Samuel Adams: Jim Koch

In 1984, Jim Koch felt suffocated by his cushy but boring corporate job. So he left, dusted off an old family beer recipe, started Sam Adams, and helped kickstart the craft beer movement in America. 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.

• 0:01Guy Raz?

  Hey, just a quick heads up to let you know that there's a little bit of strong language in about the first minute and a half of the show. So if you've got any kids around, just cover their ears for about a minute and a half, and then you're good to go.

• 0:14Guy Raz?

  So you call up your dad and you're like, "Dad, guess what? I'm joining the family business. I'm gonna make beer."

• 0:20Speaker 01

  I was worse. I went home.

• 0:22Guy Raz?

  And was he excited?

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Oh, not really. When I told him, I was kind of hoping that he'd put his arm around me and-- because this 150-year-old family tradition was gonna be carried on.

• 0:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  No. He looked at me and he said, "Jim, you've done some really stupid things in your life. This is the stupidest."

• 0:50Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 1:03Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how Jim Cook started brewing an old family beer recipe, called it Samuel Adams, bottled it up, and then helped kickstart the craft beer movement in America.

• 1:19Guy Raz?

  So at some point last year, the number of breweries in America passed the 4,000 mark. And most of those breweries make craft beers, things like IPAs, porters, stouts, lagers, you name it. And this is beer that wins awards all over the world. And a lot of it even gets exported to places like Germany and Holland and Belgium, where beer brewing is practically a religion. But if somehow you went back in time to, like, 1980 and someone handed you a cold bottle of American beer, you might not recognize it. Because-- and Monty Python fans might remember this-- American beer used to be a joke.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  This is frankly, over here, we find your American beer is a little like making love in a canoe. It's fucking close to water.

• 2:10Guy Raz?

  So that was what it was like when Jim Cook was a young man. But he knew a lot about beer because he happened to come from a family of beer makers.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  My dad was a brewmaster. And it's like being the chef in a kitchen. He was responsible for the recipe and the quality of the beer. He wasn't the owner. So he got out of brewmaster school in 1948. And there were 1,000 breweries all over the US. 36 years later, when I started Sam Adams, that 1,000 had dwindled down to 50. And my dad had to move from brewery to brewery as the breweries closed.

• 2:50Guy Raz?

  Did you have any intention, like as a kid or as a teen, of doing this? Doing the same thing your dad did?

• 2:57Speaker 01

  No. My dad told me that it was a miserable way to make a living. And he eventually left the brewing industry entirely. The last thing that he wanted for me to do was to go back into brewing.

• 3:10Guy Raz?

  And this is a little bit crazy because they were like, it wasn't just your dad was a brewer, like his dad was a brewer too?

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Yes. Every oldest son for six generations has been a brewer. I believe I'm the only sixth-generation brewer in the United States.

• 3:27Guy Raz?

  So what did you want to be?

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Honestly, I really didn't know. You know, I had this wonderful educational opportunity that nobody in my family had ever had. After I graduated from college, I started a JDMBA program. And I could just feel this pressure behind me pushing me towards some career decision. So I dropped out.

• 3:53Guy Raz?

  So what'd you do then?

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Well, at the time, I was involved in a lot of outdoor activities. Rock climbing, kayaking, backpacking, things like that. And my climbing partner, he got me involved in Outward Bound. I was able to do that during the summers. And then I had--

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Learned that you don't need that much to live on if you're really enjoying what you're doing.

• 4:24Guy Raz?

  And so how many years did you do that for?

• 4:27Speaker 01

  I did it on and off for three and a half years. At the end of that three and a half years, I thought, OK, I think I'm ready to go back. And got my MBA and my JD. And I started working as a management consultant for a company called Boston Consulting Group. And, you know, we flew first class, you know, you consulted with CEOs, everybody treated you really well. It was a great job for a while.

• 4:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah, sounds pretty good. So why did you leave it?

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Well, I had this epiphany, I guess. After six years at BCG, I asked myself, do I want to do this the rest of my life? And the answer came back, no. And the next sort of corollary to that was, well, if I don't want to do it for the rest of my life, I probably don't want to do it tomorrow.

• 5:23Guy Raz?

  So how did that, like, that decision lead to you thinking about beer?

• 5:30Speaker 01

  That's a good question. And, you know, I knew I didn't want to work in the corporate world. So I thought, I'm going to start my own business. I don't know what it's going to be. But my dad had given me, actually, a copy of Ink Magazine. And there was an article in there about Anchor Steam, this small brewery in California.

• 5:53Guy Raz?

  San Francisco.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  It was owned by a great guy named Fritz Maytag. And Fritz had a viable, small brewery. It was an outlier. And when I was a consultant, what always fascinated me were the outliers. Because that's where the real learning was. Like, there was obviously the potential to find a market for a really high-quality beer. And I started to think about it. And I developed a different business model for what is now called craft brewing.

• 6:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So this is in the mid-'80s, right?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, 1984.

• 6:31Guy Raz?

  So you call up your dad and you're like, Dad, guess what? I'm joining the family business. I'm going to make beer.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  It was worse. I went home.

• 6:39Guy Raz?

  And was he excited?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Oh, not really. When I told him... I was kind of hoping that he'd put his arm around me and because this 150-year-old family tradition was going to be carried on to yet another generation. No. He looked at me, he said, "Jim, you've done some really stupid things in your life. This is the stupidest."

• 7:08Guy Raz?

  Okay, Jim, I just want to pause for a second and ask you, because I can kind of understand your dad's point, right? I mean, you had this great job, and then you just left it.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Yes, and I left it because staying there was very risky. Leaving it was not risky. And it's the difference in life between things that are scary and things that are dangerous. And there are plenty of things that are scary but aren't dangerous. And there are things that are dangerous but not scary.

• 7:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  And those are the things that get you. I can give you a climbing analogy from outward bound. Like, one of the things we taught people to do was rappel off a cliff. And they're really, it's a very scary thing to do, but you're also held by a belay rope, and that rope will hold a car. So, walking off the cliff backwards is scary but not dangerous.

• 8:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Okay. Walking across, you know, a 35-degree angle snow field on a beautiful, you know, late May afternoon with this bright blue sky, it's not scary at all, but it's very dangerous because the snow is melting. Eventually, it's going to find a layer of ice. The water will lubricate that, and you have an avalanche. That is dangerous but not scary. And in my situation, staying at BCG was dangerous but not scary. And the danger there, the risk of it, was continuing to do something that didn't make me happy.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  And getting to, you know, 65 and looking back and go, "Oh, my God, I wasted my life." That is risk. That is danger.

• 9:07Guy Raz?

  So was that what you said to your dad? I mean, did you convince him that this was worth trying?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  He eventually did come around. You know, I sat down with him. And the thing that convinced him, I think, because all the American brewers were basically making the same kind of beer.

• 9:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  You know, very light, very easy to drink. And I said, Dad, I'm not going to compete with Bud and Miller and Coors. Everybody in the US who wants good beer is drinking the imports.

• 9:40Guy Raz?

  So at that time, it was like Heineken?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Heineken, Beck's, St. Pauli Girl. Those were considered the great beers of the world. And what I did know from my brewing background is they were not the great beers of the world. That there was the possibility of making beer with a lot of flavor, but balanced. And there's a particular flavor structure of good beer. When you taste it, you will get that structure. And I could give it to people fresh because beer is perishable. Beer has about a four to five month shelf life.

• 10:16Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  And the imported beers were almost always stale. They were typically in green and clear bottles. And visible light isomerizes a compound in hops. That's why you get skunky beer.

• 10:30Guy Raz?

  So how did you come up with the recipe that, you know, you thought, OK, this is going to re-educate American beer drinkers. They're going to want to drink this beer instead of what they're used to.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  That was easy. After about an hour and a half, when my dad was beginning to get it, he was like, oh, you know, you're right. Nobody's making great beer. Yeah, maybe somebody should do that.

• 10:51Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Then he took me up into the attic. There was a trunk, and there were family recipes. And he took out one of the recipes and said, this is the recipe. It was from my great-great-grandfather's brewery. My dad had made a version of this beer at Wooden Shoe Brewery in Minster, Ohio, where he was brewmaster. Because the brewery was kind of going down the tubes. And he thought, maybe we can turn the brewery around by making big American lager. And the owner tasted it and told my dad, he said, Charlie, nobody is going to drink this. People want water with foam on it. So make water with foam on it.

• 11:37Guy Raz?

  So you just took this recipe and started to experiment with it?

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I took the recipe. I started making it in my kitchen.

• 11:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  It's an extremely difficult beer to make. You can't really do this as a home brewer.

• 11:50Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  It requires much more precise control. But I brewed it and I could tell this is going to be a good beer. If I can make this right, this would be a really good beer.

• 12:02Guy Raz?

  OK, so you make a beer. But how did you, like, how did you even know how to begin to start a beer company?

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Well, the first thing I realized, I had to find the best brewmaster in America to help me. He was a man named Dr. Joseph Awadis. And he was the first American brewmaster to combine high-level scientific understanding, because he was a PhD in microbiology, with decades of practical experience.

• 12:34Guy Raz?

  How did you even convince him to get involved in your, like, fly-by-night startup?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  He turned me down at first. He thought, this is really crazy and you don't have enough money to pay me.

• 12:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Which was true. And I said, well, Dr. Awadis, I'm not some idiot kid just making beer in their kitchen. My dad was a brewmaster, my grandfather. And he remembered my dad a little bit. And I said, well, I'll tell you what. I'll give you 2% of the company. And that piqued his interest. He signed on and he helped me adapt a 19th century recipe to a 20th century brewery.

• 13:15Guy Raz?

  So did you have to go out and raise money to build a brewery?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Well, I realized there are breweries out there. And my dad was the one who gave me this insight. What we did is we rented space. Dr. Awadis and I showed up, brewed the beer, and then they packaged it. And I didn't have to have my own brewery for several years.

• 13:40Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  When we started, we didn't have things that you think you need for a business. We didn't have an office. We didn't have a telephone. You know, I just asked myself, am I spending money on things that are going to make the beer better? Or am I spending money on things just because that's what you're supposed to spend it on?

• 14:00Guy Raz?

  By the way, how did you come up with a name, Sam Adams, for the beer?

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Well, it came from my history teacher when I was a junior in high school. When she taught the revolution, she highlighted the role of Samuel Adams. Depending on what books you read, he was a brewer. I wanted a name that was assertively American, that reflected America's history and brewing tradition, et cetera, et cetera. So on the label, there it is, brewer, patriot. And I wanted to do what Sam Adams had done, only in my little way. I wanted to create a beer revolution and declare beer independence for the United States.

• 14:49Guy Raz?

  In just a minute, we'll be back with Jim Cook, and he'll explain how he actually convinced people to like his beer. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 15:10Guy Raz?

  It's How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So after experimenting for a few months with a family recipe, Jim Cook finally got it down to exactly the way he wanted it. And at this point, he had to figure out how to sell it.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  So my dad had told me, you know, you're going to start a business, Jim. It's lonely. It's going to have its ups and downs. See if you can find a partner. So I looked around. BCG was full of like the best and the brightest from the top business schools. But somehow, I couldn't see them being my partner because they had all the same skills I had. But then I realized, wait a minute, there is a person here who is energetic, talented, resourceful, great people person, has all the skills that I don't really have. She was my secretary. So it was just me and Rhonda.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  She was 23 years old, no college degree, bartended at night. We were the perfect complement.

• 16:16Guy Raz?

  So how did you, you guys convince bars and shops to, to take your beer?

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Well, I was hoping that I would get a distributor. Well, there were five beer distributors in Boston. I went to each one of them. They all turned me down.

• 16:30Guy Raz?

  Because?

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Because to them, it looked like a stupid idea.

• 16:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  This was a beer that had a lot of color, had a lot of flavor, had a lot of taste. This was in the heyday of light beer. And, you know, they'd ask me, okay, so what's your marketing plan? Why don't we have a marketing plan?

• 16:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  What's your advertising budget? I don't have any money for advertising. Well, tell me about the company. It's me and my 23-year-old ex-secretary. So it wasn't very confidence inspiring as a business. And the only way that I could get my beer out there was I would put cold beer in my briefcase every morning. I could fit seven beers and I had these two blue cool packs.

• 17:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  And a sleeve of cups. And I went from bar to bar, cold calling.

• 17:19Guy Raz?

  Just going and talking to managers and?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, trying to get to them. And I'd never sold anything in my life.

• 17:27Guy Raz?

  Was that hard for you?

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Um, yes, I was, I remember to this day doing my first sales call and hit the streets in Boston. I remember I was like, okay, I'm just going to call on the first bar that I come to.

• 17:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  And I came to a bar and I didn't know what I was doing and I had my consultant suit on. So I started talking to the guy behind the bar and he was nodding and I thought, that's a good sign, but he wasn't saying anything. And luckily, in the back was the manager, because the guy I was talking to was what's called the bar back. The bar back is the guy who like stocks the glasses and this guy didn't speak English. So he was just nodding away, manager in the back thinking, oh my gosh, there's a guy in a suit here, he's talking to my bar back. He's either IRS or he's Immigration and Naturalization Service and.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Neither one of those is good. So he rushed up and I kind of had my 30 second drill. Hi, I'm Jim Cook. I'm starting a small brewery here in Boston to make a new beer. I'm going to call it, it's called Sam Adams. And my real end point was to get them to try the beer. So, you know, I build up to this and said, would you like to try it?

• 18:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  He said, sure, leave me a bottle. I said, oh, it's cold. And I have some cups here. Let me pour you one.

• 18:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Before he could say no. And of course, in the bar business, if you pour a beer, you can't just throw it out.

• 18:57Guy Raz?

  You've got to drink it.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we tried it together. And he said, kid, you know, I didn't think the beer was going to be this good. I'll take it.

• 19:07Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  And I was so excited. And of course, I went back and actually Rhonda was taking some time off before we started. I called her, I was so excited. Rhonda, you know, we got our first customer. And Rhonda was very practical. She said, how many cases did he order? Oh, I forgot to ask him. So I had to go back the next day and apologize. And I was scared again that he would have like changed his mind or anything. But he gave me a 10 case order.

• 19:41Guy Raz?

  So this is like 1985 and you launch and you start to get some attention.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  And six weeks after Sam Adams came out.

• 19:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  It got picked as the best beer in America.

• 19:55Guy Raz?

  How did that happen?

• 19:58Speaker 01

  It happened out in Denver, Colorado. It was at the Great American Beer Festival, which had pretty much beers from every brewer. And they went around over two nights, tasted the beers. Everybody got to vote for the best beer. And they did this countdown, you know, 10, nine, eight. And I thought we'd finish in the top 10, but they, you know, they kept getting lower and lower.

• 20:21Guy Raz?

  And you're like, oh, man.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Oh, and then they announced, you know, and there's number two, the second best beer in America is this. And I was like, well, you know, maybe next year.

• 20:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  And then, and the best beer in America is Samuel Adams Boston Lager. And the whole company was two people.

• 20:40Guy Raz?

  Hugh and Rhonda.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:41Guy Raz?

  So did that mean you were profitable from, from the, from the start?

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yes, we were profitable from the first full month because, going back to what I was talking about earlier, you know, it was the ultimate lean startup. Like I said, we had no office, we didn't even have a telephone. We did all our business from payphones. You know, I knew where all the good payphones in Boston were, the ones that were warm in the winter, the ones where you actually had a little shelf where you could put stuff on. So I was very clear when I started, it was just very clear to me, there were only two things that we needed to do really well. We needed to make great beer consistently,

• 21:29Speaker 01

  and we needed to work our butts off to sell it.

• 21:31Guy Raz?

  And at the beginning, this was like a regional thing, like just in Boston and New England?

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:37Guy Raz?

  So how did you get it to spread across the country?

• 21:39Speaker 01

  It happened very slowly. You know, it's basically, I started in Boston, I sort of grew a little bit out of Boston and went to Worcester. I was doing a lot of the selling myself, so one bar at a time, and a lot of work, a lot of shoe leather, a lot of motel sixes. So I think the first city out of New England was Washington, so I would go down to Washington.

• 22:08Guy Raz?

  Here, here, DC.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Mondays and Tuesdays, yep. Down here, I mean, I still know a lot of the bar owners here. I was at a bar before I came over here, The Irish Times.

• 22:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah, famous bar near Union Station, yeah.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, one of my first accounts. And I was talking to Brendan, the current owner, but his dad put Sam Adams in there almost 30 years ago. So, you know, it was very hard in the beginning getting places to carry it. It probably got, you know, 95% rejection. So I'd make 20 calls to get one account. And then we got picked as the best beer in America.

• 22:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  We got a bunch of publicity around that. People Magazine did a story, which was good and bad, because all that publicity boosted the sales and we ran out of beer.

• 22:52Guy Raz?

  You could not make it fast enough?

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Well, it takes six weeks. To make Sam Adams and we weren't expecting it. So we were out of beer for three weeks. We lost a bunch of accounts, pissed people off. But it was clear there was that this idea was a bigger idea than I had realized. That this wasn't gonna, you know, take five years to get to a million dollars and then level off.

• 23:12Guy Raz?

  That was your plan. You thought, five years, we'll get to a million bucks.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  That'll be great. I'll be happy.

• 23:16Guy Raz?

  Have a nice life.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And I remember.

• 23:19Guy Raz?

  How long did it take to hit a million, by the way?

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Uh, five months. I remember sitting down in a bar with Rhonda and Rhonda, we had a business plan. But something's telling me this is bigger than we thought it was gonna be. That we are climbing a mountain here. And nobody climbs a mountain to get to the middle. We're gonna climb this mountain to get to the top. And it may take 30 years, it may take 50 years. And our mountain is, I want Sam Adams to be the largest and most respected of the high-end beers in the United States. That's our mountain.

• 24:09Guy Raz?

  So I remember, like, part of your strategy, it seems, was like attacking those imported beers. Like, I remember hearing radio ads that you would do in the 90s where you would say, you know, declare your independence from foreign beer.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  The radio spots came about because there was a radio station in Boston that won a beer for a party. And so we traded a beer for airtime. Now, they gave us airtime at 2:00 in the morning, thinking, who would want that?

• 24:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  To me, I thought that was great because that's when the servers and the bartenders get off their ship.

• 24:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah, right.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  That's when they're listening to the radio. So they gave me all this airtime. And I, at first, was gonna like get radio talent to record it. And then I found out, well, you can hire that, but... There's all these union rules and you have to pay residuals, you got to track it. And I was like, I can't do that. I'll do the spots myself. So my spot was when America asked for Europe's tired and poor.

• 25:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  We didn't mean their beer.

• 25:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  But the beer they send us is hardly their best. They send us Heineken that's outlawed in Germany because of Germany's strict beer purity law. And the Bex they send us isn't the same Bex they have in Germany. They add forbidden adjuncts to it. That was a bet the company.

• 25:35Guy Raz?

  Were you threatened with litigation?

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. But I knew I was right. Having a brewing background, I knew it.

• 25:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  You could also tell it on analysis. So my feeling has always been if you're right about something important, push it.

• 25:54Guy Raz?

  So after, I guess, like about a decade after you launched, you decided to go public. Tell me what happened. Why'd you decide to do that?

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Well, I thought it was time to do something to reward my investors. Because at that time, I think a dollar invested was probably worth $400. So I went to a couple of investment banks. They describe the IPO process. But when they describe it to you, you realize that there's nothing public at all about it.

• 26:23Guy Raz?

  It's all for their buddies.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  It is all for their buddies at the big institutions to buy the shares and make a bunch of money. And that bothered me. And I thought, I've got to find a way around that. So I started thinking about it and I came up with this idea. So we put coupons on the six packs that allowed you to buy 33 shares of Boston Beer Company at $15 a share. So it was $495. You just had to send in a check. And the investment banks freaked out about it. They told me you can't do it. It'll never work. They gave me all these reasons not to. But I stood my ground. I was insistent, and I knew that the investment banks are going to make money on this.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  So they will let me do it if I refuse to compromise. So I refused to compromise. Eventually, they all came around, and we got 130-some-thousand people who sent in their checks. We got $65 million. And that was the first time something like that had been done. And other people have continued to do it, followed up on it.

• 27:33Guy Raz?

  So earlier, you said that you want Sam Adams to be the largest and most respected of the quote-unquote "high-end beers" in the US. Do you think you've achieved that?

• 27:43Speaker 01

  This may sound surprising, but I still don't feel like we're there.

• 27:48Guy Raz?

  Really?

• 27:49Speaker 01

  But I got to give you some perspective. What do you think our market share in the United States is?

• 27:54Guy Raz?

  I don't know, 10%, 15%?

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what everybody thinks. A little over 1%.

• 28:00Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  So the big brewers spill more beer than I make all year long.

• 28:05Guy Raz?

  Right, yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  90% of the US beer market is in the hands of two big, global brewing conglomerates.

• 28:13Guy Raz?

  But I mean, you're not like a small company. I mean, how many employees do you guys have now?

• 28:17Speaker 01

  We've got a little over 1,400 people. And that's, to me, also really gratifying because the average W-2 compensation is $70,000. So they're, you know, they're good jobs at our breweries. Those are manufacturing jobs.

• 28:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Good-paying manufacturing jobs in communities all across the United States.

• 28:42Guy Raz?

  So Jim, when you think about how you built the company and Sam Adams and like, how much of it do you think was like your skills and your intelligence and talent? And how much of it was just luck?

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Guy, I'll take the luck. So in all humility, a lot of it was luck. I look back and things could have gone wrong. You know, the brew kettle could have exploded. Or, you know, that first guy could have told me, this is a really stupid idea. Go back to your job. You know, a lot of things didn't go wrong that could have.

• 29:19Guy Raz?

  Did you or could you have ever imagined that craft beer in America would become what it has become?

• 29:28Speaker 01

  I never imagined the success that we've been able to have. And I never imagined that there would be 4,500 other craft brewers, you know, many of them enjoying their own success. Today, American beer has gone from the laughingstock that it was when I started to the best place in the world to be a beer drinker. And when the rest of the world, they're looking at the US going, I wish we could do in our country what Americans have done with beer. I wish we had the beer culture that America has. You know, it makes me feel good every time I have a beer.

• 30:15Guy Raz?

  That's Jim Cook. He has a new memoir out called Quench Your Own Thirst: Business Lessons Learned Over a Beer or Two.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Cheers.

• 30:23Guy Raz?

  Jim, by the way, says he personally tastes every batch of Sam Adams that they brew. He estimates that's 24,000 beers over the past 30 years that he was required to drink as part of his job, which sounds like not such a bad job.

• 30:41Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or listen to previous episodes, you can go to howibuiltthis.npr.org. You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes. And please do us a favor and write a review. Let us know what you think. You can also write to us at [email protected]. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at howibuiltthis. Our show was produced this week by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 31:22Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for staying with us because this is the part of the show where you get to tell us about the stuff you're building.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  Hi, my name's Chandra Arthur. I'm the CEO and founder of Friendish.

• 31:32Guy Raz?

  Friendish is an app that Chandra designed for people who want to make new friends, but don't necessarily want to hook up. They don't want Tinder. They just kind of want to hang out.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  Sometimes you meet somebody and it's a little bit awkward because you're kind of like, so, do you like steak? You know, you're asking these kinds of weird questions. So I just thought that there had to be a better way to really connect with people and find friends based on shared interests.

• 31:57Guy Raz?

  So with this app, you don't swipe left or right on someone's picture. You swipe on things that you're interested in.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  Everything from sushi to Donald Trump to tennis shoes, whatever it is. The moment there are users that have things in common with you, you'll get a notification that you have friends waiting.

• 32:15Guy Raz?

  Friendish is already up on the App Store. It's still in beta mode, so it's got a few bugs, but they're working on them. Chandra and her partner are, of course, trying to get funding for the app. And by the way, they're doing all of this in Orlando, Florida.

• 32:27Speaker 03

  So I know that's not a place most people think, oh, tech hub. But there is actually a tech scene here, and it's growing. And it's really important for us to kind of put ourselves on the map in the Southeast that there is tech interest and great ideas and innovation.

• 32:40Guy Raz?

  If you want to tell us what you're building, go to build.npr.org. That's build with a D, dot npr, dot org. And thanks. Before we go, just a quick tip to let you know about another NPR podcast you should check out. It's called Bullseye with Jesse Thorne. It's your guide to what's good in pop culture. Every week, Jesse interviews people like Cameron Esposito, Rashida Jones, Felicity Huffman, and many others about their work and their lives. You can find your favorite new TV shows, books, movies, and music, and gain new insights into the things you already love. Find Bullseye now on the NPR ONE app and at npr.org/podcasts.