Entrepreneur

How One Entrepreneur Survived Five Years of Errors

Only now is this company poised to make money.
Cyrus Schenck atop Stowe Mountain Resort.

In 2011, my five pals and I were driving home from one of our weekend ski trips in Vermont. We were engineering students at the time and used to throw out all kinds of ideas during those three-hour drives. On this one day, my friend Donny suggested building skis that were based on engineering principles and thus unequivocally better. We loved the challenge. Surely we could build a better ski.

Related: How This Company Bounced Back After a Toxic Hire

During my material sciences class, I learned about a rare class of soft. I also had a side business washing residential windows, and every dime I earned went toward building . One of my clients had some business experience and was curious about my friends -- what do they do, exactly? I explained that they’d launched the brand with me. “But what do they do now?” he asked.

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