Lumi: Jesse Genet [encore]

Packaging should be your secret weapon, and this serial entrepreneur will show you how. Some of you might remember our episode a year ago, with Jesse Genet from Lumi. They recently raised $9M, so we're checking in with Jesse to get an update. We talk about how they've evolved their strategy and what she learned raising venture capital. We also get tips for finding suppliers, and the advantages of offering a platform that gives customers unprecedented control to tinker with their packaging.

We're starting with the original interview. If you want to skip ahead to our more recent conversation, it starts at 1:07:30.

At age 15, Jesse started her first business printing t-shirts in Detroit. Over the next year she followed her curiosity, tracked down an obscure invention, and next thing she knew her new company Inkodye ended up on Shark Tank and participated in the prestigious incubator Y-Combinator. Through becoming a manufacturing entrepreneur, she learned how easy it was on the digital side to start a business, but on the physical side it was the complete opposite.

That's when their big idea hit: why don't they create a whole platform for startups to handle packaging and fulfillment? And Lumi was born. Jesse tells horror stories and practical advice about packaging and logistics. She gives insights into new ecommerce trends like direct-to-consumer retail and Vertical Commerce Brands that make your packaging more important than ever before. And she also shares her real-life experiences and perspectives on being an entrepreneur. (Her stories about stalking the original owner of the Inkodye technology, turning down Mark Cuban, and what happened as she was about to walk onto the set of Shark Tank are pretty hilarious.) She's energetic, nerdy, and unapologetically quirky, and she has some great advice you won't want to miss.

Links and social handles: (note if the embedded hyperlinks don't work, scroll down for explicit ones)

Lumi Home Page
Lumi Twitter
Lumi Instagram
Lumi Facebook
Jesse's Twitter
Jesse's Instagram

Lumi on Fast Company
Jesse Genet's MAKE IT talk on YouTube
"Digitally-Native Vertical Commerce Brands," by Andy Dunn
Marshall Goldsmith: What Got You Here Won't Get You There on Audible
Marshall Goldsmith: What Got You Here Won't Get You There on Amazon 

For more information, bios, and links, check out the show notes at http://makeitinla.org/lumi.