Home-Based 100

Fast facts

Design: Kent Harris

Written by StartupNation

SwitchYard Media, Inc. - contact | website

Designed and produced by Kent Harris

Tin Can Rocket, LLC. - contact | website

A production of SwitchYard Media, Inc.

Photo: Courtesy Fetch! Pet Care/StartupNation

Franchising helps pet lover fetch profits

See StartupNation's full list of Best Financial Performers

Paul Mann has turned his love of pets into a tail-wagging success story.

Founded in 2002 at home, Fetch! Pet Care has grown into an industry leader and won the top spot in StartupNation's Best Financial Performers category. The company offers an alternative to kennels by providing loving, professional, in-home overnight and daily care for any kind of pet.

Fetch! Pet Care realized astounding 2004-07 sales growth of 4,117%25. Franchising has allowed the company to grow into a network of 200 locations with clients in 34 states and an army of pet sitters that could number 10,000 by the end of 2009.

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Business:

Fetch! Pet Care

Founder: Paul Mann

Home base: Berkeley, Calif.

Photo: Courtesy Expertbriefings.com/StartupNation

Filling a need to cut costs

See StartupNation's full list of Recession Busters

Joseph Pickett grew Expertbriefings.com despite this economy to earn the top spot in the Recession Busters category. He bought the business, which markets teleconferencing and Web-based seminar services to drug and medical-device professionals, for $50,000 last February, after seeing how it might perform via some time as an employee.

He grew sales from $25,000 in 2007 under previous ownership to $250,000 from February through August 2008. The business seems close to recession-proof, as the industry has billions to spend, and Pickett's company fills a critical niche. He provides a way to address a requirement -- continuing education -- at a cost much lower than sending employees to conferences.

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Business: Expertbriefings.com

Founder: Joseph Pickett

Home base: Winchester, Va.

Photo: Courtesy VA Networking/StartupNation

Getting the odd jobs done virtually

See StartupNation's full list of Boomers Back in Business

Baby boomers make great assistants. They're wise, dependable and professional, have a pre-dot-com work ethic and have enough experience under their belts to know that working from home takes the cake.

VA Networking is a boomer-run business that puts them to work supporting a range of shops that need assorted help just getting the job done. Tawnya Sutherland has created the world's largest online social network for virtual assistants to gather, learn, share and grow successful practices.

With outsourcing, time management and home-based businesses being hot trends of the day, VA Networking fills a big need and is a standout winner in the 2008 Boomers Back in Business category.

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Business: VA Networking

Founder: Tawnya Sutherland

Home base: Blaine, Wash.

Photo: Courtesy Fun Photo Guys/StartupNation

Photo guy shoots for a 'green' world

See StartupNation's full list of Greenest home businesses

Kevin Slovick, the winner in our Greenest category for 2008, is an evangelist as well as photographer.

He founded Fun Photo Guys with a partner in 2006 to deliver eco-friendly professional photography services. But he's also has made it his mission (and brand) to help other entrepreneurs understand how to make sustainability the normal -- or better yet, the preferred -- way of doing business.

His San Francisco Bay Area shop is certified green. He gives talks on safe practices and is the chairman of the local chamber of commerce's Green Business Committee. And he uses any extra hours of the day to write about green efforts for StartupNation.com. (See, for example, "9 steps to green your business.")

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Business: Fun Photo Guys

Founder: Kevin Slovick

Home base: Pleasant Hill, Calif.

Photo: Courtesy Wildland Forestry & Environmental/StartupNation

Dirty work in the great outdoors

See StartupNation's full list of Grungiest home businesses

It's good to work in woodlands, but you've got to be willing to get grungy. Wildland Forestry & Environmental, the winner in this year's Grungiest category, is a consulting business doing tough work for landowners, such as prescribed burns to manage forests.

On any given day, Brandon Price and his employees might be steeped in smoke, coated with soot, up to their waists in mud and briars, covered with spider webs, dealing with angry wildlife, traveling five to eight miles across rough terrain, walking through poison ivy, using a chain saw in 90-degree heat, digging fire lines or gathering data in rain, lightning or snow.

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Business: Wildland Forestry & Environmental

Founder: Brandon Price

Home base: Liberty, N.C.

Photo: Courtesy Shop Around Tours/StartupNation

Traveling afar for fashion

See StartupNation's full list of Most Glamorous home businesses

Shop Around Tours offers the ultimate vacation for anyone who lives to shop and loves to travel: wining, dining and shopping in factory outlets in Italy, the mecca of exquisite design.

The business, the winner in StartupNation's Most Glamorous category, was created by Deborah Mayer, an avid shopper with champagne tastes but a Budweiser budget.

In 2001, she launched her tour company with the belief that others like her would travel far for designer fashion without high prices. Shop Around Tours visits designer warehouses and factory outlets from the remote Tuscan countryside to the bustling streets of Milan to the charming celebrity-soaked village of Como.

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Business: Shop Around Tours

Founder: Deborah Mayer

Home base: New York

Photo: Courtesy Kick-Off Program/StartupNation

Easing the leap into high school

See StartupNation's full list of Most Innovative home businesses

One area where innovation is critical is education, so StartupNation was thrilled to name Lee Lonzo and his Kick-Off Program the Most Innovative (and important) business in the 2008 Home-Based 100.

Lonzo founded the company to improve the transition and orientation process for incoming high school freshmen. The freshman year is thought to be the most pivotal of a student's academic career. Lonzo's idea was to recruit upperclassmen as mentors for incoming freshmen.

He started the Kick-Off Program at one school in Indiana; it's now been rolled out at more than 225 high schools and has helped more than 100,000 incoming freshmen make the leap.

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Business: Kick-Off Program

Founder: Lee Lonzo

Home base: Chicago

Photo: Courtesy YachtPals/StartupNation

Setting sail on a solid business

See StartupNation's full list of Most Slacker-Friendly home businesses

Slacker contestants, for future reference, you're almost a shoo-in for this Top 10 list if you've based your business on a sailboat.

Kim Hampton and her husband launched their business on Jan. 1, 2008. Since then, YachtPals has become both the largest boating social network in the world and the largest original sailing news source in the world.

Let's see . . . a Web-based business, located on a sailboat, catering to boaters. Yep, we have ourselves a winner for Most Slacker-Friendly.

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Business: YachtPals

Founder: Kim Hampton

Home base: Richmond, Calif.

Photo: Courtesy Surrogacy Abroad/StartupNation

Offshore your pregnancy?

See StartupNation's full list of Wackiest home businesses

Hands down, Surrogacy Abroad is the winner in the Wackiest category. The wackiness is not simply the idea of surrogacy, but the idea outsourcing the pregnancy from the U.S. to India.

Benhur Samson, the Chicago entrepreneur behind the business, is proud to "rent wombs" at a lower cost than possible within the U.S.

Surrogacy here costs around $100,000; he can get it done for one-third the cost. But how many people would really do this? Imagine dealing with an offshore customer-service toll-free help line for a pregnancy. What about sticky issues like the citizenship of the baby? Those are just a few things to think through.

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Business: Surrogacy Abroad

Founder: Benhur Samson

Home base: Carol Stream, Ill.

Photo: Courtesy Laura's Wholesome Junk Food/StartupNation

Junk food a doctor can love (and make)

See StartupNation's full list of the Yummiest home businesses

It makes sense that the winner of the Yummiest category would make junk food. But what makes this company especially tasteful is that the food is also wholesome!

Dr. Laura Trice saw many illnesses that could have been prevented with more-healthful lifestyle choices, so she started creating treats for herself, friends and family.

Laura's Wholesome Junk Food is now sold nationwide and has fans around the world. With new "healthy living" and "cooking with kids" videos posted on YouTube, an innovative blog and quarterly newsletters, this home-based winner uses her time creating treats and teaching instead of commuting. Call it an mmm, mmm good business plan!

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Business: Laura's Wholesome Junk Food

Founder: Dr. Laura Trice

Home base: Venice, Calif.