Manish Chandra, founder of the popular online marketplace Posmark, told Collaborative Consumption, that his wife’s shopping bags of unworn clothing that littered their closet floor was was initially inspired him to launch Poshmark, a company that now hosts 700,000 sellers and is worth over 50 million dollars.

Like in most success stories, the road to wealth and fame did not happen over night. As a savvy entrepreneur and businessman, Chandra began his journey in 2005 when he launched a startup called “Kaboodle”, which was not unlike Poshmark in that it was also a social shopping service. That company was then sold to Hearst Corp. for a staggering 30 to 40 million. Then, in 2011, Poshmark was born.

The site and app (available on iOS and Android) had almost instant success with rapid endorsements from A-list celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, and Rachel Zoe.

The income Poshmark has managed to generate has not only been directed towards the CEO of the company but also its users, a feature that attracts many to download the app and start selling. In 2015, Business Insider published an article on how a user managed to sell enough items to earn $500,000 within the short span of three years. The article describes Poshmark as “a cross between Pinterest and Ebay for women’s clothes” and to be fair that description is not far from what the site really is.

In the end, Chandra, along with Tracy Sun, Chetan Pugnalia, and Guatam Golwala (the co-founders of the site) used their business expertise in hopes of building an empire. They managed to attain just that.  Their stories show how ambition and an idea can go farther than one ever imagined possible.

Chandra emphasizes the magnifying importance of entrepreneurs possessing big picture goals for their companies. “Sometimes when you look at a cup of coffee, somebody sees a coffee shop and the other person sees a Starbucks. The opportunity is not in the coffee cup. It’s really how you think about that coffee cup.”