Garden.com: Growing By Its Own Rules

“We weren’t gardeners trying to turn our passion into a business. We were MBAs trying to find a business,” says Sharples.

The three co-founders, Sharples, her husband Cliff and Jamie O’Neill, are all graduates of Kellogg Graduate School at Northwestern University. In their hunt to become online entrepreneurs, Sharples says a move to Texas got her imagining a company that could recommend plants that grow best in your area and then ship them to you.