Lasso Gear is an athletic apparel company based in Los Angeles, California that specializes in performance socks. Lasso Gear implements scientific research with personal experience to present socks that mimic the technology of ankle taping and ankle braces to provide faster, more easily accessible heightened performance and increased recover. Lasso Gear was started by a young entrepreneur named Partha Unnava, a friend of mine, who had a serious ankle injury playing basketball in his youth. Partha was frustrated with the limited options of recover for his injury so he used his background in biomedical engineering to a create a visually elegant sock that provided very similar benefits to ankle taping or braces. I have spoken to Partha several times during at my previous job, and he has described his upbringing and key points to being successful as a young entrepreneur. The two points that stood out to me the most was the importance of being unique in a very competitive space and implementing one’s own story or background into their product. Partha described the intensive research and trial and error he partook in to finalize his product especially in an extremely competitive space such as sportswear. Partha stresses the need to stick out in one way or another in order to gain any sort of competitive advantage especially as a small business. Furthermore, implementing one’s own life story, upbringing, background, etc. can be used to bring a unique aspect to a product or service. People tend to gravitate towards a product if the meaning behind it is well produced and presents heightened value.