The 39 Best Home-Based Businesses To Start In Washington [2024]

After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in Information Systems, I joined Accenture as a consultant, where I worked mainly with telecommunications companies. The “big company” environment and experience helped me to understand the value of scalability and process creation/improvement—but I was left feeling like a small cog in a huge machine. Simply put, I wanted to see my efforts impact the bottom line.

In 2008, I joined a small mobile accessories company based out of Asia that was looking for help building its business in the U.S. It was a big move from Accenture: I was brought on as the President of its Americas business and responsible for expanding the brand into a whole new continent. I started out working on a kitchen table and packing customer orders right in my living room.

Fast forward two years, and we had grown into a $40M annual business with major customers like Apple, Amazon, AT&T, and BestBuy. There were many mistakes along the way, but it was the most challenging and satisfying learning experience I’ve ever encountered.

We are Kelli Bielema & Vanessa Resler and we run The AirScream, a mobile karaoke lounge in a vintage Airstream located in Seattle, WA. The AirScream is an experience like no other where we bring the trailer to your special event, park it & let the party ignite! Our customers are marketing and brand specialists who want a unique activation at their events that bring people together. We also work with event planners who plan corporate parties as well as private social celebrations like birthday parties and weddings.

We created The AirScream out of a desire to scale up the karaoke game & capture the heat of mobile experiences that doesn’t show any signs of cooling. Because karaoke can be a challenge to place in a venue where it doesn’t take over the whole affair, The AirScream is its own self-contained unit that can go directly outside an event space (or indoors when it fits). The basic operation of the trailer runs on a standard household outlet with a dedicated 20 amp circuit (and a second one to run the air conditioning). There’s also an option to utilize a generator in cases where power is too far remote. And no, you can’t ride in it while it’s in motion.

We are new to the market and are slowly scaling up as we get comfortable with our processes so we can perfect everything before we debut to the public. Currently, we are operating focus groups with event planners & vendors, our friends & family and with upcoming pop-up events at select locations where we truly will experience The AirScream in the wild.

Hello! My name is Aleksey Weyman and I’m the founder of Millennial Moderator. Millennial Moderator is an online publication that shares valuable tips and best practices across a variety of topics including technology, business, lifestyle, and more.

Our mission is to be a treasure chest of valuable insights on how to get ahead in life- both personally and professionally. Today, we are averaging $500 USD/month and around 3000 monthly readers, with imminent plans to scale upward. Millennial Moderator earns revenue from affiliate advertising networks such as AWIN, sponsored editorials, and our brand new service- Coupon Book.

Hi, I’m Benjamin Hebert and I’m the co-founder of NaturalStacks.com. We’re a rapidly growing supplement company that specializes in brain health.

Our products are designed to target concerns like memory, cognitive function, and processing speed.

Our flagship product CILTEP is a patented nootropic formula (a unicorn-like event in the supplement industry). We’ve funded three different clinical trials and have been able to build an incredible brand built on transparency and trust.

Hi - I’m Jeremy Hendon, one of the co-founders of Nourishing Brands (a direct-to-consumer media company that operates popular sites like KetoSummit.com). My wife and I started the company just over 5 years ago to help people make the transition to eating a healthy diet easier and way more delicious.

Today, our main products are cookbooks (both digital and physical) and challenges and courses centered around various diets. To provide a bit of context, we sold over 300,000 cookbooks in 2020 alone. But our first really successful product in late 2016 was the Keto Summit, a digital summit with over 30 Keto experts.

My name is Jae and I’m a spreadsheet nerd. 👊

Gorilla ROI is a Google Sheets add-on that connects Amazon Seller Central to Google Sheets.

If you sell on Amazon via FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon), our tool is for you.

Hi everyone! My name is Jessica Carter, popularly known as Jess Michelle, and I am the founding owner of Jess Mi Boutique. I cater to women of all shapes and sizes on more of the dressier side than casual.

We offer dresses, jumpsuits, matching sets, tops, bottoms, swimwear, activewear, and accessories! Through my boutique, I am also a blogger! My business has always been more than just clothes for me. So in my blog, I express some of the hurdles I have overcome as well as what my boutique truly means on a deeper level. Everything I do stems from my desire to help women see themselves through the eyes of God and the beauty they have always possessed!

The main products I offer that receive the most attention are my dresses; they are my staple pieces! Just like the famous Fashion Nova is well known for its jeans, my boutique is often known for its dresses!

My name is Craig Rabin, my team & I invented a travel gadget called The Airhook in 2015 and have seen great success over the last 5 years… until the pandemic hit. The Airhook is a small travel gadget that anchors to the back of a locked airline tray table – which holds your beverage and electronics device. All the convenience of the tray table with the ability to move your knees!

Leading up the pandemic we were shipping products all over the world and to every state in the U.S. Business was booming as we had just won the award for the Most Innovative Travel Gadget. Then, the travel world completely froze and has since been thawing incredibly at an incredibly slow rate. What to do, what to do??

Hey! I’m Gino Ferrand and I’m the founder of TECLA. I’m originally from Lima, Peru, and I’m currently living in Seattle, Washington. My business makes it easy for startups to interview and directly hire software developers from an invite-only network of the top talent in South America (same time zones as the U.S.).

TECLA is a hiring platform designed specifically for startups and software agencies that are looking for pre-screened, vetted, talent and are open to working with remote team members. Today, we have almost 9,000 remote candidates on our platform from all over Latin America. We’ve successfully connected hundreds of senior-level engineers and designers with companies from across the U.S. for full-time positions.

My name is Matt Griffin, and I'm the CEO of Combat Flip Flops--a team of people that believe we can bring sustainable, peaceful solution to armed conflict with education and economics.

Combat Flip Flops is an e-commerce company employing artisans and entrepreneurs in Afghanistan, Colombia, Laos, and the United States.

With a team of five, Combat Flip Flops distributes products direct-to-consumer through our website, Amazon, and a handful of boutique dealers. Collectively, we refer to our customers, dealers, and supporters as “The Unarmed Forces.” In 2017, The Unarmed Forces (UAF) funded 217 years of school for Afghan girls and cleared 2814 square meters of landmines in Laos.

Hi there!

My name is Mitch Colleran and I’m bootstrapping Join It -- a SaaS platform that helps organizations sell and track their memberships.

Previous to starting Join It, I spent 6 wonderful years at Eventbrite -- where I got a broad ‘tech education’ through roles on the Sales, Marketing and finally Product Management team.

Hi! We are the Simple Goodness Sisters, real-life sisters Belinda Kelly (4 years younger, the bartender) and Venise Cunningham (the older sister and the farmer.) We are a lifestyle beverage brand focused on bringing the world a Happier Hour, from garden to glass.

The products we make are “farm to bar” mixers and accessories for drink making and entertaining, made with edible flowers and herbs we grow on our sustainable cocktail farm. The products are completely natural, without additives or chemicals for the best taste and product possible. Our mission is to help people celebrate their lives and build community around a round of drinks. We believe everyone should get an invite to Happier Hour, so we market our drink syrups for cocktails and alcohol free cocktails alike, and have customers buying them for dessert, breakfast, and ice cream toppings as well.

The first product we launched were our simple syrups. The syrups launched in three flavors in Fall 2018 (Rhubarb Vanilla Bean, Marionberry Mint, and Huckleberry Spruce Tip), followed by 3 additional flavors in Spring 2019 (Lemon Herb, Berry Sage, and Blueberry Lavender), and edible flower salts and sugars for rimming in Fall 2019. During that time we pushed our ability to grow, harvest, and package in a major way, growing at a rate of 4 times our original production, with quite a learning experience along the way. We both come from a technical background in corporate Seattle, so organic farming, food production, and entrepreneurship are all areas we’re learning by doing, and Google!

My name is Caylee, and I’m the founder of two businesses by night/weekend and a Product Design Manager at Facebook by day.

My primary business, Swipies, is a reusable paper company. Swipies are essentially portable, flexible whiteboards that don't smudge because they use wet-erase markers (instead of dry erase.) I sell Swipies in kits through my Shopify store (shipped to 42 states and 30 countries so far!), and I sell custom-branded Swipies to companies like Airbnb (see below), General Assembly, Moz, and Indeed.

My name is Yun Zhang and I am the CEO of Wyze Labs, as well as one of the founding members. We founded WYZE Labs in July 2017 and launched our first product, a smart home camera – the Wyze Cam – in October of the same year.

Within our first six months of launch, we’ve been fortunate to have sold over 300,000 units and foster a thriving user community that we rely on every day for product feedback.

Our mission at Wyze Labs is to make great smart home products and make those products accessible to everyone.

Hi, I’m Mike Schaefer, Owner and President of Soaring Heart Natural Beds located in Seattle, WA.   Soaring Heart hand-crafts and retails all organic beds and bedding.   We believe breathable, all natural fibers create the best sleep environment and go out of our way to source the best raw-materials we can find.

I’ve always wanted to run a sustainable, green business that works hard to leave our planet better than we found it.  You won’t find any petroleum derivatives, plastics, synthetics or added flame retardants or fumigants in any of our products.  We only use organic cotton, wool and the latex from rubber tree plantations that has all been independently certified to confirm to global organic standards.

For more than 35 years, we’ve been building great beds and we believe you won’t find better products and customer service anywhere.  Our team of crafts-people loves what we do.  We hand-sign every mattress and offer a 20 year warranty so that you can rest assured we stand behind everything we make.  Today about 25% of our business is online, with the balance coming from one of our two Seattle-area stores.

My name is Fran Dunaway and I am CEO and Co-Founder of TomboyX. We make underwear, swim, and loungewear that isn’t for everybody but is for anybody.

That’s right, a gender-neutral company that is focused on fit and quality. We are all inclusive so offer every style in sizes XS to 4X. We’ve gone from zero employees 2 years ago to 15 today and have consistently increased our revenue over 100% each year.

My name is Matthew Fiore, a senior in high school and a long-time LEGO lover. I also turned my passion into a business. Three years ago I started Summerfield’s Toys, an online reseller of LEGO sets and individual bricks.

I’ve been building with LEGO since I was 4. I love the feel of the bricks in my hands and the creative process of recreating a model or making my own creation, whether it be spaceships, bases, or cities.

My name is Karl, and I’m the founder of Draft. After almost a decade leading engineering teams at venture-funded startups, I decided it was time to leap into entrepreneurship. Draft is a productized service that provides technical content to software engineering blogs on a subscription basis.

August is my third month running the business and first month full-time, and I’m on track to bring in $10,000 in (mostly) recurring revenue this month. The business isn’t going to replace my salary as a CTO right away, but the freedom of running my own business has given me a lot of freedom to stretch my creative muscles and spend time with my family.

My son Joe and dog Chili. We get to hang out together every day now!

My full-time job is in advertising. (Think Don Draper with less Brylcreem,) And from 2005 to 2012, I worked at JWT, the United States Marine Corps’ longtime ad agency. As the Creative Director, I was in charge of recruitment advertising - writing the television commercials, print ads, billboards, etc - for the Marines during two of the most unpopular wars in our nation’s history.

Every time I’d go to a Marine base to film a commercial, I’d bring my then 5-year-old daughter back a small gift from the Marine Exchange. At the time, she was having trouble sleeping - bad dreams, fear of the dark, monsters under the bed - the usual fears of a young kid.

So I bought her a teddy bear and told her a story.

My name is Sam Evans. I am 23 years old and a recent graduate from Penn State Altoona. I am the founder of You Call We Haul Junk Removal, a junk removal company that removes anything from single items to hoarder home cleanouts. We’re located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and have been in business (part-time) since May of 2016.

We service any and everyone who may have unneeded items they are looking to get rid of. People often ask what items we consider junk, to us junk is anything you no longer need or want.

Our main customers are middle-aged and up adults, typically with a higher income that do not want to or are unable to do the work themselves. We complete over 75 jobs per month, bring in about $20,000 in revenue per month profiting about 65% per job.

I’m Nick Bey and I run Bey Moss, an e-commerce platform that sells products infused with Chondrus Crispus or, better known as, sea moss. Our flagship product started with sea moss gel, which was used as a food additive. Our customers are men and women concerned about their health and using beauty products that are safe for your skin.

Bey Moss started on January 1, 2020, and has made over $800,000 to-date with less than $10,000 overall in ads. Our customers realize that they are investing in their health when they consume our products.

Hey, I’m Jordyn and I’m the owner of Jordyn Alison Designs. My intentions with my products are to bring joy to your daily life as well as help connect you with others.

For a couple of years, the only thing I sold in my shop was greeting cards. But in March of 2018, I started selling vinyl stickers, which proved to be successful. I now have greeting cards, stickers, notepads, apparel and more in my shop.

Part of what I think makes my business unique is that I have a pretty strong digital side to my business as well. For that side, I work on making SVG cut files and hand-lettered fonts. As someone who can’t sit still and do the same thing every day, it’s really nice to have two distinct sides to my business that I can switch back and forth from.

I’m Stacey, founder and President of Liberated Specialty Foods, based in the quiet town of Madison, Alabama. We run a food manufacturing business making a full line of baked food (made mainly from nut flours) like almond flour pizza crust, cashew bread, and coconut flour donuts, along with additive-free sauces like ketchup and pizza sauce; with the specific mission to help those suffering from autoimmune diseases like Crohn’s and Colitis, that ALSO fill the niche of Keto, Paleo, Atkins, and other trending diets.

We sell online and to retailers. We went from about 100 retailers with our products in 2016 to over 1,000 today, including major chains from Whole Foods and Sprouts to Wal-Mart -- and we hope to keep adding more!

My name is Gregory Elfrink and I’m the director of marketing with Empire Flippers. We’re a three-time winner of the INC 5,000 award for being one of the fastest growing companies in America and we help people buy and sell online businesses.

In the last few years, we have become the thought leader and one of the largest M&A advisory businesses for digital assets in the sub $10 million range. Though, I am pretty certain we will soon be selling businesses above that $10 million mark as well.

We have brokered over $50 million worth of deals, and since we’re a big believer in transparency we also created a scoreboard that details most of our stats - from the hundreds of thousands of website visitors we get to our pool of potential buyers that grow by the hundreds every month.

My name is Allen Chiang, and I founded Retro Radio Farm, where I repair and restore old radios. I offer Bluetooth MP3 upgrade if the customer wants to play digital music.

I have a busy career as an IT professional. Retro Radio Farm is side business that grew out of a recent hobby of mine.

Right now, I make about $50K a year for the work I put in primarily on weekends. While it’s highly profitable, it has not yet lucrative enough yet for me to quit my day job. Although, the business has been growing 20% every year.

My name is Shuhan He and I’m a doctor and entrepreneur. I am the founder of a Boston-based startup called Maze Engineers. We focus on creating innovative mazes for research, integrating cloud computing technologies, wireless systems, and automated data tracking technologies to assist behavioral research. Our aim is to provide support for researchers to conduct important neurological experiments and create therapies for patients. We were actually featured on Nature.com, where we explored the science behind the mazes.

Aside from being a founder, I am also hands-on in the process of designing and creating the mazes for our clients. I have created numerous mazes for different research and purposes, ranging from mazes created for mice to VR maze intended for humans. Some of our clients are private and public universities, the military, biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and researchers.

Hello! My name is D’Shawn Russell and I am the founder and CEO of Southern Elegance Candle Company. I started the company 4 years ago as a side hustle to make some extra money on the weekends and to get me out of the house. But it quickly grew to much more than I expected.

Southern Elegance Candle Company is all about loving and living in the South. We created home fragrance products that all have a southern theme to them and all of our fragrances are based on Southern agriculture. Apple? Check! Pine? Check! Cotton (or course) Check! Missing the Southern Sunshine? We got a fragrance for you. Our core group of customers are women that live in the South or people that appreciate Southern culture.

Our flagship products at the moment are our candles. We offer three different sizes; travel tin, mason jar and large tumbler. We also have wax melts and room spray. But, we will be slowly rolling out new products over the next year to include an apparel line.

Hey guys! My name is Matt Ward and I’m the founder and CEO of The Disruptors, a podcast about the future of all of us where TED level scientists, startup founders and experts join me to discuss the big issues facing humanity and how we can solve them together. I also run The Syndicate, a podcast and investment group focused on early stage startup investing.

I wanted to make a difference in the world and for me, two things drive exponentially better results and impact for all of us, startups solving big problems and innovators tackling epic and existential problems.

I have structured my work and efforts around this to empower others to change the world for the better and have the pleasure of talking to the smartest, most influential folks trying to do the same.

Hi, my name is Todd and I’m a serial entrepreneur. After a long history of building various businesses, I created ByteStand, a friendly software development company run by ecommerce nerds who get excited about weird things like “cross-platform integrations” and “fulfillment networks” and “coffee”.

We design Shopify apps, with three apps currently in the app store and over 2,000 shops using our software. Our two main apps are ByteStand and FBA Shipping, which were designed to help Amazon sellers diversify and generate more revenue by importing their Amazon inventory to Shopify and exporting their Shopify orders to Amazon for fulfillment.

We also created FreshCredit, Shopify's first true store credit app. Between all three apps, we generate about $17,000/month in revenue.

My name is Regina Ye, and I am the founder of ZIRUI.

Our flagship product is a modular magnetic travel toiletry case that is secure, sleek, and simple. ZIRUI is the best way to travel with liquids.

BagsAway Luggage Storage is a marketplace that connects travelers and city locals with convenient, secure, on-demand bag storage locations across key cities. Utilizing the principles of the sharing economy we partner with local shops and businesses that monetize existing free-space by offering hourly/daily storage on location. We keep about 60% of all revenues while the storage partners keep the rest. With BagsAway locations in place, travelers and locals can now win precious hours back by conveniently dropping their bags at a location of their choice around the city, freeing their hands and their time to explore, experience, and sightsee without their bags in the way. Our overarching vision is to change people's relationship with things that weigh them down during travel and on the go.

We have stored over 150,000 bags for travelers thus far and have expanded to over 50+ cities and going strong! Our plan this year is to expand worldwide, with new funding and new members joining our company.

My name is Paul Sciortino, I am the founder of Ayo Supplements and we sell Matcha Boost, the best matcha tea supplement you will find on the market. It’s a simple

product; organic, ceremonial grade Japanese matcha powder combined with vitamin B-12 to support natural energy.

Matcha’s renowned health benefits are widely recognized and it is one of the healthiest substances in the world. It’s an acquired taste, however, and prep time can make it difficult to fit into a daily routine. I thought that if I created a quality product in a convenient “take with you anywhere” capsule, people couldn’t afford not to take it.

My name is Ethan Holmes. I’m from Shaker Heights, Ohio and I am the 25-year-old founder and CEO of Holmes Mouthwatering Applesauce.

Holmes is an all natural applesauce product I created at the age of 15 and have since grown to hundreds of grocery stores throughout the Midwest.

Hi there! We are Kelan and Brittany the founders of The Savvy Couple. We are a personal finance and lifestyle blog with a mission to help families organize and simplify their entire life so they can do more of the things they love.

We do this by providing content on organization, meal planning, budgeting, paying off debt, making money online, marriage, and more.

Some of our top articles include:

I’m Ervin Ruci. Since 2005 I have been interested in the problem of geoparsing and geocoding - a piece of software that analyzes a string of text for geographical locations, then matches them to a database of locations with latitude, longitude values. Geoparsing is the process of extracting and disambiguating location entities from text, and Geocoding is the process of matching them to latitude, longitude values.

As a graduate student, I built geocoder.ca in the summer of 2005 then I went on to build several other businesses that relied on its geocoding API. Many of these businesses are now defunct, but geocoder.ca is still going strong with 2020 being its best year to date - over 90% growth from the year before:

I’m Doug Geiger, founder of Can You Handlebar, a men’s grooming product company. We’re one of those low-key-high-quality brands.

We are best known for beard oils and balms, moustache wax and inventing the first application brush for beard products, the Can You Handlebar Beard Oil Brush®. We are carefully and consistently extending our product line and distribution.

In our first three years our production grew from a kitchen countertop with a crockpot I stole from my wife to “making a million bucks” and a 10,000 square foot building with a whole fleet of crockpots. Meanwhile, our retail presence -- which began on the counter of a gracious proprietor of the corner gas station -- has grown to our own network of barbers and salons across the US, international distribution and most visibly, the shelves of every Art of Shaving.

My name is Jesse Hambly, I’m 1 of 3 brothers working at Pressa Inc. Luke and Mason are full-time founders as well. We have a diverse background, Luke manages engineering and manufacturing duties. Mason is in charge of media, content creation and strategy, and I (Jesse) oversee marketing, operations, and customer relations. We’ve been in business since 2015 where we’ve been selling our flagship product, Pressa Bottle. Pressa Bottle is a unique water bottle that allows the user to juice and press real fruit into any beverage.

Our company operates at just over $50k per month and we do this primarily through our .com and Amazon. We do sell in a few retailers which are Saks Fifth Avenue, Dillards and Uncommon Goods. The product lends itself well to the healthy/active crowd but we also sell a lot of units for flavored cocktails.

Hi, my name is Lenny Bron, and I am The Blog Proofreader. I’m the annoying grammar police person you’ve always been tired of hearing from every time you use an ellipses incorrectly in a Facebook post you wrote 3 years ago.

I content edit/copy edit/proofread the work of several clients on a regular basis. Some of this is done as a freelancer for larger companies, some of it is done for startups looking to make sure their content marketing looks clean and presentable, and some of it is done for bloggers or other content creators who want their readers to enjoy the work they put out without stopping to try and process a sentence with a missing word in it.

I’ve been able to build my business from scratch to consistently make ~$2,000 per month with zero experience in the field, no expenses, and barely any upfront costs.