$300K/year keto dessert biz, $600K/year selling flowers, $3.6M/year robots 🤖

Hey starters - happy (almost) Halloween!

This week, we feature 4 amazing stories + 30 influential books recommended by proven entrepreneurs.

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#1: William raised $70M to build security robots that patrol the country:

William started Knightscope - autonomous security robots that patrol the US for public safety.

Seven years ago, he was told his idea would never work, as he was in unchartered territory and nobody had ever done it before. 

Now, they've raised over $70M backed by 16,000 investors and are doing $3.6M/year in revenue. 

Check out William's full interview here! 

Pat @ Starter Story: Want to check out the 25 best security business ideas for 2020? We put together a full list for you here!

#2: This husband-wife duo started a $180K/year food blog:

Mason started Kinda Healthy Recipes - a highly acclaimed food blog. 

As of this year, they're now a 2-person husband and wife team doing $180K/year in revenue with:

• $10K in startup costs
• 500K sessions per month
• Facebook group with more than 15K members
• On pace to see 10M page views in 2020

Their "not-so-secret-weapon?" Pinterest - 70% of revenue comes from Pinterest traffic and the blog has seen 1.5M organic sessions in 2020.

Kinda Healthy Recipe's 150% increase in traffic YOY.

Check out Mason's full story here!

#3: Sharon started a $600K/year flower arrangements business:

We just caught up with Sharon from Demmerys - a luxurious flower arrangements business.

After a rough start and a few failed launch attempts, Sharon is now doing $600K/year, selling flowers to Royal families, superyachts, luxury hotels, and celebrity homes.

Check out Sharon's interview here!

Pat @ Starter Story: Want to see more successful flower businesses? Check out these two sisters who built a $48K/yr real flower and resin jewelry business. 

#4: These two friends launched a $300K/year eCommerce gluten free desserts business: 

We just published our interview with David from ChipMonk - a speciality mail-order bakery for healthy desserts. 

What initially started as a side hustle and $5K in self-funded money quickly turned into a $300K/year full-time ecommerce bakery business.

Their secret? Email marketing - through regular email blasts and abandoned cart flows, they generate roughly $10K in sales per month just through email campaigns.

Check out the amazing story behind their idea here!

Pat @ Starter Story: Want to read more successful food business ideas? We put together a list of 43 business ideas for food lovers here!

#5: The 30 Most Influential Books Recommended By Proven Entrepreneurs (2020)

Over the past few years, we've interviewed over 1,000 entrepreneurs.

In every interview, we ask them what books influenced them the most in their journey. 

Here's a look at the top 30 most recommended books, in order.

#6: Are you ready to boost your revenue?

I want to give a shoutout to our long-time sponsor Klaviyo.

Using Klaviyo will open up a massive, untapped sales channel and bring you closer to your customers!

I'm a huge fan of the product (I use it for Starter Story and love the segmentation/drip features). I've also been able to collect so many emails using their website form integration - my list growing over 3k/month now 😲

Here are just some of the impressive businesses we've interviewed that use Klaviyo for email marketing and are raving about the product - all great interviews you should check out as well!

• Brumate ($1.1M/mo at 23 years old)
• Sheets & Giggles ($76k/mo in just 6 months)
• Beardbrand ($100k+/mo - 1.5M YouTube subscribers)
• Abs Protein Pancakes ($25k/mo passive income business)
• Xero Shoes ($460k/mo - featured on Shark Tank)
• The Longhairs ($30k/mo)
• Framed Tweets ($25k/mo)

Level up your email marketing with 👉 Klaviyo!

(And thank you for your support 🙏)

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Thanks for reading! See you next week.

- Pat Walls, Founder @ Starter Story

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