Key Takeaways

  • In 2015, Vancouver-based Campfire Capital invested in FIGS and later attempted to remove co-founders Heather Hasson and Trina Spear from executive leadership.
  • Entrepreneur Thomas Tull stepped in during 2017 with a $65 million investment to buy out Campfire Capital and all previous investors, wiping the cap table clean.
  • Hasson and Spear negotiated a three-person board where the two founders held two seats, retaining voting control all the way through their public offering.
  • Free from hostile governance and armed with fresh capital, FIGS scaled revenue from $55 million in 2018 to $110 million in 2019 and $263 million in 2020.

Early Investors Tried to Fire the Founders

Most founders assume early venture capital partners will stick by them through production delays and messy quarters. That assumption is often wrong. By 2015, Hasson and Spear had spent years selling scrub sets out of their car trunk outside hospitals, proving that healthcare professionals wanted functional, tailored medical apparel. They raised institutional capital from Campfire Capital, a consumer fund based in Vancouver, to fuel direct-to-consumer inventory.

Then things got rocky. Early operational growing pains gave the venture fund an opening. As Spear recalled, “In 2015, we had raised money from a group called Campfire Capital out of Vancouver. And one of the reasons Thomas ended up buying them out, in addition to all the other investors, is that they tried to kick us out.”

Hostile venture capitalists usually do not fire founders by force on day one. They chip away at voting thresholds, create deadlock committees, and whisper to other angels that the company needs experienced executive leadership. If you do not track your share classes and voting blocks, you wake up to an executive session where you are demoted to a product advisor role.

Thomas Tull Cleared the Table for $65 Million

Instead of fighting an exhausting legal war or yielding to Campfire Capital, Hasson and Spear looked for an operator who thought in decades rather than quarterly markups. They met Thomas Tull, the billionaire founder of Legendary Entertainment. Tull recognized that healthcare uniforms were an entrenched, sleepy industry dominated by legacy suppliers.

"He really got it," Spear said. “And he was focused on these outdated industries that were, in his words, run by the mafia.” Tull also understood that replacing the founding duo would kill the customer connection that made the brand work: “Thomas was an entrepreneur. He was an operator. And so he wasn't about kicking out the founders. He was about ensuring that we had all the support and resources we needed to go and crush it.”

In 2017, Tull structured a $65 million recapitalization. Rather than simply adding another layer of preferred equity on top of a divided cap table, Tull bought out every existing institutional and angel investor. The old cap table disappeared in a single transaction.

More importantly, Spear and Hasson protected their governance during the deal. “Heather and I had two out of the three seats on the board,” Spear explained. “So we've never lost control of this company to this day. We control the vote, as a public company.”

With toxic board dynamics gone, FIGS exploded. The business was already generating cash when Tull invested. In 2018, FIGS booked $55 million in sales. In 2019, revenue doubled to $110 million. By 2020, sales reached $263 million. Founder control did not slow down the business; it eliminated the executive friction that kills fast-growing brands.

What to Do With This

Review your current cap table and voting agreements today. Calculate the exact voting percentage you and your co-founders hold under an adverse vote, and audit who holds the right to appoint your independent board member. If a hostile seed fund has blocking rights that outstrip their check size, assemble a shortlist of family offices and former operators who can fund a clean buyout before your next institutional round.