I Make $1M/Month From Bed | Starter Story

Colin McIntosh was fired twice and laid off once before he started Sheets & Giggles, a direct-to-consumer bedding brand that hit $1.2 million in monthly sales 25 months after shipping its first box. He now runs the company from bed—or from a river in Denver with his laptop balanced on a rock. The path from three failed jobs to a million-dollar month was not about finding a novel problem to solve. It was about designing a business model first, then finding a product that fit it.

Build the Business Model Before the Product

McIntosh argues that the conventional startup advice—find a problem, then build a solution—is incomplete. The real question is whether people will pay for that solution. He recommends starting with a brand identity map, a financial model, and a business model before settling on a product. "I actually started to write my business model before I knew what the product was," he says. The goal is to build something that fits your own skills and passions, not to chase a "blisteringly intelligent novel, never before seen idea." He calls this "found a market fit" rather than product-market fit: design the kind of business you want to run, then tweak the product to fit that structure.

Validate by Selling Before You Build