Good morning, Broadsheet readers! A hotline prevents violence against women by reaching out to men, Rent the Runway seeks a valuation of $1.5 billion in its IPO, and Stacey Abrams and Lara Hodgson learned some big lessons from small business failure. Have a great Wednesday.
Today’s guest essay comes to us from Stacey Abrams and Lara Hodgson, coauthors of the forthcoming book Level Up: Rise Above the Hidden Forces Holding Your Business Back.
– Small business, big lessons. The moment our business fell apart, we could hardly grasp it was true. Like a cruel joke, the wheels began to come off the very day we scored our most important win. It was a glorious morning in the fall of 2010 when we got word that a global retailer wanted to buy 1,500 units—20 times our typical order—of the product we had invented to help busy parents feed their babies. Our patented spill-proof water bottles for little ones were already selling out in small boutiques, but now they would be distributed by a big-time grocery chain. The deal would take Nourish, our scrappy little company, to the next level.
As business partners, with varying degrees of risk tolerance, we often jokingly refer to each other as “Yes” and “But.” Lara plays the eternal optimist. She’s a cheerleader at heart, with a sharp eye for business and a head for innovation, who sees the possibilities in every opportunity. Stacey, on the other hand, serves as the resident realist of our partnership, a cautious contrarian who is a stickler for thoughtful deliberation before we make any big moves.
But after her initial elation, despair had set in. Outwardly excited, Lara entered the office ready to high five Stacey, but the celebration never materialized.
We knew we couldn’t manage the net 30-day terms, granting the customer 30 days to pay us after we ship the 1,500 bottles, unless we had the cash needed. Over the next few months, we scrambled. In the end, we had to face the painful truth: We just didn’t have the cash to pay our vendors to make the product and deliver in the required timeframe.
 Courtesy of Penguin Random House Our emotions spiraled from triumph to angst to grief. By May of 2011, the two of us would make the heart-wrenching decision to let the opportunity go and with it, Nourish, the company we had built from scratch.
As much as the failure stung, it would prove to be our greatest lesson. We realized we had actually grown our company out of business.
Perhaps the most important thing we discovered in our 15 years together is that some of the hurdles we came up against were far larger and more powerful than the two of us. We alone could not overcome the structures that dictate access to capital and commerce.
We want to help everyone better understand the often invisible and unexpected forces that hold back many small firms from unleashing their power to fulfill their potential.
Read the full book excerpt here.
The Broadsheet, Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women, is coauthored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman. Today’s edition was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
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