Finding the key partners to work with can make or break your venture. After thousands of conversations with aspiring entrepreneurs, it’s one of the most common obstacles and risks holding folks back from pursuing their idea. So – we asked some of the smartest, most resourceful entrepreneurs in the community to share their lessons and insights to help inspire and educate the next great set of entrepreneurs.

Rossy Sanchez

Start doing development tests in several factories. Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico and Spain. The selection of materials for these samples is always located in places in the same area of ​​each factory since I consider that for logistics this is more advantageous. The prototypes gave me the opportunity to evaluate the quality of the manufacture, the delivery times and also the management of minimum quantities per lot and estimated delivery times.. Read more>>

Karen Hertz

When I was in the early stages of looking for gluten-free ingredients, I googled “Gluten-free grains” and came across a woman named Twila Soles, owner of Grouse Malt House. At the time Grouse was the only gluten-free malting company in the U.S. This was fate – not only was it another rare woman owned business in the brewing industry but she happened to be just 50 miles down the road from my front door in Fort Collins, Colorado. Read more>>

Wendy Withers

Sometimes it really is “the right place at the right time” – two of my key vendors came to me, and I just had to notice them! The first was Katherine Starkey, a local Colorado artist and card-maker. Her card celebrating the “bookflood” an Icelandic Christmas tradition, was tucked into the bottom of a giveaway sack at the Mountain Plains Indie Booksellers conference. I loved the card, and contacted her about supplying cards for the bookstore. Read more>>