she didn't do a lemon stand.
leen, age ~10 ยท ceo, bear co.
most kids set up a lemon stand. leen set up a company.
she was ten years old. the product was teddy bears. the stand was outside her house. and, this is the part that matters, she sat with her dad and her brother down, divided up the shares, and made everyone a stakeholder before they opened for business.
no pitch deck. no advisors. no cap table software. just a small girl with hair clips, a very serious plan, and a natural instinct to make the people around her invested in what she was building.
the bears sold. the company survived the day.
"why lemons when you could sell something you actually love?"
something about giving your family equity in a stuffed animal business at age ten leaves a mark.
sixteen years later she is still building things from the ground up. the products have gotten more complicated: ai agents, commerce platforms, worker tools built for a moment that needed them. the instinct to pull the right people in, give everyone a stake, and build something worth owning has not changed at all.
the teddy bear stand was the first company. it will not be the last.
you found the origin story. not everyone does.
est. circa 2000-ish
bear co. ยท seed round closed
