{"podcast":{"title":"Scaling Up with Fexingo: How Small Businesses Become Mid-Market Companies","slug":"scaling-up-with-fexingo-how-small-businesses-become-mid-market-companies-7871589","podcast_index_feed_id":7871589,"rss_url":"https://feeds.fexingo.com/business/scaling-up.xml","website_url":"https://www.fexingo.com/","image_url":"https://audio.fexingo.com/business/scaling-up/cover.png","author":"Fexingo","episode_count":77,"summary":"Lucas and Luna anchor themselves on a mezzanine balcony, surveying a floor of empty desks below, as they dissect the exact financial and operational thresholds that separate a small business from a mid-market contender. Each episode isolates a single case—a specialty manufacturer in Ohio, a regional dental chain, a software consultancy in Austin—and walks through the specific revenue inflection points, debt structures, and hiring sequences that mark the transition. Lucas, a journalist who has covered private-company growth for a decade, presses on the numbers: at what EBITDA multiple does a bank change its lending criteria? How does a payroll of 40 versus 150 alter your tax liability? Luna, with a background in operations, tests those numbers against real friction—the founder who lost control of culture after a Series A, the CFO who swapped QuickBooks for NetSuite too late. They never promise a formula; they examine why some companies stall at $10 million and others blow through $50 million. The listener is someone running a 30- to 200-person firm, or an investor evaluating that space, who is tired of 'growth hacking' and wants the actual ledgers. Can you scale without diluting th…","last_synced_at":"2026-06-27T12:19:03.505596+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-up-with-fexingo-how-small-businesses-become-mid-market-companies-7871589"},"episode":{"title":"How a Home Baker Scaled to 25 Million Without a Storefront","slug":"how-a-home-baker-scaled-to-25-million-without-a-storefront","published_at":"2026-06-20T16:04:31+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-up-with-fexingo-how-small-businesses-become-mid-market-companies-7871589/how-a-home-baker-scaled-to-25-million-without-a-storefront","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-up-with-fexingo-how-small-businesses-become-mid-market-companies-7871589","url":"https://audio.fexingo.com/business/scaling-up/episode-0064.mp3","audio_url":"https://audio.fexingo.com/business/scaling-up/episode-0064.mp3","summary":"Lucas and Luna dive into the story of Bakeology, a home-based baker in Austin that hit 25 million dollars in revenue by 2025 without ever opening a retail store. They break down how founder Maya Chen used direct-to-consumer shipping, a single viral TikTok product (the 'Texas Twice-Baked Cookie'), and a ruthless focus on repeat subscriptions to bypass the costs of a brick-and-mortar business. The hosts discuss the unit economics: how a 20-dollar box of cookies costs 8 dollars to produce and ship, leaving a 60 percent gross margin that funded a 500-thousand-dollar automated kitchen. They also explore the risks—shipping fragile goods, dependency on carriers, and the ceiling of a purely online brand. A concrete look at one founder's path from home oven to mid-market without ever renting a storefront. #Bakeology #MayaChen #DirectToConsumer #SubscriptionModel #FoodBusiness #ScalingUp #MidMarket #UnitEconomics #Ecommerce #TikTokViral #HomeBaker #AustinBusiness #AutomatedKitchen #GrossMargin #RepeatRevenue #BusinessPodcast #FexingoBusiness #Business Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo","meta_description":"Lucas and Luna dive into the story of Bakeology, a home-based baker in Austin that hit 25 million dollars in revenue by 2025 without ever opening a retail…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":533,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/scaling-up-with-fexingo-how-small-businesses-become-mid-market-companies-7871589/episodes/how-a-home-baker-scaled-to-25-million-without-a-storefront/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-up-with-fexingo-how-small-businesses-become-mid-market-companies-7871589/how-a-home-baker-scaled-to-25-million-without-a-storefront.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}