nutpods: Madeline Haydon

When Madeline Haydon decided to turn her homemade, plant-based coffee creamer into a business, she didn’t fit the mold of a typical founder. She was a woman of color, pregnant with her second child, and had no experience in the food industry. At first, almost all of her sales were through Amazon, and she struggled to convince investors to take a risk on her. But over 10 years, she grew nutpods from a $30,000 Kickstarter campaign into a leading coffee creamer brand, now available in 15,000 stores across the US. This episode was produced by Alex Cheng with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant. Our audio engineers were Gilly Moon and Patrick Murray. You can subscribe to Guy’s brand new newsletter at guyraz.com http://guyraz.com. You can also follow HIBT on Twitter https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 0:46Guy Raz?

  build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea, what separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt. We get support from U.S. Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't.

• 1:32Guy Raz?

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• 2:16Guy Raz?

  on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cellphone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. If you travel often, you'll want to hear about this unprecedented offer. For the first time ever,

• 3:00Guy Raz?

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• 3:45Guy Raz?

  or bring a guest to the Delta Sky Club. Make every trip feel more rewarding with the car that upgrades your travel. Apply today at delta.com/cardsocial. Offer ends November 4, 2026. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Flights are fulfilled as flight certificates valid for Delta Comfort or Delta Maine to select domestic destinations. Book 21-plus days in advance. Up to $80 per person and taxes and fees apply. Other restrictions apply. When I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up, and getting on with my day. And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talked to on this show, because the best

• 4:27Guy Raz?

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• 5:11Guy Raz?

  Hey, really quick before we start the show. We have an announcement about a really exciting new thing we're launching: a newsletter. And like our show, the newsletter is designed to be interesting, informative, inspiring, and most importantly, fun. It's 100% free, and to sign up, just visit guyraz.com. That's G-U-Y-R-A-Z dot com.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  I mean, you have to take a look at me objectively. I am a female founder, person of color, pregnant, never been a CEO before, brand new to the industry, and I was going to anybody. I was going to angel networks. I was paying money to pitch to angels. And I took it so personally, Guy, that they were rejecting me or my business or my team. You know, I hated it when my husband would say, this is just a numbers game. And the more no's you get, gets you closer to the yes.

• 6:18Guy Raz?

  Oh, it's such great advice.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  But it's terrible receiving it because they're not saying no to him. They're saying no to me.

• 6:37Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:48Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Madeleine Hayden grew nut pods from a $30,000 Kickstarter campaign into a leading national brand just because she wanted a better, plant-based creamer for her coffee.

• 7:06Guy Raz?

  It's a rare occasion when I drink milk. And if I do, it's raw, unpasteurized cow's milk. And if that makes you want to throw your smartphone at the wall or curse me for endangering my life, to you, I say, try it. Raw milk is delicious, but make sure you trust the source. Okay, now that we have that out of the way, most of the time, I use a nut milk to whiten my coffee or espresso drinks. Why? Well, I don't have a good answer. I'm not allergic to dairy, and I guess it's just a force of habit. Today, there is a plant-based milk for pretty much every type of human on the planet. Hemp, oat, cashew, hazelnut, which is delicious, macadamia nut, another good one,

• 7:51Guy Raz?

  almond, soy, coconut, pea, rice, pistachio, flaxseed, and on and on and on. It's a pretty crowded category, and its growth has been fueled by people looking for something to put in their cereal or coffee that isn't dairy. Now, as many of you know, dairy milk consumption is way down in the United States, down 50% from 1975. In fact, in 2023, milk consumption in America hit an all-time low. And in recent years, plant milks have gotten much, much better, creamier and fuller with similar viscosity to dairy milk. But that wasn't always the case.

• 8:34Guy Raz?

  And that's how Madeline Hayden came up with the idea for Nut Pods a few years before she launched it in 2013. At the time, she was pregnant and used to using your typical coffee creamer in her coffee, you know, the kind that comes in pods that you might find at the Holiday Inn buffet bar. And if you look at the ingredients of a lot of those creamers, there's a lot of artificial ingredients. So Madeline started to experiment with her own recipes, using simple ingredients like coconut cream and almonds. At the time, Madeline's only professional experience with anything in liquid form was blood. I know, gross, right? But at the time, Madeline was literally a recruitment manager for a blood bank.

• 9:17Guy Raz?

  She'd gone to business school in Seattle, but never saw herself as an entrepreneur. And as many of these stories on How I Built This go, she had no significant money or connections in the food industry. But lots of her friends loved the homebrew coffee creamer she was making, and that sparked the idea of trying to turn it into a brand. She called her creation Nut Pods because originally, she sold it in pods only. And at first, it was slow-going. Madeline had a really hard time attracting investors, and almost all of her sales were through Amazon. But after 11 long years, she managed to turn Nut Pods into one of the bestselling

• 9:59Guy Raz?

  plant-based coffee creamers. And in early 2024, the brand was acquired by a private equity group backed by Kroger for an undisclosed amount, but it was likely around nine figures. Madeleine was born in Saigon in Vietnam, just as the country was falling to the North Vietnamese communists. Her parents both worked with the US military during the war, and when Saigon fell in 1975, the whole family was whisked out by the US government.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  It's funny, because when I think about my mom, who passed away when I was in my late 20s, you know, I think about a very cherubic woman who laughed a lot and was an excellent cook. And I found this old picture of her, and she was 20, and she was felt, and she was holding an Uzi gun. And I'm like, Dad, is this Mom? And he said, yeah. He said, your mom was actually a very good sharpshooter.

• 10:54Guy Raz?

  So she was, do you know what she did?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  She was, I think, a commander of sorts. I only know the Vietnamese word for it.

• 11:00Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  And they don't, as you can imagine, are very reticent to talk about some of the details of the Vietnam War. It's traumatic for them. But anyways, they had half an hour of notice to get to the airport because Saigon was going to fall.

• 11:19Guy Raz?

  It's 1975, the fall of Saigon. There are obviously the famous pictures of helicopters being lifted out of the embassy, US Embassy, and...

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Exactly. And my parents had had the foresight and the opportunity with working with the US Embassy to have all the paperwork in place. So go bag, you know, get all the kids from school, scramble to get to the airport. And we were one of the lucky ones, Guy, because we were all together. We were on a helicopter.

• 11:47Guy Raz?

  All six children?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Five. My mom was actually pregnant. Yes, my mom was pregnant with the six.

• 11:53Guy Raz?

  Wow. So five little kids, because you were a baby, baby.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  I was one, and my oldest sister was nine, and popped over to Guam, went over to Camp Pendleton. Jerry Brown was the governor at the time.

• 12:07Guy Raz?

  Of California, yep.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And he was very protective about... Vietnamese immigrants taking Californian jobs. And the governor up in Washington was Dan Evans. And he sent his aide down to say, Washington State welcomes you. And through the office of the governor, he heard about my parents. How, you know, it's a family of five kids, six on the way. Both mom and dad worked with the US Embassy. And they personally sponsored my family up. And so then in September, my mom gave birth to my little brother, named him Evans in honor of Governor.

• 12:49Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Yes, Dan Evans. And to this day, you don't get a lot of 50 year old friendships, but they, we meet with them every year. So it's been a wonderful friendship and it has really shaped me as well.

• 13:03Guy Raz?

  Wow. So when your parents arrived, so when you arrived to, you were a little kid, an infant, toddler, as far as, you know, what did they do for, for a living?

• 13:13Speaker 01

  So they had tough jobs. Uh, language was a barrier, even though my dad translated. He still speaks with a heavy accent today. And so my mom sewed curtains and my dad worked a midnight shift at a cannery. So in high school, my mom ended up in electronic assembly, so circuit board. And I remember I was working my, my job at Blockbuster Video.

• 13:40Guy Raz?

  This is your high school job?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  This is my high school job. And my mom, I remember I was chatting with her and she said she got a raise today. And I said, that's great, mom. And she said, yeah, I'm really proud. You know, I'm up to nine dollars an hour. And I was thinking, that is not that much more than what I was making at Blockbuster Video. And I'm like this 17 year old kid. And it made me sad and cognizant of the disparity that she and I will have. But gosh, it really instilled in me compassion. And I don't know if you can get those, those qualities without going through hardships.

• 14:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I know that, that when it came to college, you went to the University of Washington, which was, you know, in your area. I think you majored in English. And then a few years after you graduated, you decided to go back to school, to Seattle University to get, to get your MBA, right?

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Exactly. The only reason why I went back was because my mom was dying of cancer. She was worried because of all of the kids, I was the only one who had a liberal arts degree. I was the one who was always making the least amount in salary. I was the one who had the most credit card debt. So she really begged me to go back and get a graduate degree. And it took me about two and a half years to earn my MBA at night.

• 15:01Guy Raz?

  All right. So you, at night, do this MBA while you're working daytime. But then you get into, like, with your MBA degree, you get into the nonprofit world, right? This is like, this is a, would begin like almost a six or seven year adventure in the world of nonprofits. And you worked for a...

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Blood bank.

• 15:22Guy Raz?

  A blood bank, yeah.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I never had a job that I felt so connected to the community. And when you're going around and you're promoting blood drives, working with high school students, working with church groups, working with businesses, and you're driving around your community, I loved all of that.

• 15:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  I think I wanted my work to matter. And I saw that, you know, when, when my mom was in the hospital, and when my mom was going through her radiation, like, there were things that mattered, and there were things that didn't. And I wanted my work to contribute towards helping other people and making a difference.

• 16:01Guy Raz?

  At this time, around this time in your life, did you have a fa... I know you have a family now. Did, did you have a family yet, your own family?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  No, I didn't have a family until 2009. I was married before. And I, I married my ex-husband right out of college. And, you know, great guy. I think I just didn't really understand the commitment of a whole lifetime together. And I take a lot of the blame of that first marriage that failed. Because I got scared that when we started to have the ebbs and flows of a seven-year-old relationship, that this is what it was gonna be. So I just...

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Retreated and I have regret about how I left that marriage, even though I love my current husband in the life that I have with my current husband, if that makes sense.

• 17:00Guy Raz?

  Course, of course. I mean, this was a, obviously, a lot going on in your life between the time you graduate and sort of early 2010s, which is where your life really begins to change.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:15Guy Raz?

  And I guess you were on, you and maybe I think your husband, Jeffrey, were on vacation in, in Lake Tahoe and basically this is the beginning of what would become the business. But tell me, tell me what the story was.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Can I tell you the lead up to the story?

• 17:30Guy Raz?

  Please.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  So I think first thing was when Jeff and I, we were dating, we were watching American Idol and we were watching all these people that had their dreams and they would like be so emotional because they were so passionate and I realized like, I didn't have a dream like that. Do you have a dream like that? I don't have a dream like that. Like where is the passion in our lives?

• 17:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  So I left my job at Peter Sombley Center, which has since rebranded to Bloodworks Northwest. And I followed my husband to California for his career. He was a successful investment banker. And, you know, I got married the second time later, about eight years after my divorce. And so I was a later mom and we had Emily, my first born, and we had trouble having her. We, I mean, I've had about three miscarriages. We've gone through I U I, IVF. You know, you, you get in this like roller coaster of just trying to be pregnant. That's when I tried everything, everything from paleo to acupuncture to Reiki.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  And I remember that I was on a family vacation and we were at this cafe and I wanted a decaf cup of coffee and all the little bowls of little creamers were processed with artificial this and that's and hydrogenated oils. And I said to the waitress, hey, do you happen to have anything else? And she said, sure, I'll be right back. And she comes back and she plunks down that big canister of powdered non-dairy creamer. And I just looked at Jeff and I said, I am like so. Sick of, you know, these are the choices of no matter where I go. And he just said nonchalantly, well, maybe you can do something about that.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  And in that little chapter in our life, we were in California, we were, we were around people that were paleo and CrossFit and vegan and plant-based was becoming a thing. And just got to thinking about how I'm lactose intolerant, but then a concept like nut pods would actually work for all of these other different groups of people, including diabetic people or prediabetic people. And so it just became a concept that was birthed in Bird's Cafe in South Lake Tahoe.

• 19:57Guy Raz?

  So you go back to home to Orange County and you have this idea in your head of let me try and experiment with making a non-dairy creamer?

• 20:06Speaker 01

  I went home to our apartment and I got out my blender and I went to Whole Foods and I went to Sprouts and I got the ingredients that I could make a DIY creamer.

• 20:18Guy Raz?

  What did you buy?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  It was a Whole Foods 365 almond milk. It was a can of Thai Kitchen coconut cream.

• 20:27Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  It was, you know, Williams Sonoma, like Tahitian vanilla extract and some gray sea salt because it felt fancy and Morton's sea salt.

• 20:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  And so there was a period where I would just pack my own homemade creamer at home when I would go meet with friends for coffee. And then that's when my MBA brain kind of kicked in and said, you know, actually this would help a lot of people and there's nothing like this. And, oh, look, there's a Chapman University from recipe to retail class. And I just wanted to learn a little bit more about like, could this actually be a business?

• 21:10Guy Raz?

  Cause Chapman is in Orange County, I think, right? Yeah. And so you, you decided, hey, maybe I'll take that class.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  It was just a conference.

• 21:18Guy Raz?

  Oh, it was a conference, okay.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Right. And in three days' time, you could learn about how to commercially develop your brand, how to think about pricing and going to grocery stores and routes to channels and markets. And it was a really good overview.

• 21:35Guy Raz?

  Tell me, why did you think that there was something there? I mean, you like this, but did anybody else, like, did friends of yours say, I like this too? Or were people asking for it? Or how did that come about?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Sure. So, you know, my friends were in the different groups that I talked about. We had friends that were paleo and we had friends that were Whole30. And we had my family members that were diabetic. So they were bumming the creamer off of me.

• 22:03Guy Raz?

  Because they can eat coconut milk and almond milk and salt. I mean, these are things that pretty much everybody on those diets can consume.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I just really felt in my heart of hearts, one day I'm going to go into Whole Foods and I'm going to see a product like Nut Pods and I'm going to have regrets saying like, ah, I wish I had done it. I wish I'd gone for it.

• 22:24Guy Raz?

  Surely there were, I mean, by 2013, there were plant milks available, like, not like now, but there were plant milks available. I mean, was there anything at all like what you were trying to put out into the marketplace? Anything?

• 22:38Speaker 01

  The only two options were soy and So Delicious all coconut.

• 22:44Guy Raz?

  And was there, I mean, coconut milk is delicious, right? And it's got this very wonderful viscosity. And then almond milk is thinner because it's basically just water, you know, whizzed with almonds. But when you would combine those two things, you would get that sort of thick, creamy creamer.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  I wanted a half and half. That was what my goal was. I wanted something that would allow the coffee to taste like a cup of coffee. And I was using actually So Delicious at the time, which is all coconut. And it was the richest, creamiest thing I could find, but every cup of coffee tasted like a coconut cup of coffee.

• 23:21Guy Raz?

  Like coconut, right. And you wanted, you didn't want that overwhelming flavor in the coffee?

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Exactly. And coconut milk, what you just mentioned, wasn't rich enough for me. So that's why it ended up being coconut cream plus almond milk. And then that gave us the balanced, neutral creaminess that I was looking for.

• 23:43Guy Raz?

  And I think in 2013, you were you were ready to put your recipe out into the world, right, with a with a Kickstarter campaign. And initially, these were going to be pods, right? Like that, that was the name, nut pods. This is going to be like coffee creamer pods that you find in a hotel room, or like the buffet at the Holiday Inn Breakfast Bar.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 24:01Guy Raz?

  And so when you put the video out, the Kickstarter video out, first of all, how much were you trying to raise?

• 24:08Speaker 01

  I was trying to raise $30,000 because I had Googled, how much does it cost to do a commercial formula? And somewhere on some blog, some guy had said, you should be able to do a commercial formula for $10,000. So I'm like, okay.

• 24:23Guy Raz?

  Got it.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  $10,000 commercial formula, let's double it for Kickstarter backer rewards plus gifts, and let's like, just do another 10 for safekeeping.

• 24:33Guy Raz?

  And how did you get the word out about your Kickstarter video? Did you just like, send a blitz to your friends with emails and then hope that they would show up and contribute?

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Well, they actually, I didn't want family and friends, because I didn't want the polite donations. I wanted like stranger people to tell me whether or not this was something that would resonate with them.

• 24:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  And so I was following a bunch of different paleo people at the time.

• 24:57Guy Raz?

  Like bloggers?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Bloggers. And I reached out for a couple, just to say, hey, would you amplify this on your social media channels? And I got a couple lucky hits.

• 25:09Guy Raz?

  And you wanted to raise 30,000, and you did. You you slightly exceeded it, right? I think you raised 32,000.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yes. And promptly, like vastly underestimated the amount of money that it would take to actually commercialize.

• 25:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah, so let's let's start with that. I mean, you had you had a formula, right? So what did you need to do now? Now you needed to find like, a commercial manufacturer, a partner who could make this for you at scale?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  So I learned about what a food technologist does. And so I ended up just networking through some of the speakers that came to that Chapman University. And I said, oh, Barry, can you introduce me to Tara? Because Tara has worked with a co-manufacturer.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  I told her about my formula and she put me in touch with someone who would put together my formula, which took two years.

• 26:06Guy Raz?

  So was the idea to make it a shelf-stable product or to make it like a refrigerated product?

• 26:12Speaker 01

  I wanted initially in my Kickstarter campaign to have it be a shelf-stable, like a single portion cup.

• 26:21Guy Raz?

  Like little pods?

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Just like a little coffee mate because at that point I was tired of carrying around the stupid cooler pack with the stupid cooler.

• 26:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Like, and I just wanted something that was shelf-stable and I could pop it out of my bag and go.

• 26:34Guy Raz?

  What was the challenge in making that happen? I mean, tell me what, why that proved to be so complicated to figure out?

• 26:42Speaker 01

  So when I was working with Tara, my very first consultant, she connected me with a food technologist who would help me formulate commercially, you know, my kitchen formula into something that could be commercially scaled and produced. So I started looking in the grocery store and turning around different cartons and I saw Pacific Foods was, oh, great, they're local, they're just here in Oregon and they are making aseptic shelf-stable products that are nut-based, so they should be able to handle my allergens. And I called them up and I said all the wrong things. Hi, my name is Madeline, I'm the CEO of a new startup. As soon as they hear startup, they don't want to work with you.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  And I'd love to talk to you about my product. And I would never get a response.

• 27:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah, so how did you find a place that initially would agree to work with you and to work on a formulation?

• 27:38Speaker 01

  So there was a TetraPack, which is the packaging company, had a pilot plant. Now, you couldn't sell it, but it was just a development pilot plant that you could use to develop new products and test it out. It's not certified or licensed.

• 27:51Guy Raz?

  I see, okay.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  To sell finished products.

• 27:53Guy Raz?

  It was just to help you kind of figure out?

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Your formula.

• 27:56Guy Raz?

  Formula, okay. And how much was it going to cost to, from soup to nuts, to do like one formulation and see if it worked?

• 28:05Speaker 01

  So when a pilot trial would be about twenty five to thirty thousand dollars.

• 28:11Guy Raz?

  Wow. Why was it so expensive? What did that include?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  It included packaging. It includes the line time. It includes all of the ingredients. You think coffee creamer is this easy thing, and I thought that too. It's just almond milk and coconut cream and a little bit of salt, right?

• 28:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  But it's actually a very, it's a highly variable product. You're taking an alkaline product into an acidic environment like coffee. So if you made almond milk from home, just almonds and coconut.

• 28:41Guy Raz?

  Which I do a lot. Yep. You just whizz it and strain it and you got almond milk.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  And you get almond milk and it's great for drinking. But if you pour it into coffee, it will curdle.

• 28:50Guy Raz?

  Yes.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Because it doesn't have anything to emulsify. You're taking that alkaline product and put it in an acidic environment. And like any chemistry, it will have a chemical reaction.

• 29:01Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Oh, wait. But some people like their coffee iced. Some people like it standard hot. Some people like it extra hot. The temperature affects your pH. And your roast, blonde roast is more acidic. Dark roast is less acidic.

• 29:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Other ways, sometimes it would come out gloopy, like pudding. Sometimes you can taste the French vanilla. And so we were formulating all of these different tweaks of has to be the right flavor. And you have a product like ours where we only can use certain ingredients to make sure that we hit all of our certifications of non-GMO, Project Verified, Vegan, Gluten-Free, Kosher, Whole Thirty, and Glyphosate-Free. We couldn't use so many of the standard ingredients that processed creamers used. And I didn't want to. I didn't want to.

• 29:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah. But you also, you also had to keep it shelf-stable, which meant that you had to introduce some kind of preservative.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 29:58Guy Raz?

  Into the product. No.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  No. So. That's a misnomer. The aseptic processing is what makes it shelf-stable.

• 30:05Guy Raz?

  I see. Because it's like high pressure or it's um?

• 30:08Speaker 01

  No, it's steam injection 284 degrees for four seconds.

• 30:12Guy Raz?

  Got it.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  And then it's filled in a clean room environment that's not open to open air.

• 30:18Guy Raz?

  So it's like a form of ultra pasteurization, I guess.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 30:21Guy Raz?

  And shelf-stable, you want it to last for at least six months on the shelves.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Ideally, longer.

• 30:26Guy Raz?

  Longer, yeah.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Because as a startup, I need as much shelf life as I can so that by the time that I make it, I have time to market, sell it, distribute it, and actually like replenish it.

• 30:38Guy Raz?

  So what I'm trying to figure out is, you start this process in 2013, right? With the money from the Kickstarter and it takes you some time to find this, you know, this TetraPak plant. How many trials would you do at that plant?

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Oh, well, the Kickstarter money went even before the first, the first trial.

• 30:58Guy Raz?

  It was out. You were out of cash, yeah.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, we ended up having about 28 different trials. The Kickstarter money was long gone. We had done a promissory note round with family and friends who had loaned me money. We had done a convertible note round that said I was going to have a Series A and then they would have a discount. And it was time because I also felt it was ticking. It's been like a couple of years and I need to give these Kickstarter backers some product.

• 31:28Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, why Madeline decides she needs to put that product into cartons instead of coffee creamer pods, even though the word pod, nut pods, is right there in the name. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 31:52Guy Raz?

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• 32:34Guy Raz?

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• 33:19Guy Raz?

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• 34:04Guy Raz?

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• 34:49Guy Raz?

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• 35:28Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2013, and Madeline has launched a successful Kickstarter for nut pods, her plant-based creamer. And she finds a co-packer in California that's willing to do a first run of the product. But that is just the beginning. It's just so interesting to hear how complex this process was. I mean, because you would think, okay, you got the money from Kickstarter, and there you go, you're good to go. But actually, this process will eventually take you two years of testing.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Two years. It took my 401k money. It took my insurance money from when I got hit by a car. It's a crazy story.

• 36:07Guy Raz?

  Wait, when you got hit by a car? When'd you get hit by a car?

• 36:11Speaker 01

  I got hit by a car, ironically, by a Prius in my apartment community.

• 36:15Guy Raz?

  Wow. And you were okay?

• 36:17Speaker 01

  I had a concussion. And I went through all the things. And then they said, well, we're just going to run a blood panel just in case. And they told me I was pregnant, and I didn't believe it. That's when I found out I was pregnant with Claire.

• 36:29Guy Raz?

  Wow. So I guess the accident happened, obviously, back when you were pregnant with your second daughter, but presumably it took a while for you to get the money from the insurance. And by the way, how much was it?

• 36:40Speaker 01

  It was $12,000.

• 36:42Guy Raz?

  And that helped you, which was sort of like a kind of a hidden blessing because it gave you some cash to help finance these trials. I'm curious, so your husband was an investment banker. I mean, and you described him as a successful investment banker. Did he have any resources to contribute to this venture?

• 36:59Speaker 01

  You know, he was, his salary was supporting our family and his bonuses were going to Nut Pods. And it feels so vulnerable when you're an entrepreneur and you have this idea and then you ask family and friends. It's, it's difficult because my circle wasn't the circle of angel investors and we were, you know, in our 30s and we were living paycheck to paycheck.

• 37:24Guy Raz?

  And how much money do you think by that point you'd gone through, like over $100,000?

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Easily over $100,000.

• 37:30Guy Raz?

  And you wanted to save money and you probably had like?

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Oh, there was no saving money, Guy. I mean, we, we had two young kids. We had a dog. We were living in an apartment when everyone had a house in Orange County and we were young professionals, but it kind of felt like college days again when you were, you know, really poor and like your dates were going out to happy hour because that's what you could afford.

• 37:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you one thing, Jeff has been by my side through this entire thing.

• 37:58Guy Raz?

  Jeff's your husband, obviously.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Jeff is my husband.

• 38:00Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  And it was difficult for him to support and give his bonus money towards an idea that he honestly didn't think was a good idea, but he wanted to support his wife. He didn't want to let me down when I really finally found that dream that I would cry over like the American Idol people.

• 38:19Guy Raz?

  He thought this was too narrow, too niche of a product that like, even though coffee mate or the coffee creamers in your hotel room seem ubiquitous. He felt like this was too.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  It's too small of a niche. It's too difficult to produce and that's why the big food companies didn't bother with it.

• 38:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  And I said, not all good ideas come from big food companies.

• 38:44Guy Raz?

  What are the two biggest or the biggest, I mean, I'm assuming like Denon and I don't know, like Nestle are probably big players in the creamer.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Right. So Nestle owns Coffee Mate and Denon owns Silk and so delicious and international delight.

• 38:57Guy Raz?

  All right. I mean, obviously huge multinational and these are probably rounding errors for those companies, these products. They're so big.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 39:04Guy Raz?

  They're so enormous.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  It's so big.

• 39:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  But you know what? That's actually our secret weapon was that for them, anything under $10 million, right? Is like not worth it.

• 39:14Guy Raz?

  Not worth your time.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Not worth the innovation.

• 39:17Guy Raz?

  Anything under 50 million is not worth your time if you're that big.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  But when you're a startup, it's like, woo-hoo. You know, it, it all was enough for us. And that's so, and you know, I just didn't have any built in network of people that were investors or even knew about this. So Jeff, to his credit, he tried to make introductions to different entrepreneurs that he had helped even exited his business. But we just didn't get any bites and I took it so personally, Guy. I felt like they were saying, my idea was terrible or I am inadequate.

• 39:54Guy Raz?

  But who were you going to?

• 39:55Speaker 01

  I was going to anybody. I was going to angel networks. I was paying money to pitch to angels. So I didn't have any money. I needed money, but I still had to come up with thousands of dollars to pitch to angels in the hopes that some of them would invest. I also flew all the way across the country to this one guy that could be an angel investor in the dairy space. And you know, you, you learn these, these really painful costly lessons, which is don't ever take a red eye across the country just for one meeting. You have to have multiple meetings set up.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  And I came home empty handed and I took it so personally that they were rejecting me or my business or my team. But really, when I look back at it now, it could have been as simple as the stage was not appropriate for their investment portfolio, or they were more in apparel or hard goods and they didn't know food.

• 40:57Guy Raz?

  And this is an important point because a lot of people, because it's your baby. It's you. It is you. It's your product. But actually, it's really important to separate yourself from it.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  It is very important. And that's what I would tell like other people that look for me for advice is that you have to make sure that you understand there's a whole host of the reasons why they're saying no. But I hated it when my husband would say, this is just a numbers game. And the more knows you get, gets you closer to the yes.

• 41:26Guy Raz?

  Oh, it's such great advice.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  But it's terrible receiving it because they're not saying no to him. They're saying no to me.

• 41:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah. When you were pitching this, before you were even on the shelves or you had a product to sell, did you have market data that you were sharing with potential investors to show them the opportunity?

• 41:45Speaker 01

  I only had what was available on Google. And so, you know, you could sometimes have just a snippet of an industry report like IBIS on coffee and coffee creamers. And I would just try and like reach through and see what fuzzy parts, you know, behind the paywall that I could get and cleaning. And so-

• 42:06Guy Raz?

  Because you don't want to pay for the-

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Can't pay for it.

• 42:07Guy Raz?

  You don't want to pay for the subscription, yeah, to get the market data. Yeah.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 42:11Guy Raz?

  This happens all the time. You get the fuzzy bits. You're like, oh, I could see the fuzzy bits.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 42:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  I think one more thing that I wanted to just explain about why we were this incredible underdog story is not only because, I mean, you have to take a look at me objectively. I am a female founder, person of color, pregnant when I started this company, never been a CEO before, brand new to the industry. And Jeff had a real estate portfolio company that, you know, went sideways when the bubble burst. And we actually had a bankruptcy-

• 42:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  -to our name as well.

• 42:48Guy Raz?

  So you couldn't get credit easily?

• 42:49Speaker 01

  No, I could not get any credit. In fact, we started a company with those prepaid green dot credit cards. You know, the one where you give $500 and then you get a $500 credit line. But I was still going for it and I was still talking and I was still running through the numbers. Oh, I kept hearing the whole like, you've just gotta get your anchor investor and then the other investors that are on the fence will follow.

• 43:15Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  And Jeff introduced me to one of the entrepreneurs that, you know, had had a successful sale. And so this person initially verbally committed to a hundred thousand, which was like so much money. And I used, you know, his verbal yes to get all of the people off the fence. And within 24 hours, he called me back and he backed out. And I was just utterly crushed. I cried. And now I just felt like that game of sorry where you fell all the way back down and you had to like, start all over again. And I had this ethical dilemma of do I tell the people that got off the fence because of the anchor

• 43:56Speaker 01

  investor that the anchor investor then backed out? And then I ended up saying like, I just can't start a relationship without disclosing that.

• 44:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  And so thankfully, the majority of the people that committed still stayed committed.

• 44:13Guy Raz?

  All right, let's talk about the other challenge with what you were trying to do. Because at this time, the concept was pods. It was like little pods of creamer that were single serve. And so presumably, the idea was you would buy a big box, a packaged box of these.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Twenty-four.

• 44:32Guy Raz?

  Twenty-four. And, and that's it. And that's how it would work. But from what I understand, this is a problem, right? Because you really, to make this work, they have to be in hotel rooms. They have to be at the breakfast buffet at the Holiday Inn. And that's not a traditional retail channel. That's like working through

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Food service.

• 44:50Guy Raz?

  Cisco or one of these huge distributors that deals with hotels and restaurants.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Exactly right. And I think it's important to say, I started this company from the lens of a consumer. What kind of product I would have wanted to buy.

• 45:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  And what format I wanted. And so when I went to do this, I remember, remember back when Whole Foods had a local forager program, you could

• 45:11Guy Raz?

  No.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  So they, they had local foragers. So it would be someone like you and you would specialize in the San Diego area and you would see what trends are trending in your area. You could bring in special items that met that trend for your region.

• 45:28Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  I met the one for Orange County and the local forager at the time, his name is Dwight. He said, you know, it's an interesting concept. I think I can see it in our stores, but have you thought about making a carton? I said, well, no, our name is Nut Pods and we want to make the little pods and it's going to be convenient and it's on the go and it doesn't require refrigeration. And he said, I can see consumers buying it in our store maybe once a month, but if you make a carton, they'll buy it every week. Let me know if you make a carton.

• 45:59Guy Raz?

  A carton, but you were resistant to this idea.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  I was resistant because our name was Nut Pods. Can we be Nut Pods without the pods? And so I went back to my industry, you know, advisor team and I said, okay, this is what the Whole Foods forager told me and the marketing advisor said, starting out as a premium brand, which means you're going to be more expensive and unknown and food service is very difficult. And so the consensus was then maybe we should consider cartons. And so this kicked off the whole like, well, can we be Nut Pods without the pods? And a little bit of soul searching and the answer is yes, because what do you call a nut that is growing in trees? Oh my God, thank God they're called pods.

• 46:47Guy Raz?

  Coca Pod, yeah.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  And so we, we then produced the cartons.

• 46:52Guy Raz?

  You mentioned an advisory board and I want to go back and ask you about that because Who were these people? How did you get them to to agree to give you advice? And did you pay them? Or did you give them equity? Like, how did that work?

• 47:04Speaker 01

  So my advisory board were people that I came across at trade shows or any type of industry events. If it was someone and they were friendly and I could ask them a question and I said, I'd love to keep in touch. You know, I would immediately link with them on LinkedIn. And then I would ask them maybe just one question because I didn't want to annoy them. And then when it came time to do an advisory board, I had heard from someone else about Y Combinator had this fast advisory board template. And it laid out in terms, and you can download it for free, that, you know, if you are a startup and you need more input

• 47:47Speaker 01

  from an advisor, and maybe that means instead of once a month call, maybe once a week call, then the more you ask of them, you give them a little bit more equity. And it could be 0.65, it could be 0.75% in equity. Still a vesting schedule. And that vesting schedule is very important because you don't want to have an advisor that is not being responsive to you or not giving you value. And then you've already given them equity and you can't take it back.

• 48:17Guy Raz?

  All right. So you had this advisory panel and now you've got this, you're sort of now thinking, all right, really, we should focus on on making cartons. Presumably, you needed more money to get to a point where you could actually get this manufactured at scale. So this is around 2015 or before 2015 because you're getting ready to launch. How much money did you need to raise from people to get this to get this made?

• 48:44Speaker 01

  I needed a couple hundred thousand. And I was still scratching the ground, Guy. I mean, like, I entered a business plan competition at Seattle U where I got my MBA because the first prize was $10,000. And so that's how small we were trying to eke together money. And everybody was on consultancy. I couldn't afford anybody. I was a full-time paid volunteer for Nut Pods for the first three years. So I was trying to get just enough money to finish the commercial formula and make one run. Just one run. It was gonna be a big run because of the minimum order quantities. And then it should last me nine months to a year. So it gave me that time

• 49:26Speaker 01

  to talk to grocery stores, sell it online. And so at that time, my husband Jeff knew of this company called Circle Up, and they had a platform.

• 49:36Guy Raz?

  Circle Up.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Circle Up, out of San Francisco. And it would matchmake investors to vetted companies. And then these companies, you know, had a built-in angel network. And then in return, Circle Up made a percentage off of what was raised. And so that really was our Series A round.

• 49:59Guy Raz?

  All right. So in 2015, you guys are finally ready to launch. And how exactly did you do it? Like, where did you first start selling Nut Pods?

• 50:07Speaker 01

  We launched on Amazon because at that point, I had 510 Kickstarter backers that had waited two years to see product. And I also launched in a small 12-store chain up in Seattle, Washington, called PCC Natural Markets. And a lot of entrepreneurs, startups, start in the natural channel because the natural channel is a great incubator for small startup brands.

• 50:36Guy Raz?

  Had to do.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  The initial reviews came back and they were very positive. And I remember talking to Jeff, saying like, do you think they're just being nice because they're Kickstarter backers? And he said, no. And he said, if I waited two years and the product was just mediocre, I'd be pissed. And so it ended up being number one new release, number one bestselling item. It was just this rocket ship that was amazing. And so we ended up constantly stocking out and getting back in. And I was protecting that 12 store chain PCC, making sure that they didn't run out of product because I didn't want that retailer to kick me out. So we would short

• 51:17Speaker 01

  ourselves on the Amazon side to keep the retailer in stock. And actually, you know, it worked to our favor because we just had this like scarcity theory going for us on Amazon where it's like, okay, we stocked back, you know, out and now we're back in stock and people would order it.

• 51:37Guy Raz?

  And were you, I mean, what was revenue like? I mean, in that first, those first three years, were you making enough to at least keep that reserve in check that you couldn't, didn't have to spend it?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  So when you sell on Amazon, you're getting paid very quickly. And so the cash flow on Amazon was so much quicker than it was in stores because in stores, they can take net 30, which is really net 40. And so the cash flow was really alleviated for us by being able to sell on Amazon.

• 52:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  Don't get me wrong, we were still short. We were still short on cash. But I would say, you know, for the nine years that we've been in business, we've been profitable for five of them.

• 52:20Guy Raz?

  Did you start to see competitors come up right away? Pretty soon after you launched?

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Pretty soon after we launched. And so, but that's one of the things about designing a product and making sure it's differentiated. You know, were there other French vanilla products out there? Yes, but we were unsweetened, which meant that you could use your own preferred sweetener and sweetness level, including none at all. And so with Nut Pods, we were differentiated because it's it's very difficult formulaically to have an unsweetened product that still has flavor that you can taste without the crutch of sugar.

• 53:00Guy Raz?

  Hmm. I read a story about how when you decided to really lean into direct to consumer, initially through Amazon, really through Amazon, you actually got pushback or some warnings from industry veterans who said, you know, you really got to be in retail. That's where the money is. You can't be, you're not going to make money in Amazon. Did that give you pause? Because I think that was your whole business model, right?

• 53:22Speaker 01

  It was my whole business model and it was going to be the quickest way that I could reach people to sell en masse. And I remember attending a trade show and I got introduced to the Silk Marketing Manager. And I'm like, oh, hot dog. I finally get a chance to talk to someone that's right in my lane.

• 53:41Guy Raz?

  And Silk, of course, is a leading plant milk brand.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Yes. And I asked him about, what do you think about going to e-comm as an initial channel strategy? And he said, e-comm is going to be about 20% of your revenues. And really where the money is at is at retail. So you really should push for retail. And I was just ruminating on what he was saying and just thinking, am I, am I building this business wrong? And I'm doing it in the backwards way. And I realized he's talking about it from the perspective of Silk. Silk is huge. And yes, for Silk, e-comm is probably a very small ancillary channel for them. But it's enough for me at Nut Pods and it has benefits.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  I don't have to wait to get into retail for whenever their reset periods are. I don't have to pay slotting. I'm already paying Amazon for their commission. And now I look back and not only does it make sense, but it was absolutely the right choice for us. It also allowed us to just have a couple of years of learning our brand before we made that significant investment in retail. I think the biggest thing is that you can't scale that retail without significantly increasing your team. But whether or not you sell $1,000 a day on Amazon or $100,000 a day, you can still do it with one person online.

• 55:10Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, Madeleine eventually makes the jump to retail, but then worries that the stores are putting our product in the wrong aisle. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 55:40Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2018 and even though Nut Pods has been pretty successful on Amazon, Madeleine is still having trouble getting the company to the next level.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  So I was still raising money, still raising money and having limited success. And I remember there was an investor that I really wanted to invest in Nut Pods. And he said something that was crushing to me. You know, Madeleine, it seems like you've really been able to prove yourself online and that's great. But I need to see that you're not just going to be an internet darling. And you might find it'll be very difficult when you go into retail. You know, I'd love to see you when you get into more distribution. And I was just incredulous because this particular investor that I really wanted to invest in our company, just something he said about still doubting us,

• 56:36Speaker 01

  even when we had built this multimillion dollar business online, past $5 million, and still had doubts about whether or not we'd be able to make it in retail.

• 56:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  So in order for me to raise that next round of capital for us to fuel our growth, I'm going to have to prove to these investors that we aren't just an internet brand, but we're going to be able to be successful in retail. And that was the first year that we were not profitable because I had to invest in a sales team and brokers and pay slotting fees. And it did take me a couple of tries. You know, the first try I took getting into a store outside of PCC, they didn't like the fact that we were selling online because online, Amazon then was considered their competitor. And so I ended up reframing it to make it be less about risk for the retail. We were saying, we're bringing with our brand

• 57:31Speaker 01

  an installed base of, you know, a multimillion dollar business online. And we know that our consumers would like to buy our product in your stores.

• 57:40Guy Raz?

  Did it help at all that your product was shelf stable? Like, did that make it any easier to get it into stores?

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Well, it was actually our curse at retail. Because when you went into a store like Sprouts, you could either be in shelf-stable milks or you could be in the coffee tea aisle or you could be in the chilled creamer set. And we knew psychographically where would you look as a consumer for a non-dairy or plant-based creamer? It's going to be in the chilled set with the milks and the other creamers.

• 58:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  But we couldn't control where we were at because we didn't need to require refrigeration. So after three years of trying to talk to retailers into putting us psychographically where we should be, which is in the chilled dairy set, we ended up saying, fine, we will make a refrigerated product. And that was the unlock with Kroger. They wouldn't put us into their set that didn't need refrigeration. And so when I committed to the buyer that we will come with a gable top and he asked me, okay, are you ready to swing for the fences? Because you're going to have to supply us and can you really supply Kroger? And I said, absolutely. Then we got to work.

• 58:57Guy Raz?

  I think that was probably around the time where you were also raising another round. And you did in 2019, you announced that you'd raised over $30 million in a Series B. So by that point, I think you'd raised close to $40 million. I mean, given how much traction you had had and that you were in Kroger and Publix and Wegmans by that point. What was the the raise gonna do for you? I mean, what was the idea at that point? Was the idea to really supercharge this thing? So then there could be some kind of exit? Because of course, that's what ultimately it has to be about if you have investors.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  So I would say, first of all, you know, it sounds like a lot of money. But when you compare even our, you know, call it 42, like total raised, that is a fraction of what our competitors had raised. Whether or not it's Super Kramer or Ripple or CalaVia, it takes a lot of money to go into the grocery store. This is not an industry where it's easy to bootstrap your way because grocery is just so expensive. And so the purpose of that was to really have growth equity. And so it allowed us to build out our team. And our team is still very small guy. We are like 36 employees.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  And we're the number one plant-based creamer in both the natural channel and e-comm channel, number two for Mulo. So we are competing against those huge multinational companies that we talked about before, the Nestleys, the Denon's, now the Starbucks and the Chobani's with like 36 employees. And so, you know, we've always felt like a David and Goliath situation.

• 1:00:38Guy Raz?

  So and you continue to grow and through the pandemic. I mean, the pandemic didn't seem like it did. I mean, not only didn't affect you, you grew remarkably during that time because I guess more and more people were discovering the brand online.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  So we've launched nationwide in 2018. That next year, 2019, was this magical year where we were Amazon Small Business of the Year. We were Entrepreneur of the Year. We were Inc. 5000 number 13 nationwide, number two for food and beverage. And then, yes, then the pandemic hit. But because we had built this robust online channel, when the pandemic hit and consumers didn't shop in the stores and turned online, we already had our supply chain and logistics well established. And yes, we did grow through the pandemic very quickly because we had put that firm foundation down on, you know, e-comm.

• 1:01:36Guy Raz?

  In January of 2024, it was announced that the brand was acquired by

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  M. Pearl Rock.

• 1:01:42Guy Raz?

  M. Pearl, and I think they're a private equity group, right?

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  It's a joint venture between Mid Ocean Capital and Pearl Rock.

• 1:01:48Guy Raz?

  Right, and so they acquired an undisclosed amount, but obviously, I'm sure it was a great exit for everybody. Tell me about that decision and what does it mean for you? Are you still involved with the company or will you be kind of moving out over the next year or so?

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Sure. First of all, my job is to make sure that I'm doing the best decisions for the brand, including its leadership. So have I ever built a 100 or a 200 million dollar brand before? No, I mean, well disclosed, this is my first time as a CEO. And am I the right person to lead this brand at this stage? And I realize that my professional goals have shifted a little bit. You know, I want to contribute to helping make it easier for other female founders to access capital, to be able to have board diversity, not just in terms of I'm a female and I'm a person of color,

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  but also I don't come with a traditional financial outlook that a lot of board members tend to be on corporate boards. And so I actually just announced that I have worked with the board for the past few months and we have handpicked and identified a wonderful CEO successor to me. And I am going to take some time off and I'm going to find out what I want to lend my time and efforts to in this next chapter.

• 1:03:18Guy Raz?

  Madeline, when you think about where you are today and the journey you took, I mean, how much of it do you attribute to the work you put in? And how much do you think has to do with just getting lucky?

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  It really is a mixture. It's a mixture of product fit at the right time in the marketplace. When we launched, plant-based was becoming a thing. Ecom was becoming a thing. And, you know, I also give a lot of credit to the team. When I was maxed out on credit cards, I had an amazing founding team. You know, Michelle, who was one of my first marketing hires, she put our trade shows on her credit card, including the travel and hotel. And I really believe in, you know, the culture eats strategy for lunch, as Peter Drucker says. So in addition to that, yes, you have to have a good amount of luck. You can call it luck, or you can call it God.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  And I think that it's really important to have success have sometimes like people like me so that other female founders, other people of color be able to say, okay, Madeline did it. So maybe, just maybe, I can do it too.

• 1:04:32Guy Raz?

  That's Madeline Hayden, founder of Nut Pods.

• 1:04:37Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. This episode was produced by Alex Cheng with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research assistance from Catherine Cyfer. Our engineers were Gilly Moon and Patrick Murray. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Carrie Thompson, John Isabella, Chris Messini, Carla Estevez, and Elaine Coats. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.