Amy Errett, founder of hair care company Madison Reed, shares her path to successful entrepreneurship in a new book by Wharton’s Lori Rosenkopf.
In her new book, Unstoppable Entrepreneurs, Lori Rosenkopf, vice dean of entrepreneurship at the Wharton School, reveals seven distinct entrepreneurial paths that are open to anyone with the drive to create value through innovation. Drawing from her 30-year career and interactions with more than 20,000 students, Rosenkopf offers a compelling roadmap for entrepreneurial success.
In the book she tells the stories of a wide range of entrepreneurs. In this excerpt, Rosenkopf discusses the “disruptor path” and offers Amy Errett’s disruption of the hair care industry as inspiration.
Before Amy Errett founded Madison Reed in 2013, the hair color industry consisted of two dominant options: time-consuming, expensive salon services and more affordable off-the-shelf box dyes. Missing was a middle ground that offered a salon-quality product at a lower price point. That’s where Amy found her market, creating superior hair color for home use sold through an innovative, direct-to-consumer model.
With its convenience, healthier ingredients, and personalized customer experiences, Madison Reed disrupted the industry’s established norms. To get there, Amy relied on substantial funding from venture capitalists to encourage customers to change preferences, behaviors, and expectations. She also uniquely identified five values that drive the company: courage, trust, joy, responsibility, and love. Since its founding as an online, subscription-based service, Madison Reed has expanded to become an omnichannel brand, offering its products through traditional retailers and opening nearly 100 brick-and-mortar Hair Color Bars across the United States.
The Path: Disruption
In the context of entrepreneurship, the term disruption was popularized by Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation. It refers to the introduction of innovative products, services, or business models by a new or existing company that start at the low end of a market but improve enough to significantly displace higher-end incumbents. These products, services, or business models either fulfill unmet consumer needs or provide solutions that are better than established alternatives. Disruption can lead to not only the uprooting of established firms but also the creation of new markets and changes in consumer behaviors.
Examples of disruptors include Warby Parker founders Neil Blumenthal, Andrew Hunt, David Gilboa, and Jeffrey Raider, who started by selling inexpensive eyeglasses and simplifying the process of buying them with a direct-to-consumer model. They revolutionized the market by offering designer-quality glasses at prices incumbent retailers have yet to match.
In Latin America, Marcos Galperin disrupted the online shopping market by first launching an eBay clone, Mercado Libre, in 1999. It quickly became a more comprehensive e-commerce platform that’s often referred to as the Amazon of Latin America. Chief among its innovations was the introduction of Mercado Pago, a PayPal-like secure payment system that made transactions easy in a region where traditional banks are often undependable or unavailable.
In China, Tao Zhang transformed local business reviews by founding Dianping in 2003. Initially modeled after Yelp, Dianping grew beyond simple reviews to become a robust platform featuring restaurant recommendations, user-generated reviews, and group buying deals. Over time, Dianping established itself as a pillar of China’s digital economy, ultimately merging with Meituan to form one of the largest on-demand service platforms in the world. A game-changing innovation was its mobile app, which enabled smooth online-to-offline transactions, helping millions of consumers seamlessly connect with businesses across China’s diverse urban landscape.
Three common disruption tactics are:
Leveraging novel technologies: Utilizing the latest technological advancements to develop innovative business models and value propositions;
Rapid scaling: Making sure innovations can grow fast enough to both satisfy market needs and overtake competition;
Building solid ecosystems: Forming alliances of suppliers, other companies, customers, and communities to provide access to resources, mitigate risks, and create barriers for competitors.
Wisdom from Experience
Amy’s advice to current and aspiring entrepreneurs is to understand company culture. “Before we even had product, I sat down with two of our senior leaders and created our company values: ‘We are a hair color company built on values—everything we do is driven by courage, trust, joy, responsibility and love.’ I wanted to spend my time not in a toxic culture but in a culture that I felt passionate about and invested in. I was certain that the only thing that was going to make this company special was not just what we did, but why and how we did it. For Madison Reed, it’s the why of paying our stylists more than they would make in the market. It’s the why of the ingredients, and the why of our company values and the behaviors that people have. What’s acceptable, what’s not, what kind of people you’re hiring? What kind of environment do you have—is it building community or fostering hostility?
“These things are all culture,” she continues. “When people decide Madison Reed isn’t where they should be anymore, we celebrate them instead of villainizing them. I believe that every single person that’s come here is part of our story, and our success comes collectively because of them. We have 10 years of amazing alumni. Two people have started businesses. Part of our culture is wanting our people to have a transformational experience, and if that experience transforms you into wanting to go do something else like I’ve done, I’m all in.”
