Meet the 13-year-old who graduated from college with four associate’s degrees

The most important trends in the colors of 2022 have their roots in optimism, warmth, growth and enthusiasm.

Move over Betty Crocker. Former professional baker Marla Pruitte of Mary Alice Cakes has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help her bring her cake mix to store shelves so consumers can #BuyBlack in the baking aisle. “I grew up in a family of exceptional cooks and bakers,” Pruitte says on her crowdfunding site. “My great, great aunt Mary Alice Sain was the matriarch of our family and was well known for her baking. She was a kind, gentle soul and opened her home and kitchen to so many. This is a tribute of love to her.” The Atlanta-based company, which a 100% woman- and black-owned business, is raising funds to launch its cake mix, starting with its flagship Perfect White flavor, based on Pruitte’s best-selling wedding cake flavor from her days as owner of Sweet by Design Cupcakery in Tennessee. Although Pruitte owned the bakery for only two years, making the decision in 2013 to re-enter the workforce for the financial stability of her family, she enjoyed her time as an entrepreneur and walked away with a lot of new knowledge. “Owning a storefront bakery was one of the best experiences as a business owner,” Pruitt said in an email to Black Enterprise. “It taught me a great deal about operating an actual brick and mortal, dealing with consumers on the front line, customer service, and creating experiences.” Most importantly, “It gave me an opportunity to put my finger on the heart of the baked goods industry,” she says. After having the worst year of her life in 2019—Pruitte totaled her car, losing her ability to work as a contractor and forcing her and her twin sons to move in with family—she is ready to make a living from her baking skills again. But this time, she knew she needed to “come out of the kitchen.” “I realized that in order to make a larger impact in the industry I had to create a scalable product that was more widely available to anyone, not just my regular or walk-in customers,” she says. Pruitte believes she has found her solution in a commercial cake mix—a huge market that’s only getting bigger, and one in which there’s little diversity. “The cake mix industry is experiencing trending growth, even now, and especially in the U.S. The [global] valuation is estimated to be $1.54 billion in six years,” she says. “Currently there is not a Black-owned cake mix line in super store and big box retailers. Part of my mission is to bridge the gap in racial and gender disparities in this industry.” Pruitte found a manufacturer for her cake mixes through a Google search. She’s now in the initial stages of securing a consultant who will help her connect with retailers to get the product on shelves. The investment she’s seeking is primarily to help her meet the large minimum initial order required by the manufacturer. “I thought I could order a much smaller quantity to do some old-fashioned marketing and pounding the pavement,” Pruitte says. “This has pushed us beyond our financial bandwidth.” She’s seeking $18,000 on Kickstarter to cover the order and also boxes, packaging, inventory, shipping costs, and marketing and development. Not being afraid to ask for help financially is one of the lessons Pruitte leaned from her first go-round as an entrepreneur: “I started my first business with very limited finances, actually with an unemployment check, but I learned people are willing to help and invest.” Pruitte is counting on the success of this campaign to “bring Mary Alice to life fully” and to help the company become the “home baker’s answer to made-from-scratch taste in a box.” “I really have enjoyed this process of taking my personal recipes I used in my bakery and creating a formula for mass production,” she says. “I am certain that it will taste just as good as making it from scratch.”

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about the main things that are killing your growth in your startup. Growing a startup can seem complex but it doesn’t have to be. There are several things that a you can do that could kill the growth of your startup and knowing what these things are will help you grow your startup to new heights . In this week’s episode, Steli and Hiten share some address some of the most common factors and thing founders do that kills or slows down the growth of their startup. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic 00:43 The reason this topic was chosen. 02:51 One of the big reasons startups grow slowly. 03:52 Another big reason that kills startup growth. 05:01 A story about Grammarly. 06:11 Why you shouldn’t be afraid to do the things that are right. 08:04 How Hiten and his team did user testing on Grammarly website. 09:36 Hiten’s thoughts on the simplicity of homepages. 11:38 How to go from non-data driven to data driven. 3 Key Points: If you can’t measure it, are you really doing it? Your homepage should have a double digit conversion rate. If your product can be valuable to a user within minutes of them signing up, you have an obligation to get them to that value as fast as possible. [0:00:01] Steli: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:03] Hiten: And this is Hiten Shah.   [0:00:05] Steli: In today's episode of The Startup Chat, we're going to talk about the main things that are killing your growth in your start up. The reason why we want to talk about this Hiten is that you just recently were moderating a panel on this very topic with some really amazing growth marketers, right?   [0:00:24] Hiten: Yeah, I had three growth marketers on a panel at Drift's HYPERGROWTH West conference, and the people I had on the panel were a gentleman named Yuriy from Grammarly. He's been there six and a half years and he's the head of growth. Then I had Emily who's from Carta which used to be called eShares, or eShare, I don't remember, but it's called Carta. She's [inaudible] marketing there. Then I had guy named Kamo, who runs a company called Primer. It's goprimer.com. They do a bunch of work with a whole bunch of companies to help them with growth. Specifically around paid acquisition in Facebook and Google, etc. I chose those three people mainly because I think they all give a different perspective. So Grammarly is a B to C company, Carta is a B to B company for the most part, and then with Primer, Kamo sees all kinds of thing around, from B to B to B to C, to market places, he's worked with Lift and Uber and many other different companies. That's the panel of the panelist and the title, like you said is "What's Killing Your Growth?"   [0:01:46] Steli: The reason why wanted to talk about this on The Startup Chat was that I came to the conference a little bit after the panel, so I missed the panel, was super bumped about it, but I saw an insane amount of responses. People really were sharing the three things I learned that is killing your start up right now. People were enjoying it, and getting a ton of value, and the audience was primarily marketers. A lot of marketers. I felt like, let's just take the best tid bits and the biggest ah ha moments and share it with our audience as well.   [0:02:17] Hiten: Yeah, and I had some interesting questions like, tell us a story of when the business or the product was not growing. What did you do? I asked them what the number one that kills growth, that they told other people is for them. And the number one trend that these folks have seen around growth. Ill just lay out some of the conclusions or thoughts or whatever that came out of it. I think one of the big ones was, Emily mentioned when she joined Carta,