Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri

As a mother of three, Kat Nouri was dismayed at the amount of single-use plastic she was using to pack her kids' school lunches. She had already launched a successful brand called Modern Twist, which sold placemats and baby bibs made of silicone. So Kat wondered: why not use silicone to make durable food storage bags, which—instead of being used once, could be used thousands of times? In 2016 she launched Stasher, and was soon persuading retailers that an $11 reusable bag was better for the planet—and ultimately, more cost-effective for the big-box shopper. Kat successfully sold the brand to S. C. Johnson just a few years after launch, but her short tenure at Stasher's helm was marked by growing pains and gnawing moments of anxiety, including an unexpected scuffle with the sharks on Shark Tank. 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?

  Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2 a.m. kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people? So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is. If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan,

• 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?

  Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions. Gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems. But here's the thing. Path A, you keep going like that. End of the year, you're sorting through statements, trying to figure out what went where. You've left hundreds, maybe thousands on the table in rewards you never earned, money that could have gone back into the business. Path B, you pause and get The US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card.

• 2:14Guy Raz?

  Now you're earning 3% cash back 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.

• 2:58Guy Raz?

  For the first time ever, new Delta SkyMiles Reserve American Express Card members can earn two Delta Comfort round trip flights for travel within the 48 contiguous US states, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands. Plus, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles towards your next getaway. And who doesn't appreciate an elevated airport experience? Delta SkyMiles Reserve Card members get access to the Delta Sky Club, your pre-flight oasis to recharge with 15 visits and four one-time guest passes each medallion year when flying Delta together. That's up to $950 in annual value.

• 3:40Guy Raz?

  Value estimate based on $50 per visit rate to purchase additional visits or bring a guest to the Delta Sky Club. Make every trip feel more rewarding with the card 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.

• 4:23Guy Raz?

  And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talked to on this show, because the best ones obsess over things their customers will never see. Tiny details, invisible improvements, relentless iteration. And not because anyone's watching, but because it makes the product better. That's what the mobile brand does. It engineers fuel the same way great founders engineer their products. Mobile Supreme Plus Premium Gas helps keep engines three times cleaner, which can mean better performance and improved gas mileage. It's for people who care about what's under the hood, even if they never see it. Three times cleaner compared to mobile, regular gas in port-fuel-injected engines. Actual results may vary.

• 5:07Guy Raz?

  Visit mobili fuels.com for details. Hey, it's Guy Raz. And first of all, I wanted to thank you for being one of the very first ever subscribers to How I Built This+. It really means a lot to us to have your support. And we are really curious what you think about it. Your feedback could have an impact on where we go next with this new offering from NPR, like which other NPR podcasts we start offering a sponsor-free edition of, or what are the benefits we start providing? And whatever else you want to tell us about what you like and what we could do better. To fill out the short survey, go to npr.org/subscribersurvey. Again, that's npr.org/subscribersurvey. And thanks.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  I had Vertigo twice in my whole career.

• 5:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  One time was when I was on Shark Tank. Some of the judges are not that nice.

• 5:56Guy Raz?

  No.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  And if you don't know your business inside out, they're going to eat you alive.

• 6:01Guy Raz?

  But what you got out of that was huge visibility. Did you see an immediate impact on sales?

• 6:09Speaker 01

  No.

• 6:10Guy Raz?

  No.

• 6:15Guy Raz?

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

• 6:28Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz. And on the show today, how Kat Nouri built a better baggie out of silicone and started Stasher, a storage brand that wants to get single-use plastics out of the kitchen.

• 6:46Guy Raz?

  My wallet is a Ziploc bag. I keep some cash, a few essential credit cards, and my driver's license tucked in a Ziploc sandwich bag. Every few weeks, the bag gets tattered and I switch to a new Ziploc. I started using the Ziploc wallet last summer when I spent a few days at the beach. It seemed like the most efficient way to keep my cash and cards dry in my swimsuit. And guess what? It worked. Sure, everyone laughs when they see it. Just the other day, when I pulled it out to pay my barber, he sarcastically asked me if my Ziploc wallet was made by Prada. Now, imagine a world before Ziploc's. We'll call it BZ, 1968.

• 7:31Guy Raz?

  That was the year Dow Chemical introduced the product to grocery stores. All of a sudden, sandwiches and carrot sticks and apple slices could be kept separate inside lunchboxes. The problem is that we started to use a lot of them. We still do. And ultimately, that's not a good thing, because plastic is a huge environmental problem. There's too much of it, and it's finding its way into our oceans and into our bodies. A 2019 scientific study found that the average human will ingest as much as 40 pounds of plastic in their lifetime. Microplastic that floats in the ocean, in seafood, in the air, in sand. It's all around us.

• 8:16Guy Raz?

  Only a tiny sliver of the plastic we use gets recycled, less than 10%, according to the EPA. That little recycling symbol on your single-use water bottle? It's basically nonsense. So, over the past two decades, more and more social entrepreneurs have been trying to figure out how to reduce plastic. One potential solution is in a polymer called silicone. It has properties that act like plastic but is more sustainable and lasts much, much longer. And Kat Nouri, a parent of three who packed a lot of lunches, realized that, like many of us, she was using a lot of disposable baggies.

• 8:59Guy Raz?

  Kat had a small business that made home goods out of silicone, things like placemats and coasters. So she had some experience with the product. But could she figure out how to turn that silicone into a Ziploc-like baggie? Well, if you've heard of her brand, Stasher, you know the answer is yes. She did figure it out, but it would take a lot of work to convince people to buy the bags. Stasher bags are expensive. One sandwich-sized bag might last several years, but for the price of one, you can buy 120 Ziploc's, which is an important part of the story because in 2020, Kat actually sold Stasher to S.C.

• 9:41Guy Raz?

  Johnson, the company that happens to make Ziploc's. It's a sign, perhaps, that over time, S.C. Johnson sees a future without single-use plastic. But how that acquisition happened? Well, if you listen to this show, you know there is a story behind it, and it starts with Kat. She was actually born in Tehran, in Iran, in the mid-1960s, before the Islamic Revolution. In the mid-'70s, her dad decided to move the family to California to search for new opportunities.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  He had heard that California is like heaven. He said, you know, California is so green, and there's so much opportunity for us to have our own business and to start a new life together as a family. And you guys can get educated. Like, you can all have the best education and not, like, wonder what you're going to do after school if there's work opportunity for you. And that was just something that was really important to him because he was three years old when he lost his mother. And he was brought up by his brother. In fact, when we, when my dad lost his father and his brother, my dad just couldn't stand living there anymore and being associated to his business where he sort of saw the shadow of his brother every day,

• 11:00Speaker 01

  but his brother wasn't there anymore. And that was such a blow to my dad that he pretty much, like, picked us up and said, "We're packing up our bags, and we're going to California."

• 11:10Guy Raz?

  And he moves you guys to the Bay Area, to Walnut Creek, California. First of all, why did he choose to go there? Did you have relatives in that area?

• 11:21Speaker 01

  So we had an English teacher in Iran whose brother lived in Walnut Creek. And I remember to this day when he picked us up from the airport and driving over the Bay Bridge and we were two kids, my brother and I, my mom and dad. And I remember distinctly that the guy kept turning around and looking at us. And I kept asking my parents, why is he like looking at us? Now, of course, you know, when I was 16, I learned how to drive. We learned that that's what you do when you're changing lanes. So those were kinds of the, you know, and then other things that I remember is that I remember right when we got here, we just didn't want to be apart from each other.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  And we went to Montgomery Wards and we bought blankets and pillows. And even though we had three rooms in the apartment, we all huddled up around the TV with the blankets and the pillows in one room together, the four of us. And none of us wanted to use the other rooms. We just wanted to be together because it already felt like we had like left our home. And now we were like going to be in separate rooms. So it was just, it was very lonely when we first got here.

• 12:35Guy Raz?

  And how did you all adjust to life in America? Like, for example, what did your parents do for a living?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  My parents did, from the get go, they started investing in property. And that was probably one of the best things they ever did. They started buying some real estate. My dad was really, both of them, they were such a good team when it came to managing their money and working together to start a business and, and just thinking of how they would support us. We never felt like we lacked anything as kids. Even if they felt it, we never felt it.

• 13:15Guy Raz?

  All right. So you're a 10 year old kid in the US, new country.

• 13:23Guy Raz?

  How was your English at the time? Did you have, I mean, you had gone to a Catholic school in Tehran. So, did you already speak English?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  You know, it's really, that's a great question because when I got here, I actually felt like I didn't speak English at all, barely. And I remember that I used to mix up the word want and have. And it was so difficult for me. When I got here, I was in fourth grade. And my parents put me into school. And I remember that I pretty much didn't understand anything that the teacher said. And at one, and I had really poor eyesight. And my parents didn't know that because on top of not speaking the language, I didn't want to be called four eyes. So, I didn't want to tell them that I couldn't see.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  So, it was a pretty miserable move for me. I felt really out of place and the kids laughed at me all the time. I felt very different.

• 14:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  And so, I was kind of looking for an identity. And if anything, I always say I turned into Ali Sheedy when I was in high school from Breakfast Club.

• 14:34Guy Raz?

  Okay, that Ali Sheedy, okay.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Uh huh, where...

• 14:37Guy Raz?

  Wasn't she called the basket case in that movie?

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was pretty much that. And I was like the Goth kid.

• 14:42Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  More like in her, in her looks where, in her appearance, where she was a Goth girl that didn't fit in and didn't care to fit in and really didn't care if you weren't her friend because only the people that got her were allowed to be her friends.

• 14:58Guy Raz?

  Right, I'm trying to, because her character was, she was, she was a misfit, right? She didn't fit in to what, and certainly, and this is the eighties when you're going to high school. I mean, there was probably, I'm assuming you went, did you go to a big public high school initially?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went to Northgate in Walnut Creek. And I was really different than everyone around me and they treated me that way. And so, you know how they say what happens in high school stays with you in high school or something like that?

• 15:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Well, it definitely stayed with me. It's carved me for a long time. And I refused to go to school because of it. And I was basically forging my mom's name and signing absent slips with my best friend and hiding in the closet every day. I used to hear my parents in the house while they were there and assuming that I was at school. They found out that I wasn't going to school and my mom intervened and she said, what's going on with you? And I said, I don't fit in and I don't want to be here. I don't want to live this way. And so she said, she talked to her sister and she came to me and she said,

• 16:06Speaker 01

  I think I found a solution for you where you can see that the world is a much bigger place than this little corner that you think is everything that the world has to offer to you.

• 16:18Guy Raz?

  And I guess her sister, your aunt, she lived in Sydney in Australia and your mom sent you to live with her. Go to school there to finish out high school there, which must have been pretty transformational because you came back to California and eventually you applied to Berkeley and you got in.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I got in, I got in.

• 16:40Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wanted to be a lawyer. And so that was like one of the biggest winning points in my life where I thought that my efforts could really change my direction.

• 16:50Guy Raz?

  Right. And so your idea was I'll graduate and not go to law school. But actually, after you graduated, this is in the late eighties, you ended up getting a job, a sales job for, I guess, a subsidiary of IBM or a company that worked for IBM.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:09Guy Raz?

  And you were selling mainly to businesses presumably, right?

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Yes, I was selling software and hardware, actually, at that point to other businesses. I mean, the training that I got in marketing and sales was amazing. I remember walking into one company into San Francisco with my sales manager and she said, Kat, you've got to walk into this account with me. And we walked in, she says, watch, they kick me out every time. And we walk in, they say, hello, Mrs. Ms. Johnson. And she'd say, hello. And she'd say, as you know, I'm Gail Johnson from IBM. And they'd say, yes, we know. And you know where the door is.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  And she would walk me in, she'd say, I just want you to know, you should never be afraid of that happening to you.

• 17:57Guy Raz?

  So you would, you would walk in and, and say, introduce yourself and, and basically try to explain that this, you know, this, this hardware would be, would, would make their business more efficient and you would hopefully get, you know, have a chat with somebody initially?

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, completely. You know, I was sort of like, the entrepreneur in my background as an immigrant was coming out because my parents had had every business under the sun. So I started like, starting, I started interviewing the people that owned the businesses, like, why did you start this business? Like, because I was dealing with distributors and folks that had their own businesses of all sizes. And I remember I met this one guy, he was a Persian guy, his name was Farzad Naimi. And he was working for this Japanese company and I was there to try to sell him his system. And I got to know him and he really liked my energy.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  And he said to me one day, he said, Kat, did you ever know that you're actually an entrepreneur and you're working for a corporation? And it's funny how in your life, most of the things that happen to you and that you might take a chance on are always right under your nose, but you just don't sort of see them until somebody kind of like in a very simple way tells you that.

• 19:19Guy Raz?

  Had you, had you, I mean, you were still pretty young, you were probably in your early twenties at that point, so.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Twenty-five.

• 19:25Guy Raz?

  You know, twenty-five. So presumably you, you hadn't thought of yourself that way quite yet.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  At all. I was lucky to have a job is what I thought. So the light bulb went on for me that, wow, I was an entrepreneur.

• 19:39Guy Raz?

  And, and I guess, I mean, you were sort of inspired by that, that conversation. Eventually you decided to leave IBM and.

• 19:49Guy Raz?

  I guess it was right around that the same period, this is like the mid 90s, when you also got married, right?

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, when I left IBM, I did get married right around, right around that time, I would say, where I was sort of exploring different avenues.

• 20:04Guy Raz?

  And what's your husband's name, by the way?

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Afshin.

• 20:07Guy Raz?

  Afshin, okay. So when you and your husband, Afshin, got married, you kind of, from what I gather, had this, this period of time where you, you wanted to start your own thing, but you weren't quite sure. And you experimented in a bunch of different businesses. First, I guess you, you learned floral design. Did you get into the floral business at all?

• 20:27Speaker 01

  I did for a quick minute, and I discovered that my inventory dies.

• 20:32Guy Raz?

  What did you do? Did you, did you have a shop?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  I had a corner spot in front of the Orbit Room Cafe, where there's a Whole Foods now in Upper Market, because we lived in San Francisco at that point. And I had a flower stand. And we did weddings and catering and all that, you know. So it was a nice little business, but your inventory dying and then also your cash would disappear because you'd have people that were working the shifts, various people, and it had a big turnover of employees. So your cash would somehow like not be what you thought at the end of the day. So it was, it was a tough thing. And I moved on pretty quickly to other venues.

• 21:14Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  The inventory dying just killed it for me.

• 21:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah, so flowers gonna die.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  It's gonna die.

• 21:20Guy Raz?

  Quickly, yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  But my next thing was something that took some money out of our pocket, which was...

• 21:26Guy Raz?

  What was the next thing?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  The next thing was, I decided that I wanted to do an antique business because we met a couple in Mexico who had an antique business. And they lived in Ohio or something. And they promised that they would send me this beautiful truckload of goods, and I could sell them and start my own store.

• 21:46Guy Raz?

  So the first step was that, that they, they sent you a truckload of antiques that, that you paid for? Or that you got on consignment?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  No, I paid for it. Lesson to self, never pay for something that you don't know that what you're gonna receive at the end of the day.

• 22:00Guy Raz?

  And so they said, I just said, just, you know, give us ten thousand or twenty thousand or whatever, maybe more.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:06Guy Raz?

  And we'll send you a bunch of antiques and, and you can sell them, start a business.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, I think maybe it was five to ten thousand dollars. And I ended up getting stuck with it and they wouldn't take it back.

• 22:19Guy Raz?

  And did you try to sell any of it? Did you pursue this in any way? What did you? What did you do?

• 22:25Speaker 01

  I was stuck. I was stuck with the inventory. Nobody wanted that. It was just garbage.

• 22:31Guy Raz?

  So did you, at that point, abandon that idea of, of a antique business?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  I did.

• 22:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And also, I think during this time, you were, you, you, you had kids, pretty quick succession, right?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, I had three kids, all of them, so they're, they're now twenty four, twenty two and nineteen, so they're what, two to three years apart from one another?

• 22:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you've got kids at home and I guess at a certain point, your husband, he decides to leave his job, he was an engineer, to start his own, so his own business?

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he started his own manufacturing company in San Leandro.

• 23:12Guy Raz?

  And by the way, what was his company? What was his company? What were they doing?

• 23:15Speaker 01

  So they manufactured test interface products for the semiconductor industry. And I don't know how to say that in an easier way, but it's the test and burn in industry, making receptacles and IC sockets.

• 23:31Guy Raz?

  Which I don't know what that is, but.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, see, exactly.

• 23:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  And I sold it.

• 23:37Guy Raz?

  So he must have been crazy busy.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  So we were all crazy busy because I was in there with him.

• 23:42Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  I would literally bring my, my two boys, I'd drop one off and bring one to the back office and breastfeed them and have them go to sleep and then go do their accounting. And then do my sales calls and then go change diapers and then go back and pick up the other one and then come home, make dinner. I mean, it was just crazy. I I I actually felt like if I left his company that it would fall apart because I had such a big part in helping.

• 24:09Guy Raz?

  Hmm, but but I guess things got so stressful that you did leave. You decided like, like, I'm gonna take a year and and be at home with the kids because it was too much for for both of you to kind of try to get this business off the ground and to make it work with little kids, I guess.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Well, surprisingly enough, I let go and they did just fine and I stayed home with the kids. And I kid you not, out of all the things that I had done, staying home with the three kids was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

• 24:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I while you were, from from what I I I read, while you were, you know, during this time, this this year that you took off, you would, at nighttime, when everybody was asleep and it was quiet, you would you would just scour the Internet for ideas, like something that needed to some some industry, something that needed to be disrupted. You clearly were looking for the next thing. Is that is that do you remember doing that?

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so at this time, I was like hanging out with a bunch of other moms that were really creative and they were taking their ideas to the market and figuring out ways to manufacture them. And I found it really interesting that I knew manufacturing and I knew sales and I love beautiful products and I definitely had a sense for an eye for design. And I just kind of connected the dots, like, how can I possibly come up with something that can go to market, that I can manufacture and sell to the public?

• 25:46Guy Raz?

  And and you were just looking around, just like doing Google searches and?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  I was looking around and I was tagging along with my friends that were doing shows at the San Francisco Gift Show and that were manufacturing products and had agents and so forth. So I was learning from them and I was looking at different things to do. And my husband came home one day with this little box that was a

• 26:11Speaker 01

  It looked like a little Japanese in a mini box where it had a hidden compartment. And one of his Japanese customers had given it to him as a gift. And I remember when I would take a nap with my daughter, that she would go and she would take the pajamas after I folded them, put it under her pillow and she'd throw on the floor after I'd just folded it. So I thought, well, what if I came up with something that had a hidden compartment that we could hide her pajamas in? And we would call it like a PJ pocket. And it would look like a Japanese in a mini box that was hidden. And then you flip it up and you put the pajamas in it. And that's how I actually came up with the name Modern Twist, which was the company that I came up with.

• 26:55Guy Raz?

  So around this time, I think it's about 2005. Tell me about how you came up with this idea. What's the, yeah, what's the origin story of that company?

• 27:07Speaker 01

  So as I mentioned to you, I created this little PJ pocket hidden product. But I wanted to come up with, I had a feeling that people could knock me off pretty easily with a sewn product. So I started searching the internet and, you know, I was starting to think about from my days when I was at my husband's company, where there was so much plastic waste. Like, they would make parts and the part would only be like a tenth of the piece. And the rest of it would go on the ground and it would be wasted and then it would be thrown in the garbage. And that really sat with me and I kept thinking, how can, and it had a translucency to it too. And I had a design sense to me.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  And I thought, there are all these plastic things out in the world. How can I come up with something that is more design driven, that performs better than plastic?

• 28:03Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  I wanted to take an existing material and rejuvenate it.

• 28:11Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Kat grows Modern Twist into a company she's proud of, until a trusted advisor threatens to walk away. And how that threat leads to her next company, Stasher. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 28:34Guy Raz?

  Does your team want a website that looks and feels handcrafted but is still fast to ship? Well, Framer is built exactly for that. With Framer, you design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, hosting, and a CMS built in, so the work is production-ready from day one. And you can get it done with help from Framer's AI agents. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. AI agents and humans work together.

• 29:16Guy Raz?

  The agents bring speed and scale, and people bring taste, judgment, and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. AI isn't just opening new business opportunities, it's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on.

• 30:01Guy Raz?

  NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together, and that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a new expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire ...organization and how to position your business to prosper from it.

• 30:46Guy Raz?

  If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built. Stripe is built for whatever comes next because the pace of change has never been faster than it is right now. New business models, new currencies, and new expectations for speed, reliability, and scale. Stripe builds financial infrastructure that helps businesses start, grow, and operate globally. From payments and billing to fraud protection and cross-border payouts,

• 31:30Guy Raz?

  Stripe is built to support the new pace of commerce. They're trusted by the companies building at the frontier, from 86% of the Forbes AI 50 to global leaders like Salesforce and OpenAI. In fact, more than 1.6% of global GDP flows through Stripe, with Stripe's users processing a combined $1.9 trillion last year. So if you're already thinking about what's next for your business, see what's possible at stripe.com.

• 32:16Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2005, and Kat Norrie has been looking to start her own business for a while. So after doing a bit of research, she decides to launch Modern Twist, a brand that sells tableware products made of silicone.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  So I wanted to produce placemats and table runners and coasters that were for the table for entertaining, that were made out of hand silk screen silicone, that were beautiful to the touch, that were super elegant, and you could throw them in the dishwasher, and they would last you forever. The same for baby bibs. You know, I wanted your baby bib to last you through four kids.

• 32:59Guy Raz?

  I remember having a silicone baby, but maybe one of yours when my little kids were little. What was it about silicone? Because it is, I mean, there's controversy about silicone. Some people say it's not plastic. I've read tons of articles in researching this episode. There are lots of environmental organizations that say it is a plastic. The plastics industry calls it a plastic, but there are different views on it. Some people say it's not as bad for the environment because it doesn't create microplastics. Some people say it... Anyway, first of all, from your point of view, why was silicone better, a better product than plastic?

• 33:38Speaker 01

  It was because it was durable and it would last. And I think that's half the issue about anything that we produce is that it ends up deteriorating and going into our landfills and into our oceans.

• 33:52Guy Raz?

  How did you... How much money did it take for you to get Modern Twist off the ground? I mean, because there's lots of moving parts. You had to design a product, then you had to manufacture the products, and then you had to do the marketing and distribution, etc. But let's just talk about the different stages that you had to go through.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:16Guy Raz?

  First of all, money. How did you... How much money did you need to get off the ground?

• 34:20Speaker 01

  So, I was kind of crazy with that. I would say that I started borrowing money against our credit cards, and I started borrowing money against our home. And I probably went into debt for, gosh, I would say I probably took out a good $100,000.

• 34:38Guy Raz?

  And with that money, what were the first products you were going to get manufactured?

• 34:47Speaker 01

  So, I first produced the placemats, the table runners, and the coasters and the wine tags. Wine tags, I remember. That was my first one.

• 34:59Guy Raz?

  And how did you get the... Because, you know, knowing what I know about, you know, certainly from interviewing people on the show... Um, with products like these, you usually start with samples.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:12Guy Raz?

  Um, how did you find somebody to make you samples?

• 35:16Speaker 01

  So I would stay up all night and I'd look for manufacturers that could produce what I needed. And I found a factory in China that was really good at working with me to experiment. To get it right.

• 35:31Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  And I applied to the first, like, the biggest show for gift, for the gift industry that sort of like catered to the independent specialty mom and pop retailers.

• 35:42Guy Raz?

  This is the New York?

• 35:44Speaker 01

  The New York Gift Show, which is called now New York Now.

• 35:47Guy Raz?

  And it was at the Javits Center?

• 35:48Speaker 01

  At the Javits Center.

• 35:49Guy Raz?

  Mm hmm. All right. So I'm at the trade show and I'm a buyer for, I don't know. Bed Bath and Beyond or something. I don't know. I'm just making it up. But I see you. And I say, oh, what do you have here? Um, to give me your pitch, tell me, why should I buy your product? What was your pitch?

• 36:04Speaker 01

  I would basically say, um, this is one of the most innovative products in the marketplace. And it's a hand silk screen product that's been, um, made with love. We hand silk screen it. We present the work of independent artists on the surface. And it's durable, it's heat resistant, and there's nothing else in the market like it. And they would touch it and it was really the touch that sold the product. I mean, it just feels like there's nothing else like it in the marketplace. Super soft and silky.

• 36:39Guy Raz?

  All right. So I'm, I'm at your booth. I'm like, wow, this is cool. I haven't seen this before. And, uh, what, what, uh, yeah, well, tell me what, um, what do you sell in these table mats or these placemats for?

• 36:50Speaker 01

  And they were really expensive and that was a problem.

• 36:53Guy Raz?

  How much? Yeah. I'm still, you're making the pitch to me. I'm the sales guy, Rip, for, uh, for the buyer, for, uh, container, I don't know, something. What, what, how much?

• 37:02Speaker 01

  I think at that point, when we entered the market, maybe they were, uh, I want to say fourteen ninety ninety.

• 37:08Guy Raz?

  For a placemat? Wow.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:11Guy Raz?

  And then I would say, why are they so expensive? I mean, I'm, I'm at Bed Bath and Beyond, we're all over the country. Like, I don't know, Tom, can, can you help me understand why they're so expensive? What would you say?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Because then I'd take some water and pour it on the mat. And I'd take an iron and I'd put it on the mat. And I'd take some crumbs and I'd put it on the mat. And I'd say, nothing goes through it. It can withstand heat. You can throw it in the dishwasher and it'll last you forever. And they would buy it. And not in high quantities. It was always like really cool, high end stores. Like the MoMA's, SF MoMA's of the world.

• 37:47Guy Raz?

  The Museum of Modern Art.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 37:50Guy Raz?

  These museums obviously have gift shops, very influential gift shops. They, they had a buyer there who bought some of these.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Kit Dombrowski was my first buyer. And she said, you know, I like you and I like your product. And they remained as some of my best friends to this day.

• 38:08Guy Raz?

  And so you walk out of there. Did you walk out of that trade show with a lot of, I mean, a lot is a relative term because you're a small business. But do you remember like how much money and orders you got from that, from that trade show?

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Probably I would say somewhere between 20 and 50,000 on my first, my first show. And I remember calling my husband right when Kit walked away. And she came in, she walked into the show at the last 10 minutes of the show. And I said, honey, I think I have something.

• 38:45Guy Raz?

  The SF MoMA?

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:48Guy Raz?

  And do you remember if, I'm focusing on SF MoMA because I don't think you sold to big companies at that point. It was like small boutiques, right?

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 38:58Guy Raz?

  And probably the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's gift shop was the most influential store you sold to.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Very much so.

• 39:04Guy Raz?

  That there's visibility and it's a trendsetter. And, and in, in, you know, in those first five, six years.

• 39:13Guy Raz?

  Were you even able to get a foot in the door at some of the bigger retailers? Like, would they even answer your emails or calls? Like, the Bed Bath & Beyond? I don't know, TJ, whoever it was. Was that even something you were trying to do?

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was more like the Bloomingdale's and the Surla Tobs of the world.

• 39:33Guy Raz?

  Could you get into those places?

• 39:34Speaker 01

  No, it was very difficult to get in.

• 39:36Guy Raz?

  Did you try?

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I got in. And when I did get in, it was so minimal and the effort was so much. And the process for shipping to them took like an employee of its own.

• 39:48Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  And I didn't have the manpower at that point. And honestly, the independent designers or the independent retailers did so much more for us because they could explain the product in person. And so their sales volume was so good, I didn't really need to be in those stores.

• 40:06Guy Raz?

  Right. I mean, this is really pre-e-commerce. E-commerce was around, but it wasn't quite what it is today. So you still really depended on those stores. And just to put this into context, I'm imagining by like 2010, this is five years in, when you say you were doing really well, that was probably a few million dollars in sales a year, right?

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 40:28Guy Raz?

  It wasn't like 20 million dollars in sales. Like, doing really, because this is a, probably the margins were low and it's not like, I don't know, Bitcoin, right? It's like, it's where it's just...

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 40:41Guy Raz?

  Right? It's silicone products that there's a limited number of people are going to buy it. And then it lasts forever. They're not replacing it.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. That was one thing. One of the buyers turned around and said to me, you know what the problem with your product is? I said, what? He says, they last forever.

• 40:59Guy Raz?

  So you buy it once?

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Because you buy it once. And, you know, we were, I was doing really well. And when I say that I was doing really well is that I didn't have to worry about having a few employees and paying myself anymore and affording a space. And by this time, I had brought in a CFO. And he was working with me once a week and we would stay up from Thurs-

• 41:28Guy Raz?

  He was like a part-time CFO?

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, he would stay up with me from Thursday evening. Everybody knew I had Thursday evenings for like 10, 15 years straight.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Where Mike would come to the house.

• 41:40Guy Raz?

  This is a Mike fake, right?

• 41:41Speaker 01

  This is Mike fake. And he would come to my house and come upstairs. I'd have dinner for him and he would just start digging in and he would, he was like my everything. Kat, what are you doing with this retailer? Why are you just, you know, focusing on this one retailer that you're selling this SKU to? Let's get rid of that SKU. And at this point, something else happened after I had met Mike. First of all, Mike cleaned up my books, helped me get an SBA loan, helped get our financials straightened out, got inventory under control and was, I don't even know how I would have done it without him, honestly, all the way through. He was absolutely my pillar of strength.

• 42:26Guy Raz?

  He was sort of a consultant, right? I mean, he was a part-time CFO to help you kind of map out things that you were not able to, to see or figure out on. I mean, he basically had a perspective that you didn't have.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he believed in me. I mean, he had all the tools that I didn't have. He, he always joked that I paid him in Persian food and he was my, he knew I was that crazy entrepreneur that sort of like flew by the seat of my pants. And he was that very calm, cool cucumber. He never got excited about anything and he never got overwhelmed by anything. And I really needed that.

• 43:07Guy Raz?

  Right. Your company, your company, Modern Twist, would not become profitable for, I think, around seven years, if I'm, if I'm right, which is, I don't, I'm not dismissing that. I think that's amazing. But it took a while before it actually became profitable.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 43:24Guy Raz?

  But even over that period of time, you know, up until it became profitable, it doesn't sound like you were nervous that it wasn't going to work out. Or were you? Was there ever a point where you thought, we gotta get, make, make it this profitable? I've been in this for seven, eight years and my God, I'm not. Am I making any money from this yet?

• 43:43Speaker 01

  No, I didn't get antsy at all. I was making money at that point. And everybody was making money. We were doing fine. But what happened at this point is that I met a friend of my mom's at a natural product show named Ahmed Rahim.

• 44:00Guy Raz?

  We know him. He's been on our show, founder of Nu Ni Tea. Yep.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I met Ahmed Rahim at a natural product show through my mom. And my mom was the nutritionist and she's super holistic. And my passion was always so connected to food. And here I was producing a product that had to do with things that were at the table. But they didn't have to do with all this good nutrition that I loved and I was raised with. And I started hanging out with Ahmed and the organizations he was involved with, B corporations. You know, at this point, you know, my mom's whole, you know, holistic, you know, Buddhist side kicked in of,

• 44:46Speaker 01

  are you just gonna take your care of yourself and your family? I mean, this guy Ahmed is all about community. And he's hanging out with all these organizations that are gonna change the world. Why can't you sort of like look into producing something that could have a real impact? And at one point Ahmed turned around and said to me, I'm just not gonna support you anymore, be your advisor if you don't think of some other way to produce something that actually has the ability to have change.

• 45:17Guy Raz?

  So clearly you wanted to, you started to think about ways you could innovate or grow. And you had experience in silicone plastics, in silicone products. And it sounds like in your mind, you started to think, what else could I do with silicones, with silicone products?

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my aha moment was definitely as I was trying to make a bag with my silicone product and with some fabrics with some friends of mine at Graff and Lance. We were trying to-

• 45:49Guy Raz?

  You were trying to make like a handbag?

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were trying to like sew the silicone into a bag and then put a zipper on it. And they were beautiful, but then again, I was going back into the industry that wasn't exciting me anymore, which was the, you know, the high end, you know, design industry. And I love design and I love the function of things, but I wanted something that actually could be consumed by the masses, that could actually make a difference and sell in volume.

• 46:17Guy Raz?

  So just to be clear, you started by thinking, I'll make a handbag for women or men, whoever wanted, but like a fashion handbag.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Well, more like a makeup bag because it would be small and it would have a zipper.

• 46:30Guy Raz?

  But when did you start to think, you know, this is actually like sandwich bags for lunch, for school lunches?

• 46:35Speaker 01

  When my kids would come back with, you know, all these wrappers and-

• 46:41Guy Raz?

  In their lunchboxes, yeah.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Single use bags. And I'm like, what are we doing? Like, why is this happening in our community? Like, where's all this going?

• 46:50Guy Raz?

  Right. And you're thinking, yeah-

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Forty-five percent of all landfill waste is from packaging and that's usually from single use things.

• 47:01Guy Raz?

  Right. So, so the thing about silicone is, from what I understand, and I'm not a, I'm not an expert, not like you or a chemist, but it's basically, it's, it's made from natural materials, sand and rock and-

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 47:15Guy Raz?

  And, and there's different types of silicone, right? Because there, there's some silicones that are, that do have chemicals and other things in them to make them work, right? What's the difference between the kind of silicone that you were making and using and other silicone? If there, is there?

• 47:34Speaker 01

  So you can put fillers and byproducts and chemicals and any kind of crap you want into silicone and make it cheaper. And if, if you're using a platinum form of silicone and it's food grade, you're definitely paying a lot more for the material.

• 47:49Guy Raz?

  What's, what is, what makes it different? What, what makes a food grade?

• 47:53Speaker 01

  It's free of, it's free of latex and phthalates and plasticizers.

• 47:58Guy Raz?

  So you're making something that was food grade. After three years of experimenting, you finally come up with a, the, the bag. And the bag that you can sell is like a lunch bag. And this is going to be a modern twist product? That was the idea?

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 48:16Guy Raz?

  And you called them stasher bags right away?

• 48:18Speaker 01

  I called them stasher bags. That's right.

• 48:20Guy Raz?

  And had, and how'd you come up with that name?

• 48:21Speaker 01

  You don't want to know. No.

• 48:24Guy Raz?

  Just stash stuff in your bag?

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I hang around with a lot of people from the natural products world. They stash a lot of things, you know?

• 48:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  And they had a lot of influence and, you know, when I was hanging out with them and they loved, we loved the idea of coming up with something whimsical with a very heavy topic of plastic waste.

• 48:44Guy Raz?

  And that was Stasher?

• 48:46Speaker 01

  That was Stasher.

• 48:47Guy Raz?

  And if somebody came to you, you would say, hey, you use Ziploc? This is going to totally eliminate the need for that because you just buy this and you've got a lifetime Ziploc bag here.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I was on LinkedIn again and I saw that people weren't getting that these, they're like, what's the difference between, like, at this point, the plastic free movement was nowhere yet. And people were asking, well, what's the difference between, like, if I use a reusable, you know, or a resealable bag than if I use your bag? So I had to really, like, get that across. I'm like, okay, how do I get the function of this thing? Because here I was with a bag that was, at that point, when we were launching, it was $10.99, so $11 bag.

• 49:33Guy Raz?

  $11 Ziploc.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 49:35Guy Raz?

  It's a lot of Ziploc bags. I'm going to Costco and buy like a Ziploc pallet. No, not a pallet, but yeah.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  So they didn't see the value of, you know, you have to give the consumer the value. And I'm like, well, you could use it thousands of times. You can cook in it. You can freeze in it and you can use it thousands of times instead of that. And then, and at the end of the day, you would actually end up saving money.

• 49:58Guy Raz?

  But you could cook in it? You could actually, what do you mean?

• 50:00Speaker 01

  You could sous vide in it.

• 50:01Guy Raz?

  It was that airtight?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Yes. It's that heat resistant, too. So basically, I reached out on LinkedIn and I wanted to see, I had a friend, her name was Laura Scher. And at that point, she was another, you know, social entrepreneur and she said, Kat, there's this really cool concept. It's called sous vide that's in the marketplace.

• 50:20Guy Raz?

  Sous vide, water cooking your food.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Water cooking your food.

• 50:23Guy Raz?

  In a, in a plastic, in a container.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  In a heated, like, you could put it in a pot and then you put a sous vide machine in a pot. And then you put your plastic bag and your food inside of that bag. And and the taste of the food is amazing in it because all the nutrients stays in the bag and the taste and the moisture stays in there. So sous vide has been like something that the French have been doing for a long time. So I reached out, I I was looking on LinkedIn, trying to see who the biggest sous vide player was. So all of a sudden, I see on my LinkedIn that Electrolux has bought Anova. And I'm like, Electrolux just bought Anova. So I reached out to Anova and I'm like, I've got your bag for you.

• 51:06Guy Raz?

  Anova is a sous vide company.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they were bought by Electrolux. So they were gonna ramp up quickly and be the number one.

• 51:14Guy Raz?

  Anova, Anova.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Anova, A N O V A, yeah.

• 51:18Guy Raz?

  By the way, no one, except for people who are super food geeks, are even gonna know the company, right? You gotta be a super food geek to have a sous vide stick. But anyway, keep going.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So I reached out to them and this was really important because they helped me produce my first set of molds. I meet with them and we get our first biggest order from them.

• 51:40Guy Raz?

  How did you have the the capital to make the product? Because usually those places pay sixty, sometimes ninety days later, you gotta pay for the product. So there's a gap. How were you able to to finance that?

• 51:54Speaker 01

  What happened is that Anova gave us a big order and Anova was already in Target. And they needed a sous vide bag and I had a sous vide bag for them. So this was a way for me to get into Target. And I had, I went to Target and I already had an initial meeting with them and they weren't into my idea at all.

• 52:15Guy Raz?

  They weren't into it because your bags were too expensive, probably, right?

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Honestly, I think the real thing was that they didn't think anybody saw the difference between a reusable plastic bag, you know, who's gonna pay for your bag? So I didn't get an order from Target directly, but Anova gave me a great order and and I made a great deal with Anova where they had to pay for the molds for the productions because we didn't have them.

• 52:39Guy Raz?

  Right. And and and the bag would be would be like part of a kit?

• 52:44Speaker 01

  They would put it right next to their sous vide machine in Target.

• 52:48Guy Raz?

  All right, so you, so you, so basically, this deal with Inova finances the first molds. And, but it's a tiny market. I mean, you got to hope that people, it's, it's people are going to buy a sous vide. It's a tiny number of people. And then, then you have to hope that they're going to buy the bag. So I can't imagine that it took off right away.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  I wasn't interested in that market necessarily. I was interested in the fact that people would get, I had to educate people.

• 53:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Where the value was for this $11 bag. And people weren't getting it from our messaging that was on the packaging. And I didn't know how to message the packaging.

• 53:28Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Which is why I decided to do Shark Tank.

• 53:32Guy Raz?

  After the break, how Kat gets her first bout of Vertigo while standing up to the sharks, and her second bout while sitting down with the buyers at Target. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 53:49Speaker 02

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• 55:26Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2017 and Kat Nouri is just starting to get traction with her new company, Stasher. But she realizes that not enough people know about the advantages of using silicone bags over single-use plastic. So to get the word out, she decides, what else? To apply to Shark Tank.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  When I sent things to Shark Tank, I didn't look like a small company. I looked like somebody who had some traction. And so when I did the submission, I was very colorful and I had the tools to show them that it was a company worth looking at.

• 56:09Guy Raz?

  And when they contacted you and they said, okay, you're on, presumably in 2017, you went on.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 56:18Guy Raz?

  Were you nervous?

• 56:18Speaker 01

  I had vertigo twice in my whole career. One time was when I was on Shark Tank.

• 56:26Speaker 05

  Next up is an eco-friendly alternative to plastic bags.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  It made me so nervous to be judged by the whole world, like to actually put yourself out there, especially as a woman. And here I was, I had to go stand on my own in front of the whole world, pretty much to judge me.

• 56:46Speaker 06

  I don't understand the advantage of the product. And the product doesn't get me excited. I'm out.

• 56:53Guy Raz?

  But here's the thing, you were going on. With a mission, I mean, yes, you want to make money. But like you were going on, you were saying, look, plastics bags, the zip top bags are really bad. People, you know, are throwing these away. I'm going to solve this problem. How could, how could you even have imagined anybody would be mean about that?

• 57:16Speaker 01

  I think you've watched Shark Tank. Some of the judges are not that nice and they'll shred. And if you don't know your business inside out, they're going to eat you alive.

• 57:25Speaker 06

  Kat, why haven't you put more about the environment and the plastic free element?

• 57:31Speaker 04

  I agree. Maybe that's something that we should definitely put on the packaging. If you told me that and you're one of my buyers, I'd definitely put it up there.

• 57:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, but that doesn't work that way. This is your vision. You've got to be able to sell this away from you.

• 57:43Speaker 04

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Well, the one thing I knew was my business and they weren't going to tell me how to do my business. And when it came to them questioning my business and telling me how to do it, I got a little offended and I got a little offensive and it brought my other side out.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  Can I ask you, you're a brand specialist. What would you do that would say that that is a better option and it's healthier? How would you do it differently?

• 58:05Speaker 06

  We can't do that here. We can't reinvent it. Look, Kat, we're asking you questions and you're coming back asking us a question instead. Right? You're not saying, I get it or I made this choice because...

• 58:15Speaker 04

  I do get it. I swear I do get it. But I'm just saying that I wanted to see what your point of view was. I don't want to argue.

• 58:19Guy Raz?

  You did get an offer, or I guess two of the Sharks were considering teaming up an offer, but you did get an offer from Mark Cuban. He made you an offer.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  Mark made me an offer, absolutely.

• 58:31Guy Raz?

  20% for $400,000. And, and, and did you, in your mind, had you valued your company at that point?

• 58:42Speaker 01

  I think it was something like, I hadn't valued it myself, but I think they were valuing it like at 2.5 or something like that.

• 58:50Guy Raz?

  But he, he made you an offer, 20% for $400,000. You came back and said, I'll give you 15% for $400,000.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  And he accepted it.

• 58:59Guy Raz?

  He was going to become an investor.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 59:01Guy Raz?

  Okay, so the taping ends. This is the part that a lot of people don't know. It doesn't mean it's a done deal. You still have to negotiate off camera to get that money. And you guys actually never closed the deal. He, in, in the end, he did not invest.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  In the end, we spent like $20,000, $25,000 on the negotiations and I really wanted to make it happen, but... I wanted a deal that basically let me still run the company the way I wanted to, and I couldn't get that deal, and I had to walk away.

• 59:35Guy Raz?

  But what you got out of that was huge visibility. And that airs in January of 2018. And did you see an immediate impact on sales?

• 59:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 59:48Guy Raz?

  No. Nothing.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did, but I mean, it wasn't immediate. It kind of trickled through time. Basically, it gave us like a leverage. People would see it, one buyer would tell another. You would send it to a buyer. We started utilizing it as a marketing tool. And I had one friend whose brother had seen the show. And he said, I don't care what anybody says. You're a complete badass, and I want you to run the company exactly the way you're running it. And here's a half a million dollars without any questions. So I took the money from my friend's brother.

• 1:00:26Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  And I didn't have to take the shark's money.

• 1:00:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah. One of the things I think is really important is, and I hope people listening to this, especially PR people who are listening to this, who pitch our show, we get pitched a lot of things like, my client just raised 20 million dollars. They founded their company last year, and they've just raised 25 million dollars. Can they be on How I Built This? And the problem with that pitch is that there's no story. If you start your business last year, but there's no story to tell. And raising 20 million dollars is great. Congratulations. It doesn't mean you're successful.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:04Guy Raz?

  It doesn't mean, let me see what you do with that money, right? You didn't actually raise a whole lot of money. But there's a myth there, I think, in the entrepreneurial world, that raising money is like a badge of success.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Guy living in the Bay Area, there's this big perception that VCs and raising money is like your route to success.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  And one of the biggest things that I have seen in my own friends and from what I had studied has always been that there's no such thing as free money. You can't run your company the way you want if you take someone else's money. And I wasn't about to let anybody ruin my vision because I wasn't, I didn't start this company for profit. I started this company so that it would support the change that I wanted to see in the world. And if I was gonna do that, the VCs were probably gonna tell me, that's a really great thing, but you can't donate, you can't run it this way, you can't hire that person, you can't grow as slow or as fast as you want. I didn't want to grow fast for someone else. I wanted

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  to, the company went explosive because we were authentic and we were transparent. Not because, you know, we were trying to like, you know, sell something to someone because, you know, it was just some gadget that was gonna scam someone.

• 1:02:33Guy Raz?

  Right. Um, once you had visibility from Shark Tank, did that help you get into bigger stores like Target, for example? Is that, is that how, how you got into Target?

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  So, um, we got into Target because what happened is that I, through LinkedIn, found, um, the brokers that represented larger companies. And I found out who was, um, repping some of the brands that I really admired out there. Companies like Swell that had done a really nice job of going to market.

• 1:03:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah, been on the show? Yep, sure.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  And had eliminated plastic waste through their bottles.

• 1:03:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  And when I went to Target the first round and I got a no, they didn't see the value in a $11.99 bag because they didn't see that, you know, they couldn't see through the marketing or through the marketplace, the reception and the perception of the value of the product. And, um, it was a category maker. It wasn't a hard container. It wasn't a tossable, single-use plastic bag. So where did it fit?

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  Did it fit in the essentials or did it fit in housewares?

• 1:03:58Guy Raz?

  And what did you say?

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Well, I found out through people that what you get in essentials is traffic. And what you get in housewares is really you might get an end cap, but the actual volume in sales is less.

• 1:04:13Guy Raz?

  Is lower. You say you realized you want to be in the other, other part of the store.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  I wanted to be where I could show the volume of sales to Target so that I would have, you know, I would have, you know, I would stay.

• 1:04:27Guy Raz?

  But you said, but yeah, but when you say you weren't prepared the first time, what did you do the second time to make the case and to convince them that they should carry this product?

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  So the second time I took my, um, head of product development and engineer Paul with me to my Target pitch for the second time. We get to Minneapolis and I fly in with an end cap. My team worked on the end cap for three or four months.

• 1:04:54Guy Raz?

  The end cap, I think, is a shelf, like a promotional shelf, right?

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  It's a promotional shelf that has information about your company and

• 1:05:04Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  a beautiful display.

• 1:05:06Guy Raz?

  So you brought that with you, like you, you, you brought it to the pitch?

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  On the airplane. My team worked on it for like three or four months and I ended up standing at my hotel with no end cap that night.

• 1:05:19Guy Raz?

  Oh, it didn't arrive?

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  It didn't arrive.

• 1:05:21Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  So I go to sleep and keep telling myself, I got this, I got this, it'll be there by the morning. In the middle of the night, I wake up sideways and I can't even move. And the minute I come to stand up, I throw up and I have major vertigo.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  There I was and I had to not only look good, I had to go do a presentation in the account of my life. And I made tilted my health head sideways and I took a shower and I went downstairs and my brokers and Paul were there and they all like wheeled me in pretty much. And I sat, they sat me in a chair before the buyer walked in.

• 1:06:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  And I had had a video that we had made. I went to LA and we made a video about what plastics are doing to our planet and how it's affecting human health because we're eating the fish that are eating the microbeads and that our bodies are being consumed with plastic and by 2050, we would have no fish in our oceans. And this video was so powerful, we all had tears in our eyes. And the buyer said to me, I, I represent a category of essentials where there is a lot of this, where I feel like, you know, why isn't there a more innovative solution

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  to what's going on in our planet with plastic waste?

• 1:06:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  And here you are, and I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure you succeed. And I was completely stunned and he said to me, I don't even know what you would be like if you felt good.

• 1:07:07Guy Raz?

  I mean, the, the video that you presented, um, did you, I mean, that must've been expensive to produce, right?

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  Very. It was thirty thousand dollars.

• 1:07:18Guy Raz?

  You had, and you had like a production team come up with a video that showed the impact of plastics?

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:25Guy Raz?

  That was the pitch you made. And, okay, so, so you make the case to Target and they say, all right, you're in?

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  We hit them on our mission.

• 1:07:32Guy Raz?

  And so presumably you now had to, to ramp up production because you now are getting this order from Target. And by the way, at, at this point, were you patented? Did you have patents to protect the silicone bags?

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, we spent so much money on patents and that was like well worth everything that we did and anyone that copied us, we went after.

• 1:07:54Guy Raz?

  Cause you, cause there were knockoffs, there were tons of knockoffs.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  We were on red, I had a whole team on Redpoint every day that would go on, their job was to go on the internet and see who was knocking us off and serve them. And

• 1:08:09Guy Raz?

  Is, I don't know what Red Point is. It's, I guess, is a data

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's wonderful. You can see who's knocking you off like in three seconds and, and where it's coming from.

• 1:08:17Guy Raz?

  And, but still, it's a pain because if you have people knocking you off, you have to

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:23Guy Raz?

  File lawsuits. In the meantime, you're losing sales.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  But, yeah, but you have to do it because if you don't keep some of the big ones back, you're gonna get eaten up. But I do have to say on that note, I want to thank every single copier we've ever had out there because it made me run like the devil was chasing me.

• 1:08:40Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  And you have to thank your competitors.

• 1:08:43Guy Raz?

  You say it made you run because you wanted to, you got to establish your brand. Essentially,

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:08:47Guy Raz?

  Once you have a product that can be slightly modified and replicated, the, the advantage that you have to, you, you've got to have is a better brand. It's a, it's brand awareness.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Being first to market has the biggest advantage you could have with getting in front of the buyers, being in the market, getting first positioning. It has the biggest advantage of anything. But the other part of that is just keeping everybody away from you so that you can keep like doing things differently. And the way you keep the, uh, everybody away from you is by zigzagging on the road.

• 1:09:24Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  And being a B corporation and being a one percent for the planet and being a one, a, a, a woman owned business, those things were not things people committed to when they were copying me.

• 1:09:36Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  You know, I was putting my money where my mouth was. I wasn't a greenwashing company that was trying to make a dime. I existed to make a difference and my team existed to make a difference.

• 1:09:49Guy Raz?

  How did you, I mean, given that there, there, there were and are um, products that, that are also silicone bags with the zip top, zip, uh, there's a company called Zip Top. Was it just at a certain point you can't? Sue them because they're also, I mean, they're, they're changing it enough where they're not violating the patent?

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the, the thing is, you also don't want to, you know, I always told my, my team this, you know, and, and they know I didn't watch the copiers like they did because my job was to drive forward and to drive really fast. And their job was to look in the rearview mirror and to always make sure we took care of our customers like nobody else and that we had a culture in our company that cultivated everything that we stood for. And people like, you know, we had millennials in the office. They're no nonsense. If our office was all about what we wanted to see out in the world and that just spread like fire, you can't copy that unless you're legit.

• 1:10:52Guy Raz?

  So you, I mean, 2018 and then 2019 are, you know, huge growth years. I think by the end of 2019, you were, you know, maybe doing about $30 million that year in revenue. But that year, a little over three years or under three years after you really founded the company, an announcement went out, SC Johnson acquires Stasher.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:11:23Guy Raz?

  Which is amazing to be acquired after just three years.

• 1:11:28Guy Raz?

  But tell me, tell me why? I mean, what, what, what was the, I mean, obviously you got a payout. There's money there. Was that the reason why it was, it made sense to you to, to sell to SC Johnson?

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  And I, and I can't confirm your numbers, by the way, so I wanted Stasher to be in the hands of everyone if it was going to make real change. And guy, it's all about distribution. Who has distribution?

• 1:11:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Essie Johnson's one of the biggest, right, like, companies of, it's a, well, it's a consumer packaged food company.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, they're a multinational. And what do they manufacture?

• 1:12:06Guy Raz?

  Right, they soap and detergent and household cleaning products, all kinds of things like that.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  And they, and they manufacture Ziploc.

• 1:12:14Guy Raz?

  Of course.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  And they have a whole arm of companies that are better for you companies, like Method and Mrs. Myers and Caldraea and Sunbom. I mean, they have companies that are changing the footprint of the way multinationals do business and the way things are produced. And by the way, just for the record, I didn't get acquired. I brought the acquirers to the table. I sought anybody that would have an arm for massive distribution of Stasher out and I weeded them out.

• 1:12:50Guy Raz?

  And did you specifically look for Essie Johnson because there was a product that they had acquired that you thought aligned with yours? You mentioned Method. Was there any, anything about that?

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, they have it on it's accessible to everyone. That was important to me. You know, that Stasher would be accessible, that it would be affordable, that it would be donated to schools or, you know, all kinds of things that it would be recycled through TerraCycle. Those are programs that they're putting in place that I could have never done. But then I have to tell you, Guy, COVID happened and every single day I thank my stars that the acquisition happened because I had the responsibility of 40 to 50 families in my hands.

• 1:13:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And that could have been potentially a disaster because people weren't packing school lunches.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  People weren't going to retail stores. People weren't shopping anymore. Everybody was saving their money.

• 1:13:46Guy Raz?

  I'll tell you what, though, we were going on a lot of hikes. I had a lot of dried, I had a lot of dried cranberries in my Stasher bag.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  And I did, and I did meet the guy that was going to be our CEO.

• 1:13:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Because you, you decided at that point, or you were not going to be the CEO after the acquisition.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  No, but I had to meet who was. I had to meet Kay Stalma, who's from the Netherlands, and the guy was just...

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  The nicest guy and you know, his DNA is all about sustainability.

• 1:14:17Guy Raz?

  Why didn't you want to stay on? Why didn't you insist on staying on as CEO? Cause you are no longer really a, you're not really part of the company anymore. You're kind of a brand ambassador. But why didn't you insist on staying on? Did you just not want to do it?

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  I'm not very good at following rules.

• 1:14:34Guy Raz?

  You didn't think, you didn't think you were the right person to work in a big sort of corporate superstructure?

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and I have to tell you, Guy, I mean, my family's been on this ride. I mean, my kids have been on most of my business trips. They've been at all, like a lot of my trade shows. They've packed up my goods with me. They deserve mommy at some point. And now that they're young adults, I really want to not just be here for my kids. I want to be here for other women and I want to do things that are, that will have a bigger footprint in the money that I was able to make with my passion for something that'll change, hopefully, the plastic footprint of our society. And I have the ability to do something else that's possibly maybe even bigger.

• 1:15:21Guy Raz?

  So that was it. 2020. The deal closes and, and then COVID hits and wow, I mean, in some ways the timing couldn't have been better.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they're doing great.

• 1:15:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  And I love being in touch and they'll always be my family.

• 1:15:41Guy Raz?

  When you think about your journey and, and, and you know, all that you've been through and the success you've had, how much do you think that has to do with? How just, you know, your smarts and your work ethic and, and how much do you think, do you attribute to luck?

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  I think as an immigrant and as my mother's daughter, work ethic is a given. And I do believe the harder you work, the luckier you get.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  But I also believe that the universe has a power and an energy of its own, some of it not in our control. And if we embrace those things, whether we call them luck or things that we're unlucky, I think that maybe we just like, let go of the things we can't control and think of those things that come to us as luck or things that just happened because we took a chance.

• 1:16:41Guy Raz?

  That's Kat Norrie, founder and CEO of Modern Twist and founder of Stasher, where she still advises as a consultant. By the way, if Mark Cuban managed to make that $400,000 investment for 15% on Shark Tank in 2018,

• 1:16:59Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:17:00Guy Raz?

  Would he have done well?

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  He would have been clicking his heels.

• 1:17:05Guy Raz?

  Wow. Cuban, you would have been clicking your Ferragamo slippers.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:17:14Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. We would love it if you could give us a positive review on whatever podcast platform you use. And don't forget to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to write to us, our email address is [email protected]. And if you want to follow the show's Twitter account, it's @howibuiltthis or mine, @guyraz. Our show's Instagram account is @howibuiltthisnpr and mine is @guy dot raz. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neve Grant with research help from Claire Murashima. Our production staff includes Casey Herman, J.C. Howard, Julia Carney, Harrison, B.J. Choi, Liz Metzger, Farah Safari, and Elaine Coats.

• 1:17:59Guy Raz?

  Our intern is Catherine Seifer. And Jeff Rogers is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

• 1:18:11Guy Raz?

  This is NPR.