The #1 Mistake Killing Your Startup (ft. Sahand Dilmaghani)

The #1 Mistake Killing Your Startup (ft. Sahand Dilmaghani) Speaker 1: One of our investors told me, he was like, you know from like 7 to 9 a.m. You own my house. Like, we're just orbiting around your product. Like, I'm brewing a coffee, my wife's brewing a coffee, my kids come down, they're brewing a coffee. Like, I'll have another one before I'm out the door. That's what I'm talking about. So that end-user relationship is huge. And then you double down on that because now we have an insider's community. We're like, yo, tell us what you want. I want to learn from people that have our machine, use it every day. What do you want to see? What else can we do? Do you know how excited they get? Do you know how many customers have my personal cell phone number? It's obscene. It's not, it's not, like, I wouldn't advocate for it. But it's crazy, and then they go out and spread the gospel, they become the evangelists, and that's where I'm like, okay, like, that to me is when you bolster all of your classic best practices on paid media, but stuff like that, that's how you start creating unfair advantages. Speaker 2: Welcome back to another episode of Chew on This. Today we have CEO and founder of Terra Kaffe, Sahand. First of all, Sahand, I've been able to have the pleasure to meet you at multiple different founder dinners, at different conferences, events, and Every time I've always spoken to you, it's just been a breath of fresh air in what you're working on. You've always been super humble in your approach. You always talk about the challenges first and then you talk about all the great things too. And so it's always refreshing to meet other founders that have a similar mentality to us. So I wanted to first of all thank you for coming on and spending time here for our viewers. For the few viewers who don't know you, maybe you can give them a little bit about your background and how you got to creating a hardware and creating Terra Kaffe. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to give a quick background myself, but I just want to first thank you guys for having me on. It's great to be here. Great to reconnect always. I started the company about like six and a half years ago now. I originally was actually working in electric vehicles in kind of more of a finance capacity, but that was because before kind of switching gears into the startup space, I was actually working in investment banking. Kind of that classic M&A, private placement work for tech-enabled businesses, but always with like a history of just entrepreneurial ventures. And it's not even entrepreneurship in the sense of like a venture-backed business, but just building stuff, right? So just creating. And it's almost weirdly, you know, kind of addictive once you start and realize you can kind of create your own version of the future. It's almost hard to stop doing it. So, yeah, I came out of school, worked in finance, knew I wanted to kind of switch gears eventually, joined electric vehicle startup. Just by virtue of how early stage it was, I got so much exposure to what it takes to carry something from like ideation to mass production. Like that entire journey was technically, you know, employee number seven. That startup scaled to, you know, 70 through five, you know, scaled through five countries. It was based in Germany, which was a great experience just in general, like personally and professionally. But yeah, you know, kind of bundle all of that experience with my love of coffee. You know, since a kid, just it was like, Hot drinks, coffee, tea, and like dried fruits were like the social nucleus of our upbringing coming, you know, from a Persian household. And yeah, I mean, I really experienced the problem firsthand in terms of starting the company. I was coming back home looking for an espresso machine for myself and the family and we were kind of, you know, looking at the options that were out there and that's kind of where I got like hit with a sledgehammer in terms of learning that in terms of like modern coffee consumer preferences, Everybody was going for higher quality. Everybody was going for more selection, more artisanal brews. Latte surpassed dripped coffee as the most ordered drink in the U.S., but when it came to the optionality to brew that at home, you either had to get a minor or a major in baristology or you had to kind of default to the classic pod-based systems. And I was like, okay, This is interesting because you can take a very design-forward approach to a category that is a very emotional, visceral purchase, but you can actually build a technology mode over time that builds a really powerful and double business. Speaker 2: It's incredible. I remember when I, you know, I first met you and I looked up the brand, obviously in the world of like CPG and what we always see, like we're used to seeing people like, you know, creating supplements or beauty products or whatnot and here it is. It was like, you know, it's a $1,700 Coffee machine, right? Speaker 1: That wasn't hard enough for me. I had to make it even harder. Speaker 2: And so I'm still curious. Walk me through the journey. I mean, it looks like you had a great experience at the EV company to be able to walk you through what the nucleus of building something like that is. But like I've read a review that someone said like it's like the Porsche of these machines, right? Like it looks absolutely stunning. It's beautiful. Speaker 1: They didn't say Ferrari? Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm so curious. Like you have to go and get like someone to create like Product, I mean a hardware like that and what's that process look like and then did you know all the nuances that goes into like the shipping, the weight, all the parts of building a business. Walk us through the journey of initially deciding something that felt very passionate and probably problem solution driven rather than like hey all the mechanics of a business. Speaker 1: I really wanted to just understand the building blocks of what it takes To build this business, and I've always, like I said, ideating on different, you know, ventures and opportunities where I'd see, like, white space. Okay, is there really something there? And my triangulation, always before starting anything, was kind of like the passion, the competency, and the opportunity. You've got to have all three. Like, I shouldn't be running any NFT crypto startup. Like, I'm just not the guy for it. I don't have that competency or any, you know, the background in that terrain. But I loved coffee. I definitely had this rough understanding of hardware and then I saw this really interesting white space in terms of nobody really advancing it because it was so hard. What that looked like in the beginning was really simply I got used machines because they're expensive, right? That was part of the opportunity. They were so expensive that I To experience the products for myself, the few that existed, I bought used machines and I just took them apart and I looked at all the building blocks to build these machines and they're all using the same kind of heart, the same engine, the same internal component. I'm like, oh, so they're commoditizing the main elements of this device. That gets really interesting because then from a product sourcing component selection process, you can start to pick and choose which areas you want to improve and take a much more iterative approach to that. I gotta be honest, it's still crazy, crazy difficult to bring something, you know, to life like this. You know, hardware complexity is nonlinear. It gets exponentially more difficult the bigger it gets, the more parts it has, but I was also just really lucky in my old startup that I was at before starting Terra Kaffe. I just was surrounded by engineers and designers that were like, you know, they're just amazing human beings, my best friends, and we all helped each other out starting our own things, and they helped me a lot. You know, Probably had a six, seven figure sum of free services from close friends that were helping me on industrial design, UI UX design, mechanical engineering, you name it. Speaker 3: That's incredible. I mean, is this something where I guess you kind of took apart machines, kind of put together something that you had an idea of and then brought it to like a manufacturer and said, hey, like Can you do this? What does that look like? Speaker 1: I mean, I basically started as a sourcing project where I had one, a close friend who was a sourcing agent that was living in Asia and she was helping out. I also then was just because I was like, I have to learn so much about the category. I kind of wanted to triangulate it from a number of people. What the best path was going to be. So I actually ended up kind of going to classic sourcing markets and, you know, contract workers that could help us find as much optionality as possible to get off the ground. And like, I just remember, I mean, the 3D printed parts, the kind of machine parts, whatever you can get as a sample. I remember I had two prototypes for the first machine. I just moved back to the US, moved to New York. I had two prototypes. I had no money for marketing and I just I was told, or I think I just like probably through like watching TV and stuff, thought like, okay, Soho's supposed to be the cool neighborhood. I just knocked on doors in every single shop on Spring Street, Prince Street, Green Street, you name it, and I was like, who's gonna let me serve coffee to your weekend crowd? You knock on 50 doors, one person says, yeah. You come in, you start serving up coffee, strike up a conversation, and you would question yourself like, is there an opportunity? Is my thesis correct? Is the hypothesis by which I'm investing all of my time and money Is it a sunk cost or is there really something here? Every single time I went out there, it just validated even further the fact that we were tapping into something. Speaker 2: Impressive. Yeah. Speaker 3: So when it comes to, I guess, product-market fit, right? You've gone and done your research phase, tested the product with the market, understood that, okay, maybe there is something there, okay? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 3: Now you have a product that's Definitely on the high end of price points. Where did you think you were going to initially market the product to and how were you going to attempt to do that? Speaker 1: I mean, I think we kind of just caught the heels of the entire like e-com renaissance that happened. I know, you know, with all the kind of OG DTC brands that kick things off, I think everybody was kind of finding their vertical where they could tap into and have, even if nothing else, an initial beachhead where like, all right, I know I'm solving this problem for this particular segment or sub-segment of customers. So when I was looking from a channel standpoint, I was like, okay, the most efficient lean process of getting out the door and testing whether or not there was product market fit and was there product market fit at scale, right? Cause you can, you can get out the door and kind of almost have a little bit of like a mirage in the desert and you can kind of get like a little bit of like a false positive with a really low ceiling on your business. And that can be, uh, you know, I can only imagine how many categories people have made that leap and kind of gotten hit in the face with that. But I, I had a lot of conviction in the fact that I was tapping into coffee and just as far as, you know, the second biggest commodity by value in the world, knowing that over two-thirds of Americans are not coffee consumers, they are daily coffee consumers, daily, seeing that big of, you know, just an overall tan that I was going after, regardless of whether or not I was approaching it from, you know, the higher-end segment first, the luxury segment first, I just knew, okay, If I'm tapping into something with this first product and we're building a strong brand, the ability to precipitate that into the entire category and use that as your springboard to build an indelible brand is really high because now you're an authority. Now, you know, if I started with a little demi-tasse or a little cup and I told you tomorrow I'm starting an espresso machine company, you'd be like, all right, man, like, that's, you know, maybe hold your horses, you know, sequence it out a bit. I was like, that is a rich territory of fertile soil to build up the company. And you know, yeah, every data point I got was further validating that like, people were looking for somebody to graduate away from the classic pod-based systems. Speaker 2: So you've now, you know, going back six and a half years ago, you've now You've come up with the product, you've found a way to engineer and build your first version, right? And I believe you're on your second version now? Yeah. So you built your first version and now you realize you have to go and sell this, right? So now what does that look like? Did you drop a website and you started ads? Were you going into retail, Amazon? How did the different channels work out for you? Speaker 1: Yeah, I love the kind of like conversation of like, you know, whether or not you want to go quick into diversifying the channel expansion or if you really want to double down on what's working. We were already seeing a lot of success on the DTC side. So it made sense for us to make sure that, you know, that is gonna be, if nothing else, kind of like first base for us that we know we're there, we're comfortable, we've established that, but we know that obviously That's not the end state, right? We want a home run. So what we did was we had a pretty clear discipline, you know, and sequential strategy of scaling that up, but really in a way that didn't overextend or overreach from like a capitalization or a resourcing standpoint into new channels, we knew we needed to test things out. The main thing I was looking for early on was I need to see pull factors, right? And we actually had two very interesting pull factors which made it hard to decide where we were gonna jump first given that we didn't feel like we were in a position where we could do both at the same time was we had heavy retail inbounds and we had heavy organic search, branded search traffic on Amazon. The thing was for us, the V2 was the unlock for Amazon. Because it's a connected device. We get a hold on to that end-user relationship where we can figure out how they're using the machine, how are they liking it, how can we better help with troubleshooting, maintenance. You get to have a longer-term relationship with that customer so then you get to have that long tail of consumables revenues but also allows us to do more for the end-user. All of that was critical from the unlock perspective and then from the retail side it was like we can't be everywhere all at once. We got to be judicious. And we wanted to make sure anybody we pick, we need to think about them advancing us either through Coffee, design, or tech. One of those three. I mean, those are the three legs of the stool that we're gonna stand on in the long run. Speaker 2: I think that's really smart. When you look at, and I don't think we've had, maybe we've had a couple of guests that have had high-ticket products like the Hydro and a few others, but like, when you look at a product that is high-ticket, right? I mean, again, what we're used to seeing is products that are $40, $60, $80. You're out here selling product that is, you know, $1,600 or $1,700. When it comes to engineering, what's your CAC gonna be and how you're going after the market and stuff like that, how is that process and are you sometimes still figuring that out? Because I feel like with all the different changes that happen, how do you guys figure out the true unit economics? And you don't have a product that's easily giftable, so I'm curious how you guys are navigating through what seems like very simple marketing methodologies for most of us. It feels like you can't really copy-paste. Speaker 1: Yeah, you definitely can't do the rinse-repeat on everything. It's not going to work. And that also, by the way, applies to the channel side of it, too. Like, if you want to just kind of show up everywhere, you're going to quickly find that there are going to be some frontiers you can't expand to, and most of them are going to be a huge uphill battle. And I think for us, I mean, look, the entire kind of like CAC LTV or AOV to CAC ratio that we have to look at, I mean, definitely governs our paid media tactics, our performance marketing tactics and how many things we invest in. But I mean, we are fortunate that I think we have kind of the confluence of two factors that really help us is one, we do have a decent amount of white space. Again, like when you have a hard category to get into, that means from a competitive landscape, I'm basically dealing with five You know, hundred plus year old legacy brands. Yeah, there are unfair advantages when you're that old and you have that much distribution. There's also unfair advantages I get from a nimbleness perspective in terms of going after them, being able to kind of, you know, just move faster with the latest technologies, using the latest tools, being able to have that kind of end customer relationship. And that also kind of goes into, you know, the second point, which is ultimately for me, like, Like, I just have a much tighter end-user relationship. That relationship translates into feedback into my product, right? 100%. Speaker 3: So, for example, like for Obvi, right, where we have, you know, anywhere from like a $60 to like a $80 AOV, that's still considered like an impulse purchase, right? I can still run an ad today, somebody will consider it for less than 24 hours and pull the trigger and buy, right? Then you got the people that will buy within a week, and so the majority falls within that one to seven days, maybe a month out, maybe a year out, but it's a small percentage. For you, that consideration window is massive. I would imagine. Speaker 1: Super different, yeah. Speaker 3: You'd be surprised. Speaker 1: There are some people, there's that kind of like top quartile customer that honestly just falls in love and it's all amygdala. It's no prefrontal cortex. They're just like, it's beautiful, I want it. Speaker 3: Here's my card, boom. Speaker 1: But yeah, absolutely. Generally speaking, the consideration window is going to be a lot larger. Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just the fact that you said that there is a white space, it's not like people are looking for it, right? You also have to... Speaker 1: Which is a blessing and a curse. Speaker 3: Right, exactly. So my question is, when you think marketing strategy and when you think about ad creative and how you're actually marketing the product, right? What goes into the story that you're trying to tell? How do you guide people down a journey? Where does it start and where do you think it ends? Speaker 1: Meaning like when we like what do we do well through our paid media that allows us to stand out? I think, look, it goes kind of back to what you were saying, which is it's a little bit of building the plane as you fly, because I think that we've scaled a lot over the last like five years. And what worked for us really well in the early days, we realized it's not that you ditch it, but you do need to kind of expand upon it over time. And so as we've grown and gone through kind of different stages, and we're actually also appealing then to different customers, I think that we've learned different messages have, you know, different resonance factors. The rationale, the post-purchase rationale for why they bought the machine has changed over time. It's, again, it doesn't ditch. It doesn't ditch the original criteria and you'll see that those variables stay present, but they are not the main staple of your diet anymore. And so that actually has shifted a lot of our communication strategy. It's also shifted the platforms that we're showing up on and testing, you know, how we choose to test different areas is, okay, like, is CTV actually more prevalent in terms of, you know, driving interest? You know, is it more effective from a top-of-funnel storytelling perspective to then translate that into our middle-bottom-of-funnel, transaction-oriented marketing? Also, from the consideration period, We have a heavy, heavy community-oriented approach. Heavy. When we look at the post-purchase and we see one quarter, if not sometimes as high as one-third, depending on the week, one-third of customers are buying this because of word of mouth. Speaker 3: Interesting. Speaker 1: Insane. It's really high. And we kind of found out anecdotally early on, but now empirically, We, when somebody in the neighborhood gets our machine, you kind of become like the king or queen of the cul-de-sac. You're like, you're like, everyone's like, I was going to get that. Speaker 2: You can just, you can feel that from that. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: Couples go over to a, you know, a house party, a dinner party, and they're like, we're not getting that other machine. I want that one. I want the cool one. It's like, that's what I kind of felt early on when we started. It was like, There is this beautiful, rich, physical and temporal real estate of that morning coffee that I didn't feel like anybody that was in the space currently was appreciating and respecting. And I was like, all right, we're going to be that player. One of our investors told me, he was like, you know, Do you know from like 7 to 9 a.m., you own my house? Like we're just orbiting around your product. Like I'm brewing a coffee, my wife's brewing a coffee, my kids come down, they're brewing a coffee. Like I'll have another one before I'm out the door. And that, that's what I'm talking about. So that end-user relationship is huge. And then you double down on that because now we have an insider's community. We're like, yo, tell us what you want. You have to be careful, right? Because everybody who runs an e-com brand knows like the more platforms you're present on, A lot of times they kind of just become like either CX or troubleshooting. I was like we need to have an area where it's not look I want to make sure we're taking care of everybody that needs help or has a whether existing or prospective customer answer your questions, but I want to learn. You know, from people that have our machine, use it every day, like, what do you want to see? What else can we do? Do you know how excited they get? You know how many customers have my personal cell phone number? It's obscene. It's not, like, I wouldn't advocate for it, but it's crazy. And then they go out and spread the gospel. They become the evangelists. And that's where I'm like, okay, like, that to me is when you bolster all of your classic best practices on paid media. But stuff like that, that's how you start creating unfair advantages. Speaker 2: Chew on This is sponsored by, if you're juggling your marketing ops between different platforms, then listen up. Ash and I were in the same boat as you were not too long ago. We were using an email service provider and an external SMS provider to manage over 200,000 customers. With numerous email flows like post-purchase, abandoned cart, win-back, automation funnels, running these communications on several platforms was killing our potential impact Because we just didn't know how to optimize the process on each channel. We needed a new approach. So we reached out to our community. The number one recommendation was Sendlane. So we had to check it out. And let me tell you, it surprised us on every level. They took over the entire migration process, transferring data, forming up emails, and making sure that we didn't miss a beat. And now with their Move Now, Pay Later offer, it's easier than ever. You pay nothing up front, no hidden fees and no unexpected bills. So if you're worried about the cost, the disruptions, or the sheer amount of work it's gonna take to migrate your current marketing ops, Sendlane takes care of everything and you don't pay until they're done. We highly recommend Sendlane and since we've moved, we've seen incredible ways to optimize all our channel strategies in one place. Now, let's get back to the episode. Speaker 3: There's one piece I want you to get a little more tactical on for the listeners and viewers. And I've asked this question a ton where it's like, Are you running post-purchase surveys for your brand? And I would say maybe 60%. 60% do, maybe 40% don't. And it's a lot of people and it's a lot of information that's super valuable that you're not able to leverage, which you should be. And so the fact that you stated the stat that 30% of customers come in because of word of mouth. So tactically, as an owner of the business, You now get that information. How do you act on that? What would you do to actually, all right, now you've learned this, what do you do with that information? Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, first of all, I'm gonna just say one thing to the first part of that, which is like, for those who are not running those surveys and not collecting that information, it's one of the most powerful tools, especially if you're kind of like on the earlier of early stage and you can't pay for all the various attribution tools yet. It's a really simple way to get valuable information. Because think about it, even if they did buy off of a different type of ad, if they associated their purchase with a certain touchpoint, that's also valuable to know. So that's the kind of stuff where I'm like, I totally get it. We have so many things we have to manage and juggle, but I really would double down on doing that. At all stages, I think as far as acting on it, it does depend on what the data is telling you, so it is a little idiosyncratic to what are the stats actually saying. Is it a perfectly even split? I doubt that's the case. It's the same way with channels, right? I don't think I've ever met anybody that's 33% DTC, 33% retail, 33% Amazon. I don't think I've ever heard of that existing. If you're out there, you're kind of a unicorn case, but I think it's super important to look at what the information is saying. For us, like what I'm saying about the word-of-mouth side, well that gets really interesting in terms of how much I'm investing in the community building efforts for the company because a lot of times that isn't That isn't going to be the main kind of exercise you're doing as a marketing team, but in reality, that's that thing like, again, if you take it out of your training, if you take it out of your practice, you're going to wonder why you're not seeing the bigger gains that you want to get. Why have you hit a kind of glass ceiling, so to speak? But that was what, you know, the data told us. It's like, okay, well, some people might say that was obvious, but you know what? There's so many areas and so many kind of opportunities to try out new growth vectors for your business. It does get hard. It gets hard to discern exactly where to focus. That kind of stuff can help you prioritize. And in a landscape where people just are having to operate with leaner and leaner staffing, leaner and leaner resources, rigorous prioritization is table stakes. You don't have a choice. So you better know where people are finding you, what's getting them to transact, and how you want to double down on that. Speaker 2: We're huge fans of building community. We've been growing one on Facebook group for the existence of our brand, but we also don't run into that many People come on our pod that are building community. So it's nice to hear when you do find somebody that is. So tell me a little bit about what that community looks like. Who's fostering it? How involved are you in it? And then what are some of the larger benefits that come out of it outside of being able to spread the ability to sell your product more? And where is it hosted? Speaker 1: Yeah, functionally speaking, just the way it runs right now is our CX team does run. It's our CXO Kate. She's incredible. She's the one who's kind of leading the charge. Her and her team are doing an amazing job just kind of from the initial implementation to carrying the ball forward. So that's just functionally how it works. The platform that we're currently on right now, which we're still trying to figure out, you know, exactly if we want to migrate this elsewhere, is on Facebook. We do have a community that kind of skews slightly older, just given the price point of our product. So as a result, we found that Facebook has worked quite well for that. There has been some, you know, inquiry or kind of desire to push it over to Slack and, you know, we're happy to make that transition. It's really a matter of where can we get the most people that we're actually going to contribute. And that's one thing we've said is, like, this is not meant to be just a troubleshooting channel and this is not meant to be just people passively there. Like, I actually want people... Speaker 2: And just hitting some arbitrary numbers. Speaker 1: Exactly. And then in terms of, you know, you know, The engagement, one of the things that I love is we set up webinars. The first one was with me, then it's with our CTO, just with our art director, our designer, people pitching ideas. It's not just about Having a relationship to sell them more things, it's really ultimately like I want to learn and I want to build a direct connection with you. I'm trying to embody that it's more important to have a hundred people love you than a thousand people or a million people like you. If you like something, you don't really ever say much about it. If you love something, you can't stop talking about it. That's the kind of force multiplier we're looking for. So whatever I do anywhere, whether it's out of home or digital, I get that amplified by the people that are just so beyond excited that they're connected with us. So, you know, look, if you want to send me a photo of your new puppy next to the espresso machine or your cat, a lot of cats love to sleep on top of it because it's warm. You know, like, I love it. Share it. Like, you know, you got a new glassware, new mug or something and you wanted to, you know, try a new recipe with a new cocktail. I love it. Like, just keep feeding that. And you know, people, you'll be surprised just like how much they want to go out there and spread the word for the company. And that's, you know, look, Mr. DeLong is not going to get on that ever and do that for his community. So I was like, all right. Speaker 2: Not at all. Speaker 3: So throughout the journey, you mentioned that you guys raised a good amount of capital to grow the business. For us, we've done something similar. Not crazy to the extent that you guys have done it, but Walk us through that journey of kind of, all right, well, we know we need cash. Here's where we're going to go and get it. But then actually utilizing the funds, I think, is something that you kind of have an idea of. Prior going into it, but then when you actually have the cash, you're like, well, I almost don't want to touch it. So walk us through that entire journey. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think for anybody starting anything and regardless of what state you're at, I think you kind of need to have the end state figured out of what you're trying to build towards and then work backwards in terms of the milestones you need to hit to ultimately get to that outcome, right? And that will very quickly kind of translate into the financials in terms of like what targets you need to hit, like what, you know, Fundamentally what business are you in? Are you in a recurring business? Are you in a one-time sale business? Like what do you need then as far as just like fiscal discipline and financial health to get to the next stage? And so I think me just first of all having like a finance background has helped a lot in terms of the articulation of why we're raising at a given point in time and what we're going to achieve with that capital. To get to that result, you know, then what does that mean in terms of the next stage in our life cycle, right? So being able to paint a very clear picture both in words and numbers is a really important skill set You know and in terms of the investor selection, you know, it's like what they say about friends in life It's like, you know good friends make the good times double and the bad times half and bad friends make the you know the good times half the bad times double. So it is, it's really important to understand that selection criteria and, you know, who you're kind of working with, but ultimately it is the kind of classic making decisions in the early stages about, you know, the level of experience they have in a given category, the stage experience they have, understanding what it takes to get You know, to the next level, whether or not that's going down the kind of alphabet soup fundraising path or it's a, you know, this is going to be a one and done. We have that clear pathway to profitability. So yes, while we raised kind of, you know, a decent amount in terms of, you know, just what the overall e-com landscape looks like, we've actually been very judicious and lean compared to our competitive set. And that's one of the things I always tell people when they, you know, when they invest in TK, I want to show you that I'm going to stretch that dollar further than anybody else. Like I'm going to get the most, you know, just as far as results, bang for your buck. Like, I just want to show you, paint a picture for you where you, you know, one, are proud as an investor, but two, kind of, you know, following through on the results. And it kind of goes actually back to what you said at the beginning. It's like, I'm going to always tell you the challenges before I tell you the W's and the wins. There's so many wins to celebrate. I get to celebrate more W's because of the way we address the challenges and that's tough too, right? Because even from a team dynamic standpoint, you know, sometimes it can be tough where, you know, people can start to wonder, like, why, you know, we're always, feels like we're always trying to address the next challenge or we're trying to take head-on the next, you know, thing we have to, the next problem we have to solve. You end up in a lot of fire, firefights and like a little, you know, I say all that essentially to say like, you know, that fundraising journey is, you need to know what you're signing up for and you need to also set that expectation clearly with the team and it's something that I've been trying to do better Just as a leader, doing a better job of articulating that to everyone in terms of what the expectations are for the business and how hard it is going to be to get there, but that we have a plan and we're going to share in that upside. We're going to share in that success together. Speaker 2: I'm curious. So one of the, I know theme of the discussion has been like challenges and maybe some learnings. I don't really think the word mistake is Really used by many people now because it's like everything's learning, right? But maybe you can share some of the challenges you faced, some of the learnings that you didn't know you were going to face and came through the quote-unquote mistakes. But whether it's right now or over the course of the journey, I think one thing that our viewers really like is when people are sharing things to watch out for. People that are sharing things that they can hopefully miss. So if you have anything to share there in your journey or a few things. Speaker 1: The reason I'm kind of chuckling on that question is my mind does immediately connect back to that whole founder mode, manager mode conversation. There was a period of scale where I did feel like the guidance I was getting was very heavily like you're the founder and CEO, you're the visionary, you need to, you know, delegate out and you need to Think back about the vision and, you know, obviously operationalizing the vision into a strategy that, you know, sets clear milestones, but in the spirit of that guidance, I think I actually tried to pull out of the weeds and I didn't really have the articulation of what I felt was kind of Being more restricted in an ability to add value to the entire team and actually feeling more siloed. And as a result, it metastasizes the problem where, you know, the further away you are, the more kind of things lack structure, the more that lack structure, the more, you know, more kind of confused you get. And then again, you know, that just becomes a vicious cycle. It's not to say that, like, you need some sort of, like, maniacal manage every line and every detail all the time because it's not tenable either. But I think a lot of startups, especially over the last, like, 24, 36 months, came to this realization that this whole kind of, like, big this, build this heavy OpEx, build this kind of, like, bigger org because that's an investment, which it can be. But I think we were kind of getting the ratio a little off and I think that trade-off was somewhat missed and that was something I had to contend with In terms of what stage we were at, how far was I pulling back because I thought this is what you're supposed to do, this is what delegation looks like when in reality you're not really able to add the direct value that people are looking for and frankly in some instances retain the culture that you started the business with in terms of you know getting to that next stage and really keeping that as a tight nucleus. I'm sure there are more mistakes to reflect on, but that was the first one that came to mind. That was great. Speaker 2: What does the next five years look like for TK? Whether it's the expansion to retail and a few things you're working on, but what do the next three to five years look like? Speaker 1: Definitely we have this vision where, you know, Starbucks took every corner, we're taking every countertop. So, you know, we have a lot of exciting things in the pipeline. Like I said, the TK2 just keeps getting better with time because we keep taking feedback and rolling out updates for the machine so people get to have new features built into their machine that, you know, essentially there's no planned obsolescence built in here. And then channel expansion is going to be critical for the business. So, you know, We know our customer base is three times the national average to buy through traditional or specialty retail, so meeting the customer where they're at, it's a highly experiential product, so they're going to want to give it a try. And then, yeah, we have some other exciting things in the hopper, pun intended, in terms of their products. Yeah, and with that, man, thanks again for having me on. Speaker 2: No, of course. Speaker 3: Right before we let you go, We'd love to close out the episode with one thing that you want viewers and listeners to take back and implement in their business today. What would that one thing that you want be? Speaker 2: Or sip on. Speaker 3: Sip on. Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say, I was like, dude. You gotta know your audience, man. I mean, I love a lot of the kind of like team building, leadership oriented stuff. And I like, you know, a lot of the things we talked about, but I do feel like one broader through line, which, you know, pertains to everything from sales and marketing to team building is kind of like not letting kind of not letting perfect be the enemy of good. I think it's one of the most important things to reflect on. I think the more and more founders I talk to, the more I see people kind of like beating themselves up about getting something wrong or like, I could have been more efficient with this. I could have, you know, focus better on that. I, you know, And look, it's always healthy to do a post-mortem and maybe this is a level of reflection and rumination that it's not so much about, you know, a marketing tactic to implement but really ultimately in terms of keeping an even-keeled kind of head on your shoulders as you're executing through incredibly, you know, volatile, tumultuous times is you can't let perfect be the enemy of good and frankly cannot let perfect be the enemy of done. A lot of times You know, we kind of get in our own way the most and kind of having that level of equanimity is one of the things I felt like I wanted to keep advocating for and other founders that I think are doing a great job but I oftentimes find that they're just kind of like beating themselves up and really are frankly have a lot to be proud of. Speaker 2: Chew on that. Speaker 3: If you want more from us, follow us on Twitter, follow us on Instagram, follow us on TikTok and check out the website ChewOnThis.io.