Fuhu: The company that grew 158,000 percent in 2014
Fuhu, maker of the Nabi tablet for kids, is growing fast.
“Last year, I would estimate it at 158,000 percent growth,” says Fuhu CEO Jim Mitchell. “When a company is growing this fast, you’re constantly running and you’re running at full speed,” he says.
But Mitchell and Fuhu co-founder Robb Fujioka say they don’t want their company to lose its entrepreneurial spirit, its startup mentality amid all the expansion.
“When you look at big corporations, they are really made to have measured growth and to have measured losses. We’re not really built that way,” Fujioka says.
And there’s another way Fuhu differs from your everyday corporation: Its conference room.
“In the middle, instead of an open space, it’s a big ball pit, with thousands and thousands of red balls that you might see, like, if you were at a McDonald’s or something like that,” Mitchell says.
Fujioka’s son came up with the idea for the ball pit idea and, in the end, it made sense for the company to get playful with its conference room. With the ball pit, Fujioka says he wants to, “remind everybody that they’re in a company that was made for kids.”
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