CEO & Co-Founder of CaratX — on going from washing cars to building a jewelry marketplace across 16+ countries, why he walked away from a lucrative acquisition deal that disrespected his team, and what 13 years of solo hustle taught him about patience, integrity, and people
Josh Burwick did not set out to build a jewelry company. He set out to be a general manager of a car dealership. He washed cars, wrote service repair orders, sold cars, and worked his way through the chain — methodically, the way you do when you have a plan. Then, in 2007, he was browsing eBay and stumbled on a small jewelry manufacturer in India. The prices were strange. Too cheap. He reached out. And that chance discovery turned into a thirteen-year solo journey that eventually became CaratX — an online jewelry marketplace with sellers and customers in over 16 countries.
But this episode is not just a startup story. It is a story about what happens when your values are tested — by slow progress, by doubt, by bad days, and eventually by a company that comes knocking with serious money and serious disrespect. Josh turned down a lucrative acquisition deal because the prospective buyer was not treating his team right. He walked away. And talking about it with Sergey, you can hear exactly why — not as a heroic gesture, but as the only thing that made sense to someone who had spent years building something real with real people.
In this episode, Josh talks about what keeps a founder going through 13 years of incremental, sometimes discouraging progress, how to build a team that takes ownership and runs with you, and why the best mental health strategy for an overwhelmed entrepreneur might be as simple as not picking up the phone first thing in the morning.
Josh Burwick is the CEO and Co-Founder of CaratX, an online jewelry marketplace connecting hundreds of sellers with thousands of customers across more than 16 countries. His path to building it was anything but direct. He started in automotive in 2003 — washing cars and working his way up through the dealership chain, aiming to become a general manager. A chance encounter on eBay in 2007 changed the direction entirely: a small jewelry manufacturer in India with prices that seemed too good to be true turned into a thirteen-year solo business in bridal and engagement rings.
For those thirteen years, Josh built, wholesaled, and reinvested entirely on his own — learning what the market wanted, finding his niche in bridal jewelry, and slowly developing the relationships and technology knowledge that would eventually lead manufacturers to ask him to build something bigger. CaratX launched in 2020, and in the years since, it has grown into a full marketplace that Josh describes simply: putting more beauty into the world.
What defines Josh as a founder is not the scale of what he built but the consistency of how he built it. When acquisition discussions came and the other company showed disrespect toward his team, he walked away from a deal that could have made him a lot of money. He did not hesitate. That decision — choosing people over an exit — is the clearest expression of everything he says about building a business with integrity.
It happens. It does happen. You're going to have plenty of moments where your values are threatened, your morality, even your moral compass, your ethics. It does happen. So, recently we were in discussions with a company that was interested in buying us. Now, the reason the deal fell apart was because the other company wasn't respectful to my team.
Your team is everything, right? People are absolutely everything. That's just a general takeaway for all of business. Take care of people, take care of your team, take care of your customers.
When somebody won't leave you alone and they want to run with you, let them. People like that, they those are founders. Those are like founders, right? They take ownership of the business. They just just let them run and just do that. Let them run. They're going to make mistakes. Lots of them. And it's going to suck. It's going to hurt. The mistakes are worth letting them run.