A Startup With Animal Instincts Meet the makers of Spirit Hoods, a line of <em>fuzzy</em>, fake-fur headgear that resembles skinned, stuffed animals.

Entrepreneur: Alexander Mendeluk, a sometime-actor with bit parts in the Twilight movies (he's the one Kristen Stewart kneed in the groin).

"Aha" moment: Mendeluk sported the bobcat to a Hollywood party in 2009. "The entire place just stopped," he says. Soon, a gaggle of girls began petting the hood and "I was, like, 'Ohmigod. This could be something cool.'"

What possessed him: In film school at the Art Institute of Portland, Ore., Mendeluk was looking for a way to truly stand out, so he and a designer friend came up with the idea of a bobcat hood. Mendeluk began making them for his friends and noticed how cool it looked when his crew all wore theirs at the same time. A tribe was born.