Sara Blakely spent seven years selling fax machines door-to-door for an office-supply company — being turned away and having her business card ripped up at least once a week — before starting Spanx with $5,000 of her own savings in 2000, writing her own patent, keeping the company entirely self-funded for 21 years, and eventually selling a majority stake to Blackstone in 2021 at a valuation of about $1.2 billion
Sara Blakely spent seven years selling fax machines door-to-door for an office-supply company — being turned away and having her business card ripped up at least once a week — before starting Spanx with $5,000 of her own savings in 2000, writing her own patent, keeping the company entirely self-funded for 21 years, and eventually selling a majority stake to Blackstone in 2021 at a valuation of about $1.2 billion — reported by siliconcanals.com, aggregated and ranked by ClawDigest.