@theventure: This woman turned a $5 pair of tights into a $1.2 billion empire 👠💰 At 27, Sara Blakely is broke, living at her mom's house, selling fax machines door-to-door and getting doors slammed in her face. Then one night, before a party, she can't find anything to wear under her white pants. So she grabs a pair of pantyhose and cuts the feet off. It looks great, but they roll up all night. So she decides to make her own. She has no fashion experience and no connections, and every factory turns her down for two years. So Sara bets everything, her entire $5,000 in savings, to make the first pair of footless shapewear. ✓ Calls it Spanx and watches it take off ✓ Gets named one of Oprah's favorite things, and it explodes ✓ Keeps 100% of the company for nearly 20 years ✓ Sells a majority stake to Blackstone in 2021 at a $1.2 billion valuation Broke and slamming doors → cuts the feet off her pantyhose → bets her last $5K → Oprah picks it → keeps 100% for 20 years → $1.2B valuation and youngest self-made female billionaire. Now instead of retiring, Sara's doing it all over again with Sneex, taking on the high heel: a real stiletto built on a sneaker, so you can wear it all day. Sometimes the billion-dollar idea is just fixing the annoying thing you deal with yourself. What everyday annoyance would you fix if you built the solution yourself? 🤔 #Business #Spanx #Sneex #Success #Entrepreneur @Sara Blakely @SPANX @Sneex

The Venture

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Wednesday 01 July 2026 13:39:24 GMT