In This Episode You’ll Hear About:Why Stephen didn’t feel like he was cut out for corporate life and what that led him to do instead throughout collegeHow he met his wife and Co-Founder, Allison, and started working for her family in oil and gasWhat led to Allison discovering the health benefits of apple cider vinegar and the desire to make it taste betterWhat turned their first iterations of the product from a hobby to a business and why it was a huge game changer What hard lessons they have learned and what they have learned through the fundraising processWhat it has been like to grow their team from two to 50 people in just 18 months and what they have learned about leadership and team dynamics as well as  the importance of building relationships with those on your teamWhere you can find Poppi and what’s next for them in terms of flavor profilesTo Find Out More:drinkPoppi.comQuotes:“{Allison} read that drinking apple cider vinegar could really help to detox and reset her body. So that's where this whole concept really came about.”“‘How do we figure this out? How can we take this product from our kitchen and put it into a manufacturing facility and meet all of the qualifications and have all of the policies in place? How do we get it done?” So we just got to work. We just jumped right in.”“Looking back, I would have raised capital sooner. But that kind of just that wasn't the way that I was thinking about it. So we just made do with what we had.”“Early on we had talked to some of these co-packers, and their capabilities weren't there. They weren't willing to work with the product that was unpasteurized. A lot of them didn't want to work with vinegar because they felt like it would contaminate their lines. So being where we are now, obviously we just weren't talking to all of the right people.” “It was like, "Get equipment, let's scale it. Let's continue to grow sales and then reinvest in the business and continue to kind of bootstrap it.’"“I wasn't building on building a brand or taking it to market or putting together a promotional calendar to incentivize trial and do all of these other things to try and get people to try the product and build the brand. So I mean, that was honestly the biggest thing that I think halted our growth.”“The good thing and the bad thing is that Poppi is just been blowing up. At this stage of our business, we're growing faster than Vitamin Water did and Bai did.”“When you become a family and you're all pulling in the same direction, you don't mind picking up the slack for the other person because you know, when the tables are turned and you need someone to pick up the slack, they're there for you.”“It's all about Poppi being a mission-driven company rather than a maintenance-driven company.”“Making money should be a result of doing something good.” “I try not to have an ego because I want people to be able to speak up. And if it's not the best idea, know that we still love and respect you and are just excited that you're bringing ideas to the table as opposed to, you know, feeling like you're shamed because it wasn't the idea that we went with.”“Throw yourself in so far that the only path is forward.”

Stairway to CEO

Growth That’s Bubbling Over with Stephen Ellsworth, Co-Founder and CEO of Poppi

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:Why he became passionate about alternative protein and animal rights while in college How his time at Acton School of Business helped him learn a lot of what he needed to know about entrepreneurship and how he started an internship with ProVeg Incubator in Berlin, GermanyWhat led to the idea of a seafood alternative, specifically raw tuna substitute, and what the iteration process was like at the beginning What fundraising has been like for Jacek and his team, and what they have learned throughout the processWhy Jacek believes that making alternative proteins is not just about making a product “like” something, but actually better than that something and why the possibilities are more exciting that wayWhat strategies he has found helpful when hiring and ways he has been intentional about building a solid team at KuleanaWhat he learned from hard times, how he has overcome them, and why his passion for the mission continues to drive him through any pain and struggleWhat advice he has for other Founders and what is next and exciting for KuleanaTo Find Out More:Kuleana.coQuotes:“Going for raw tuna, I was like, ok, we'll have to actually innovate on the process to create products, and I thought that was just really, really exciting for me.”“Investing, in a very large sense, is a game of momentum.”“We can be something similar to, but also better than a product.”“It's a little bit of this fun game in food like innovating and making things better than, and at the same time, people like somewhat of familiarity with food. And I think that's what a lot of companies and Founders are trying to reconcile in the alternative protein space is how do you make it familiar, but you want to make it better?”“When it comes to hiring, it should kind of take a while. And if it's not, then maybe draw that process out just because obviously those are the people who really build that company. You only do so much. You do a lot as a founder, but it's really that initial group of people who multiply that impact.”“When people believe in it, they just work harder. They stick through the pain. So try to unravel that and identify whether somebody really cares about that mission”“It felt like something that needs to be done, and then it becomes a lot less about you. That's really, really cool because your pain then matters less. And when your pain matters less, you become more pain tolerant.”“If you look at professional athletes they have coaches, multiple coaches, right? It's like, why aren't professional business people having coaches? We should all have them.”“The reality is you start to recognize that if you don't prioritize your sleep and those other things, your work quality just drops tremendously and you make more mistakes.”“Some of the best advice I ever heard was, "Just do what excites you.’"“Sometimes as an entrepreneur, we feel like we have to invent everything, but it's a lot of times the best things are just small improvements and small iterations, or merging of multiple ideas and not feeling bad about that. But I think copy and paste is really underrated.”

Making a Splash in Alt-Protein with Jacek Prus, Co-Founder and CEO of Kuleana

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What her childhood was like and how she has always been a leader and had many interests and passions from an early ageWhat changed her focus from International Relations and Economics and perhaps leading to work in the State Department to working in marketing at the NFL instead and what she learned during her time thereWhat profound takeaways Mayssa gained during her time at Uber, Daily Harvest, and SoulCycle and how they have helped her today as a Founder/CEOWhy the idea for Behave came to her, what started her on the path to dig deeper into the idea, and what the first steps wereWhy Mayssa was frustrated with the traditional R & D approach to product development and had the genius idea of finding a pastry chef to help herWhat fundraising was like for her and what advice she passionately offers to those who are looking to build a business and raise fundsWhat lessons she has learned as a leader that have helped her enjoy her role and breathe life into her team as they continue to growWhy Mayssa believes that even the hardest challenges can lead to good things that help the company in the long run and what advice she has for other FoundersTo Find Out More:EatBehave.comQuotes:“Trying to do things that were more entrepreneurial and really owning projects and owning initiatives from start to finish, built a solid foundation for what it was going to look like to have an idea out of nowhere and turn that into a business and launch that business.”“You're pitching the partnership, but you're also pitching the business.”“I think in a partnerships role or a business development role, you almost have to take on that external speakerphone for the company in a lot of ways.”“Through all my experiences and through having built my career in a business development and partnerships function, for the most part, I've always felt that actually most business gets done just through friendship.”“My philosophy is that you will get so much more done by people liking you than by paying them or feeling like you have something to offer them.”“I knew that if we were going to do healthier, better-for-you candy, it was still going to have to taste amazing. When people reach for candy, it is an indulgence. It’s a moment of fun and joy, and I just knew that compromising on taste wasn't going to be an option.”“You have to go into it believing that you're going to raise the money. Actually, a lot of fundraising for me was shifting my own mindset.”“It's so easy to get trapped in this whole, very confusing web of what am I supposed to be doing? And I think the sooner that you can surrender and just say whatever feels right to me is what's going to be right for the business... And now I feel so happy that I was able to kind of let go of a lot of those shoulds.”“You have to also acknowledge that every other business that looks like it was built in a perfect Excel spreadsheet straight out of Harvard Business School was probably also a burning dumpster fire on the inside. You just don't see that.”“Just having people that are in the boat with you... I wouldn't have been able to get this far without that network and that support system.”

The Taste of Sweet Success with Mayssa Chehata, Founder and CEO of Behave

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What life was like as an entrepreneurial kid and triplet in Portland, Oregon, and what aspirations he had even back thenHow a pivot in college became helpful later in his career, what he learned from his time at Nike, and how he came up with the idea for BottomlessWhy Michael quit his job and jumped in to building out the concept and getting Bottomless off the ground, and what that experience was like for him and his Co-FounderWhat is so unique about the Bottomless system and how it is a truly customized way to never run out of high-quality coffeeWhy it took three times of applying to YCombinator before they were accepted in, why that is a good lesson for others wanting to apply, and what valuable lessons he learned thereWhat fundraising was like and why the first round was a total bust, but a valuable lesson that he offers to others who are ready to raise funds and want to succeedHow he has grown as a leader, what he’s learned from mistakes, and what it’s like to be a husband and wife founding teamWhat’s next in the near and far future with Bottomless and what further advice Michael has for aspiring entrepreneurs, Founders, and/or operatorsTo Find Out More:Bottomless.comQuotes:“One day we just thought, OK, how do you actually find out how much people have all the time? Just had this epiphany that weight is a source of truth for how much people have. And if you could just record that in a regular interval, you could actually solve the reordering problem for people.”“We actually are looking at your patterns and sort of dynamically figuring out essentially when we should order, so the likelihood of you running out is fairly low.”“The way that the actual coffee product works has evolved with contact with customers over the years.”“Trying to impress them with a bunch of clever writing is not as impressive as sticking to something and just sort of making progress on it over the long run because then they know you  really are serious about building a company around this.”“It was always just focusing on the problem in front of you and just trying to continually grow. And so that was a very valuable thing, and I saw people sort of transform their way of doing things from sort of a very sort of business plan, sort of what I might call pseudo entrepreneurial mindset to a very sort of hustle-oriented mindset.”“Make something, try to get people on it. If they don't want it, ask why and make something else. And then once you have people, try to grow it. If you can't grow, it solves a problem.”“If you're an early employee at a company that has gone nuts and IPOd, or you're a previous Founder that has found some success, like, yeah, sure, you can start something and just get funding right off the bat. But generally, the other people have really done a lot of work to prove what they're doing to get that sort of fundraising, even today in this fundraising environment.”“In particular with the type of company that we're doing, that's really sort of building something novel from scratch and having to do a lot of new things, it just requires a lot of focus. We have to be three times smarter and also work three times harder. And I think having your Co-Founder also be your spouse is a massive advantage.”“Our real goal is to figure out how to automatically replenish everything intelligently using sensors rather than people having to do it manually and try to store this information in their head.” “It's just the way that restocking is done broadly is broken and it's broken in commercial settings, it's broken households, and it's even broken into some industrial settings.”“I find it immensely gratifying to work very hard on something that I think is ultimately going to be very impactful for the world. It may sound crazy, but I legitimately think we're going to inspire a whole new type of technology.”

Coffee at Scale with Michael Mayer, Co-Founder and CEO of Bottomless

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How Ric grew up in a family of doctors but had no interest in medicine so instead went into finance and businessHow he started selling his products online while the internet was still newWhat led to the creation of the company after he and his co-founder both had struggles with their own companiesHow challenges and losing a huge account led to a pivot that became a success in a new channelWhat advice he has for a healthy founding team and why good communication among the Founders and partners is not only imperative, but absolutely essentialWhat brought them to open up market in China, how it has been a unique strategy, and why that fits in with their overall missionWhat it has been like to open up their own retail stores, what lessons Ric has learned as a result, and what they have coming up in the futureWhy he thinks being a lifelong learner is a part of being successful and making a difference in the world around youTo Find Out More:100percentpure.comQuotes:“Why are all these companies putting these ingredients into the product? Because it makes them cheaper and it makes them stable.”“We led a lot of the innovations in the natural side of the industry. A lot of the preservatives you see in clean products today are ones we were the first to use in beauty.”“It's really an art when you're making a natural product. You have to be very, very precise on things to get it to mix extremely well.” “There are so many challenges as an entrepreneur, it's very rewarding, too, but you definitely go through a lot and I don't think it's easy.”“When you're working with partners, it's hard not to blame each other. You have to really ensure that you blame processes, not people.”“Trust is the most important thing. Our fastest years of growth are the years where we trusted each other the most, the three founders. Those were our fastest years when we grew 30-40 percent.”“It's our mission to improve the lives of six billion people and animals. China has a billion people and even more magnitude of animals on top of it. So I felt like we really need to stay true to our mission. And if we're really trying to stay true to our mission, we need to be where the people are around the world…”“I use China as kind of the model of eCommerce of the future because they bypassed the whole desktop computer phase. They went straight to mobile because nobody has desktops at home in China that I know of, so they bypassed desktop, went to mobile, and their eCommerce is extremely advanced because of that.”“The store of the future, the retail associates, are content creators.”“You have to be okay with failure. It can't bother you. It's got to be like water off your back. Nothing. Move on.”“Another key element of success is having a very strong network. If I need something or need access to someone, I can get it because of my strong network.”“Some people felt like brick and mortar is dead. I don't feel that way. I feel like you need both to be successful.”

Pure Innovation with Ric Kostick, Co-Founder and CEO of 100% Pure

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like to grow up in a great family that valued homegrown food and home cookingHow he found his way into a passion for sustainable food while at Yale and had opportunities to not only be a part of farming but also part of helping others enjoy good foodHow he got a lot of experience and education working as a buyer for Fresh Direct and had a few light bulb moments noticing some gaps in the industry, and then came back to the Northeast to work for Happy Valley MeatHow his roommate had been learning a lot about the food industry as well and became the perfect person to co-create a solution to the healthy snack options conundrumWhat the product development process was like and how it all came together in a unique way with a final product that provides the answer to the problem they set out to solveHow they went to market and how they dealt with COVID coming at about the time they were set to fully launch What challenges Leland and his team have overcome and continue to work through What advice he has for aspiring entrepreneurs and what’s next for Slow Up in both retail and in the DTC spaceTo Find Out More:SlowUp.coQuotes:“There was a real live and interesting tension between staying completely committed to like really strict set of rules and values and ethics and growing quickly.”“We thought about what is the deal with the distance between how satisfying and exciting meals are and what we're living on in between meals?” “We heard over and over again that options that were healthy weren't tasty, and that options that were tasty weren't particularly healthy, and that everything had too much sugar. A lot of dissatisfaction and the nature of the dissatisfaction was pretty clear. So that smelled like a business to us.”“We just turned Chef Caroline loose and said, "Make something healthy and delicious that feels like a recipe, not a formula, and feels like it came to you from a chef.’”“The nucleus is that breaking that healthy/tasty compromise, using fresh ingredients like you would at a restaurant or in your own kitchen and coming up with a product that felt like a recipe, not like an extruded lab product.”“This has been an education for me in not saying, here's a delicious thing, how do we take it to market? But instead, like, here's a market, how do we make something to address it?”“We really think of ourselves, despite riding on the refrigerated bar coattails, as creating a new category. It's an unfamiliar product that really only resembles a bar in its shape, really not in its experience.”“Getting creative around where we belong in the grocery store, who the right buyer is, and who the right distributors are is part of the project.”“We like to say good food goes bad.”“Get a handle on the business first and then get a handle on what you think you can deliver, then take that and make the slide deck.”“You just got to jump in the cold water. I think that's the big advice. Hard to feel prepared, and with a little bit of the benefit of hindsight, pretty impossible to be prepared unless you've done it before. So just send it.” “There's always another hill to climb. Another problem to solve. Problems shift or grow or shrink, but they don't disappear. So once you've jumped in, recognizing that you just got to get comfortable in that. There's always another hill to climb.”

Slow Up for Fast Growth with Leland Whitehouse, Co-Founder and CEO of Slow Up

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What brought her family to the States from South Asia and what life was like with an entrepreneurial fatherWhen she realized that she needed to leave the big company world and become an entrepreneur herselfWhat her time at M13 was like and what valuable lessons Sabeena learned there about building a business well and getting started How DEUX launched what became a powerful test market via Instagram and why they knew early on that this was going to workHow she has learned to stay healthy mentally and keep herself as focused as possible, even with ADHDWhy fundraising for her was actually a lot of fun and what advice she has for Founders who are fundraisingWhy DEUX is on track to hit one million in sales during their first year and what advice Sabeena has for others trying to get that mark, including some of the unique ways she got her delicious product into people’s handsWhat’s next for DEUX and why you should just start when you have a great concept that you are wanting to move forward withTo Find Out More:eatDEUX.comQuotes:“It was just in my nature to be entrepreneurial. It was almost like I tried to fit into a box and tried to fit around the red tape, and it just wasn't working because it felt so forced.”“We didn't really have branding yet. We launched an Instagram, and we essentially said, "DM us to place an order, and Venmo us.’"“So there was, of course, the quantitative metrics that you look at of sales and follower counts and engagement on our social posts. But then there's also this quantitative, almost like feeling that you get, it's almost like this like magic sauce that you can kind of feel like, yeah, this is going to work.”“I don't think that doubt ever really goes away. You just figure out how to manage it and do your little mental health hacks to get over it. But it's kind of just like always living in there a little bit.”“Raising when you're a few months in versus raising just on a deck, a presentation, I think those are two very, very different things.”“It's disrupted what is so hard to disrupt, which is social media. And so that sort of relationship, I would say, has been kind of integral.”“That's the thing that I think is just such a core value to us is sure it can be healthy, but if it tastes like cardboard or kale, nobody wants to eat that if it's a dessert. So kind of marrying the two of, I call it, hedonistic health. But it's healthy and clean, but it's delicious. And I think that's kind of the fundamental I would say the core value of our product strategy.”“I think it takes practice and it takes reps to be able to have all of those high highs and have the low lows. And you have to go through them to kind of then even out and stay even-keeled.”“I need to do what a coach does to motivate my team to kind of have that energy and build that culture.”“Just start. We want everything to be perfect. We want to have the perfect brand and the best website. And we want everything to be pristine. And I think there is advice that I received that was if you're not embarrassed of your first product, then you're not doing it right.”

Rolling in the DEUX with Sabeena Ladha, Founder and CEO of DEUX

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What life was like growing up on a farm in Oregon and learning a lot about nutrition and agriculture and entrepreneurship and how that brought her to study at CornellWhy she started pursuing internships with the government, such as an Oregon Senator, and then in DC working on Capitol Hill before deciding that wasn’t the long term path for herWhat led her to the entrepreneurial fellowship called Venture for America and why that experience gave her so many learnings to take with her when she would later build her own brandsHow she traveled around the world for six months after the fellowship ended and what she learned from seeing farms in other parts of the worldHow her time with an angel group led to being the Co-Founder of a company called Plant Water back in 2016 where she was able to learn about how to build something from scratchWhy her learnings from building Plant Water led her to approach building GEM differently by creating an MVP product and intentionally building a community with which to understand, gain insight, and even look at as co-creators developing the product and the brand to meet needs more specifically and successfullyHow the community first model led to a quick and successful pre-seed funding round that came about very organically and quite differently than Sara had originally imaginedWhat great advice she has about fundraising and building your investor team through communication and relational partnershipsHow Sara and the team approached a recent rebrand, why they went about it, and what the process looked likeHow they have used a simple and small retail approach to continue to gain brand awareness, build a bigger audience, and gather more insight as to how they can continue to do things better and betterWhy their product is so different and why it mattersTo Find Out More:DailyGEM.coUse code word ​​STAIRWAY10 for $10 offQuotes:“I was always interested in our food system as a whole and how we can continue to improve it. And so I knew that was something that always was going to be a lifelong mission of mine.”“I learned most of all that it's about the people that you work with. When you get the right people in the room with big ideas and vision,  you work really hard, and you learn that you really can, there's a lot that you can do when you set your mind to it.”“I learned that a really good leader is one that is always willing to roll up their sleeves and be a maker at any point at the company.”“The really good leaders are the ones that really understand how important it is to invest in the people and those relationships.” “Everything is a relationship and relationships are all about negotiation.”“I knew that I needed to get an MVP out in the market, and I needed to build a community first and make sure that I understood their problems that I needed to solve.”“Through that community, I was able to optimize the product enough to the point where we could then commercialize it and get it to market. And so this kind of community-based approach was the best way for me to leanly iterate on our initial product.”“This community organically really showed like, wow, people are wanting this.”“Once I realized that the pathway to successful fundraising was to build the relationships with the right investors that aligned with my mission, vision, and values, and when I started to find those and unlock those, that's when it started to become more successful for me.”“Just as much as they're buying a piece of your business, you are selling them a piece.”“I believe that the most successful companies are ones that take a step back and look at their community first and invest in customer experience first and foremost early on, not just the brand.”

From Farm Life to GEM Bites with Sara Cullen, Founder and CEO of GEM

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like to grow up as the eldest of five in Ireland in a family of entrepreneurs who are third generation manufacturers of construction clothing and why she went into techWhy her dad encouraged her to go study business instead of dietetics and why she saw the wisdom in that laterWhat moved her over to California to work for Google and then AirbnbWhat her experiences at Airbnb taught her about how to create a healthy family culture within a company and not just grow fast, but grow well with a strong teamWhat brought about the need in Laura’s life for a company like Bobbie and what compelled her to develop a product and work on it for four years before launchingWhy she believes confidence and great referrals from past experiences are helpful in raising funds with investors, even if you don’t have metrics yet to shareHow fundraising has gone for Bobbie through traditional VC funding and also the nontraditional raising through Republic, which has including over 200 momsWhat the process of obtaining the FDA green light was like, what lessons came through it, and why it is the way it isWhat great advice she has on how to successfully lead a startup and what is next for BobbieTo Find Out More:HiBobbie.comQuotes:“Becoming an entrepreneur myself now, have I realized that the currency to join a startup is really energy. It's passion. It’s your connection to what’s being built.”“And it was during this I realized I love fast-growth companies. I love being in the middle of it. I loved being on call at random hours because that kind of adrenaline to be building something that wasn't just a massive revenue driver, but it was a culture changer is so impactful.”“I think that's part of an entrepreneurial journey, which is, you spot opportunities by seeing the ridiculousness of why certain things are the way they are.”“It continued to hit me that they are buying into my passion, my confidence, my ability to execute. What I had was, very fortunately, a decade of experience in the tech world and fast-growing companies to be able to point to to show that I did have a track record of getting shit done.”“We were very intentional about spending the two years prior to launching and building community. And often products and companies will say, ‘well you can't do that until you have a product on the market.’ And for us, it wasn't just about the product, it was about shaking the stigma, having the conversation.” “When we went to market, we had hundreds of moms who were dying to share that we had just launched. I believe that is kind of the secret sauce of what allowed the business to take off.”“It was an education of the industry that we are about to walk into. We are walking into an industry that is heavily regulated with massive companies watching your every move.”“The people that you find that are completely irreplaceable for you, you give them the world because they are worth the world. Your entire company goes around because of the people that you hire and how you recognize them, reward them, support them.” “There are hands down people that give me the sweats at night if I thought about losing them...because they truly are founders, owners, developers of this business more than myself. They are incredible.”“As a CEO, your job is to build the machine that runs, and every component of that machine is its people.”“How you support the exit of an individual in the business will say everything about your leadership.”

Formula for Change with Laura Modi, Co-Founder and CEO of Bobbie

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How his childhood was full of the love of food and exposure to business and learning how to make money, even from an early ageWhat hard lessons he learned from mistakes in business while in college and how what he calls his first real business really grew and provided a lot of opportunity with nationwide clientsWhat it was like to have a successful experience in an acqui-hire with NOISE that was an amazing partnership for Andrew and what he did next with recruiting solutionsWhat led him into financial management and consulting, to part time CFO roles, and lead to a full time CFO positionHow the idea for Otamot came to him, what he did differently with this idea compared to other ideas he had over the years, and why he chose the name OtamotWhy they were able to hit the ground running after launching Otamot, how he got in front of more buyers, and his advice on marketing and pricing strategyHow he balances his full time, 9-5 job, with his 5-9 job growing Otamot and what advice he has for others who have a great idea and want to take it somewhere  To Find Out More:otamotfoods.comQuotes:“To grow your business and really grow your experience, you're going to have to work with more and more people.”“If you want people to be the extension of you, then you've got to give it all for them every single day.”“I call it being comfortable being uncomfortable. Because if you're going to be squeamish and if you can't kind of thrive off of being in these different and challenging situations and really get excited about, hey, how do I jump over this thing? Then being an entrepreneur or doing something that hasn't been done before is not for you. And that's OK.”“A little light bulb went off and I said, I love making food, I am a parent that just wishes I didn't have to spend three hours to make this, but I feel really good about her eating it. But is there a life hack here?”“If we're going to flip the label around, what if we just flip the name around too? And it really plays well into it and really explains the origin of the sauce, which is we really want to turn things around.”“We prepped enough that well before launch I hired a PR company. Well before launch we did our branding and sell sheets, so we were able to hit the ground running and look like a million bucks before we made any money, before we had one sale.”“When you're building a business, you also want to look at what will your COGS be later on based on certain velocity assumptions. And you should be pricing yourself based on those future velocity assumptions, in my opinion.”“If you want to go national, you have to be ready for it. And that just doesn't mean, hey, have a few bucks in the bank. That means be ready from a production standpoint, be ready to service them, be ready to understand how freights work, how UniFi works…”“If I didn't have great teams on both sides of the table, I could not do this.”“You just have to be someone that's been used to juggling life and you have to enjoy being that clown.”

Secret Sauce with Andrew Suzuka, Founder and CEO of Otamot.

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What got Isabelle so interested in the plant based food space and how she has spent her time learning so much about it and seeing the opportunities present in itHow she came to realize the incredible benefits of Lupini beans and the huge opportunity there was to build a platform and a brand around this bean that many people did not know about yetWhat brought her to the US for one year during her undergrad, took her to grad school in Europe, and got her into the startup space once back in the USWhat valuable lessons she learned from the startups she worked with and how those lessons translate now into how she leads her company and how she values the people on her teamHow the opportunity to run with her idea for Lupii came about and what it took for her to find the perfect Co-FounderWhat the fundraising process has been like and what conventional and unconventional ways they are raising funds to grow the companyHow they changed their strategy once COVID put a pause on their retail relationships and why selling on Amazon has been helpful to them in the early stages of their businessWhat advice Isabelle has for getting through the hard times, being a good leader, a good Co-Founder, and also building something bigger than just a businessWhat is next for Lupii and where you can find them around the US and onlineTo Find Out More:https://getlupii.com/Quotes:“We are using the whole bean, which means that you're getting all the protein and all the fiber and all the minerals without any of the added junk. So that's pretty innovative in this space.”“It's great to want to take the playbook and tear it apart and throw it out the window. But it's also really important to even know how the playbook was written and you need experienced people for that.”“I think the trust piece is so essential, especially if you start something new and nobody knows you, and you have to build your reputation, it's important that you create trust and you can only create trust if you listen.”“It's important to listen and take in information and then make decisions from there, versus thinking you know it all because you don't.”“Surrounding yourself with a team, with a Co-Founder, that has complementary views is not easy because you tend to want to hire people that are like you. Get people on board that are different, that operate differently, that have different backgrounds, so that you can make informed decisions…”“Really, the job of the leader is to set everyone else up for success.”“You need to be open minded and self reflect and understand why am I behaving this way and why is this person behaving that way and how can we find a middle ground and do the best out of both? Because I think that's a great way to build a successful business with complementary skill sets and ways of doing things.”“What we love about Amazon is the fact that we get exposure to customers who would otherwise not find out about us. And we have had really honest, direct feedback, which is so important for us in the early stages of the business.”“Lupii is a platform for the Lupini bean. We're not a bar company. We're a Lupini bean company. We really see the bars as the first product range that we launched with.”“What I've learned is really there are hurdles that will feel tough at times, but then things will always work out if you just continue being committed to it and working at it.”

Raising the Protein Bar with Isabelle Steichen, Co-Founder and CEO of Lupii

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:What it was like for Achal to grow up in a family of doctors and health care professionals with roots both in India and in the US and how much he learned from being a part of such a family legacyHow his first jobs were scanning patient charts in order to convert them to digital and then working at Subway as a Sandwich ArtistWhat his work at Deloitte was like and why meeting his Co-Founder then created a strong partnership that led to the idea and creation of CabinetWhat convictions led to Achal and Russ deciding that they could bring about innovation in using sustainable options for packaging and why it is so important to themWhy batch level testing is so important and a vital part of how Cabinet ensures product quality and safetyHow fundraising has gone and what valuable lessons he has learned along the way, which has led to wonderful financial partnershipsWhat great advice Achal has for hiring and maintaining a cohesive company culture, even involving various team members in the hiring process who can help keep the cultural fit clear with new hiresWhat routines and mindsets he operates in daily in order to keep himself balanced and work through the highs and lows of being a Co-Founder/CEO and building a company with a great impactHow he has grown from a Founder into a CEO and why he sees those roles as different with a different set of needs at a different timeTo Find Out More:CabinetHealth.com Quotes:“My vantage point is, if you build a business, especially in the world of health care, that isn't prioritizing consumers' well-being, then that's directly oppositional to the purpose of being a business.”“I think our physical health and the environment around us are inextricably linked. And yet in the world of health care, there are no sustainable options today.”“It's exceptionally complex to innovate in this space. The supply chains are global. They're fragmented. Bringing more sustainable products to market requires regulatory expertise, requires buy-in from your entire supply chain.”“Being able to call someone who actually believes in you as a person, and not just the business, has been fundamentally important to our well-being and our success over the last few years.”“Reflect on why you are raising money before you go and raise capital.”“If you sell a product, it makes money, really think twice about why you're raising and if there are ways that are not just focused on a more heavily equity driven route that could actually enable you to be more successful in the long run.”“Your goal when you're fundraising is to gain momentum. And so really what you're looking for is not necessarily the check itself immediately, but the commitment that the investor will participate in the round.”“Don't get too caught up in setting a valuation or in some of the caveats the investors give you. Focus on getting the dollar commitment and you'll find that the rest of those contingencies typically fall away as a round comes together.”“Being a CEO... I fundamentally have three responsibilities. The first is setting a clear vision for our team and the strategy that goes with that. Secondly, making sure we actually have the right team in place, making sure that they're taken care of... And then third, making sure we don't run out of money or that we're making enough money to support that team.”“Building this company is my opportunity to continue the legacy of my family in the world of medicine to help people live healthier, happier lives, fundamentally building a more sustainable health care company.”“When you feel that you don't really care if you're going to hit barriers or failures otherwise and you're going to build that thing, I think that's when you found the correct why for yourself.”

Rethinking Pharmacy with Achal Patel, Co-Founder and CEO of Cabinet Health

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:Why David wanted to create this company with a product that needed to be iterated hundreds and hundreds of times to get it right to be a non-alcoholic alternative that could be added to cocktails What the process of doing what so many people in the industry thought was impossible was like and how they persevered with this unique ideaWhat it was like launching a brand right before a pandemic and how they navigated those unusual challengesWhat childhood in Oklahoma was like and what ways David was entrepreneurial very early on, learning valuable lessons about hard work even as a teenagerHow he got into the fitness and physical therapy world and what led him to the CPG world after thatWhat advice he has for Co-Founders and for setting yourself up to be able to let go more easily as you scale and grow the companyWhat unique route they took for raising money and what advice David has for other founders when looking for non-traditional fundraising ideasHow David and his Co-Founders run the team and cultivate a company culture that is built on trust and respect and keeping it personalWhat is next for Ritual and why they are confident that Ritual will become synonymous with nonalcoholic spiritsTo Find Out More:RitualZeroProof.comQuotes:“The idea never left. And what came to me was, if we could actually make these taste like known spirits, if we could approximate the flavor profile of whiskey, of gin, tequila, rum, that'd be amazing.”“The devil's in the details and the details matter. Let's get it right. So we kind of knew we were on to something really early on in the process and it became a matter of perfecting.”“It's kind of like the Impossible Burger or almond milk. There's never going to be a world where the coffee joints don't sell alternative milks to go with your latte. And in no world, the grocery store is not going to have alternative meats. Now that it's there, people are buying it.” “What we've learned is you can't change consumer behavior. They're going to do the thing that they want to do. Maybe it's not real meat, maybe it's not real milk. Maybe it's a Ritual Margarita instead of the real thing.”“If I could do things differently, it's prepare for more success because this category is on fire. This company is leading the charge in the United States for a category that's really needed. And nobody understood just how big this was going to get when we first started the company.”“You just can't do it yourself. You certainly can't scale. And if you started off with the mindset of this is mine, mine, mine, it's really hard to give those pieces away and grow. And you have to be able to give things away to be able to grow.”“There's nothing not personal about a startup. The whole 'It's just business' thing is complete bullshit. It's just personal. Keep it personal and become friends.”“The most important thing you can have among your Founders and among your employees is trust.”“It is so very gratifying to build something and see something out in the real world. But I think it's just worth it. I think it's a shame if you don't give some version of entrepreneurship a shot. It's a wonderful way to grow as a person.”“It's a learning process. Your life is about learning. That's as important as the money you'll get from this, and you'll realize later ultimately more important than the money you'll get from this is how much you've learned, people you've met, the experiences you've had…”

A Category Worth the Shot with David Crooch, Co-Founder and CEO of Ritual Zero Proof

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How Matt got involved with such a unique company and what the process of deciding to jump into this role looked likeWhat led to the decision to build the company through drops and why that has been such a great successWhat Matt and the team did to build enough hype to very quickly have enough interest to sell out every weekly drop within 30 minutes or less, sometimes even down to 10 secondsWhy experience, brand, and then sales is the order of their focus and how being intentional about their brand integrity has brought exponential growth in a very short period of timeWhat Matt’s extensive experience as a Founder and marketer in other companies in other industries was like prior to becoming the CEO of Last CrumbHow fundraising has been unique and why they approached it in a very Last Crumb way that will set them up for further growth and successWhat Matt’s leadership skills are like, what his superpowers are, and why he believes in a lean team that is focused and tight to move forward in efficient waysTo Find Out More:lastcrumb.comQuotes:“I shared the cookies with other people as I was exploring the opportunity and continued to talk to Derek. The response was exactly the same from everyone, which was, "Oh my God, this maybe is like the best cookie I've ever had.’"“I think we make a really cool product that makes people really happy because it's just ridiculous.”“There was a little conspiracy theory going on on Instagram for a while that here's no actual cookies for sale. And these people are just making this up. And it's a total marketing scheme which would have been entertaining and kind of fun. But that wasn't the case. We were increasing production by fifty percent week over week.”“We are growing ridiculously fast. And our goal is to get cookies into people's hands, but to do it in an ultra premium way.”“We look at ourselves as the intersection of luxury gifting, fashion, and then CPG.”“Because people are sharing our cookies, because they have this interesting unboxing and wow factor, I think that in a way it almost creates an experience dining thing that happens with you and the people you're with that you remember and you want again.”“We had a lot of hypotheses and we tested them. And some of them have worked really well and some of them haven't worked as well. And we're learning and we're continuing to iterate.”“If you don't think you have it {product market fit}, you don't have it. And I think that's a really interesting thing is that, if you make something really great and it resonates with people and they want it, you know. You don't have to beg them.”“I think that what I'm finding is that it's happening faster than I would have expected. But we're going about it in a way that is different than I've ever done it. And it's really interesting to see that.”“Find a really good CEO or people who've been CEO that you can call.”“My goal is that kitchen ops every day wakes up and says, "I wish you guys could have sold and shipped more cookies because we could have made more. "And every day the logistics ops says, "Man, I wish you guys could have baked more cookies because we could have shipped more." And I think that's a really interesting friction that we want to have.”“Take the first step. Don't worry about finishing the race. Otherwise, you're never even going to get a chance in the race.”

No Cookie Cutter Company with Matthew Jung, CEO of Last Crumb

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:How growing up with entrepreneurial parents taught her a lot about hard work and hustle and why she was always interested in creative type careersWhat types of jobs helped her learn how to run a successful business and why her time at eBay was impactful in her experience with marketing, which is helpful today as she has been marketing her own productWhy tea has always been an important part of Sashee’s life and how that became a pivotal part of becoming a Founder and creating Tea DropsWhat the impetus was for getting her to prove the concept and build her company  on a solid foundation that led to more opportunitiesWhy she is thankful she had to bootstrap this business in the beginning and why it helped her make great, strategic decisions early on What struggles Sashee and her team had to overcome in the beginning of building Tea Drops and what struggles still occur nowWhat fears she had to overcome, including the fear of public speaking, which she has now conquered and actually been rewarded for great pitches by PepsiCo and Tory BurchHow she’s grown as a leader and what great advice she has for other Founders and operators who are wanting to build a successful business while maintaining a healthy life/work integrationTo Find Out More:MyTeaDrop.comQuotes:“I got exposed to email marketing, digital marketing, our social giving platform called eBay Giving Works at the time. And so I was exposed to a lot of different facets of marketing and that all was very useful when the time came for me to actually start marketing my own product.”“Growing up I was always exposed to tea culture and not just from a functional standpoint, that tea is a functional beverage that's good for you, but very much so that tea is this communal beverage that connects you to your culture, connects you to other people and connects you to your family.”“I loved every aspect of it. I loved the challenge of it. I loved not knowing what was happening next, but really working on something that I felt needed to exist in the world.”“Don't get me wrong, I was very scared. But I also knew that if I didn't try it now, I would have a sense of regret about it.”“Everything is nice in theory, but when you actually have to put it into application, practically do it, it's a whole different ball game.”“What bootstrapping does is it provides you with a certain discipline. You have to make hard choices and you have to do it with your own money.” “I grew the brand organically to probably 500K in revenue just from these boutique retailers before I took in capital, and that was really just a function of building a close relationship with the retailer early on.”“I think the challenge is more so just keeping an eye on what is your end goal and objective and not being so dissuaded or deflated by the feedback that people are naturally going to have, especially with something that's new.”

Steeped in Possibili-Tea with Sashee Chandran, Founder and CEO of Tea Drops

Stairway to CEO is a new podcast, hosted by Lee Greene, highlighting untold stories and inspiring content from innovative founders plus expert advice for starting and growing a business.

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Stairway to CEO

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