Whole Foods

American premium grocery chain co-founded by John Mackey and Renee Lawson Hardy in 1978 — which grew from a single Austin store to 500+ locations — and was acquired by Amazon for $13.7 billion in 2017.

Created the premium natural grocery category — the insight that a significant segment of consumers would pay premium prices for higher-quality, healthier, more transparently sourced food — and demonstrated that the category could scale to a major national chain while maintaining quality standards.