167. From Scrappy to Scalable: Daniel Scharff Grows Startup CPG

Ep. 167 Daniel Scharff

Daniel [00:00:00] the way to discover innovation is not really on your computer.

Daniel It's holding and touching things and talking to people and thinking about things in a new way, in the right environment.

Karl Hey rum, what's going on? It sounds like we both had pretty fancy weekends here on the Grow Everything Podcast.

Erum Yes. Fancy Weekends for people who run this podcast, the Grow Everything podcast, where where we talk about how biology is transforming every industry and how to help people use biology too when they're thinking about entering industries.

Erum But yes, we did have very fancy weekends. On Friday, I had gone to lunch at Le Bernardine, which is one of the fanciest restaurants. It's a three Michelin star rated restaurant and has been for a really long time.

Karl Yeah, it's been around forever.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. With, Eric Repair, who's their, head chef for founder and Wow.

Erum I was just blown [00:01:00] away. I mean, this was, a long awaited anniversary. Luncheon, I guess. I mean we, it was actually our anniversary in December and we were like, let's go to La Bernadine. we're like, let's just go like on a Friday afternoon or.

Erum our son's still in school.

Karl Yeah. Yeah.

Erum So it's like we get a little bit of savings, you know, not paying a babysitter. because it's pricey for sure. But I would say well worth the experience because A, you can say that you've been there, so it's like bragging rights.

Erum You're paying for those bragging rights.

Karl Right.

Erum And then of course, the food was just. I have had flavors I've never experienced before. And I was like, how do they come up with those flavors? And then you have, I dunno, like five or six waiters that are serving you the rough, the, your experience. And they're like, oh, well this is a fish.

Erum It's from here, feeds on this. And you really, they talk about first the origin of the ingredients. So the provenance.

Karl Provenance, yeah.

Erum Yeah. The provenance of the ingredients. And then they talk about the terroir. So like, yeah, where's it from, but what is [00:02:00] going on? The different flavors.

Erum So, so much fun. Of course, I took a picture of every dish. I think it was an eight course meal. Wow. Seafood. That was lunch. Yeah. It was a late lunch that we were anticipating for quite some time. So we prepared. I had a very late breakfast. It was just a wonderful experience. I took a picture of every dish.

Erum not that I'm gonna post it anywhere. I, I should do it on Instagram. I posting is work people. I'm not as, when I post, I post for Grow Everything and for messaging lab and for what's going on in the bioeconomy, that's probably my limit. But, but anyway, yeah. Thanks for asking. It was really cool. and then you were also living the New York Life.

Erum Tell us what you grew up to this weekend.

Karl Okay, so wait one, just one big comment about Le Bernardin. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. so we've talked about,drops of God.

Karl drops of God just dropped a second season, which I started watching. And so that's also about provenance and terroir since it's about the wine industry and, [00:03:00] I thought that it would be very hard to follow up with that first season. and I'm not gonna spoil it for anyone, but so far the two or three episodes that have dropped are pretty damn good. So, if you wanna get into the provenance and terroir of wine. I think it's a great place to go.

Karl Um,

Erum yeah, we actually talked to one of our waiters about like, have you seen drops of God? They were like, yes. And so we had a nice conversation about that during our very fancy lunch. actually there's a sommelier and they hadn't watched it, and she's like, oh, everyone tells me to watch.

Erum I'm like, yeah, you of all people. And they're like kind of upper echelon. Of Somalis that have like a, cup because a silver cup that they wear around their neck, it's like pretty gangster chain. Yeah. and then she's like, oh, I have to, I have to. I'm like, yeah. And then another waiter overheard us and he was, came over with our next dish and he was like, I've seen it.

Erum And I'm like, I. And then when you see of God, it's like you're in an inner circle. Like you know now. Like, you like

Karl yeah.

Erum Like, oh, we know, we know about flavor. Yeah. We know where it comes

Karl from. Yeah. No, very. It was very cool.

Karl so yeah, we [00:04:00] also did something fancy. We met up with my sister-in-law and my brother-in-law. On the Upper West Side, and then we walked across Central Park, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Karl And we basically did three things. The first thing we did was visit the temple of Ur, which is this Egyptian temple surrounded by like a, pond and it's very popular. It's really incredible because

Karl they've got walls from pyramids and lots of like sculptures. And you just wonder like how all this stuff ended up, at this museum. Like, who paid for it? I know? A lot of this stuff, was like appropriated and it doesn't belong there.

Karl but it's just such a wonderful resource to be able to go and see this temple. And you can walk around it, you can walk into it. And, you know, if you've ever seen the movie, oceans Eight, I think it shows up there. so that's one thing we saw. The second thing, we went to go see this sculptor Nucci.

Karl He has a piece called water stone and [00:05:00] Waterstone is basically a rock that has water coming out of it and very quietly covering the stone with water. It's very meditative. And one of my sons, Alejandro, when he was young, he loved watching the video of the creation of this piece of art. And then the final thing that we did was, there's a surrealist artist, man Ray. He was like a pioneer in photography.

Karl For example, he has this metronome, which is a device that you use to keep time for music. It basically is like a small box that has like a pendulum that swings and you can adjust the speed of it. And, he had created this thing probably in the 1920s where he put like a photograph of an eye on the pendulum.

Karl So it kind of moves back and forth, even though it wasn't moving in the exhibit. But it was really nice to see how many people were there, to go see Man Ray. And then also to look at these pieces of art and photography that are just so iconic and that we all know without [00:06:00] realizing that this man had created them.

Karl And to actually see the pieces of art. It's like when you go to the Museum of Modern Art and you're able to see Starry Night or going to the Louvre and see, you know, the Mona Lisa, that's like the level of, this.

Erum That's your art debriefing from Carl.

Karl Exactly. Remember, I am married to an art teacher and we do go and see a fair amount of art, when we can, and do find it to be very relaxing and inspiring.

Erum Awesome. Awesome. And other fun things you do as well is we share books of note, especially sci-fi because we love it. Um, it's very inspiring. I think a lot of the leading scientists that we talked to, we had Michael Levi on, recently, Elon Musk also talked about how he's came up with a lot of his long-term vision thinking, and it comes from sci-fi.

Erum You know, sci-fi is science fiction Till Becomes Science Fact, and the book that you shared with me is Automatic Noodle, which was so cool. It's a [00:07:00] great book. You wanna give our listeners a quick synopsis so we can talk about how it relates to biology?

Karl I mean I think the quick synopsis is a bunch of robots build a noodle shop.

Karl Period.

Erum Yes, yes. it's set in 2063, so not too far. Just in the future. A lot of us will still be around and really it's about these robots that have intelligence. they're sentient, they have feelings, they have, friends.

Erum They love and they're used for different things.

Erum And they were all like, put into this restaurant and they were shut down. that's how the book starts. And then one wakes up and wakes up the other robots and they're like, oh, wait, well we have money to pay in order for us to still be around. So we have to pay, the fees of. Our, contracts and it gets really interesting, um, in terms of how they figure out how to make money, which is of course, spoil alert.

Erum They put up a noodle shop. But it's all the challenges and, interactions and the way the [00:08:00] world could work in the future, not too distant. Future was phenomenal to read about in such a fantastic story.

Karl Yeah, I love the way that the robots interact with each other, and to me,

Karl I thought that that was super playful and a lot of fun and. It's a short read. Annaline Nuit is a brilliant writer. I can't recommend what they write enough, and I highly recommend it.

Erum Yeah. Yeah.

Erum And there's a lot of examples of how biotech unfolds in the future. in the story they write about self healing, microbial based materials like polymers, or like special concrete that heals in their water systems. So concrete that's used to make. Pipes and, sewage systems, if there's a crack, it can heal.

Erum So it actually continues to maintain itself, which is really cool to think about, like how do you do that? and also they talked about water turbines that you can just purchase from a hardware store, to generate electricity.

Erum but yeah, so anyway, I don't know if we gave any [00:09:00] spoiler alerts.

Erum I don't think so. I think these are just like, the whole story is very phenomenal like, it will stretch your imagination and give you a new appreciation for artificial intelligence. I think a lot of it can be doom and gloom, that taking our jobs, which is. You know, a part of the narrative, but there are other parts of the narrative, and I think this book, automatic Noodle by Anna Lee Neitz, has done a great job of painting those pictures.

Karl Okay, so let's bring it back to the present day. IAM, have you heard of Molt or Claude Bot?

Erum I am hearing about it on my feeds. People are sending me links like you are sending me links. Tell our audience what's going on with this.

Karl so Cloud Bot is like an open source personal os and it runs locally on your own computer and, um, you can use it as a 24 7 assistant and you can set it up so that it talks to either on Messenger or WhatsApp or Telegram or whatever. People are doing all sorts of crazy things with it, but it just feels like my feeds on forecaster are either people talking about CLO bott or people talking about CLO code, which are two different [00:10:00] things from two different companies.

Erum Yeah, so wait, what is forecaster? Carl?

Karl Okay, so forecaster is, it's a decentralized social network. It's very similar to Twitter,

Karl But most of the people that I know who are on forecaster either focused on crypto or programming, there's not a lot of biotech on there. Very little.

Erum So the, the point of Claude Bot is you're basically, you have an assistant that you can control through a messaging app, instead of having to pull up an AI and this thing could be doing work for you, in the background while you're, you know, doing something else. I mean, it's basically to me, the beginning of these kind of agents that you just control with.

Karl text commands. Um,

Erum it's hard for me to understand the difference between a text command and a prompt.

Karl I don't know what the difference is either, to be honest.

Erum I was looking into different AI

Erum is it like a cloud bot can on your behalf go and book a hotel going through all the websites and have your credit card information?

Karl You [00:11:00] can have it do that if you'd like. Yeah. You can set it up to do that kind of thing.

Karl But, but then at the same time, what people are also talking a lot about is Claude Code, which is an anthropic product that allows you to code with, text prompts as opposed to having to create these big programs based on using, um, you know, computer code.

Karl And, I have been seeing people create these very hyper small, tools to solve very specific problems. So, for example, a writer I follow, Elliot Pepper created a very local surf tool for people in San Francisco. To tell you like what, um, you know, what the wave conditions are on the coast of San Francisco.

Karl There's one big company that gives you surf reports from around the world, but they're not super local. And so Elliot created this tool that was just specifically for San Francisco beaches.

Erum Cool. And then how does this relate into, uh, grow everything?

Karl Back. Well, so I started playing around with Claude Code to [00:12:00] see if we could create a bot that would be based on all the work that we've done here on Grow Everything. 'cause we've done this with Google lm, you probably can't make Google LMS public. but I wanted to create a public facing tool.

Karl And so that's what I'm doing with Claude Code. So stay tuned listeners. I'm hoping that sometime in the future that will be available to you.

Erum Yes. And then something like this could help people think about how to use biology in different ways, whether it's new ingredients, new packaging, new types of experiences

Erum And we had so many brilliant thinkers on this podcast that are doing everything from. Creating, cement, using microbes, shout out to Ginger, who I spoke to recently, um, caught up with her. She's amazing. and then people that are making textiles and dyes and perfumes and all these different things that, Could use a little bit of a reformulation, which was a topic of our previous episode. Highly recommend that with Joshua Lacer of synonym.

Erum But today we are talking about how to make specific [00:13:00] types of products, and those are consumer packaged goods products, and they are everything. Consumer packaged goods are what you find in Walmart, target, what you just buy and consume on the regular, from laundry detergent to shampoo, to cleaning supplies.

Erum It goes on. and also food. So everything that's in the in between aisles, so not the produce and meat, but everything that's in between, from snacks to drinks to candies, and. We have been doing a lot of thinking in this space. We are in the midst of our CPG series, so this is why we're having this episode.

Erum We're at the tail end of it, so not to our CPG series where we had, RD directors. Amy Trejo and JC Garcia Garcia of p and g. Before that, we had Aaron Morasco of Cargill. and the reason why we had Joshua Lac synonym on, because he has thought deeply about how to reformulate the products that we use [00:14:00] every day using biology or biomanufacturing instead of the traditional petro chemistry.

Erum And so one of the things that we were thinking is like, Hey, look, we have a lot of, deep, thinkers and business. people that are in the space of biotech, but what about those people that are building CPG products every day and not from the large companies, but from the everyday entrepreneur that thinks of like, Hey, I could create a better version of a laundry detergent, a better version of this cereal bar or snack food, and there's a huge community of people that are doing that.

Erum That's why we have today's guest on Daniel Scharf to join us. He is a founder of startup CPG. So Carl, I know you hadn't met him. I actually had met Daniel. Through my own curiosity of what was going on in the world of CPG on the startup level. And there were a couple events that were happening in New York and there was one event that was, a collaboration [00:15:00] between a few organizations.

Erum One was a podcast shout out to Women's Splain podcast, and ro, which is the banking, service. And they both collaborated to have this event where it was about, female founders in, creating consumer product goods. And one woman that I met was. Was like, oh, how did you find out about this event?

Erum And I was like, oh, the, you know, the women's playing podcast? And she's like, oh, well I found out about this through the startup CPG Slack. And I'm like, wait, what the heck is that?

Karl Yeah, wow.

Erum what's the startup? CPG Slack. I wanna know what's going on there. And then she was like, oh, well, you know, here's a link just so you know, you could sign up.

Erum And it was like three clicks. And I was in this massive community of builders that were making next Gen everyday stuff.

Erum I saw them on LinkedIn and I was like, there's this person, there's this guy Daniel who showed up everywhere wearing the same hat, the same shirt that said Startup CPG. Like really like knowing how to brand and keep that consistency. I'm like, that guy's cool. He probably knows so much about what's going on in the world of [00:16:00] startup CPG, and like, what's going on?

Erum I'm like, we need this guy to come on the podcast and talk about what's new in the world of creating consumer products and goods.

Karl Awesome. So let's let Daniel take it away.

Erum Daniel Raf, welcome to the Grow Everything podcast. We are so happy to have you on.

Daniel Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

Erum Yes, I was saying I feel like you know you're a celebrity to me because I see you on all the channels across my LinkedIn, Instagram. I also joined the startup CPG community and it's really an exciting community.

Erum I have never seen anything like it, and I'm a part of a lot of communities, so congratulations to you on

Daniel Thank you. I appreciate that. I, I feel like we are building something that is actually quite unique to any industry. I've never heard of anything quite like us across tech or just anything where we really have this do good [00:17:00] model where we just really help people and then somehow manage to make that a good business as well.

Erum Yeah. And let's get into it because I would love to know, I mean, you've worked at large CPG companies, you launched your own fast growing brand, and now of course building startup, CPG. So tell us a little bit more about the moment you realized that the bigger opportunity wasn't just creating brands, but supporting thousands of founders at.

Daniel Yeah, I don't, I mean, I don't know if I would say it was a time when I realized that was the bigger opportunity, so I dropped everything else. I think it was an evolution and just something I was always passionate about my journey. I went to business school. From there, went into management consulting, and I loved that pace of work, the variety, the importance of the problems, but also kind of got sick of.

Daniel All of those things as well, especially the pace of work. And I just wanted to do something specific instead of a little bit of everything. And I got into CPG, and I loved the industry. I worked for Mars Chocolate for three years in a global [00:18:00] role. I was traveling the world doing. Pricing and Kazakhstan and Mexico and everywhere was really cool.

Daniel And so I loved the industry. I loved product you can touch and talk about and it's fun to tell people you work there and that's a good time for me. but at the end of the day, I just didn't care as much about that particular kind of food. I would say, right, where it's just you're like, all right, what are we even doing though?

Daniel Because this is not necessarily making the world a better place, although it is fun and they're good people who work there, and the brands are fun too. So from there, I was overjoyed the day that I got hit up on LinkedIn by a recruiter for just Ag that's what I wanted, and I didn't know anything about that world.

Daniel The one that we're all in today of better for you, CPG, and all these entrepreneurs. And so I was like, yeah, better for you. That's what I wanna do. I immediately responded like, yeah, I'm in What's going on? And I moved out to sf, which was at the time the heart of what was going on in CPG and food tech.

Daniel [00:19:00] I ended up being there for five years and during that journey I just, I'm a community builder. I've always looked around at what I was learning, what I was doing and been excited to share it with other people and build community. And so I wanted to start events 'cause I'm just some guy who works at this food tech company and there are all these other exciting ones and cool founders and I didn't know any of them and I wanted to, and I started organizing events.

Daniel Those escalated very quickly. I mean, I'm a crazy ambitious person about. Honestly, anything that I do, I'm like, cool, and then we'll make it much bigger and everyone will do it. And so that's my nature. I started growing the events really substantially. Even by the fourth event, we probably had a couple hundred people there and then looked around and realized.

Daniel This is great. I'm in sf. I was calling it SF CPG. At the time, there was nothing national, but the problems are national. Yeah. The problems you have as a brand in SF are the same as a brand has in Vermont and the buyers that you're trying to get in touch with, which is really the hardest thing to do.

Daniel They're all over the place. They're not just in one [00:20:00] city. And so it was there that I realized there was the need for a national community. And I also realized there are way too many people who have their hand in your pocket when you're a brand. They're trying to get a retainer from you for some marketing, some ops, consulting, whatever.

Daniel You know the name of the can provider they need to get in touch with, so you charge 'em a retainer. Ridiculous stuff. And I just wanted to combat all of that and see what we could do to help. And I had a good job, so I never needed to charge them and just started building this huge resource if you're at Mars Chocolate and you don't know how to do something, you ask the person who had your job before you, they're still there. If you're a small company, you know, not only you don't have that person at your company, you don't even know who they are, who might know. And so I wanted to bring all of those experts to people's fingertips.

Daniel We launched the Slack, rebranded as startup, CPG, the national community, and then just looked around like, what else can we do? What's next?

Karl That's awesome. you guys have grown startup CPG into the world's largest community for [00:21:00] emerging brands. Let's say you took a step back and looked at it now as a media company.

Karl You mentioned Slack network. Events engine, what do you think it's really become, or what is it gonna become?

Daniel So somebody explained to me along the way, this is a media company, just so you know, and I thought, oh, okay. I guess I need writers and I need to have a podcast. Things that will actually sustain this.

Daniel Because in the first couple years it was fine for me just to pay outta my own pocket, support some stuff. The expenses were low, but then sponsors started getting interested. And when you. Are gonna support a business through sponsorships, which is a choice I made because I did not wanna charge a membership fee for this.

Daniel Then you have to have something that's gonna work well for them. You need vehicles. We really pride ourselves, especially on educational content. And you know, the one funny thing I think is if you ask the brands in our community we care so much about them, and we are very dear to them also just because of all the value we give them.

Daniel And if you talk to 'em about like, how do you think they make money, they're like, [00:22:00] I don't, I guess, I don't know. So we like are very clear, like, these are our sponsors, but they show up so organically with us. We'll. Take one of our expert partners and do a really great educational webinar with them.

Daniel And so the content is so good. Or we'll do a giveaway where someone's gonna get a bunch of services from them for free and it works out great for everybody. so that is why it really needed to grow as a media company. It also gives us the platform to feature all of the brands. so. When there's a brand that we love, we have a big platform to feature them on the podcast through our award programs.

Daniel We can write articles about them and buyers are paying attention and investors they're watching my LinkedIn, our LinkedIn, our Slack, our emails, and I would say all of that and our relationships with all of the key people in the industry are what give us this special power, I think, to really help elevate brands.

Erum Yeah, I will say that it's super impressive what you built. you're attracting all these people to be a part of the community, but you did in such a way that's very automated. 'cause I'm a member of the [00:23:00] community now and it was really easy for me to join and participate. And there's so many different opportunities when it comes to where you wanna participate when it comes to CPG,

Erum so it's been an incredible experience from a member point of view, and you talked about your awards, the shelf award, which is really cool.

Erum I love the name. and then there's just so many brands that are part of it. So you, you've seen them all, I'm sure you've seen their pitch decks the way they launch and scale. Can you tell us a little bit more about some patterns you've seen, whether it's a failure pattern that you just want. Founders to understand, don't do this.

Erum Or something you've seen that's, successful and you're like, oh gosh, I just hope that all founders do this. And I know it's not an easy, you know, catchall, but some insights are great.

Daniel For sure. I have a, yeah, I have a bunch of things that I can say. Having watched this for a long time now, I actually was just looking at a picture of our first pitch box, which in 2020.

Daniel With the pandemic, all the retailers started [00:24:00] delaying the reviews. And so brands that had started up ambitiously had all this excess inventory because they were planning on getting on shelf and the retailers stopped taking new brands. And so we did this pitch box. We like, Hey, we'll try to help you. And we put together this beautiful box and sent it out to all the retailers and investors that we knew.

Daniel And I just looked back at a picture of that from June of 2020, and I think it was maybe. 12 to 15 brands, I don't know, but I think only two of or three of them are still around. And it's a harsh reality. Honestly. Only let's say 20, 25% are really gonna last that long of a period. And even fewer are gonna get to 10 million in revenue, 50 million in revenue, whatever it is.

Daniel And so. yeah, I think it's hard to come up with an exact formula for these things, but I can definitely give you a few observations about things that definitely will sink you. Yeah. And things that probably will help. you know, I think one thing that definitely will sink you is not having a strategy. People

Daniel will launch and it's okay [00:25:00] to not know anything about CPG when you start, but be resourceful and look at what is out there and understand, am I trying to grow this in my own backyard? Am I trying to grow it in the natural channel? Am I trying to grow it in a specific region that really resonates with my product?

Daniel Because if you don't do that, you will work as hard as you want to and spin your wheels without it actually going in a specific direction. so I think that one, and I think also sometimes just not knowing when it isn't working. Yeah. I unfortunately will get this from brands.but somebody came up to me at one of our events.

Daniel Two weeks ago at Winter Fancy, and they said, Hey, do you know any investors who would look at this product? And I've seen this product for a couple years now and it's in a particular category that already kind of peaked and now is definitely on the way out. And I said, okay. I mean, yeah, this is not a great category to be in right now.

Daniel What's your retail traction like? [00:26:00] Maybe there's some excellent point of like, oh, this category's not good, but I'm good and this person said I'm in 10 stores, and I said, it's a couple years and you're in 10 stores. Like, yeah, well, I, you know, I'm having trouble getting them to take me. I don't know. A really nice way to just crush their dream, be like this is not working.

Daniel Just so you know, if you're only in 10 stores, it's been a couple years, there's a very bad product category to be in now. No one's looking to grow in this area. Consumers are not interested in it. You could pivot and you might hit on something that is actually hot. Otherwise, I just hate the idea of them.

Daniel Just working on that for the next couple years. Yeah, absolutely. Just, you know, shooting blanks like this is not gonna work. And I know that there are not so many things I know with such certainty as that. So I think just really, if you're really grinding and there's just no sign of light, that it doesn't even have to be that you're just only getting in 10 stores.

Daniel It could be you're stuck at like a hundred, 200, 300 stores, but the velocity is not where you need it to be. People are not [00:27:00] seeing the growth from your brand. There may be a pivot out there. That could actually get you back on track or unlock something magical. I have seen some really smart entrepreneurs find that crease to be in.

Karl Yeah. And what about on the success side, besides pivots?

Daniel Yeah, I don't think there's any one thing, but I can tell you the people that I see be the most successful are very. Scrappy founders who are giving it all, and they're resourceful and they know how to build their network and use that network, and they are just out there doing it.

Daniel There's no question about whether this is something they want to do as a lifestyle or because they think it's cool to be a founder. You cannot stop them from pounding the pavement, including going and pitching individual stores and then demoing in those stores, and then using that to then get into a distributor and then figuring out which other stores that distributor delivers to.

Daniel Really knowing how to play that one lily pad to the next game with just ferocious [00:28:00] intensity. And then. I would also say knowing how to big up your skillset as you grow. Because the same person that needs to go and actually deliver the product and demo in the store is the same person a couple years later when they grow, who needs to spend their day living in the data and making decisions about what kind of promotions they should run.

Daniel So yeah, I think a really flexible skillset. And just high horsepower, which doesn't mean they need to be a Mensa, I am member like Genius iq, but they really need to know how to look at the business and just be so tenacious about it and have an absurd desire to succeed.

Karl you are exposed to a lot of brands.

Karl You see a lot of these companies. Can you mention any that stand out to you and why? What makes their products different from anything else that's out there?

Daniel Yeah, I mean, maybe I won't go into any specific products themselves, but I will say there are a couple. [00:29:00] We see everything from the early stage because of the value that we deliver to the community.

Daniel We grow very fast. All of the early stage brands will run around and tell each other to join. We have all these programs helping connect them to retailers for free. So I see pretty much everything I will say. My least favorite thing to see is just yet another copycat of something that has been successful a few years earlier, which means a year or two ago, I would say it was everybody trying to launch a chili crisp because of the success that fly by Jing had.

Daniel Right now, I just see a lot of lazy. Sodas coming you're going right into the fray. Like you think you can come on with a really nice follow on product, but everybody's doing it and the big companies are doing it, and that space got so crowded so quickly. So those are kind of my least favorite things.

Daniel The things that I get really excited about are when it's a product that's so innovative, I never really would've even understood that we all needed that innovation, and it came about because. It was a product born out of the [00:30:00] needs of that founder. Yeah. They didn't do a data analysis to figure out where the white space was in the market and then create a product.

Daniel They are a runner, and they realized that this kind of a product that they need mid run doesn't exist in any real format. And so they created that and then, oh, what it looks like actually everybody else in their run club needs that product too. And it really starts resonating. that's a great way to find innovation and grow it that you wouldn't necessarily expect.

Daniel I've seen lots of great products in less innovative spaces like dairy, like Frozen, coming out. Sometimes they touch on some of these trends that we're seeing a lot like protein, fiber, whatever those are. Mm-hmm. But probably more by happenstance than just intentionally trying to hit the trend on the head.

Daniel 'cause that's a dangerous game to play also.

Erum And you kind of touched on this, and perhaps you wanna elaborate on more or we can move on to the next question, but you, you were saying that the sodas category is just, [00:31:00] there's too much going on there. and I would like to just say, like I, the other day I saw, the Ben Stiller Soda Stillers and I was like, oh, this is interesting.

Erum And I had enough. I'm a big fan of Poppy and so I'm happy for all of their success and that they. Put out a consistent product, especially since they're using some ingredients like, raspberry juice, which I think could be a very challenging juice to keep consistent. but are there others could just, like you mentioned the running club, but can you share a little bit more about like categories that you're excited about besides the sodas, other ones that you think should probably be sunset?

Daniel Yeah. I mean, and it, look, someone's gonna win the soda game. I guess who knows? I, the, just the celebrity influence space is very crowded as well. Yeah. But it seems at least like with Stillers, that he's gonna be pretty involved, which is also what it takes. I mean, he is put his name front and center on it and, so I think, we'll see with that one.

Daniel But yeah, I mean, I'm also, I just have seen so many brands trying [00:32:00] to do the kind of. Ification approach where they're trying to be the poppy of right. And going with branding and packaging and taste profiles that look like that, that also is kind of dangerous to me because that's a unique moment in time.

Daniel And, it's a lot of brands I think that maybe had unique stuff could fall flat just by chasing a similar kind of market opportunity. honestly, like I don't really get into so much specific categories that I think are. Hot for investment, anything like that. I'm much more interested on the business side about what are the things that people are doing to grow in a really effective way.

Daniel Yeah. Because I, I really believe you can be successful in any category, even like hot sauce, which for me historically has been the one where I'm like, stay out of hot sauce. You know how many fricking hot sauce samples we get? There's absolutely no moat. Like you can get. sticker Mule to custom make you some hot sauce, whatever.

Daniel It's just like All branding, the bottles look so similar. Yeah, but someone's gonna win that game.

Daniel [00:33:00] So like, the thing, you can win any category. It's really gonna come down to the founder and the execution and the branding and all of that. but. I don't know. I mean, I think overall anyone will tell you this, like the things that are gonna make a product successful are gonna be in this order.

Daniel Number one, great branding and packaging. Yeah. And number two, taste. And you know, if you nail those two things, I really think you could be competitive anywhere as long as you know how to then communicate those things to people.

Karl Yeah. It's interesting that you bring a sticker meal. when you order from them, they send you their own hot sauce.

Karl you know, in a bottle that's a sticker meal on it. It's not very good, by the way, but, and I

Daniel also hate that they do that.

Karl Yeah, I do too.

Karl But you know what? They must make enough money and, it does something for their brand. So, you know, I tip my hat to them for that. So we, at this podcast we focus on how biotechnology and biology. is transforming [00:34:00] industry. So we see a lot of biology driven claims in CPG.

Karl Things like gut health, functional ingredients. Where do you see biology genuinely improving products and where do you see the risk of it just becoming, you know, marketing language?

Daniel Friends. I am not a biology expert. I don't even think I could define it for you. If you talk to my biology teacher from eighth grade, she would tell you, I'm the last person that should be talking about biology.

Daniel I don't know a lot about science. I can also list all the other things I don't know a lot about. It includes geography, history. But what I do know I think more about is I. So Poppy, for example, like there is a health claim on there. Right? I personally don't believe that's why people drink it. I think it's a good tasting soda that is low calorie, and I think it's, to me, it seems like it's not filled with a bunch of artificial stuff and some of those flavors hit.

Daniel I love the orange it [00:35:00] tastes. Like a Fanta is good.

Erum Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel The

Erum rose, I like the rose

Daniel so good. And it's not, it's not as embarrassing as this Dr. Pepper Zero that I'm drinking right now. But I still love, 'cause I'm, I love the nostalgic flavors. I have really basic taste buds. I love that kind of stuff. And so I.

Daniel For me, but you know, I don't know a lot about the history of that brand and who the early adopters were, and maybe it was really key to get some of the early influential people drinking it because it gave them that kind of a permission, having a health halo around it. I personally don't know a single person who drinks Poppy because of.

Daniel The gut health? I mean, how much are you even gonna get through a beverage? You know, like, so I personally don't care as much about the claims on some things like that. I care a lot more honestly, about the taste. But I believe that biology also can be very helpful on taste, profile of products and like really interesting food tech.

Daniel The company that I used to work for, just Egg there, there's so much science that goes into those products and [00:36:00] they're. They're frozen plant-based folded patty. It's amazing. It's incredible, especially if you have an egg allergy and you put it in the toaster like a Pop-Tart, and it's a great source of protein and it really is a pretty clean ingredient deck.

Daniel And so I. I know the food scientists who would work on it and I see their processes and just, they're, very deep on the science around it and it's really impressive. And I know there are a lot of companies like that. There are also a lot of companies that more just start with like, Hey, I wanna do this.

Daniel And they go hire a formulator or hire a coman, and the product kind of dumps out. And then there are a lot of products that don't require that level of science or biology that are probably more marketing and taste profile and flavor driven. So. There are certainly brands out there that have done well, I would say using.

Daniel More science. there are also plenty of brands that have gone deep on science and raised more money that than the three of us will ever see in our lives and spent it all very quickly and [00:37:00] in some cases irresponsibly, I would say.

Erum Yeah, no, that's true. yeah, so many stories of that. That's for another podcast, and we have talked about people raising way too much money and unfortunately not able to deliver on time.

Daniel Yes. I would like to get the marketers from those companies on for a podcast about what is the worst thing you spent money on? And you can start with 10 different things.

Karl Right,

Erum right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be really good. it's about taste. It's about going out there and talking to customers and having them just decide.

Erum by themselves, right? You can make as many claims as you want, but they can just, they like the product. And one of the things I've observed about Sar CPG community, that there are a lot of live events. There's three chapters and a lot of buyer facing conversations.

Erum Why do you think in-person connections still matters so much in a digital first CPG world?

Daniel In person has and always will be the most effective way to get in front of people. there's no replacement for that. I mean, [00:38:00] you know, how many LinkedIn messages do you get a day from random people? Any one of them.

Daniel If you meet them in the right setting, you're much more likely to listen to them for a second. Maybe there's something about. The confidence that they have, the look that they give you, the materials they have, that makes you pay attention in a different way. that is true for anybody, for brands, whoever, there's nothing like the chance to talk to 'em and they may not be interested.

Daniel But if they are, then you can also accelerate the conversation in person. Much faster, I would say as well. oh, by the way, I also wanted to mention, because we hit that biology touchpoint, we, by the time this podcast launches, we'll have launched our product developer formulator directory. Oh, wow. And this is one thing that we've created for the community.

Daniel I expect your listeners are gonna be interested to know that many of whom may be formulators. the reason that we did this is, I mean, really it's based, comes from my time at Just Egg, where I just, I know the formulators who are there and the food scientists and the deep skill sets that they have.

Daniel And a lot of them at their freelancers, they do whatever. And [00:39:00] we always get questions in our Slack channel that's, does anyone know somebody who can make a protein bar or can do a beverage, whatever? and our Slack channel's. Great. We have 35,000 people in there today. And maybe someone is like, yeah, I know someone, but it's still suboptimal.

Daniel And we actually just want a full database of everybody and includes their skill sets and what clients that they worked with and even where they're located. Because if I could find that person and they were in my city, oh, I want to go do this in person and then maybe they can come with me to the Coman as well.

Daniel So, it's free to sign up 'cause our whole mission is just to help the brands find the right partner. So anybody can go to our website or our Slack channel if they wanna. Be part of that database so that brands can find them. But back to the in-person stuff, we're even gonna start building community around people like that.

Daniel We're doing a dinner at Expo West for product formulators, with one of our sponsors that I'm really excited about. And, yeah, I mean, it, it just, I guess going back to pandemic, like pandemic started. There were no in-person events. We did what we could [00:40:00] do digitally. Yeah. We helped brands to get in touch with retailers online.

Daniel Then the world started coming back and everybody really started shifting back towards in-person events, and so did we. We started launching our first events at Expo and in all the different cities around the country where we had already built up a critical mass online. But more and more we are just realizing that the key for us is these in-person.

Daniel Events that we can do because there's plenty that can happen online, but honestly, the retailers don't even have the. Attention for it. So many of these submissions that I, I don't know, they all have formal processes. the way to discover innovation is not really on your computer.

Daniel It's holding and touching things and talking to people and thinking about things in a new way, in the right environment. And so. We do great stuff online. We'll have campaigns sourcing for great people, but they almost always have an in-person component to them. They're gonna involve samples. I mean, a lot of what we do is food and beverage.

Daniel You need to taste the stuff and really [00:41:00] experience it. 'cause almost all of that business is not done online. It's done in retail where that is kind of the point of it. So we have really. Amplified our in-person events. Last year we did, I don't know, 75 or a hundred in-person events, and the best ones are all, they're this grocery run series that we created last year grocery run.

Daniel The whole concept is we are gonna do an event. With retailers in the local market, and if you come to it, you will get to talk to them. So we do some that are specific to retailers. We did goPuff and Whole Foods and Sprouts, all of these different great top tier retailers and people. Could apply to sample, we usually would've the retailer then select the brands to sample.

Daniel 'cause we want them to pick ones who are, have the best likelihood of getting in with them. We want the most deals to happen. Sometimes it's a pitch slam format where really the retailer will pick the finalist and other times anyone can just get a ticket and come and you know, you should bring your products with you and try to grab the buyer as they're walking around.

Daniel That's what I would do. And then we have some that are citywide. So [00:42:00] we're about to do our first Hawaii grocery run. I've got every single Hawaii buyer of influence coming for this one big day of sampling at a distributor's warehouse. We're doing that in San Francisco for the second time in April.

Daniel Also in April in Chicago. We've got every Chicago buyer coming, and it's a really wonderful grassroots. Show feeling to it. We've got, let's say 70 brands bringing a tabletop, and we don't need them to have a huge booth. We don't even want that. We just want to sandwich as many brands in there as possible, and it really feels like the kind of place you would discover some innovation.

Daniel And then we'll do our work. Just making sure all of the key people. Who can change your life are there in the room? Retailers, distributors, and so much happens with these in-person events. The other thing we really try to do is around all the major trade shows, we gather all these retailers and we have a list of 1,500 of them that we have close relationships with, and we offer them to set up and take a one-on-one meeting at our booth.

Daniel The brands can all apply for [00:43:00] this. There's a big free thing that we do. We just really want these connections to happen. So at Fancy Foods recently, the winter show we had. I think 1,500 applications for these meetings. We ended up having over 200 one-on-one meetings happen at our booth with 20 or 25 different really prominent retailers.

Daniel and these are great local ones. Even if you're like here in New York City, happier grocery takes them, which is just. Everybody's crazy about Happier Grocery now. It's such a big deal that they do it with us, to regional retailers like Ray's that is so hot on product innovation these days. Even CVS took meetings there.

Daniel We have, KeHE and UNFI take meetings. Everybody is there and they get a list of 150 brands that are really interested to work with them and they can pick five to meet with at our booth for five or 10 minutes. And we time it, we're very, regimented about that. And then I can't even tell you how many deals happened because of these in-person.

Daniel Things that we've arranged. We have a channel on our Slack for my team that's just [00:44:00] called Only Hits, and we just post every single win that we heard about happening because of one of our events. And it's just full, just hit after hit. And it is the in-person component that is making all of that stuff happen.

Daniel The magic of a well curated good experience where the energy and vibes are good, it's the right conditions for discovery, and we have great brands getting time with the retailers. Magic happens.

Karl That's amazing. that is just such an amazing story and platform. So I think anybody in our space who's listening to this, who's building CPG brands needs to absolutely leverage what you guys are doing.

Karl But let's talk about the podcast. You've got this, top CPG podcast globally. and you, you've mentioned a bunch of things that you do. So you switch from interviewer to operator to community leader. How has the podcast changed your thinking around storytelling and trust in the CPG industry?

Daniel Well, first of all, I'll say it's nice to be an interviewee since I'm usually the [00:45:00] interviewer. It's nice to be here with you guys today. Yes, thank you. Just, hey, I didn't have to do any prep creating questions, so it's nice to be in this seat for once. Um, yeah, the podcast I mentioned before, basically we created this as a platform.

Daniel We like, we need this big platform to be able to feature brands, to be able to educate brands. and as we have grown and the podcast has grown, we've also realized. New and different kinds of content that we can deliver to keep serving our audience really well. And so we used to just have one episode a week, and it would be on a variety of topics.

Daniel Then we launched another series, which is Founder Fridays, every Friday our editor, Caitlyn will drop an episode with a brand from our community, and we do it because people. Love hearing these stories of brands that are especially in the thick of a startup experience, talking about their brand, how it's going, what are the things that they're learning.

Daniel It's great insight for other brands who are on that learning journey as well, [00:46:00] but also for everybody else so that they can truly empathize with and understand the journey that we're on. and then we have also now added a third. Episode every week. Our, content correspondent Hannah does all of the investor and operations focused episodes, and we are on a tear right now of just we, so we did this event back in December.

Daniel It's called Founders and Funders. This is the biggest investor event that's ever happened in early stage CPG. We identified the top. 70 most active early stage VCs, writing checks for pre-seed and seed and Series A. We got them all to come to this event where we had the top 160 brands of the year and that was competitive to get a spot.

Daniel 'cause we, you know, we don't charge a lot for it. We just want the best brands there that are most likely to get deals from these investors. A really beautiful day. We had 600 meetings happen. We had one room with. 30 tables and every 10 minutes a bell would ring and everyone would have to run out 'cause the next group was coming in.

Daniel And that just so much action. I've already heard [00:47:00] about a lot of checks getting written because of it. and so. Doing that event and the prep, we really understood who are the most active VCs out there. And you can see a list of them on our website. 'cause we have a top investor list with also instructions on how to get in touch with them if they have a preferred method of contact.

Daniel But then we also, it's just so much better when you reach out to someone if you have some context and know how to reach out to them. Like if I'm reaching out to a buyer, hopefully I know something about their stores. Even better. I've been into one of their stores and seen. Set and can talk to 'em about where my product should go.

Daniel The same is true about investors. And so we deliver so many interviews with investors now so the brands have more context and whether they wanna listen to the whole episode or just chat GPT it and find out some of the key takeaways they can weave into their pitch. We love that 'cause we just want the stuff to happen.

Daniel and we are also launching a very exciting new podcast series that, which will be focused actually on. Product developers. It's a new series that we'll have called r and d radio that really focuses more [00:48:00] on the science side of the business. so our host, who is a product developer as well, will be able to get some of that knowledge out there in a way that's interesting for the mass audience, I would say, because all of the content is designed for early stage founders who wouldn't be experts on things like water activity, but they will want to know some of the tricks of the trade and ways to work.

Daniel Better with these experts as well.

Karl Very cool.

Daniel So back to your question, I don't know how podcasting has changed my view of the world, but I will say I love growing this platform. We were really excited recently, the podcast became a top 150 world entrepreneurship podcast, which for a niche podcast is amazing 'cause there are That is amazing.

Daniel Only two or three others in there. That's It's a podcast about an industry. The rest are like. You know, you can do it, creating your wealth strategy or rise on up, you know, things that are just like any consumer things. But ours is a B2B podcast for a niche industry, and all we do every day is try to make it really valuable for our audience, and it's [00:49:00] really exciting that it's caught on so much.

Erum Yeah, I mean's, I mean, pulling all the resources and making it easier. For, CPG startups to get started and know where to look. Yeah, and I think that's really important, and I'm sure we have a lot of guests for your new r and d podcast because we know a lot of formulators and so they can, you know, talk the talk.

Daniel we love it. We will be sourcing those from our database of yes product developers. So they should definitely apply there. The other thing I'll say about the podcast,

Erum yeah,

Daniel my dad taught me this thing when I was young 'cause he, he created an institute for his. Industry as well, and he was like, you know how you can get somebody.

Daniel To attend one of your events is feature them. Oh, that's really interesting. Yeah. it's actually really so helpful for us to have such a powerful platform that the buyers want to be on and the investors want to be on because it has the scale that it has now. So I can't tell you, I mean, now I know all these investors and have become friends with all these buyers because.

Daniel [00:50:00] It was something that they would say yes to. And then I had the chance to spend an hour with them doing the podcast and really learning about them. And it is very interesting to me. I mean, if you ever listen to my podcast, you can tell like I, these are just conversations that I want to have and my questions are natural questions 'cause I'm a curious person.

Daniel And so it's fun, but then you have a bond because you've done this with them and that. Thing lives forever and it's out there. And then fortunately for our community, it also makes it way more likely they're gonna say yes to the other things that we invite them to, like taking meetings at our booth or coming, just being at our events where they can experience brands.

Daniel So I'm sure you guys have found that as well. For example, now we're friends.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait. Are you based in New York, by the way? Or where you based?

Daniel New York City, west Village represents.

Erum Yeah, we're in Brooklyn, so we're, we're all neighbors. It's great.

Daniel Alright.

Karl Enjoying the snow.

Erum yeah. So then, I would love to learn a little bit more about the fundraising component, right? one of the things we talk about in our world and we touch on a little bit [00:51:00] is there's always that, venture capital model where you just raise seed series A, there's that one model, but there's other ways to finance and.

Erum I would just love to know from your perspective, what is the fundraising environment like? You know, you mentioned that there's been some deals at your, you know, event that happened. But is it looking like there are a lot of CPG investors that are looking for product, or are they slowing down? Tell us a little bit more about what you're seeing.

Daniel Okay. When I started the Founders and Funders last year, I'd say beginning of last year, I was so down on the fundraising environment. I would just tell anyone who asked, it's so bad, it's never been this bad, and you need to figure out other things that you can do, which I think is still a good idea to be scrappy and have all of the other ways, but.

Daniel Once we started this exercise of like, alright, I'm gonna build this one database. To at least identify who is pretty active. And when we started doing that, we actually uncovered so many very active early stage investors. I really think that they're coming back around. I also think that there is a [00:52:00] flurry of m and a activity that has happened lately.

Daniel You know about some of them, poppy Ste. There are a lot more happening right now. Good, crisp, just five others that I've heard about in the last couple weeks even. And it has a huge trickle on effect because. When the big CPGs buy something and it's a decent valuation, then the PE guys are more likely to take swings at stuff, and then the venture guys who are later stage are more likely to invest in stuff.

Daniel And then the early venture guys will invest in more stuff because they all see the potential for exit once it gets to the next tier. So it is really exciting. You can see. Activity heating up much more investment happening these days. So I think valuations are getting back to a point that would be more fair.

Daniel 'cause I heard about some really disgusting ones. I would say like two, three years ago. People just selling their soul way too cheaply. And I would say I'm in general very hopeful about the fundraising environment, but I still don't think that that is necessarily the path for [00:53:00] everybody. I would say it's a good path for you if If you have a product that you want to grow very quickly and you're determined to do that, and you don't have any qualms about getting on the fundraising hamster wheel where you're gonna raise some money, and then you need to work so hard to deliver for them. And that growth is gonna also necessitate you fundraising again soon, and you are going to spend, let's say, at least a quarter of your whole time as a founder fundraising.

Daniel Great. Does that sound fun to you? It really might. If it does, great, go fundraise, go for it. Get a big arsenal of money and go and deploy it and shoot your shot. Yeah. And I hope you spend the money really wisely and it grows your business and then maybe you'll ramp up to a sale. I think it's funny 'cause I think a lot of people don't really like to talk about the exit scenarios at the beginning.

Daniel Like, no, I'm not just trying to like grow this and sell it. Everybody is trying to sell at some point. Very, very, very, very [00:54:00] few, like you can count on one or two hands. The people who never sold their business, they just stayed private forever and just grew like crazy, but. That's okay. Like it, you know, just good to understand really what is the path that you're trying to go for.

Daniel I personally, you know, I'm not a, an independently wealthy whatever person who just like has all the money in the bank I don't know if I just was like a second time found or just had all this money I would. Probably just try to go it with my own stack of cash or whatever. Just 'cause I like the independence part of it and not really owing people things.

Daniel But you know, if you're an early stage founder, that may not be an option. You may not have money saved up, I like the side hustle approach also, where you just do it on the side when you're doing something else. 'cause then you have an income, which means you have money to pay for the things that you're gonna need and you shouldn't skimp on like branding and inventory.

Daniel So I believe in those kind of approaches. I also think that there is a way that you can try to grow your [00:55:00] business in a scrappy way before you raise money. So you, at least when you sell 10% of your company, it's a much bigger amount that you get for that, and that'll last you longer. So that at the end of the day when you sell your company, you still own a good chunk of it and not a small percentage where you would have to even have a really ridiculous valuation to come away with a meaningful amount of money for you.

Daniel So I like the stories of, hey. I did this when I had another job and I workshop the branding for a year or two until we really found product market fit and I. Use some of my own savings and income from my other job to pay for that stuff. And then the next year we managed to get up to a million in revenue because we used non-dilutive financing where we were paying terms on it.

Daniel But we did that to fund the inventory and the purchase orders that we were getting got up to a million, maybe 2 million. We're almost even getting to the point where we're profitable and now we're gonna do a big raise. We have great velocity numbers to show to the investors. That's amazing. You get to that and like you have a really solid [00:56:00] story to raise at, you know, a 10.

Daniel 15, 20 million valuation, whatever it is, so that when you sell 10% of the company, you're walking out, you know, maybe you have 2 million bucks to then go and that'll give you hopefully, you know, a year, two, three years burn, right? Where you can, otherwise you sell 10% at the beginning of that journey, you're probably at like, I don't know, maybe a two, 3 million valuation and you got 300 K.

Daniel And I'm like, what's that gonna do for you? Yeah. You know, that's just gonna like bide you over to start fundraising again. So I like when people can delay. That whole process and it will give you a much more meaningful outcome, which I wish for everybody to have. Many cases it won't, but even if it doesn't, at least you're then not an uninvestible business.

Daniel 'cause you raised this money early on and now you're not able to get the growth that you need and who's gonna invest in a business that already raised a bunch money and doesn't have growth.

Karl Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Erum What a playbook. Thanks. Yeah. What a playbook. That's one playbook.

Daniel It's good one. I know it's a playbook, but it's definitely, I don't [00:57:00] know, I just, I like it's, I, I definitely see people who just end up face down in the dirt because of how they went around fundraising, so,

Speaker yeah,

Karl totally.

Karl I, we've seen it. Yeah. I mean, when we think about where CPG is gonna be in 10 years, and you think about the work that you guys are doing now. What do you hope, startup CPG helped unlock for founders and the broader, food and beverage ecosystem?

Daniel I, I guess it's pretty simple. I wanna save them money and time and increase their chance of being successful.

Daniel We wanna bring them these crazy opportunities that they would never have or that they would have to pay a lot of money for because only. People who have big brokers or big bank accounts could get these kind of things. We like to democratize all of that and break through barriers. We honestly just look around like, what do you guys have to pay for now?

Daniel Could we do that for free? That is a lot of our process around creating our new resources and services. I really believe that there are great service [00:58:00] providers out there as well, but I want them to demonstrate the value and not just get a retainer from someone. 'cause they know the name of the person that they probably need to talk to, but because they know their stuff.

Daniel And so that is what happens in the Slack channel, is you ask a question. Service providers are not allowed to advertise there. The only advertising that they can do is by answering questions. So if they really know the answer and show that, like, okay, maybe this person. Has got something and there's more value in it for me.

Daniel So I not only hope that we can do this directly for brands, bringing them unreal value for free. We only ever charge for events 'cause we have to, but it's not a lot.

Daniel I want to have this huge impact helping all these brands. The thing that is exciting to me is helping people.

Daniel Honestly, I could be doing this in any industry, it's just, I like the early stage. 'cause that's when you're closest to the founders and the people who it matters most to that you're helping. So honestly, makes me so excited when I hear about the wins that we helped get. We wanna lead the league in assists.

Daniel Mm-hmm. That's the thing that we track. We just want to, [00:59:00] we wanna be the John Stockton assist leader of CPG and doing it all for free. And it's so much fun and it's really pure because the brands, they really celebrate it, the wins that they get through us because you know, it's not like. they don't do that with like their brokers for example.

Daniel 'cause they pay their brokers a lot of money to get those ones. Like they better, but they do with us 'cause so much fun 'cause we, we like help 'em for free. Great. Like, okay, if you don't get it, you can have your money back. Which is nothing because you know, it's free help. But we really have honed it to be so valuable for them.

Daniel one brand told me we got them 63% of their retail doors was through opportunities with us, which are free. that's what I love and that we can keep doing. But also. In our industry, I hope we really influence other people to reorient, to have services that are friendlier to brands that really consider them and try to help 'em succeed.

Daniel Less predatory, I would say, and I've seen us having that impact. I also. Feel like even outside of our industry, I hope that other people will consider [01:00:00] models like these. I hope somebody does a startup, CPG for other industries that is just flipping the script. 'cause I feel like when I started, I just would go to these trade shows and stuff and just see like, gosh, it's so hard on these brands and people charge 'em.

Daniel So much money to do all this stuff and like, I feel like we could flip this model. Mm-hmm. We're actually, we're just trying to help them so much and feature them and we'll get everyone else to be a sponsor. Alright, let's go. So that's the model that. I really personally care about, I think because of the journey that I've had, and by the way, I hope other people start a startup, CBG for service providers and you know, I like it.

Daniel Everybody can use some help. This is the particular way that I've tried to help people because it's the journey that I've been on and the thing that's really meaningful to me, but. I will be excited to see other people replicate this. Do good, do well model where you just figure out who you want to help and you put your head down and you help them and you have the expertise and resources to do it.

Daniel And then it turns out you can have a good business too, by doing that.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. I love it. It's a [01:01:00] great model. I mean, startup buy, it's what I'm thinking. And just again, from a platform point of view, it's remarkable what you've built with your team and very impressive. so for those that wanna check it out, that are building in CPG.

Erum Star, CPG is the one for you. Join experience, have a good time. And especially if you're in New York, I mean, you'll see me Daniel's here though. It sounds like you're traveling all over now for all your other events. Hawaii. Yeah. That's awesome. It's really cool. okay, so now this is a part of the episode where we're gonna have a quick fire question.

Erum So. I'm gonna ask you a series of questions, just answer really quick. One or two words, maybe a sentence. let's go. Ready?

Daniel All right. Let's do it.

Erum All right. Okay. The most underrated skill for A CPG founder?

Daniel I think resourcefulness, because the answer is out there a lot of times. if you don't think about who you could ask or what. Assets you already have that you could leverage. I feel like knowing where all of that stuff is and how [01:02:00] to activate your fan base in really interesting ways, that is a huge skillset that it can help you get things done.

Karl Totally nice. what's one piece of advice founders hate hearing but absolutely must hear?

Erum That's a good one. I think sometimes could be abstract for people, but you just have to have a whole plan laid out and try.

Erum So I love that one. okay, the last CPG product you bought that made you text someone about it.

Daniel Well, I, someone just sent me one this weekend. That was super good. There's a blind tiger. New skew. Blind tiger. Makes non-A, cocktails, which are good. I don't, I typically, honestly, I don't drink a lot of non ALK cocktails.

Daniel 'cause for me, like a lot of them have a lot of calories. I'm like, I don't know if I'm either. I'll, like, maybe I'll just have a soda if I'm not gonna be drinking or I'll have a real drink. but this one's. So good. The Blind Tiger new one. It's a grapefruit fizz. it's, it's sort of, it's Paloma inspired.

Daniel The branding is beautiful Art Deco Miami vibes on [01:03:00] it, and the taste is so grapefruit fresh, tart forward. And it's carbonated, it's lovely. And it's only 30 calories. That's the big thing. It's four grams of added sugar, which is very low for a drink in that space. and so I really like this new skew from her because her other ones actually were higher calorie, which it's just not a choice I would make.

Daniel I wouldn't be drinking a high calorie drink even at a party like that, you know, unless it Does something for me like alcohol. but it's, really good.

Karl I'm gonna look for that. Okay. Launch strategy. Slow build or Big Bang. And why?

Daniel I mean, if you got the cash you do you, I mean there are plenty of people who are like, you know, you take a brand like Stillers, they got the cash, they got the moment, the influencer.

Daniel They're gonna go for it and they're gonna go everywhere all at once. They're gonna hit every distributor, retailer and try to, they, I think they already launched Target, so that's great if you got the money, if you don't have the money, then don't do that. You'll lose all your money very fast. So I think you [01:04:00] just look at your budget, look at your goals, figure out your strategy and stick to it.

Daniel But be a little flexible 'cause stuff will come up that you weren't expecting and you might reorient your strategy to capitalize on it.

Erum Nice. Nice. Great advice. Okay. the grocery aisle you always walk and then one you always skip.

Daniel I will always walk beverage because I was a beverage CEO. so from 2021 to 2023, I was a CEO for beverage company.

Daniel I got to do it from scratch. So I've spent so much time looking around the set and trying the different products and seeing what I think works, what I think is a bad product, all this kind of stuff. And so. That's just the best lens. That's the category that I know the most about. And so it's always how I'll evaluate a retailer and understand their approach to innovation and see what brands are doing a good job.

Daniel And I miss it. I miss being a founder of a brand also, so it makes me feel like I'm a little back in the game.

Erum Nice. And then one that you skip.

Daniel Well, I mean in the grocery, any, anything that's not CPGI honestly don't care [01:05:00] that much about these days, so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time in produce or in meat or bread, stuff like that.

Daniel Although I do buy those products for my home and I enjoy them. I don't think about the branding as much more just whether it's organic or not, something like that.

Karl Okay. And last question, CPG category. You can't wait to see. Transformed by biotech.

Daniel I think every, I mean, gosh, at Just Egg, you know, they also are doing the. Lab grown meat, the cultivated meat, whatever you wanna call it these days. and I don't, we'll see what happens in that world. I think that's the most interesting one to me. And you know, the question was always, can it actually be done at scale?

Daniel Because of the, the cost of it. And I think it just still is way too early to tell on that, where still so many orders of magnitude away from where it would need to get to. And I don't know, I also kind of feel like if you put Elon Musk on that kind of a problem, he would figure it out of eventually, like, forget whether you support him [01:06:00] politically or not.

Daniel Mm-hmm. He just has a way of figuring out impossible things. So I don't know, I, it sort of feels like it could be done, but will someone get it done? I don't know. I guess we'll see. Maybe one of you out there listening will do it.

Erum Daniel, thank you so much for joining the Grow Everything podcast. We appreciate having you on. We'll have to have you back on

Daniel such a great, was a

Karl great interview. Thanks for the time.

Daniel Thank you guys. Everyone sign up, startup cbg.com. It's free.

Daniel Thank you guys.

Erum Yay.

Karl Have a great one. Bye.

Erum See ya all.

Daniel Bye guys.

Erum So, Carl, what'd you think of that episode?

Karl you know, I was super impressed by Daniel and his journey, and I'm super glad to expose our community to him because so many of the people that we talked to that are working with biology, are working on CPG products, and they may not be aware of the fact that startup CPG exists and now they know.

Karl What did you think Iran?

Erum Yeah, I just love Daniel's approach and his, like you were saying, his journey. he worked at Mars and he created a CPG product company was beverage company and he worked at Just Egg and he just saw that there were a lot of people like him, a lot of startup founders.

Erum And it is challenging to start a company. You need a lot of resources, not just money. The money is used to buy something and what are you buying? you're buying exposure to an industry. You're buying, information, you're buying, some work to build decks and products and there's a lot that [01:08:00] you can acquire for, rather than just getting money, you're sharing resources and.

Erum Daniel saw that and did an incredible job being able to connect people into this community that are very open to helping, like, I'm on this Slack community and people are like, oh, I need a, refrigerated storage unit in Brooklyn, New York. Can you help me find it?

Erum And people are like, oh yeah. And there's 10 answers, you know? So it's

Karl amazing. It's

Erum super engaging community. Everyone's. Always helpful and it requires leadership and someone like Daniel and his team to be like, Hey, this is our values. Our values are to be able to be, radically open and sharing and let's just do it.

Erum and I appreciated that part of how he was looking at, what founders need to succeed and what kind of, disposition they need to have.

Karl Yeah, I mean, to me one of the big things that impressed me was like this community that he's built, it's a media company.

Karl It's event, it's [01:09:00] a bunch of podcasts. He's got a huge list of investors. and it's an, you know, an engine of impact. you mentioned the Slack community, and I just love all of that because I think it makes a big difference, particularly if you're a startup founder and you don't really know where to get started.

Erum Yeah. And then just advice that he gave about, what it takes to be a good, founder, and being scrappy and. Not just, raising a bunch of money and then figuring out later, but to really have a strong plan.

Erum I really liked that. And then just talking about the world of CPG and I appreciated him being very candid, saying like, there's a lot of sodas out there. They're lazy sodas, like everyone just making a soda. and actually after we, had interviewed Daniel, I had gone to the local bodega and I saw.

Erum It's the stillers cans like Ben Stillers drinks. Yeah. In our bodega. I mean, I, we live in Brooklyn, so maybe that's like a, a testing ground. I see so many different sodas that I I do feel his sentiment when he was like, Can we just take a beat of, from the unique [01:10:00] sodas? but also just, um, where.

Erum People can think of how biology can play a role when it comes to consumer products and something I think that, for his community, we can bring that perspective to them and say, Hey, look, biology does offer a lot of unique functionality. And but I wanted to share the story of,How performance beats out, sustainability of course, doesn't always win. And Daniel echoed that. A lot of our, guests for the CPG series have mentioned that the sustainability story has to be table stakes. It can't be the main driver, but performance being that driver and I have this bar of soap that I purchased from Iceland a year ago.

Erum So I still have it.

Karl Wait, you still have this bar of soap and you're still using it

Erum a year later? I'm using, I use it for on day one. So here's my journey. I was at this hotel, and all the products were beautifully curated in their gift shop. And there was this small bar of soap that was shaped like an iceberg and it smelled so [01:11:00] beautiful.

Erum And I was reading the ingredients and it had like algae and all these things, and I'm like. Wow, this is really cool. And it was like $28. It was a little small bar of soap. it's a little bit bigger than if you put it in the palm of your hand.

Erum Right. It's bigger than, yeah. I was like, you know what, this is my treat to myself. I'm just gonna spend $25 and I'll bar a soap 'cause it smells so nice and it's gonna remind me of Iceland. I'm like, I'm just gonna use it every day. I don't care. Like it's gonna be my moments that kind of trail after this trip.

Erum It's still going strong, and I use it every day. I use, it's right next to my, kitchen sink. So like, after I wash the dishes, I use it to wash my hands. And so I use it regularly and I'm talking about performance. This bar of soap has been, it still smells very fragrant, too.

Karl Amazing. That's amazing.

Erum I'm like, it's going and going. I probably would've bought four or five. either bars of soap or liquid soap dispensers in that amount of time, maybe more. And I'm just like, this is brilliant. And I know they use a lot of unique ingredients and I'll find out the brand and figure it out.

Erum But I just thought that that was a [01:12:00] really good example of a product that, yeah, it's $26 and it was a stretch, but the smell, the long lastingness of it, I'm just like, okay, here we go.

Karl Performance wins is what you're

Erum saying. Yeah. Performance wins. So anyway, that was a little story about, when you look at biology and consider how to make a product, it can just do such phenomenal things that consumers will appreciate.

Erum anyway, I'm digressing now, so back to Daniel. Great conversation. it's just cool to have someone that has seen the start of a new way to bring consumer product goods to the market.

Erum it's not just left to the large companies who are innovating.

Erum We're so happy to have them on our podcast and We will continue having them on. but also we call them the, challenger brands, the companies that are coming from left field that are really rethinking how to formulate products and that have the brand, the skill, the scrappiness, to be able to get those [01:13:00] products out into the world.

Erum And so thank you Daniel Shaf for joining us on the podcast. Anything else you wanna reminisce about?

Karl the one thing I would just say about Daniel that I think is important to point out is that he also emphasizes the importance of in real life events, like in-person meetings, in preference conferences, in-person events.

Karl And I just love that. I mean, it's something we have talked a lot about here on Grow Everything, because we know how important it is for people to meet each other in person and to have these conversations. media, is not going away. and this podcast is a result of that. But knowing that Daniel just reinforces the importance of those in-person events.

Karl And so I'm a hundred percent with him.

Erum Yeah. I think it's, a nice flywheel because you know you're in the community because you know people, right. And you wanna be able to help them. I think that's why the startup CPG community is so. Engaged because they meet these people, face to face.

Erum And that does win out. we're always out at all the [01:14:00] biotech events, I'm sure a lot of our friends are listening and they're like, yeah,IAM mcCal show up. We show up because, meeting people and. That whole communication that happens without words when you're next to somebody, is so amazing that we can do that as humans.

Erum and so let's keep this the IRL going. We know we're gonna try to have some more live recordings of the Everything podcast this year. there's some things in the works, but if you have an idea, let us know. we show up. If it all makes sense, we would love to, do some more in-person recordings and make things fun.

Erum You know, we're building community here too, and if there's one thing that life does, it's come together and create communities I'll say this, biology organizes when it does, it does beautiful things.

Erum So let's organize.

Karl All right. Well thank you for tuning into the Grow Everything podcast. Find us on all streaming channels. People do text us questions and we do answer. So please do that. You can find all our contact information on our show notes.

Karl Subscribe to our [01:15:00] substack and make sure you watch us on YouTube, like subscribe and comment

Erum Great. That's the pod.