Creative Inventables
Keith Schacht
Startup: Inventables
www.inventables.com
Chicago
Founded: 2002
Age: 25
Inventables provides a resource -- a journal subscription and materials -- that help Fortune 500 companies come up with new consumer-product ideas. The biggest indicator that things are going well for this company is the 100-strong client roster that includes Nike, Procter & Gamble, Coca Cola, and Fisher Price.
"There are so many more companies we can help and so many other ways we can help them," says Schacht. For now, nine people work out of the startup's Chicago headquarters and a string of freelancers elsewhere identify new technology that Inventables can provide to its clients. But the company is hiring.
For Schacht, the biggest measure of success is that customers are paying for the product. Officials from Inventables have been asked to speak at many conferences, too.
Lesson learned:
"Do something that you're passionate about. There are a lot of people who start companies about stuff that doesn't personally interest them.... It makes all the difference in the world to be doing something you're passionate about."
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