Lisa Price, founder of Carol's Daughter, reflects on community backlash after selling her company to L'Oréal and discusses generational wealth disparities.
Insight
Price: Lack of Generational Wealth Drove Backlash to Carol's Daughter Sale
“I realize that as a group of people within this world, African American people, historically, we have less experience with generational wealth. We may be successful in certain areas, we may have become rich recently, but we don't really know what generational …”
Insight
Deferring to veteran executives was perceived as founder weakness by Lisa Price
“I decided that I was going to take the position of, I'm not gonna sit at the head of the table, I'm gonna sit at the table with everyone Because there's so much that I need to learn, and unfortunately, that was perceived as a weakness, and it was perceived as …”
Insight
Big acquirers buy profitable businesses with strong margins, not struggling ones
“A lot of people think that you know, you're not doing so well, so they pick you up for a song, and it doesn't work that way. You have to be profitable, you have to be doing well, you have to have good profit margins, and they have to see growth coming from you…”
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Price: Taking equity partners means the goal is a strategic exit
“So once you take on an equity partner, your goal is to Sell to a strategic partner, and everyone exits happy, hopefully.”
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Price: Bootstrapping breaks at $2M in sales; scaling requires outside capital
“There comes a point, you know, when you start doing a million and a half, 2,000,002 and a half million in sales, where you can't wing it, you know, like things have to be secure. And that's when investment was definitely needed because there was some winging i…”
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Price: Generating customer demand is harder than fulfilling backlogged orders
“What if you didn't have the orders? That seems to me like it would be the harder part to kind of make people be interested and make people purchase. He says, you have the orders, you have their credit card numbers. As soon as you get the stuff made, you'll get…”