Glacial To Gangbuster

Sarah Kauss slowly, patiently persuad the world to buy her $35 fashion-forwad water bottles. Now sales are at $100 million.

- Kate Rockwood

When S’well founder Sarah Kauss finally made the leap from making manual invoices in Excel to using QuickBooks, in 2010, she called in an accounting pro to get her set up. He looked at her statements—and the scant $2,000 she had left in savings—as well as the rent on her New York City apartment, where she was working and storing the 3,000 high-end water bottles she hoped to sell. “You know,” he said, after a long pause, “you could get a real job.”