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Carpenter bootstrapped the company for roughly five years. Then, in 2018, Serena Williams had become an anonymous customer of the brand. She wore Nude Barre during the 2018 tennis season. Her team reached out to Carpenter to inquire about a sold-out product. Shortly after, Carpenter met Jason Calacanis, an American Internet entrepreneur and angel investor. In addition to investing in the company, he also introduced her to Freestyle Capital. Additionally, she also filmed an episode of that never aired. Katrina Lake, founder and CEO of Stitch Fix, served as one of the guest sharks who showed interest in Carpenter’s company.
“I had been bootstrapping for a long time,” Carpenter explains about the decision to scale the company. “I had been teaching 20 classes a week, fitness classes, while running the business. I was just at the point where I was like something has to happen differently for me to scale this business. Especially as I was shifting into motherhood, I knew that I probably wouldn’t have the capacity to teach that many classes a week plus scale the business and be a mom with a newborn.