Fortune's profile of our journey from firefighter side hustle to a $60-million national brand zeroes in on what we've come to call the "ship-then-perfect" rule — the discipline of getting a working product into a customer's home before chasing the next iteration. As the magazine put it, the rule "turned the firefighter's side hustle into $60 million in revenue."
What we'd add to the Fortune frame is that the rule only works when paired with patience. Murphy Door was founded in 2012 in West Haven, Utah, and the first several years were almost entirely about listening to what installers and homeowners actually used a hidden door for — a pantry pass-through that doubled as a panic-room entry, a gun cabinet that disappeared into a wall, a flush-mount that finished out a basement remodel.
The lesson we'd give a small-business owner reading this: ship the version that solves one real problem completely. Iteration speed beats scope every time. For the wider picture of how the company has been covered across business and design media, see our as seen in page.
