His house burned down. He used the insurance money to build PopSockets. | Equity Podcast

Does a consumer hardware company need to get on the VC treadmill to succeed? Eleven years and 290 million products sold across 115 countries later, PopSockets has proven that the bootstrapped, low-dilution path more viable than the industry gives it credit for. The global consumer hardware brand was built on less than $500k, no institutional capital, and a philosophy professor's determination. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis caught up with founder and former CEO of PopSockets David Barnett to talk about how he scaled from a Boulder garage, stood up to Amazon at a $10–20 million cost, and eventually handed off the CEO role to someone who'd grown up inside the company. Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:15 From philosophy professor to phone grip inventor 05:17 How a house fire funded PopSockets 07:33 Manufacturing nightmares nearly killed the business 10:08 The local toy store that proved it could work 13:14 The $20M Amazon standoff 16:09 Growing too fast? 18:20 Beating counterfeits in China through brand building 19:11 Why David never wanted to be CEO 23:07 The worst advice received, and what to do instead 26:35 Outro