The Solo List

The Solo List: 20 rising founders you should know right now

Sidekick’s list of the most innovative and creative entrepreneurs to have on your radar.
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Francis Scialabba

· 18 min read

How many times a day do you encounter a problem you wish someone would solve? The entrepreneurs on Sidekick’s Solo List did too, but they decided to be the ones to fix it. The 20 rising stars on this list didn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel. Instead, they recognized a need in the market and identified innovative solutions across the health, tech, community, food and drink, publishing, and style sectors. Their stories are inspiring, creative, and instructive.

Sidekick went deep with these founders to find out everything about their business journeys, from ideation to scaling, and the challenges and lessons they learned along the way. Buckle up, because by the time we’re done with this series, you’ll be rushing to give these brands and their founders a follow (and maybe start a business of your own). But for now, let’s meet them!

Remy Goza

Amaurys Grullon, founder of Bronx Native

Amaurys Grullon, born and raised in the Bronx, launched Bronx Native to market Bronx-inspired merchandise created by the borough’s own artists and entrepreneurs. Since its launch in 2017, it’s evolved from an online storefront to a grassroots community-supported business representing Bronx creativity, artistry, and contributions to the culture. Tapped by Bronx Congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to create T-shirts for her Netflix documentary Knock Down the House, the little pop-up shop in Mott Haven is now a nationally recognized staple of Bronx pride.

And still, Grullon said there is work to be done. “This is the mecca and birthplace of hip-hop…diversity, culture, all these things that came out of the Bronx, but we still get the short end of the stick,” he said. Grullon wants his business to achieve positive representation, empowerment, and equality.

Horatio

Jose Herrera, founder of Horatio

Jose Herrera was earning his MBA at Columbia University when he discovered a problem he thought he could solve. One of the biggest hurdles US e-commerce businesses faced when scaling was building out a customer service experience. Originally from the Dominican Republic, Herrera saw an opportunity to meet a critical business need in the US while creating skilled job opportunities for an underutilized pool of talent in his home country. The result was Horatio.

Launched in 2018, Horatio now has a team of more than 1,000 employees, mainly in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The company offers English classes and training programs to DR residents, and then outsources that talent to US clients. You get a sense of Herrera’s dreams for the company in what he describes as the full “Google-esque” experience at the Horatio offices: daily catered meals for all the employees, learning and development tracks, private health insurance, and other benefits like an on-site gym, daycare facilities for working parents, and transportation to and from employees’ homes.

bttn

JT Garwood, co-founder of bttn

Even with his experience in international business and management, JT Garwood was astonished by the lack of transparency and technology, and the prohibitive costs that came with building a marketplace for international manufacturers to connect with US hospitals. So he connected with NetApp alumnus and his now co-founder Jack Miller to build a marketplace of their own. The result was bttn.

A B2B medical supply marketplace, bttn makes it easier for doctors and dentists at smaller practices to obtain medical supplies by simply clicking and checking out online. Bttn sources the medical materials, including PPE, test kits, IVs, and other commonly needed items, and delivers them at an affordable price within a short timeframe. “We believed that we could reduce the cost of healthcare,” Garwood said. “The number one expense for most of these healthcare providers is their medical supplies. Why is it so expensive? Why are they being overcharged? Our business model inherently makes it less expensive.”

Nicole Manson

Natalie and Caleb Ebel, founders of Backdrop

Like many city dwellers, the Ebels did a lot of apartment-hopping. That meant personalizing each new space with a coat (or three) of paint. But from “schlepping down to the hardware store” to picking a color to figuring out what kind of equipment to buy (and that was just the beginning), they knew there had to be a better way. So in 2018, they launched Backdrop.

The company streamlines the painting process with home delivery, easy color sampling, and a commitment to a better product: All Backdrop paints are low-VOC, Green Wise certified, and low-odor, and the cans are made from recyclable stainless steel. For the Ebels, customer satisfaction and loyalty have been a North Star. “We’re there to hold your hand,” Caleb told Sidekick. “Every step of the way is what we wanted and couldn’t find when we were painting.”

Rob Thomas/Day One

Andrew Hutton and Rahul Brahmbhatt, founders of Day One

Before teaming up to start Day One, a community and school for entrepreneurs, Andrew Hutton and Rahul Brahmbhatt both had wide-ranging experiences in venture capital, consulting, and brand building. They also had experience with adult corporate education and what actual value-add it provided for up-and-coming entrepreneurs. They knew they wanted a real community to emerge from their educational platforms, where founders across industries learned from one another. Their solution was a cohort-based model of education.

“And this is where we started to realize we really are making a university for entrepreneurs,” Hutton told Sidekick. “You have this umbrella ecosystem, but there’s individual journeys.” Now 40% of the community identify as women and people of color. They come from 19 countries around the world. “We’re just bringing so many more people into [the field of] entrepreneurship,” said Bramhbhatt.

Melati Citrawireja

Sana Javeri Kadri, founder of Diaspora Co.

When 23-year-old Sana Javeri Kadri decided to tell the stories of Indian turmeric farmers, she never imagined that she’d embark on a journey that would disrupt the spice trade as she knew it. “I wanted to be telling really deep, nuanced stories about South Asian food, culture and cuisine in a way that I wasn't seeing in the media, and I certainly wasn’t seeing on the grocery store shelf,” Kadri said.

After moving back home to Mumbai, India, and taking months to visit more than 40 farms across the country, Kadri realized there were several generations of young South Asian farmers who didn’t have access to the US market, and decided to bring them together via Diaspora Co. Since its launch in 2017, Diaspora Co. has grown its spice offering from one product to more than 30, and prides itself on its ethical sourcing and paying its farmers 6 times more than the commodity price.

Tertulia

Sebastian Cwilich, founder of Tertulia

An avid reader and art collector, Sebastian Cwilich understands the value of discovery: of new artists, authors, and creators. So when he found himself digging through dozens of recommendations to find his next read, he decided there had to be a better way. Tertulia, like his previous art-discovery platform Artsy, was his solution.

A discovery app that uses AI to collect information from databases of book reviews, podcasts, and articles about books, Tertulia is modeled on the power of word-of-mouth reader recommendations. If users enjoy a book they discovered through Tertulia, they receive recommendations for their next purchase. For Cwilich, it’'s a way to democratize book discovery on the internet: “Most discovery for things like books actually misses the multidimensional nature of discovery,” he said. “What if we could capture all the world’s book conversations?”

Deanie Chen

Vanessa & Kim Pham, co-founders of Omsom

As first-generation daughters of Vietnamese refugee parents, sisters Vanessa and Kim Pham were well aware that the world could use a lot more Asian representation in general, and at the grocery store in particular. In 2019 they launched Omsom, a “proud, loud” collection of Asian sauces and seasonings.

After bootstrapping for the first year until they “burned through our life savings,” the sisters brought  on investors—but they had some caveats. They wanted their cap table to comprise 50+% women, people or color, or the LGBTQIA community. Since then, Omsom has launched nationally in Whole Foods stores, and may have single handedly destigmatized the negative perception of MSG. Through it all, Omsom’s main goal remains the same: The sisters wanted to create a food brand that “celebrates the multitudes in our stories and in our flavors,” Kim said.

Eric Ryan Anderson

Fawn Weaver, founder of Uncle Nearest Whiskey

After reading a New York Times story about Nathan “Nearest” Green, the first known African American master distiller (he taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey), longtime investor, business builder, and best-selling author Fawn Weaver knew she had to create a brand that would bring Green’s name back into the premium liquor industry.

Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey took off shortly after its launch in 2017. By 2021, the company had sold nearly 1.5 million bottles, making it the top-selling African American-owned and operated spirit company. And perhaps most importantly, Nearest Whiskey honored the memory of Nathan Green, which might have been lost to history. As the brand continues to grow, Weaver is working to build Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey into a legacy alcohol brand that sits on bar shelves and home bar carts across the world.

Cayce Clifford

Helen Mayer, founder of Otter Childcare

Before the pandemic, Helen Mayer worked at a company that supported first-generation college students. Having been a first-gen student herself, she found it to be meaningful work. But when the pandemic hit, Mayer, who had 16-month-old twins,  became a stay-at-home mother “by default.” She quickly noticed that a lot of other working moms were also struggling with issues around childcare. Mayer told Sidekick she “never intended to start a business plan,” but she thought, “maybe I can build a tool that will help people to find a neighbor who’s a parent and swap childcare back and forth.” And from that shared need, Otter was born.

Soon, though, Mayer realized that for full-time stay-at-homes (like her mother had been), the growing community she created could provide an opportunity for people whose labor had gone traditionally unrecognized and to empower a community that hadn’t had access to economic opportunity. Today, Otter has a team of 12 and matches vetted childcare providers with families. In 2021 the company earned $23 million in Series A funding. For Mayer, though, Otter has always been about providing service on both sides of the business model: to parents who need childcare, and to caregivers who need a platform where they can be “really in control of their schedule and get to make better choices about the families that they work with.”

Mecca Gamble

Jasmin Foster, founder of Be Rooted

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When the pandemic struck, Jasmin Foster—who was the head of sales at a popular beauty brand at the time—suddenly found herself with fewer meetings and more time. Having worked in the industry, Foster was well aware of the lack of representation of Black women in retail. And because journaling was an important practice in her life, she saw that stationery was a niche area of retail where consumers of color were also underrepresented.

So in 2020, Foster launched a collection of beautifully designed and inclusive journals and planners. A huge win for Be Rooted came during its first year in business, when the company became the first Black-owned stationery brand to be sold in Target. The brand was featured in Time’s list of the top 100 brands of 2022, which lauded Foster’s efforts to bring diversity into the world of stationery. “I’ve always wanted there to be a brand like Be Rooted. Then I said, ‘Well, it’s been a decade—why not just create it myself?” Foster told Sidekick.

Alison Taylor

Andy Hunter, founder of Bookshop

The idea for what would become Bookshop.org first came to Andy Hunter, the co-creator of Literary Hub and publisher of Catapult Books, in 2011, as he observed Amazon’s fast-paced growth (and growing dominance) in the bookselling industry. At the time, however, investors weren’t interested in Hunter’s alternate vision for a collective, indie version of literary e-commerce. But the idea stuck with him, and in January 2020, after months of quiet building, he launched Bookshop.org. In March of the same year, many indie bookstores shut down their storefronts during pandemic lockdowns. Bookshop found itself in the perfect position to help both book lovers and indie bookstore owners.

The company offered bookstores a unique opportunity to create their own reading lists, and bring attention to books and authors that were traditionally overlooked. It also kept small bookstores afloat by providing them a robust, far-reaching e-commerce platform. Since its launch, Bookshop has raised more than $22 million for local bookstores, and Hunter plans to keep growing the Bookshop community.

Christina Gilbert

Christina Gilbert, co-founder of OneSchema

Christina Gilbert, a Google alum and a product manager with a background in computer science, understood that any feature that saves time during a product launch is a value-add, especially for startups working with limited resources. So when she and her co-founder, Andrew Luo, learned that engineers were struggling to import CSV files like Excel spreadsheets into their code, they sprang into action and launched OneSchema.

An embeddable CSV importer, OneSchema keeps engineers from having to write new lines of code to manually resolve errors. Startups, in turn, can save money on these fixes and reinvest the capital elsewhere in the business. Gilbert explained that  One Schema addresses a special kind of need. People tend to think it’s just a small engineering snafu, but down the line it becomes very challenging for teams to solve. Now, thanks to Gilbert, users never have to manually clean a spreadsheet again

Stix

Cynthia Plotch and Jamie Norwood, founders of Stix

Cynthia Plotch and Jamie Norwood were working together at a small Baltimore-based startup when the idea for their own company grew out of an uncomfortable moment for Plotch. In 2018, Norwood said, Cynthia was buying a pregnancy test and she ran into her boyfriend’s mother.”  Still in their early twenties, the women weren’t ready for motherhood and knew many of their friends felt the same.

Initially, the pair thought they’d only sell pregnancy tests through their e-commerce business, Stix, but they added other products to their line, including UTI tests and emergency contraception. From scrappy beginnings entering pitch contests and keeping their full-time jobs, Plotch and Norwood  attracted the attention of an angel investor and built a loyal Instagram following. But as Stix grows, Norwood said, the goal of the company remains the same: help women make competent healthcare decisions while removing any associated judgment or stigma.

Tacombi

Dario Wolos, founder of Tacombi

Growing up in Mexico, Dario Wolos was raised on the rich and tasty cuisine of street vendors and local restaurants. But when he came to the US, it was a different story. With legacy brands like Chipotle, Taco Bell, and the now defunct Chi-Chi’s priming American consumers for more opportunities to enjoy “Mexican food,” Wolos launched the first Tacombi in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and then brought the restaurant to the US in 2010. Since then, Tacombi has expanded across the country, with locations in Miami, Maryland, Virginia, and New York. More recently, Tacombi has launched a product line of tortillas, burritos, and tortilla chips called Vista Hermosa that’s available in several national grocery stores.

Above all, Wolos’s mission is to bring the warmth and comfort of Mexican culture and Mexican hospitality to as many restaurant-goers as possible. ”People think about Mexico and Mexican food like it’s ice cream. You want it when you’re sad; you want it when you’re happy. It’s comfort food, to a certain extent; Mexican culture and Mexican hospitality is so warm,” Wolos told Sidekick.

Tony Luong

Matthew Roberts and Doug Hoon, co-founders of Cometeer

How do you revolutionize a near-universal product like coffee? Well, Matthew Roberts and Douglas Hoon decided they were up for the challenge. While studying abroad in Spain during his junior year of college, Roberts found himself craving that true American specialty: iced coffee. He settled for freezing hot coffee into cubes, which became the first step of what would later become Cometeer.

After learning the ins and outs of what it takes to brew great-tasting coffee, the pair launched Cometeer, which sells frozen coffee pods that are curbside recyclable. So you can simply add water and enjoy! If this sounds like your grandparents’ Folger’s crystals, think again. The brand works with the biggest roasters across the country, from Counter Culture to George Howell. Since its humble beginnings, Cometeer has successfully raised more than $100 million in venture capital funds. Now, Cometeer customers can bring their beloved iced (or hot!) coffee wherever they go.

Touchland

Andrea Lisbona, founder of Touchland

In 2018, Andrea Lisbona came to the US from Spain to study abroad as part of her master’s studies in business administration and fashion studies and quickly noticed the little bottles of hand sanitizer dangling from students’ backpacks. “Everyone was using it” but no one was enjoying it, Lisbona told Sidekick. It was sticky and gross and as a skincare lover, she felt a strong desire to wash it off.

Lisbona saw an opportunity: make hand sanitizer into a better, nicer feeling, nicer looking product—and take it from a necessary evil and turn it into a self-care moment. After she launched the business with a Kickstarter that was 450% funded, the company soon gained a foothold on social media, where organic influencer growth helped establish Touchland as a beauty brand instead of a hygiene brand. Beauty and self care were exactly the space Lisbona wanted the company to occupy. They began selling with a direct-to-consumer model and now also have partnerships with retailers like Sephora and Target.

AltSummit

Adriana Catalina Vázquez Ortiz, founder of Lilu

When Adriana Catalina Vázquez Ortiz was still early in her career at Morgan Stanley, she observed that the women on her team returning from maternity leave often struggled with the realities of breastfeeding and lack of access to proper lactation resources in the office. And as she encountered more women with families, she noticed the pattern persisted… pretty much everywhere.

While completing her master’s degree, Vazquez Ortiz focused her capstone project on developing technology to make life easier for new moms. She launched Lilu in 2016 with a smart, wearable device to make breastfeeding and pumping more comfortable. Vazquez has  the goal of eventually launching more postpartum support devices, and Lilu products have since launched on Amazon and been recommended by lactation consultants. But there is still more to learn and do, Vazquez said. “For many women, when breastfeeding is not going well, it might be the first time they feel that they’re spiraling out of control or losing,” she said. That’s where “the desire to use technology for good” comes from.

Aether Diamonds

Ryan Shearman, founder of Aether Diamonds

In early 2018, Ryan Shearman was reading Drawdown, an anthology about the latest efforts to solve the climate crisis, when he came across a section on direct air capture technology that piqued his interest. Using chemistry to remove CO2 from the atmosphere? “That immediately started to light off some synapses in my head,” he told Sidekick.

Thinking of ways to incorporate the technology into an industry ripe for disruption, Shearman landed on jewelry. He launched Aether Diamonds  to combine the technology used in lab-grown diamonds and direct air capture to create the ideal image of fine jewelry: bright, beautiful and sustainable. “Diamonds are… one of the most valuable forms of carbon on planet Earth,” Shearman told Sidekick. So imagine if you could pull them out of thin air? Now, you can.

courtesy of Marina Khidekel

Marina Khidekel, founder of Hugimals World

Marina Khidekel, the former Chief Content Officer at Thrive Global credits a series of sleepless nights as the inspiration for her business, Hugimals. The only thing that helped her sleep at the time was the weight of her partner’s arm on her body, which wasn’t a long-term solution for either of them. Weighted blankets proved too hot, so she started looking into other items with calming weighted pressure — items mainly used in the special needs market for people with autism spectrum disorder and sensory processing issues.

While weighted stuffed animals did exist, many of them were poorly made and not machine washable. Khidekel decided to make her own: one that she would use herself or give as a gift. The result was Hugimals, weighted stuffed animals designed to give the feeling of “hugging you back,” she said, in calming neutral colors, and intended for use by anyone who needs some comfort in stressful times. While Khidekel is still bootstrapping the business in many ways, word of mouth is spreading quickly. At one children’s hospital in Miami, for instance, the staff uses Hugimals as a standard response tool for patients needing extra support or comfort. “When I heard that,” Khidekel told Sidekick, “I was like, I have to keep going.”

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