#3 | Kevin Lavelle: How Mizzen+Main Got Into Nearly 1,000 Stores

Kevin Lavelle took Mizzen+Main from zero to more than 100 Nordstrom doors in 16 months. Then he hired the CEO who replaced him.More on Kevin Lavelle and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/kevin-lavelleThe brand is now in almost 1,000 retail locations plus 11 of its own stores. He covers the parts founders usually skip: raising $100,000 at a time from angels, signing a personal guarantee with almost nothing behind it, what changed once a private equity firm was on the cap table, and why he chose an L Catterton investment in early 2017 over selling the company.Then he started over. Harbor, his second company, began the night a rival baby monitor app crashed. It pairs a camera with smart audio and a remote night nanny, against in-home night nurses that run $300 to $700 a night. Tim Ferriss invested and asked what was expected of him. The answer was nothing.Along the way: why the best baby monitors are still bad, why the AI chip sits inside the camera, what 300 to 400 discovery calls turned up, momfluencers commanding $40,000 to $80,000 a post, and a US birth rate down to 3.6 million a year.Kevin Lavelle is the founder of Mizzen+Main, the performance dress shirt brand he started building in 2011 while working at Hunt Oil in Dallas, and the founder and CEO of Harbor, a baby monitor and infant sleep company. He is an SMU graduate and a former Oliver Wyman consultant, and he lives in Dallas.KEY MOMENTS00:00 Zero to 100 Nordstrom doors in 16 months05:46 A sweaty staffer, and a shirt idea09:05 Raising $100,000 at a time13:55 Signing his first personal guarantee19:03 L Catterton, and the executive coach22:30 The decision to step back as CEO37:10 The night the baby monitor app crashed42:10 Smart audio and the remote night nanny49:51 Momfluencers at $40,000 a post01:04:30 Tim Ferriss invests, and expects nothingNewsletter: thedealtablepodcast.com/connectLane Carrick on selling a business, The Optima Advantage: amzn.to/48nLElWInstagram: instagram.com/thedealtablepodcast/LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/the-deal-table/The Deal Table is hosted by Ryan Harper and Lane Carrick, filmed in Dallas, and produced by Harper Belmont Media.