CAPTAIN UNDER PANTS

Anthony Coombs became a hero to the plus-size market for building online undies brand Splendies. He never had delusions he would collect a Bezos-size fortune from his Inc. 5000 company, but he figured he could sell it after a few years and move on. If only it were that simple.

- Alex Bhattacharji

Shortly before he launched Splendies, Anthony Coombs had an unsettling job interview. It was 2013, the then-33-year-old had just moved to Los Angeles, and a friend had arranged for him to meet with a partner at a prestigious tech incubator. Thirty minutes after the interview was supposed to begin, the man popped out into the reception area and asked Coombs why he was there, and then he made him wait another 30 minutes. Coombs was stunned, and even more so when he finally took a seat opposite the partner, who put his feet up, crossed his arms, and issued a challenge. "Impress me," the man said.

When he got home, Coombs, still fuming, wrote the words Impress me on a piece of paper and stuck it to the wall of his apartment. He'd been considering the idea that would become Splendies but took the interview because he hadn't yet committed himself to startup life again. Now he felt driven. "This is going to get done," he said to himself.

Eight years later, in mid-2021, Splendies was on track to do nearly $16 million in annual revenue, and Coombs had bootstrapped his way there without a dollar of outside investment or even debt. The company had finished every year in the black. That fall, Splendies appeared on the Inc. 5000 as one of the fastest-growing companies in America. It had grown 347 percent over the previous three years, putting it firmly in the top third of the list, at No. 1,373.