Science & Technology

This Founder Bootstrapped Her Way to a $47.5 Million Exit l Build Mode

Ashley Tyrner-Dolce spent more than a decade building FarmboxRx without taking a single dollar of venture capital and ultimately exited the company while still owning the majority of it. Join us at TechCrunch Disrupt October 13-15 in San Francisco. Use promo code: buildmode25 for 25% off your ticket. In this episode of Build Mode, host…

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1 month ago

September 24, 2026

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Ashley Tyrner-Dolce spent more than a decade building FarmboxRx without taking a single dollar of venture capital and ultimately exited the company while still owning the majority of it.

Join us at TechCrunch Disrupt October 13-15 in San Francisco. Use promo code: buildmode25 for 25% off your ticket.

In this episode of Build Mode, host Isabelle Johannesen sits down with Ashley to talk about what bootstrapping actually looks like when you don’t have money from a previous exit or a wealthy network to fall back on.

Ashley started the company after experiencing food insecurity herself. Years earlier, while pregnant with her daughter, she relied on food stamps and lived in a rural food desert where getting fresh food could mean a 30-minute drive. She eventually launched Farmbox Direct as a direct-to-consumer produce delivery company before pivoting the business into healthcare and building what became FarmboxRx.

Along the way, Ashley tried to raise venture capital, but investors pushed her to turn the company into a meal-kit business, a direction she believed would take it away from the customers she wanted to serve. Instead, she kept bootstrapping. That meant cutting expenses, reinvesting money into the company, negotiating longer payment terms with vendors, using credit card points for travel, and at times stopping her own salary to make payroll.

Now an investor herself at HLM Investments, Ashley explains what bootstrapping signals to a VC, why founders should think carefully about when they raise outside capital, and why she believes traction can put founders in a much stronger position before they take a check.

Chapters:
00:00 — The case for bootstrapping
01:42 — How Ashley started FarmboxRx
03:50 — Bootstrapping without a financial safety net
07:16 — Why VCs struggled to understand the business
10:21 — Proving the investors wrong
12:34 — Building a network without VC backing
15:24 — Getting advice from VCs without taking their money
17:36 — Why Ashley refused to change her vision
20:14 — Walking away from term sheets and acquisition offers
22:32 — What bootstrapping signals to a VC
25:08 — Getting creative with cash flow
27:09 — The upside of bootstrapping
28:54 — What Ashley would tell a founder starting with $50K
30:26 — How to land your first customers
34:44 — Would Ashley take VC money today?
35:55 — Why founders should wait longer to raise
36:55 — Not all bootstrapping is the same
39:30 — The difference between bootstrapping with and without money

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CNET

Unboxing Apple’s $149 HomePod Mini 2 in Green

Apple’s new HomePod Mini 2 is equipped with a full-range driver and dual passive radiators, made for 360-degree sound. It measures about 4 inches across, and will come equipped with the S10 chip, which Apple says analyzes music in real time to optimize it. Unbox it with us in their new green color. #unboxing #onemorething…

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October 30, 2026

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iPhone Duo Livestream: How Many Folds Can Apple’s Phone Take? Day 5

Apple’s iPhone Duo is out and we want to see how durable it is. So we built a robot to fold it 20,000+ times a day to test its limits. How long do you think it will last? 100,000 folds? 200,000 folds? 500,000 folds? Tune in and watch the testing live. We’ll have CNET’s editors…

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23 hours ago

October 30, 2026

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Join us weekdays from 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM PT / 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM ET.

Read more about the iPhone Duo Folding Test on CNET.com
The iPhone Duo Is Now in Our Custom-Made Foldable Phone Test Machine. Will It Beat the Galaxy Fold 8?

iPhone Duo Review: Late to the Foldable Party, but It Steals the Show

Check out the 3D Printer Matthew Murray used to print the sled that iPhone Duo is sitting on:
Looking for the Most Accurate 3D Printer? Our Exclusive Testing Reveals One Clear Winner

Video Credits:
Host: Matthew Murray
Producer: Stephen Beacham
Thumbnail Designer: Zooey Liao

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Science & Technology

Anthropic’s IPO filing puts the AI business model to the test | Equity Podcast

After weeks of speculation and leaks, Anthropic finally released the S-1 filing for its IPO, showing revenue of $16.3 billion for the first half of 2026, with a net loss of $80.7 billion. At around the same time, former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer sparked a backlash after boasting about using her AI app Dazzle to…

Published

1 day ago

October 30, 2026

CYBER TECH TV

After weeks of speculation and leaks, Anthropic finally released the S-1 filing for its IPO, showing revenue of $16.3 billion for the first half of 2026, with a net loss of $80.7 billion.

At around the same time, former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer sparked a backlash after boasting about using her AI app Dazzle to answer questions about her daughter for a school presentation.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and Anthony Ha dig into the long-awaited financial details behind one of the industry’s biggest companies, looking at both the enormous opportunities and the many, many risks. They’re also joined by Amanda Silberling to discuss a more basic question facing the industry: Are AI execs too out-of-touch to build products for normal people?

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
2:47 Marissa Mayer’s Dazzle backlash
8:47 Product problem or messaging problem?
12:46 Anthropic’s S-1
15:09 Revenue growth, losses, and the acquisition spree
20:02 The S-1’s most notable risk factors
23:57 Apollo economist: where’s the AI payoff?
25:36 Bedrock Robotics raises $600M for self-driving excavators
30:12 Rebuild raises $2.1B for domestic manufacturing
34:11 Outro