$50M in Revenue With Just 7 Employees and The Minimum Viable Company

What does it actually look like to build a mid-eight figure consumer brand with seven people and zero venture capital?Alex Schinasi, Co-Founder and President of Hulken, joins In The Money to break down the Minimum Viable Company, a model she's built from scratch after two VC-backed SaaS companies taught him everything she didn't want to do again.Hulken hit $50M+ in revenue with fewer than 10 people. The goal is $100M with the same headcount. This is a conversation about what's actually possible when you strip a business down to its highest-leverage elements and refuse to hire your way to growth.We cover:What the Minimum Viable Company actually is and why Alex thinks it's the future of building brandsHow Hulken went from zero to $5M in revenue without spending a dollar on paid adsThe niche communities that found Hulken first: thrifters, makeup artists, professional organizers and what that signal meantWhy Supreme reached out before Alex was even working on Hulken full-timeHow to vet agencies like you're hiring a co-founder and why firing them is easier than firing staffThe $5K shoot that got Supreme's attention (and why $40K shoots are a trap)QVC as the retail bootcamp nobody talks about harder requirements than any retailer they've worked with sinceThe five-month sprint to launch 1,800 Target stores with a team of fiveWhy having in-house manufacturing changed everything about their capital structureThe AI project management layer they're building and what it's actually replacingWhat Alex would do differently in the first 12-24 months if she started overThe supply chain and ops decisions that cost them margin early and what they've fixed sinceNew product expansion: the travel rolling tote, what's in the pipeline, and how they think about SKU discipline at this stageIf you're building a consumer brand and wondering whether you really need to raise, hire fast, or scale a big team to win this episode is the clearest argument I've heard that you don't.