Kyle Hency knows what it feels like to run a brand on fumes. Chubbies — the irreverent direct-to-consumer shorts company he cofounded at Stanford in 2011 — nearly ran out of cash three times and spent 18 months operating with negative $2 million in the bank. The culprit? Inventory.
Now Hency is making that problem his business. His new startup, Good Day, just closed a $7 million seed round — bringing total funding to $13.5 million — to build an AI-native, ERP-lite operating system for modern retail brands. Investors include Ridge Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Flex Capital, Long Journey Ventures, and Adverb Ventures. Fortune broke the story in January 2026.
What This Actually Means
Good Day is not another project management tool. It is a direct swing at NetSuite — Oracle’s dominant (and notoriously bloated) ERP platform — targeting a segment that NetSuite was never really built for: lean, growth-stage consumer brands doing $5M to $50M in revenue.
Hency’s argument is blunt: “Do you think NetSuite, created 20 years ago by a bunch of suits, is helping anybody during Black Friday, Cyber Monday?” He is betting that the brands most under pressure right now — the ones bootstrapping because VC money for consumer deals has dropped over 90% since the DTC boom — are exactly the ones willing to ditch legacy software for something built around their actual pain points.
That positioning matters. NetSuite has dominated mid-market ERP for years partly because there was no credible alternative that spoke the language of a retail operator. Good Day wants to be that alternative — and Hency has something most B2B founders lack: he lived the problem. He is not selling software he theorized about. He is selling the solution to the nightmare he actually survived.
The Numbers Behind It
- $7M — new seed round (January 2026)
- $13.5M — total capital raised since founding in 2024
- $100M+ — Chubbies’ current annual sales under Solo Stove (the acquirer)
- $1M to $8M — Chubbies revenue growth in its early scaling years
- 18 months — how long Chubbies operated with negative $2M cash during a growth phase
- 90%+ — estimated decline in VC investment into consumer deals since the DTC peak
Customers already on the platform include Hill House Home, The Normal Brand, Margaux NY, and Kenny Flowers — all names with real DTC followings and the exact cash flow stress Good Day is built around.
The Hustler’s Library Take
Here is what most coverage of this story missed: the timing is the whole point. When VC money was flowing freely, brands could paper over bad inventory management with the next funding round. That era is over. As Hency put it directly: “The lenders have gone out of business. The VCs aren’t backing brands as much as they were before. If you look up how much VC investments into consumer deals have gone down, some numbers show over 90% reduction.”
That means the brands that survive 2026 and beyond will be the ones with the tightest grip on what is sitting in their warehouse. Good Day is not just a software play — it is a bet that the next generation of retail winners will be operators first. There is a lesson in that for any business founder, not just DTC brands.
There is also something worth noting about Hency’s marketing strategy. He is not whispering about his competition — he is calling out NetSuite by name in press interviews. That kind of aggressive positioning is a calculated move to win the attention of frustrated NetSuite users who have been waiting for permission to switch. Patagonia built a billion-dollar brand by leaning hard into unconventional positioning — Hency is borrowing from that playbook in a B2B context.
What You Should Do
1. Audit your own “inventory blind spot.” Hency’s near-death experience was not caused by bad marketing or weak demand — it was caused by not knowing what he had, what he owed, and what was coming in. If you run a product business and your ops team is still relying on spreadsheets to manage inventory or fulfillment, that is the exact gap Good Day (and competitors like it) are targeting. Getting serious about business asset management is step one.
2. Stop chasing revenue. Start chasing everything below it. Hency’s quote about managing “revenue all the way down to profits” is the most actionable thing in this story. In a capital-tight environment, gross margin and cash flow visibility are survival tools. If you cannot fund growth through the business itself, you need to know exactly where the money is going before the next check clears.
3. Name your competitor and mean it. If you sell something that displaces an incumbent, say so. Hency is not being reckless — he is being precise. Potential customers already know NetSuite. By putting it in the headline, Good Day skips a whole layer of “what problem does this solve?” education. If you have a real, specific advantage over someone the customer already knows, use it. The brands that hit 8 figures are the ones with a clear point of view, not a safe one.
Source: Fortune. For more on building a lean, profitable business from the ground up, join the Hustler’s Library community free.
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