Subscribe for Updates

From Screen Printing to Shark Tank with Jesse Genet

Jesse Genet

By Josh Pigford on June 25, 2018 · Last updated on April 23, 2026

Listen: player active at launch

Founder Chats

From Screen Printing to Shark Tank with Jesse Genet

Founder Chats is brought to you by Baremetrics: zero-setup subscription analytics & insights for Stripe, Recurly, Braintree and any other subscription company!

Like this episode? A rating and a review on iTunes would go a long way!

This week I talk with Jesse Genet, Founder of Lumi! In this episode we talk about being a tinkerer as a kid, getting in to screen printing in high school and how that has been a common thread in every business for 15 years, being on Shark Tank, shutting down a successful business, the role of printing processes in human history and more.

3:45- Technology and hobbies as a kid- more into physical tinkering

8:00- Impact of parents on entrepreneurial spirit

10:00- Job in high school printing and selling shirts

11:00- 3 years of high school

13:00- Selling t-shirts in California for the summer

15:25- Finding a loophole in getting out of Senior year of high school

18:55- What Senior year actually looked like

20:24- “Push for a thing, get the thing, then you have to actually do the thing”

24:00- Pursuing higher education

26:43- Moved to LA and went to Art Center College of Design for Industrial Design

28:55- The smartest choice Jesse ever made

30:38- Meeting co-founder, Stephan

31:35- “Let’s start a business”- Inkodye

33:10- First Kickstarter project

35:35- Balance between creative stuff and business stuff

38:10- Sandwich video

41:10- Applied and got into Y- Combinator

42:58- Catalyst for transitioning out of Inkodye

44:20- Shark Tank experience

47:30- Results of Y-Combinator and the impact on creating Lumi

48:50- Transition from customizing “literally anything” to shipping and packaging

50:25- Expert in printing processes

51:45- What has made you stick with printing processes for so long?

54:45- The next year for Lumi

How to reach Jesse: Twitter

Table of Contents

More Articles

More Articles

Written by

Josh Pigford

Josh is most famous as the founder of Baremetrics. However, long before Baremetrics and until today, Josh has been a maker, builder, and entrepreneur. His career set off in 2003 building a pair of link directories, ReallyDumbStuff and ReallyFunArcade. Before he sold those for profits, he had already started his next set of projects. As a design major, he began consulting on web design projects. That company eventually morphed into Sabotage Media, which has been the shell company for many of his projects since. Some of his biggest projects before Baremetrics were TrackThePack, Deck Foundry, PopSurvey, and Temper. The pain points he experienced as PopSurvey and Temper took off were the reason he created Baremetrics. Currently, he's dedicated to Maybe, the OS for your personal finances.

Subscribe for Updates

Email address

Subscribe for Updates