Kristen Dunning says she became an entrepreneur by accident. She grew up with eczema and summers on her grandparents’ 84 acres in Dixon Mills, Alabama, and arrived at the University of Georgia to study agricultural communication and horticulture. As a freshman she pioneered her own research project on medicinal plants for inflammatory skin, earned herself a greenhouse, and spent three years growing rows of herbs and infusing them into soap. During lockdown she put every bar on a Shopify site and sold out in two hours.
By March 2023 she had sold 17,000 bars from farmers’ markets and her website and was a graduate student at UGA. That month Startup Runway held its 19th showcase in Athens, the program’s first outside Atlanta, supported by the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation. Kristen had never pitched to a room of investors. She rehearsed with Startup Runway’s coaches, then sat down at a table with mentors for the program’s signature mock board meeting: not a fundraising conversation, but a working session on the one problem standing between Gently Soap and its next stage of growth. Then she walked on stage in front of a live audience and a panel of investor judges, took their questions, and won the $10,000 grant.
“Going from selling soap at Saturday farmers markets in college to suddenly running a nationally recognized brand overnight was definitely a feat. But I’ve come to see that leap, and all the growing pains that came with it, as an integral part of my founder story.”
Kristen Dunning, in a note to Startup Runway’s founder, September 2026
She spent it the way an operator does: a booth at the National Eczema Expo to meet her customers, and inventory to prep Gently Soap’s launch on Amazon. ‘I never think I’m ready for any pitch, ever,’ she told Startup Runway a month after winning. ‘But every single time I’ve forced myself to get up and do it, I either win or someone in the audience comes up to me after. Let them tell you no.’ Someone did come up to her after: she was scouted for Shark Tank just after Startup Runway, and in September 2023, six months after the Athens showcase, she opened Season 15 with those newly drilled pitching skills and closed a deal with Candace Nelson. Aveeno named Gently Soap its Skin Health Startup of the Year. Oprah put the bars on her Favorite Things list in 2024, Good Morning America and People followed, and the company passed $1 million in annual recurring revenue. Along the way she finished her Georgia MBA, took Gently Soap through Techstars, earned an investment from Black Ambition, became a certified B Corp, and appeared with Coco Gauff in a UPS commercial during the Olympics. Kristen won Walmart’s Fast Pass at the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs, and Walmart’s American-made program put Gently Soap on shelves nationally in 2026. The business has now passed $1.8 million in lifetime sales, and nearly four in five customers come back for more.
Gently Soap is still made in Athens. In May 2024 Kristen came back to Startup Runway’s 25th showcase for the ‘Where Are They Now’ alumni panel, this time as the one giving advice (listen below). She says she wants to be a household-essentials brand for people with sensitive skin, from body wash to laundry soap, and is planning her first institutional seed round. She started by letting a room of strangers tell her no. They didn’t.
