Pipcorn: Jennifer and Jeff Martin

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So it was a ton. Of work. Zero efficiencies. It was like the what's the most amount of work we can do and that's what we did. And that first time we like made all the bags and we seal them, we bring them to the market. Yeah. We were so excited. We had all these. Our mom and dad were in lawn chairs behind us. We're like, we've we've arrived and we open them up and like they're stale. Soft. It was really disappointing. From NPR is how I built this.

show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. They built. I'm Guy Raz and on the show today how Jennifer Martin turned a tiny kernel of corn into a big idea. joined up with family to build Pipcorn. A brand of snacks made of heirloom corn

Sold in thousands of stores across the country. So you've probably heard the term unfair advantage. This is a term startup founders will use when pitching their idea to investors.

Our unfair advantage is we hold the patent on this idea, and no one else can legally copy it. Or Our unfair advantage is that we only hang out with A-list celebrities who will promote our skin cream on Instagram. You get the point here. Another advantage a startup can have is

is location. Especially when you need to break out of the pack in a crowded marketplace. And when it comes to location New York City? can be a pretty good place to launch.

But wait, you say? New York is expensive, and New York is full of a million brands companies. All true, yes, but New York Especially New York media. Happens to also be obsessed with New York and everything that happens there. And that outsized attention can help turn a smaller brand into a much, much bigger brand.

fast, which is how a snack food company called Pipcorn got its start. Pipcorn was originally conceived in Chicago, but weeks after they started, the founders, brother and sister Jennifer and Jeff Martin, Got an opportunity to sell their heirloom popcorn at the hipster outdoor New York food market. Smorgesburg. In the hipster capital of America.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It's a market visited by some of the most influential journalists, TV executives, and food bloggers. And one day, one particularly influential visitor to the market Would stop by the popcorn stand. A visit. That would also prove transformational.

But We'll get there. Even with the early and outsized attention, and even with an eventual slot on Shark Tank, The rise and rise of Pipcorn was anything but smooth. In fact, at several points along the journey, The viability of the business.

was in doubt. Especially because the snack food industry is jam packed with options. When it comes to popcorn alone, There are at least 100 different national brands. Aside from Angie's and Smart Food and Orville Redenbachers, you can find popcorn popped in a solar-power factory, sriracha popcorn, even a popcorn brand called Gary Popins. But Jennifer and Jeff Martin, and their other co-founder, Teresa Zoe, We're trying to differentiate their brand by using a different ingredient.

a strain of heirloom corn that they believed tasted much better than conventional corn used in popcorn. And with that corn, they would eventually go on to produce a line of corn based snacks. Frito like corn chips. Cheetos like crunchies and cheese balls. Comfort snacks, but a little fancier than the kind you might find at seven eleven. Jennifer and Jeff grew up in Madison, New Jersey in a family of four kids.

And from a very early age. Their parents made it Pretty clear that family. Was at the center of everything. Like we used to w walk through the grocery store chanting like

We are the Martins, the mighty, mighty Martins. We had this whole thing that we would do and it was just fun. You know, we were Your kids and but you know, they they it was really important to them and it definitely is important to us. And what did your parents do when you guys were growing up? So th they actually met working at IBM, um, both in the sales department and they bonded over being

kind of able to lean on each other uh and kind of not other people. Why? They were at the time, you know, our dad was one of the only black men in in the group and our mom was one of the only women. And so They really leaned on each other uh for a ton of support.

And they were really successful doing it because they really had each other. They had this really strong connection and bond. But after having four kids all within a year, it was kind of a crazy house. Um our our mom retired and our dad had moved at that point to Dunham Brad Street where he worked in sales and was actually traveling a ton. So growing up it was really like Our mom. She was home with the the with the four crazy kids.

So it was four for kids. Did you guys go to church? Was that part of growing up or not really? Yeah. So our dad is Baptist and our mom is Jewish actually, so They took us to temple on Fridays and church on Sundays. And it was really more about community and when somebody didn't want to go, they didn't have to go. There was not that push. Really what they were trying to instill is like, you're part of a bigger community outside of this family also. And it's your responsibility.

to be part of something bigger than yourself. And so I think that's really what they Instilled and I looked forward to it every week and I think it was really cool that It was never about somebody being right or wrong, it was just like different perspectives.

Do you remember I'm just I'm I'm curious as as kids like sort of sometimes going to church or sometimes going to to the synagogue and having, you know, parents from from different backgrounds and cultures and being biracial. Did as kids did you Ever feel like that.

left out or shut out or did you always f generally feel welcomed in in the different environments and communities that you would go in and out of. I mean there was definitely a an adjustment. I would say. You know, there were moments in time where

an off colour, you know, comment would be made. About our dad at temple. And it wasn't like something that was incredibly obvious, but if you're in that if you're living in this scenario you pick up on it. And Potentially the same thing at church on Sunday. So

Just with those two as an example, and even outside of religion, you know, there was just you just pick up on these things, but it also teaches you patience. It teaches you how to communicate with people at a very, very young age and how to carry yourself in a way that's different than other people would have to. You know, like I I've been in many situations, I know Jen has as well, there people don't know what our background is and they they they don't know based on how we look you know Definitely not that we're biracial, but

They kind of assume one thing or another, and that is a really interesting place to be. Yeah, I I think that For me, I think I did feel othered in certain situations and I think I think what I felt in a lot of situations as a kid and still was just like holding my breath waiting for somebody to say something. Just like

sitting in temple and just waiting for somebody to say something that was going to be hurtful and I think That is why For me I always wanted to be so close to my family it's because

We didn't grow up in a very diverse town. And so I didn't feel part of the community. necessarily that we grew up in. Um, and so I think being with my family I felt like

it was like we were like a team and so that we were always looking out for each other. So I I I definitely think that I felt that way. Sounds like your parents were super supportive. Um um I mean I imagine you know this Um

when you were a kid, um But But you are gay, you're a gay woman. Were your parents Uh, pretty supportive. Did she feel comfortable talking about it with them? When you were younger.

Yeah. I remember like I you know, I I just remember telling my dad um and him just like making like jokes because my dad's very funny and then was like, you know, I don't care at all and I love you no matter what. And Yeah, they're really supportive. And I think it's interesting because of their generation, a lot of people aren't supportive and r even if they are like in an interracial relationship, like

you know, being gay isn't means com is not the same thing, right? Like that's like a complete and they are super supportive. And even though I was nervous to come out, I feel like it was Really easy. And then I called Jeff after I talked to them. He was the he was the third call. Wait, who was number two? I called mom and dad separately. I called mom, then I called dad and then I called you. You have um

You are black, Jewish, and gay. Yes. A lot of people don't like me. Yeah. Yeah.

Um W it sounds just sounds like there was a lot of love in Your in your house growing up. Yeah, a hundred percent.

And I think it was like A lot of love and a lot of hard work. Like That's that's really what what they what my parents are all about. Jeff, you went um on to study business in college. I know after college you went to go work at a bank at at UBS, I think in two thousand seven.

Yeah. And I think around that time, Jennifer, you Left. But you from from what I read, you you were only there for a year. You weren't it wasn't the right fit for you and you

Essentially kinda dropped out from that school. Yeah. It just wasn't the fit. So so you I guess Ended up. Going to college in Chicago. Right, and to Loyal University.

And you were studying like I was it was like social work, so it was like human services and social work. And my plan was I knew I wanted to help people, I didn't know how. And so that was definitely my plan to like continue going into that field and m my job when I was there, there was a health food store down the street up the campus. It was called True Nature Foods. There was like a teen juice bar which kinda got built out as soon as I started working there. And so it was great to go there and be able to work there and get a discount.

because it was all the food that I could eat because I also had to heal myself, right, of like all the food stuff that was going on for me. Wh what were your food issues? If you don't mind. Well, I have I'm celiac and then I have like I'm allergic to milk. I have like a bunch of like random just allergies and then I have um ulcerative colitis. Wow, so when you were a kid growing up

Were you completely gluten free? Basically yes, I had food allergies, but we didn't figure out it was gluten. Until I was about 12 and we eliminated gluten from my diet completely. And I started to feel better for the first time in my life.

The thing though At that time, you know. nineteen ninety something. The gluten-free options were awful. Like they were so bad. But we had this little cabinet in our house that I could where all my food was that I could eat. Generally the only snack having it in the world.

No, you need to hear that, it's like, oh I'm gonna go get like she had the only one that like no one wanted. So it was her snacks were always safe. They were so bad. They were so bad. Yeah, they were like So upsetting. Yeah, which is amazing because today Gluten free snacks are great. Yeah.

And did you also give up grains? I didn't give up all grains. But I did give up corn, actually. Um that was a big one. A lot of the reason I couldn't eat corn was because at that time the gluten free products were all made with really, really bad corn, you know, like not corn that

you're supposed to be eating like it's like feed corn that basically were right eating. And so I think that was a lot of the reason for the corn what I thought was a corn allergy. All right, so you are in Chicago at Loyal University. Mm-hmm. Meantime.

Jeff you had This is two thousand nine. You've been laid off from your job at at UBS, the investment bank, during the recession, right? Yeah. Um

So we were obviously started in two thousand seven, which was an interesting time to start in the industry and Yeah, I worked in the consumer products and retail group and specifically on the retail side of things. So Once the recession hit. You know, retail was impacted very quickly. And uh

I I vividly remember the the couple rounds of layoffs a round of layoffs goes by and I was in the clear and then you know round two goes by and I'm I'm in the clear okay, yeah, we're done with layoffs and we're you know, we're we're fine. Round three comes and you know, okay, geez, that was crazy, but you know, I'm still in the clear and You know, you see friends packing up their desks and it's it was it was hard and I remember it was the fourth or whatever.

Round of layoffs and I'm sitting at my desk eating lunch and uh my my phone rings and it says ninth floor HR. I I I mean I knew instantly, right? I knew instantly. So I pick up the phone. Uh it's the head of HR Calls me about down to the ninth floor, I

go to the ninth floor and um you know, talked about, yeah, hey, Jeff, like we appreciate everything you've done and all this good stuff. Here's is, you know, severance package, but we're gonna have to let you go. We're we're we have to cut and cut costs and this is this is how we're handling it. And it you know, no one likes to do that and um that wasn't lost on me. So I went back up and I I was so in it and I was so focused on work that I went back up and I was literally Yeah, I went to go finish what I was doing. Like I went to go finish

the presentation so I wouldn't let Brad down when he had to go to the meeting. So he comes over to my desk and kinda snaps me out of it and is like, Hey Jeff Really appreciate it. It's okay.

Like we we we got this. It's it's okay. And then it was real. Like oh I have to go now. Like I have to leave the building like immediately. Um So I did.

I went downstairs, called my mom. and told her what happened and I was shocked, you know, I'd worked four years and I had a plan and a path, and then one day it's just like rug is ripped out from under you. So I called my mom and I told her and I was like you know, in shock. And uh she just

Didn't skip a beat and just said Jeff. This is the best thing that's ever happened to you. Now go spread your wings. So you are And Jennifer, you are in Chicago studying to get your your bachelor's degree and working part time jobs, including a job at a at a health food store.

while you're a student. And I guess um you met like there was a regular customer who you got to know who had lost a lot of like a lot of weight by going on a juice diet. What's what's the story? So he this his name was Jay Michael and he was incredible. Um but He would come in once a day, and we just really hit it off. Like it was just such a great friendship, and one day I really needed. More money. And I was w doing some other like catering and working at a gym too and I was just like

Jay, if you buy me a juicer, I'll privately juice for you. Like I got it. Wait that you would if he bought you a juicer that you put in your in your apartment, you would just like fill mason jars with juice? Yeah. I mean it's like only a it's only a thing like a college kid who doesn't understand anything would offer because When you say it like that, I'm like, that is a very weird thing to ask somebody. But I think I just I always knew it could be bigger than that and I sent him the juicer I needed, he bought it for me and he was like just come juice at my house. And so basically what would happen is like I'd go to his house, I would place a peapod order. It would come to his house and I would just juice for him and I would make tons of juices and I would try all these different like recipes and he had lots of friends and so then I started juicing for them and then I started like just m making all these deliveries and he had a car and so he would let me use his car and drive all around Chicago. It just was like such a funny time because I was like working nonstop. It was like 7 a.m to like 1 a.m at his house juicing

And I was just like, we should start a business. And he agreed. Um maybe it was like his idea. I don't remember at this point who said it. We were just like, this is working, this is great. And so then we started it and kind of us like launched it and then we did it for a while. Obviously he was the capital and I was doing all the work. And the plan was to like grow it into what we know of juice companies now. Having storefronts and being able to pick up a bottle when you want it or having a cleanse where they can send it to you. Um, so you're doing the the juicing business and working at the health food store and and you were a student.

Yeah. And You come across a farmer Who Tells you about like some kind of

Or popcorn that you Yeah, well what's what's the story? Yeah, so I was working at the health food store and on the weekends we had a farmer's market. And This

guy would come up and it was like a raw milk it was like a raw milk co op outside of the store during the farmer's market. But he also brought with him. These mini popcorn kernels. and the store owner knew a lot of my like dietary restrictions and that I can't have corn. And so he was like

Try these, you'll be able to eat them. It's half the size of ordinary popcorn and The popcorn itself is so tender, like the hull. He was like you won't have issues because I think the thing that you know, we don't really think about it as like those big hard pieces from normal size popcorn, they get stuck in your teeth and they're aggravating. But the same thing happens when you're dy trying to digest them, you know, like they're still

that big and hard. And so that's really what was happening to me a lot of the time. And the quality of the heirloom corn And what was this I mean, it's like sort of there's like heirloom wheats and obviously heirloom. other illuminates. Like where what's the store'cause most corn that we eat. in the United States around the world is genetically modified corn. It's it's grown to a stand

pests and and to not require that much water and and to be sweet and crispy and to be able to stand up to long distance transportation. This was like Ancient. corn like the it came from from non modified corn?

Yeah. Uh sorry, I I Gotten really deep into the agricultural side of things. But yeah, the I mean When you'd create a product you're doing it to accomplish one or more of the goals you just mentioned. And generally it's like size and uniformity. An aesthetics.

So when when you do that you generally breed out or you modify out something. And one of the first things to go is nutrient density and flavor. They're like out the window first. So the beauty of heirloom and what you know, heirloom farming, you know, agricultural practices, what's so important Is that we're like

Really preserving this bit of history that doesn't have a place in, you know, the commercial farming world. There's no You know, before Jen Found these kernels.

There were like little it was all farmers market stuff. It was always like hey, here's a five pound bag of kernels, I'll see you next year when you need another five pounds. There was no commercial use for it, but the beauty of heirloom is it's open pollinated. All the work is done by insects, birds Which Essentially like what we say is like it's the oldest version. It's like what Earth intended this product to be that's just evolved over time. with almost no human interaction.

Alright, so Jennifer, you are Introduced. To this. Like these heirloom popcorn kernels. And uh and what'd you do? You you you did you go home and like

Pop them? Mm-hmm. Yeah, ex that's exactly it. I went home, put some oil in the pot A little bit of like rosemary I think and salt and pop them. And

You know, it's the first time I'd ever seen popcorn that wasn't massive. Like it was just these mini kernels. It was also the first time that I like stove popped popcorn. You know, we grew up and we would have the microwave popcorn. And so I took it home really excited and I popped it and it was like half the size and really tender and And it didn't hurt my stomach. That was the craziest part. Like I could eat it and I hadn't as I said, like I hadn't had popcorn or corn in so long because as a kid it made me so sick. And it was delicious and it was like I think for the next month that's all I ate for dinner every single night. And and Jeff, you were you were living in New York at the time.

I guess you were Around this time when when Jen when Jennifer had Gotten these m it sounds like Jack and the Beanstock. Like these magic. Popcorn kernels.

You were like you happened to be visiting her at the time, right? Yeah, I just happen to be visiting and helping her move apartments. She found a different place where it was moving, but you know, she was busy and I was I had some time, so I said, you know, I'll come out, spend the weekend, help you pack up and and and it'll be fun, you can hang out for a little bit. So we we literally that's what we did. And we were left with nothing uh but pots, pans You know, and some stuff from the kitchen. So

Jen p pulled out this bag of kernels and had some olive oil on the counter, some salt, and then threw it in a pot and popped it up and sat on the floor. There was no furniture with the pot of popcorn and just ate The entire thing. Didn't stop, didn't talk, didn't like communicate in any way. We just ate the entire thing and then stood up and popped another pot. And did the same thing.

And the first thing I said in the second pot was, we gotta sell this stuff. Like this is so special. We have to feel this. What did it taste like? I mean. W what h how was it different in when you tried it? It it it was just

So f so first of all, the initial like oh okay, I'm eating popcorn I know what popcorn is, whatever. You put this popcorn in your mouth and you chew on it and They're like crispy, we say. It's not. It's not like this crunch you can hear from across the room, but you get the satisfying crispiness.

And then what you're left with is this really flavorful Corn, That tastes kinda like corn, like it's incredible. So you said once you tried the popcorn, you said we have to sell this but we're you Kinda half.

joking was or was you were like really serious. Like we need to stop what we're doing and sell this. Hundred percent serious. Well. And and Jen, what did you think? Were you like, Yeah, we gotta sell this? Yeah, I was definitely I was like

So happy to be able to do something with my brother. That I was like a hundred percent. And also one of the bigger things we kept saying was like It's so good, but also if like I can eat it, then a lot of other people who can't eat popcorn can eat it. Yeah.

Twenty eleven, two thousand eleven. Did you did you call up that farmer and say, All right, Hey, we gotta buy more more of your Popcorn kernels. Yeah, we did. And it's

We call them up and We were so young. And didn't know things that at one point we like had to ask him. Are we doing something wrong by like buying his corn just from him and then popping it and selling it? Like we literally asked him and he was like What?

Like this is exactly what I want to happen. But it was just like looking back, it's like we're we're super appreciative that he saw the vision and understood'cause he You know, he was so so familiar with this popcorn, but he was so supportive of us going out and doing this. So what was the next step? I mean if you were really serious about starting a business Did you first start by doing more research? Did you first start by like

Turn of build a business plan? Did you first start by forming an L C or or did that come later? It it kinda came later. We we did a lot of testing. in our parents' kitchen we did a lot of like sharing with friends and family to just kinda get feedback, but You know, we definitely

didn't go the path of like business plan and You know the whole the whole thing. It was like we we know we have something pretty special, so we kind of pivoted more to trying to find a place where we could sell this without going the path of raising ton of money from day one. We we kinda wanted to just prove it out and bootstrap it. I feel like there was a lot of

conversations, there was emails, there was like both of us, you know, still testing popcorn and eating it. And then we went on a road trip. We actually like Drove across the country. Jeff and I did. And Teresa met us in Chicago. Teresa is your is your wife, Jeff. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And and you kinda roped her into this.

Yeah, yeah, she kinda didn't have a chance. I mean I I guess she didn't really have a choice. She she she was in. Yeah, so Jeff got the car in LA I met him in Vegas and I remember being on that road trip and we spent the entire time trying to figure out a name, trying to talk about like what what it would look like. thinking of like the worst names for mini popcorn, like every version of like what mini popcorn could potentially be called we came up with.

And I feel like that was like a really pivotal Moment. Where was like a hundred percent like this is gonna happen and gonna happen soon. But we could not think of a name. We could not think of a name that did the product justice. And we like Jen said, we tinkered with every version of Mini and it was just like this is corny if it's no pun intended. Um

So I actually had a friend from college who's Friend. Growing up. started a company call the Naming Group and they would Literally name.

Products and different things for kind of like large companies. They did a lot of like work with cars. So they were they would name Like a new car that was being launched by X brand. So she hooked us up with a guy that worked for her named Jake, and he learned everything we wanted to do. We sent him some samples and probably a Ziploc bag or something. A week later he's like I have a PDF, uh I will have a presentation for you guys and he had like fifteen names in there.

And right in the middle of that deck was Pipcorn. And as soon as we saw Pipcorn, it was like that's it. We settled on it like on the call. Like that was the name. It's like we're not popcorn, we're Pipcorn. It's something that we could say and people could it would resonate um without doing a ton of explaining. So when you um told your parents, like, hey, we're gonna start this popcorn business, were they

Were they really supportive or were they like I I don't know. I mean'cause'cause Jeff, you had a job on on Wall Street as a as a banker, I mean were they were they thinking maybe you should go and get like a a job job or or were they like yeah go for it. They definitely said go for it. And w we support you.

Hundred percent. But I'm sure in the back of their minds they're like What are these kids talking about? Like this is A lot. Yeah, my mom recently

Told me that she was like Because one of the things we did when we weren't together was we hired a student to help us with the logo and the packaging. And my mom said that she and my dad every day would be like They Worked on a font.

for like hours. They just all they did was worked on a font. And like I think there was like moments of that. I think they were super supportive, like Go do this, but I think that amount of like attention to detail we put into every decision we made was like beyond what they were like they were like, just go do it. And I imagine like the startup costs were not that high'cause it's like Corn kernels and

bags to to put it in, like you probably probably didn't have to I mean I'm assuming Jeff you may have s have had some savings from your job or you had some money to to to finance it. Yeah, and I think this is why it didn't fizzle. So many of these, you know, startups fizzle for one reason or another, and one of those reasons it didn't fizzle, or a couple of them were you know, there were like these little signs that we started noticing, like the old chip aisle that always said chips, pretzels, snacks. started saying popcorn chips, pretzels, snacks. So it's like, Okay, popcorn's growing, there's something happening here and then incredibly low barriers to entry, where We could start with three thousand dollars in a bank account and get the equipment we needed and at least start. I mean it didn't get us that far, but we could start and we could prove it out.

In a pretty small targeted way. Yeah. Jennifer, you graduated, I guess, in twenty twelve, is that right?

Yeah, I graduated in twenty twelve. And that spring 'Cause I guess back in New York your brother and um is kind of popping a lot of popcorn and y you are you're kinda going back and forth, I guess, between Chicago and New York and that spring

You guys managed to get a booth at Smorgesborg. Describes Morgisborg. What what is it for people who haven't heard of it? Smurrenberg is It's like an outdoor food market with

A bunch of small batch. foodies who are like making one product whether it's You know, snacks like we were doing chocolate. lobster rolls, burgers. It's just stands of people who are really passionate about food and are doing it in like smaller ways and either like somewhere between launching and like a few years old. And how'd you get in?

So I actually had to go to their offices. They had an office in Brooklyn And pitch them. Mm-hmm. They had a lot of like people who were actually cooking on site. like making food on site. And they didn't have a lot of packaged goods to round out the w the whole setting. So we kinda told the story, like we can start to be one of these packaged food vendors that can be like a take home. So

You know, people who are gonna you can only eat so many things in one at one time, but you can buy a bag of popcorn and take it home with you and take it home. Yeah. It sounds like they thought this was different and interesting'cause it was also w a weird thing. Like Heirloom popcorn. Like who's what's that? Oh, it was like perfect. Like they they had already run a flea market. Very Brooklyn.

Yeah, it was super Brooklyn. It was perfect for what they were trying to build. Tiny popcorn in like really hipster like coffee bags was like right up their alley. So it it it worked out. That that's what you were selling it in? It was it was like coffee paper coffee bags. Yeah, we and we we couldn't afford a print job, so we this was all happening Like all at the same time was like refining the packaging and the idea and the where we're gonna sell it and it happened very quickly, but We couldn't afford a print job. So it was like

Let's buy these coffee bags that are readily available. And Teresa had the idea, like, why don't we just hand stamp them? And what did your logo look like? Great. It was just it w there were three words. It said Pipcorn

And then there was a little grain symbol above the Pipcorn and it said natural on the left and Hollis on the right. And Natural and what? Hullus. So like the popcorn yeah, like was like virtually hullis, so it was like a hull. Yeah. Like a boat without a hull. Call less. Yep. Wow, that is a bold choice of words. 'Cause people are like hulless, what does that mean? Yeah. And by the way

Where were you popping the popcorn? So we were popping out of a really small food incubator up in East Harlem called Hot Bread Kitchen. It was um like a non profit where they would work with immigrant women and provide them an opportunity and a and a facility to

Bake. items from their culture essentially and sell them And then the other side of it was this They would rent kitchen space by the hour. So we we asked him to just rent the space for like six hours and uh like we really needed to start making product or else we thought Smorgisburg was gonna say like all right we gotta give your spot up to somebody else. So we convinced him on April twenty sixth, twenty twelve was the first day in the kitchen.

We popped for hours six hours. And we made like a hundred guys. Like nothing. And and how were you doing this? Were you like Using Cast iron. Dutch ovens and just shaking it over over burners. We so we had finally graduated from our mom's old spaghetti pot, and we just bought a bigger version of that.

We bought like a fifty dollar pot, which was so expensive for us at the time. With a lid that didn't fit on properly. Yeah. And then we bought fry baskets. So a part of the problem with popping popcorn ready to eat in a bag, ready to go, is the kernels. You don't you gotta sift out those unpopped kernels so people don't break their teeth. So We bought a fry basket, which is like The basket that you literally put into a fryer to fry French fries.

and just made the holes a little bit larger. We poked holes through them to make those holes a little bit larger so we could Pop the popcorn, take the pot when it was piping hot. Pour it into the fryer basket. And then s shake it like crazy to get all the kernels to the bottom and then fall out. And then we would put those into little bags and seal'em up. Jeff had like

burns on his arm. Because he would just he would just be standing at the stove. I was the sifter, he was the popper for a lot and he would just be shaking it the whole time. So it was a ton of work. Zero efficiencies. It was like the what's the most amount of work we can do and that's what we did. And that first time on the April twenty sixth, we like made all the bags and we seal them and we bring'em to the market. And All the bags were stale. When we got to the market because we just hadn't thought about that. We hadn't been like they were stale because you

If you just directly put on the coffee bags. The popcorn goes stale? Yeah, so for the ones we were using then, eventually we graduated to having ones that were lined so that we could just do it in it. Yeah. A the first

Batch. We put'em in. Sealed it up. So excited. Go to Smorgisburg. We're like we've we've arrived and we open'em up and like they're stale. And everyone's such a good sport. They're just like soft. Yes. It was really just no fun.

Crispy popcorn. But you only make that mistake once. Yeah. Oh yeah. And by the way, how much how much were you selling the bag for? Like eight dollars.

Eight bucks. So that's like Had to ask people like hey We you know, we didn't know anything, so it's like if if this costs us four bucks to make How much should we sell it for? And um

You know, s somebody gave us the advice of like you should just be doubling it. Yeah. So Whatever it costs you to make it, sell it for double. And it's heirloom popcorn, so people are like, Well maybe it you know, eight bucks it's expensive, but it must be pretty special if it's that expensive. Yeah, and and for us it was like if we can't sell it for eight dollars, we don't have a viable business'cause we can't lose money doing this. All right. So you debut At Smorgesborg in Brooklyn in April of twenty twelve.

And how'd you do? How how what was the reception to to your popcorn on your day at your debut. It it was amazing. Like we we had a lot of friends and family come support. So we were just jacked up. We were so excited. We had all these Our mom and Dad were in lawn chairs behind us. It it was amazing. People

were uh just really excited to see what we were doing. And then someone put us on their Instagram, Jen. I can't remember who it was. Kate Spade. Kate Spade, put us on her Instagram. The Kate Spade. V Kate Spade and it said it was a picture of our bag and it said at Pip Snacks, welcome to the flea. Wow. First day.

I'm assuming at this point, like once you debut at the this Opener market. Jennifer, you You're leaving Chicago, you're not gonna I'm assuming you're thinking, All right, this is gonna happen in New York. Yeah, a hundred percent. So I guess in that summer.

In July of that summer. It was a hot day. You guys were selling your popcorn. And there was somebody there, like you you saw a woman with a clipboard who who was like Just kinda standing around you invited her to stand under your

Tent. For shade. Yeah, so we saw a woman and it was a super hot day and she was just kinda like standing there and so we said to her, like Do you want to stand in the back of our tent so you can get some shade and finish working on what you're working on? Just not looking at your popcorn or anything.

No, she wasn't looking at anything. She was just You know, we just looked out in the crowd'cause that's like what you're doing the whole time. And we just saw her and were like, She needs a place to like just hang for a second'cause she was just like trying to do work. It was clear. Um And so we were like, Do you want to hang in the back of our tent? And she was like, That would be great. Thanks. So she goes to the back and we're in the front and we we don't even talk to her. Like we're not trying to really engage. We probably offered her a bag of popcorn and then just sort of like hung out up front, joked around, tried to sell.

And she walked out of the back of our tent and came to the front. And she was like I'm actually a scout from Oprah's favorite things. Wow. Yeah. And you know, you guys are on my list or

Like, do you have any samples and what are your holiday flavors? And so at that point, you know, this is July, we launched an April. We don't have holiday flavors. But you know, it's Oprah's favorite thing. So we're like, um, you know, and we just name the like classic holiday flaves. We're like gingerbread and peppermint and all these just like random things. And she was like, Okay, great. Um what does your packaging look like for the holiday?

And so we had at the time, if you had come to Smorgasburg, all of our display we set the bags in old milk crates. So we're like, it's gonna be a crate. And she was like awesome, I need a sample. This is Saturday. I need a sample in my office by Monday. And we were like not a problem.

for your Christmas offering. And this wasn't even something you had thought about until she asked you, What's your Christmas offering? You're like, Well yeah we're gonna we're gonna sell like a four pack in a crate. That that you just kind of had to come up with that instantly. Yes. Yeah. And so We were like So excited and it was just I can like still feel that moment of like

You know, we had no idea who was standing in the back of her tent. We were just like trying to give her a second and then Being like Could this actually happen? Like what you know, and we had so many things that were working, like right time, right place that we were like, No way, like what's going on? And so We like pack up and Jeff is very good at like building things and fixing things and he like goes home and like builds a crate. Like he like he like stains the wood, figures out all the measurements, does all the things. And the and the idea was that uh the bags would be in the milk crate. That's how you would sell it. Yeah, for the holiday thing we were like, let's do four bags in one crate.

you know, that'll be the that'll be the holiday offering'cause, you know, traditionally popcorn was in A tin um a tub. Like a tin. Yeah. And you know, it's like the holiday tin. Like you know, everyone knew knows that and we were just like, We don't wanna do a holiday tin. Like that's not who we are. We wanna be different. And so this was our work around and Yeah, so went home, luckily like We were really able to just like test recipes. you know, very easily. We tested a few, made

the gingerbread, the peppermint. How do you make a How do you make it taste like gingerbread? You just put like cinnamon and nutmeg and All spice on popcorn? That's what we figured out, but when we said it we had no idea.

Right. Yeah. I mean we we barely had our our own flavors we were still testing and you know, kinda like refining a little bit. By the way, what flavors were you selling at that point? At that point I think our flavors were sea salt.

Had all. Rosemary and Crabby? Crabby. Crabby was like. Which was like an old baby. Right. And she wanted Christmas flavors. So yeah, we just started to like research. how to make which is easy right like here's what's in a gingerbread seasoning kind of deconstructing and then rebuilding in a way that would lend itself well to like seasoning a snack food.

But we we went down a path of doing like chocolate and mint and we got like way ahead of ourselves. And uh it was kind of an iterative process with with Oprah's team kinda try really trying to prep us to get a yes from Oprah. So they're kinda helping us like, you know, Oprah likes these flavors and trying to kind of pique her interest. And what what did they tell you Oprah liked? Truffle. Truffle. Oh man. And then specifically truffle with

Lemon on top. And we tried every possible way to make a truffle lemon popcorn. Yeah. We had our mom dehydrating lemon peel and grinding it into a dust and We had we were using lemon juice and

Lemon essence. We we tried everything, and there was only one thing that we could get to work, which was in the typical Pipcorn way. The most difficult thing to do. Which was? Which was zesting fresh lemon on every single batch of mine. Wow. Just taking a like a microplaner. Yeah. And just z and and what'd you get the truffle from? So O Oprah's team had a relationship with a a company that uh made truffle salt. And they said, You know, give these people a call, they might be able to help you.

It turned into something. You know, that worked really well. Wow. So you you threw some truffle salt on the popcorn, some lemon zest, sent it back to Oprah's team and

They said you know what? Uh Oprah likes it. She doesn't love it. But she likes it. Pretty good. It's pretty good. She doesn't love it. You kinda want Oprah to love it. We want her to love it. So they were like, Hey, come to the office. She's making her final decisions this week. And was Oprah gonna be at the office?

No. No. We we were just gonna go and set up. So we were gonna go bring a crate and and their advice was Get a big red bow. Like Make it showy. Do whatever you can do to make this Look great. But it's all about presentation too. Like it's gotta be the whole thing. And then you might

You know, get a yes from Oprah. Yeah. And One thing that we we ha hadn't said was they were filming behind the scenes. So we had been filmed we'd at Smorgasburg. they came to Smorgansburg and kind of showed the process of like

Finding people's'cause they were trying to make an episode of how does Oprah pick her favorite things. Right. So We had already been filmed, so when we get to the office they were like, We need to film this part where like people bring all their things. So they mic'd us up. put us in a room and they were just like the scene we're trying to show was this is when you like walk into the room, you put it down, you set it up, and then you walk out. That's all you gotta do. And so we were like, okay, cool. Oh my goodness. Everything's so beautiful.

Hello, that's why I kept saying You have to do beautiful. That's why I said presentation is key as well as taste. Okay, I'll be back in a moment. I'll be back in a second. We walk in. We put it down on the table. they were like, Okay, we'll take the bow off, right? They were kind of instructing us to do like a few things. So we like take the bow off and then All of the sudden.

The door swings open. It's Oprah. She just walks it feels like it's not real. Like you You don't even know that Oprah's real. And then she's there. No. She's there. But I'm here today. I've already chosen this. You're in. Yeah. It's a day. It's a yes. We had also been waiting in the office for a pretty long time and

I just I just can like remember being like is this actually happening? Like Is this real life? So she immediately starts asking us questions about the product and we were like Oprah, so sorry, but like we need a couple seconds. Like this is a lot. We we can't think straight. And then I I was I had to ask her if I could give her a hug'cause I wasn't sure if somebody else would bust through a trapdoor and tap on me before I got to her. It was like And she said you can hug her? She did, yes. And I think I mean it's so overwhelming. You're like, I wanna tell you everything and thank you for everything, you know? I wish we could have like

redo it when I could like be in my body. Yeah.'Cause I fully left my body. Wow. So We left and then we had to like Figure out You know, this is August and this is going live in November.

And we are only a couple months old. We didn't have the production to support it. We didn't have these crates actually made and we didn't have a vendor to make them. And we didn't have money. They needed money. to do this. Yeah. We didn't have

The flavors. Perfect. And we had to go figure all of that out in an incredibly short period of time. When we come back in just a moment. how Jeff and Jennifer scramble to prepare for the Oprah air date.

And what happens after their website, inevitably Crashes. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. from NPR. Hey, welcome back to how I built this from NPR.

I'm Guy Raz. So It's late 2012, and Jennifer and Jeff know that as soon as their episode with Oprah goes live. There's gonna be a surge in demand for Pipcorn. Especially because they're working on all these holiday flavors and What better Christmas gift than a crateful of beef?

Peppermint and gingerbread infused snacks. So we really f set our sights on some commercial popping equipment, which was A challenge because we wanted to replicate the same process. We wanted to keep going with that whole like pot on the stove. But that's not possible, not practical. Yeah, it's um We found this guy.

I think he was outside of Seattle. Who essentially would make these like cauldron style Farmers market poppers. Where it's this Big huge pot.

And these burners, it's like a the burner that you use for like a walk. So Incredibly powerful, big flames. You put the oil in and you put the corn in. And it's essentially the exact same process as popping it on the stove. It just moves it around. Yeah, so in the beginning we couldn't afford uh the

stirs it automatically so we had big wooden paddles and we would just agitate the corn, stirring it, stirring it, stir it. Wait, I'm trying to figure this out. How do you how do you do that? Uh doesn't it pop into your face? Yeah. Yeah, every now and again it would.

It was u usually fine. Even if it popped out and hit you, it wouldn't be a big deal'cause it would just bounce off of you. But if you're popping a sweet flavor with some melt sugar, it sticks to you. So it pops out. Burning hot and it's and it happened to me a couple of times where it would stick to like my neck and it it would it would burn you. I mean it was it was painful. And where did you put did you still use it in the commercial kitchen that you were working out of? No, so we tried. Um

You're crazy. This is a shared space. You you're in here for four hours a day, but then someone else comes in. You can't just occupy all the space with your giant machine. Right. So we we found a kitchen, we moved to New Jersey. right off the George Washington Bridge in October. And we were able to um

put in equipment, lock the door. We had kind of had our own little space that was just for Pipcorn. But all this like buying equipment, uh, moving to a new space, uh h how are you paying for it? I mean y you Presumably didn't have much money yet beyond some sales from from Smorgesburg. Yeah.

This was the point where Teresa So I met Teresa working in Banking and she kept down that path. She she was still working in banking. 'Cause she had a steady job and you were married and you

You didn't have a steady income. N yeah, so we actually weren't married at the time. Uh we were just dating and and that whole thing, but she really kept her job full time to support me, like being able to do this full time. But she had also saved up enough money to Put some capital in so we could

in this really short period of time between August and November Build something where we could weather the Oprah Storm like we could meet the demand. Alright, so you've got this Ginormous expensive popcorn machine.

And you're making lots of popcorn. And presumably the Oprah episode goes live. When did it go live? November. November twenty twelve. And uh

What what happened? They showed a pan across shot at the market of our packaging. And when they showed the name Pipcorn. our website crashed. Before they even power of Oprah. Yeah. Power of Oprah. People just went on Two

Order your popcorn? Yeah. You know, we had prepped we actually so we aired on a Friday and we We went to go hire one person. To help with production. And she brought a friend to the interview. At the end we were like, Okay, Joanna, you have the job.

And she asked about her friend who wasn't a part of their interview at all. We're like, Okay, yeah, you can both please come back on Monday. So Uh the airing comes on again, our website just crashes. We were refreshing over and over on the phone with people trying to figure out what had happened. We actually did get it back up during the segment.

But we missed that first wave of of traffic. Oh wow. Did you get a lot of orders for f like Christmas orders for the Christmas flavors? Yeah, we got a ton. I can't remember actually how many now, Jeff. Do you remember? It was like close to

Yeah, two hundred thousand dollars in sales in in a short in a really I mean like a hundred and fifty thousand dollars of sales in a really short period of time and We were you know, we had bought this new equipment, we had this space that we could, you know, have our own packaging and popping area. And back to the crates. We hired somebody to make How many Jen?

Thirteen thousand. Thirteen thousand, I think. Wooden crates handmade in Brooklyn. Hand stained, hand sanded. Wow. Like These beautiful, beautiful crates. So we we had a process where we had the crates, it was all what I think helped us was the crates were very rigid and the paper

Coffee bags were also rectangular. So You could like slide him into the crate really easily, put a little cover on it, tape it up And it was a pretty small compact package. So we were just literally popping around the clock. Packaging around the clock, packing boxes.

parents, friends coming on the weekends. It was just non but it took us a long time. Also we Featur was in November, I don't think we shipped all the crates until probably February. Wait, wasn't this wasn't this supposed to be for Christmas? It's supposed to be a Christmas gift. Yeah. Yeah. There was a lot of long phone calls. Apologizing. There was a lot of Christmas in February. Yeah. Yeah.

So it sounds like it was I mean, obviously super exciting, but Kind of a nightmare. That's it. Perfect way to say it. It was Incredibly exciting, but

one of the most stressful moments as well, because we were doing our own customer service. We were picking up the phones. We were You know, people you ruined Christmas, you ruined this, you ruined that. And other people were like We fully support you know, we we wrote an email saying this is gonna take us a lot longer than we thought. Uh if you want to refund We will get you a refund.

But if you want to stick with us, we'll get your order out by this time. And you know, we had a lot of support too, but it was a bit of a nightmare. I mean, it's hard to work through like a big back order when you can only make so much. Were you were you like Was like the UPS truck pulling up in front of of that kitchen space where you're working and just like you're just like loading boxes onto it every day? Yeah. Yeah.

Did he come I feel like he might have come twice a day. He came twice. We would like tip him a little bit here and there to like get him to come back a third time. I mean We were all hustling, including the FedEx guy. Like we were all hustling. All right, so you get through that. And You now.

I mean you you were on you were on Oprah's favorite things and And Smorgesborg got quite a bit of press attention, so you you had some visibility and I guess Sounds like it's going amazing. Yeah, I mean it it was I think We had prove that we have something real.

you know, it's not just like a fun hobby, it's not just this has this is gonna be really big. But I think it was really hard, you know, I think the Oprah We sort of like pivoted a little bit too much to focus on like being an online gift. And we had to like swing all the way back to figure out like

Okay, well that's That's seasonal, right? People love that for the holiday, but then the rest of the year, what are we gonna do? And we had to spin all the way back to figure out wholesale. How do we scale? How do we get our shelf life up? And Even though we made a lot of money. through the Oprah experience.

It cost us so much money to like get to do all this that we really didn't have a lot of money to do that. Yeah. And we didn't really have enough to scale in the way that I think People looked at us like we could at that time.

But but meanwhile from what I understand around that time you you did open up another stream of revenue because you you were able to get into Into a Whole Foods, right? Like I think you could you got into this cafe in in a Whole Foods in In New York in the battery, right?

Yeah, and this was through our relationship with Smorgusburg. They opened up a what they called a snack bar. They had like a vacant like a Not near any of the other food, but they were like, Let's launch here and we can showcase some of these vendors from Smorgusburg. So we were like Absolutely. Like it gets us in the door at Whole Foods. Like we'll do anything. So here here's the thing I'm wondering though. When you're in Whole Foods with um

Like the hand stamped stamps on the bag. Like if you're at a farmer's market, it's different'cause or th or the smorgasburg,'cause you can go up to people can go up to you and you can say, Oh, this is heirloom corn and it's we're using interesting flavors and you can tell the story. But if you're just on a shelf of whole foods. How would somebody

that this is unusual or different or worth trying. Well th this was a really interesting time. For the brand for a number of reasons, but

One of them was just this opportunity with Whole Foods was really unique because We got in through the s the snack bar. And We didn't have to go to the grocery department. They brought us in through specialty. So we were being purchased by the same department that purchases like

beer and cheese and like These high end crackers. So we were able to have these m big displays in the entryway and by the cheese department. We had all these amazing opportunities to be

visible elsewhere because we weren't in grocery and What made it even better was that the specialty department in New York Never had a product they could stack up. It was always like these cheeses and these like specialty items that were small. So this is the first time that they had like

Boxes of a snack food. That they could stack on top of each other. And display in the store. and kinda compete with grocery a little bit. And that was a massive opportunity for us to be that snack for them. And to sell a story to

other stores within the Whole Foods Network, even like the store down the road, saying, Hey, have you seen what's happening at Bowery? Cause you should go check it out. We could do the same thing in your store. the other specialty buyers. wanted us, right? Like they they could look at the numbers in the system and be like Whoa, these kids are moving a ton of product. Like we have to bring it in.

But how were you moving so much product? Demoing. We were in the store every single day. We were demoing nonstop. And visibility. I mini was it was definitely the demos.

But That's this is when we started taking this data and this all of these date data points. And going to other stores saying like, Hey We can do the same thing for you. And then

We hit a major roadblock when we discovered the power of a store like this and specifically the Columbus Circle location of Whole Foods. This is I think their biggest location in New York, the Whole Foods and Columbus Circle. Yeah. And what was that what was the roadblock? So if you've ever been to the Whole Foods in the Columbus Circle, or if you haven't been

express checkout from the normal checkout, they usually have like a partition. And in in when we launched into the store, they said We're gonna use you guys, your Cases. To

essentially build the partition between the checkout lines. So We're used to selling maybe Between ten and twenty cases to a store. And they were like we want Three hundred cases.

We're gonna go big with Pipcorn. So we Popped it for a week. Bagged it. Rent it a U Hall, delivered it.

And The next day we get an order for another three hundred cases. And like we couldn't do it. We we were overnighting you know, pallets of corn, two thousand pounds of corn, we were like scrambling. We were producing it as fast as possible, at a loss. Delivering it ourselves. It was like one store.

Was all of our business. We would just kept getting these huge orders and we never said no. So we were always like, Yeah, we'll we'll make it work. So it was like We would get any friend. To come and help. The Columbus Circle Whole Foods like legitimately almost put us out of business early on because the volume was so huge.

Wait, but I mean this is this is sort of counterintuitive. You had so much business, so many sales, so much volume being moved that it almost puts you out of business? Yeah. Because we just weren't prepared for it. We were used to

you know, pretty good volume from the other whole foods, but nothing like They use us for the checkout line. So if you're in line on a busy day, you have to walk past Pipcorn. You know, it was just the volume was So much more than we ever anticipated. So were you guys like

Freaking out. Yeah. Yeah, we we didn't know what to do. I mean we It's like You know, people would say, Oh, that's a great problem to have. You know, it's too much demand is great.

And we were kinda like, Yeah, I mean it's amazing, but like all of these really, really amazing problems kind of like equate to like a pretty serious issue. Like we We need to figure it out. And so we we did. We This is when we started to then s get new equipment.

That was equipment that you see in the movie theaters more commercial More reliable. higher output.'Cause you couldn't just stand there Mm moving the stick around all day.

No, we uh we ha we had to graduate. And and by the way, how how were you paying for it? I mean if'cause Whole Foods, I'm assuming, pays you What? sixty to ninety days later, like m many companies do. Yeah. I mean we would owe our bills in fifteen and we get paid from them in thirty days. So we had cash flow issues for a really long time because The growth was so extreme.

That Yesterday's checks might not cover next week's bills. Wow. And that was Whole Foods, right? So Whole Foods is They're whole foods. They pay on time and

But We were also selling to a lot of other smaller stores that You know, sometimes we'd have to go chase people down for A hundred bucks because we needed it and We sold them product. So

And by the way, who was Who was doing the the business development? Like were you going out as a sales rep? Or did you did you Hire somebody. Or distributors. It was us. How are you making popcorn?

Packaging it, delivering it to Whole Foods. And also still getting direct to consumer orders and going to shops and trying to get them to sell In stock. Your popcorn.

Guy, I honestly don't know how we did it. Like thank God. How did we do that? I remember There was the specialty stores that we got into And I think that one thing that we replicated was We'd like to go on to Yelp and just look for cheese shops, specialty shops, gourmet shops in other cities, right? Like Philly in Boston and Chicago and all those things, and I think that

Was really helpful in like figuring out how to get into those. I remember Allie Truesdale from Whole Foods, she was like don't make the mistake so many people make, which is getting into Whole Foods and then being like, I wanna get into every store. I think that that helped us a little bit. Um

Because We didn't make the mistake of trying to get into like a massive retail where if we couldn't fulfill it, then we would have gotten kicked out. Aside from you know, like obviously aside from Whole Foods, but we didn't have a lot of those going on. It was all these like specialty shops. But I'm try I'm getting stressed out'cause no one is popping popcorn while you're doing all this. You gotta make popcorn. Who's making the popcorn? So

Mm. Pension Joanna, um, our first employee, she We essentially just recruited her entire family to come and pop popcorn for us. So her sister came, her cousin came, they brought friends and Uh we built this like family, essentially. Well really it was Joanna's family, but We became like an extended family and they really helped us.

to grow. So we could finally get out of the kitchen full time and we could start doing All the other stuff and feel very comfortable that we had an amazing team. Popping the corn. All right, so you you guys are trying to just keep your head above water.

C come out of twenty thirteen. Good year, two hundred thousand dollars and sales that year. And in twenty fourteen. You decided to apply for Shark Tank. Right. Yeah. Which is I mean, I I don't even want to ask why,'cause obviously why? It's a huge national visibility and

Huge attention. Yeah. They actually approached us to be To apply. For the show.

in twenty thirteen. So while all this crazy stuff is happening.'Cause they saw you on they saw you on Oprah or or how did they know about you? So we had all this stress with You know, popping the corn and growing the whole foods relationship and like all these exciting things. And in the back of our minds we had this shark tank opportunity that What are we gonna do? We have so much happening.

And Shark Tank could change our lives? But we're just not ready for it yet. If we go on Shark Tank, like they're gonna eat us alive. We're we're we've been in business for a year and three months. We just didn't see a way to be successful. So we told the casting agent, who was super understanding, we told her The timing just isn't right for us. Like we just think we'll be so much you know, more prepared next year.

If we can come back and reach out to you in twenty fourteen, like we'd love to do that. And she Said. Absolutely. Like let's reconnect next year. Yeah, and

It was just such a wild, wild experience and When we win our producer like every every contestant has a producer kind of like walking you through things and just helping you get prepped. And um he said to us when you go out there

You aren't allowed to talk to anyone about shark tank. Like you, you're gonna be picked up and you're gonna be on set. And even when you're on set and there's other entrepreneurs there, you can't talk about you can't talk to anyone. Like there's Like Shark tank spies who are around, and if they catch you talking, then you're gonna get kicked off and all this stuff, and so they don't want you to talk to the other contestants? No, they that and that's what they said to us and so we were like, Okay, got it like

We we are never gonna up mess up this opportunity, so like we are not gonna talk to anyone. So we get off the plane, they're like, no one can know you're there for Shark Tank. They said somebody would be there to pick us up. And we get to the curb and it's like a massive van that says Shark Tank season six all over it. And so we were like. What's happening like is this a test? And we get on the van Teresa was with us. And there's all all the other

brands who are the gonna pitch. And Everyone's talking. Like every single person is talking to each other. And we're like, Is this a test? Is this all a test? Like what's happening? And so Jeff and I don't say a word. And so we seem like such we just seem like horrible people. And Teresa's responding for us. So like somebody will ask us a question and we'll like look out the window. Because we're like, we don't want to get kicked off. So we like go to the room, we like check in, we go to then the lot. Where they're film and we see our producer and we like walk up to him we're like Ian.

Everyone's talking. We were feel so weird we're not talking. He goes Falcum. And he was just like, don't say a word. Wow. Don't talk. And we were like What and I think Like in hindsight.

he was really just trying to help us because you watched people psych themselves out. You watch people talking and hearing how much bigger other brands were than their brand or how much they prepped compared to other people. And we were sort of in this bubble of not talking to people and so we like didn't psych ourselves out. So I really think it was just to help us. But it's it's one of like my favorite Shark Tank memories. And how were they I mean, everybody can watch the episode if they want, but but how how was it? I mean you go go out there and you start talking about your popcorn and Uh, how were they? H how were you received by the sharks? Yeah, so it was the first day of filming for that new season. So I think they were like excited to be back. Yeah. But we were the last people to go, so I think they were probably like tired. So like having a snack at the end was great.

And When we came out there, everybody was just snacking so much. That no one was really talking a lot. They were just munching on your popcorn. Yeah, like I don't think Mark Huben said anything. He's just eating a popcorn the whole time. He's just eating the enti an entire bag of kettle popcorn the entire time. Wow. And even Mr. Wonderful, who like his job is to give you a hard time was like You guys are crazy for that valuation and then being like, but this is delicious.

What was the valuation? That you you you put it at. 200,000 for 10%. So you were saying it's it's two million dollar company. Yeah.

You're saying your valuation was way too high. Yeah. Did that rattle you at all when he said that? It really didn't because he it seemed more like They say the like they had to

I don't know, play their parts and like he wasn't gonna go in. He was never gonna invest. And so he had to like criticize us. But we'd also prepped ourselves like in a I would say a different way than other people that were at least there with us. Like we we knew the business We had done everything. From popping to bagging to delivering to yada y we'd we done it all. So we knew the business inside and out. So instead of going to LA and Locking ourselves in our hotel room and

You know, studying nonstop. We thought, okay, let's do that for one day. Let's go to a CVS and buy a ball, like a beach ball. And Teresa would essentially th would like throw us the ball and ask us a question and we had to answer it quickly.

to train ourselves to like re recall information quickly. And then the second day we are in LA We rented a car. And we drove around LA. We just Enjoyed the fresh air.

We saw the sites. We didn't stress. And then of course we got home at ten o'clock at night and we're like, we should have we should have been in our hotel room this entire time. We should not have rented a car and driven around LA. But it it but but it what it did was it allowed us to just Clear our heads and be ourselves. And we went on set.

The next day. Just kind of like feeling normal. Like the hard thing about Shark Tank for us was like managing The personalities. Like we made a pact, like we're not gonna go on and act. crazy. We're not gonna let them get to us.'Cause like that's part of the thing. They're making a TV show too, but they're also trying to make deals.

So We knew we wanted Barbara, so Robert offered us a deal, but he cut our valuation in half. He said, Love you guys, love the product. The valuation's too aggressive. So I'll give you two hundred thousand for twenty percent. For twenty percent. Yeah. So he cut it in half and we said, No, that's not gonna work for us. And he his response was okay, what's What will you do?

And we just said Two hundred thousand for ten percent. That's what we came here to do. That's what we're here to do. Nice. And we were really just trying to, you know, on TV it looks really organized, but in person, like There was a lot of like no no don't answer their question, answer my question, or you know, here's a question for you And it was a lot it was really intense. So we were trying to manage the pr the people, answer the questions, as many as we could, but also just like hang around long enough for Barbara to come in. And and that's

What we did and then eventually she's She she offered us a deal that we asked for, and as soon as she said it, we were like, Yes, yes, absolutely. Please get us out of here. We want that deal done. So Barbara Corcran does.

agree to make a$200,000 investment for ten pr ten percent stake in the company. But she also negotiated a slightly better deal for herself, which was also a ten percent draw. From your salaries. Yeah, correct.'Cause it wasn't gonna be it wasn't gonna be profitable for a while and and that's how you make your money, right? When when we when you own a share of a company, you get a distribution at the end of the year if it's profitable. Yeah, yeah, and and her whole thing was like I'm gonna work for you too. Like I'm gonna go do all of these things behind the scenes. So I'm not gonna do that for free, let's say, you know? And she's a hundred percent right, like sh the amount of work that she puts in and she has a lot of entrepreneurs to manage at this point. There's a lot of people that she's invested in

So she also wants to be motivated. So this was kind of the way that the deals were structured at the time. So it's not like she was just taking money out of the company, but if we took some cash, then she would want to as well. It was kind of a a a fair way to structure it. All right, so She's in for ten percent. The show airs, and I have to assume it's another Oprah moment. Yeah, just uh orders are going like through the roof.

Yeah. Blood pressure rising. It was just as bad, yes. It was like a blessing and a curse, but the well it wasn't a curse at all. The good news though

Packaging print job. I feel like It came in what a few weeks before? So we were no longer hand stamping bags. We were still hand packing all of them, but they were fully printed. So that was eliminated a massive step. And

Allowed us to like fulfill way more like we would have never been able to get out of the situation if we are still hand stamping. Yeah. Yeah. And now that you've got Barbara Corcran on your side and the even more visibility Did it make it easier for you to

To find m more distribution? Was it easier to get into Into stores at this point? Yeah, definitely. Within a couple so we aired on Shark Tank in November of twenty fourteen. And within the following

five or six months we were able to get into uh three more regions of Whole Foods. And with those relationships opened up some opportunities to sell to other retailers too. So We were really able to leverage the exposure and really kind of growing up in the process too. We had a bigger facility at this point, we had more employees, we had

just a process built around this whole thing. So the sh I mean Shark Tank gave us a ton of opportunities and behind the scenes we were Like aggressively pivoting towards like a much larger wholesale distribution strategy. Bye. twenty seventeen. Your popcorn was pretty much in every Whole Foods.

in the US. I think I think um I read that by twenty seventeen your your s you guys were doing five million dollars in sales. So t tw twenty seventeen was actually closer to two million in revenue. Okay. We hadn't gotten to five yet, which is like a major tipping point for for brands that uh we It was was another crazy, crazy milestone, but

By twenty seventeen we were distributed nationally in Whole Foods. I think we had three popcorn flavors in Whole Foods. And when you go into this large scale distribution We're no longer renting U Hauls. We're no longer making, you know, direct deliveries. We're going through big distributors. So we essentially sell to the distributor. And then they make the deliveries to the stores. And Whole Foods works with one in particular that has access to

you know, tens of thousands of retail stores that are not whole foods. So we were able to start to target those as well without doing any additional work from a you know, distribution perspective, we could sell to the same distributor, and then they could go deliver to another retailer that wasn't Whole Foods because there we they already have the product in their distribution center. Right. So that was a huge tipping point for us, like very late twenty sixteen when we got into Whole Foods Nationally because it opened up this major opportunity to start growing, you know, elsewhere. Between twenty twelve, April twenty twelve and twenty eighteen, you guys were just like on this march forward, like, you know, Kate Spade to Oprah and to Whole Foods and then Shark Tank and like everybody and then all over Whole Foods nationally, like you were just kinda hitting it out of the park, so I imagine when you started to pitch investors

you were you had to turn them away like they were competing to invest. Yeah, we um We got hit with like a freight train. twenty eighteen. Like it was.

We made the decision to raise money. We thought this is the path. We can grow in a major way. We got received a couple term sheets, like you know, we like you mentioned, we there was some interest, there was a lot of interest, and we thought there's one group in particular that we really loved. They knew the agricultural side of things, they were really patient capital. They understood like the struggle of being a founder because they were founders in previous lives. Um so we You go ahead, John. Oh no, the one thing I was just gonna add was like

We kicked off the fundraising process and then I feel like in two weeks we had or two or three weeks we had like two term sheets. Wow. And two term sheets is amazing. I mean that that's commitment, that's a real commitment to to investing in your business. Yeah. So like when you do a deal like this, like the first phase is like you go out and pitch and then you once you receive term sheets and you sign one Then it's like okay, this deal is on a path to getting done. So that's what we did. And yeah.

You know, it was about six months of back and forth. There was a time difference. Um they were they were based out of South Africa. So and and you mentioned two term sheets. So w was was one of them based in the US? Yeah, one was based in the US. But The one from South Africa was a stronger term sheet for us. So you so you went with them?

Yeah. So we went down this pretty long process. We had lawyers draft up the entire Agreement. We Everybody was on board. We went through the whole negotiation. It was like

W ruling. Investment group. Exactly, yeah. And but how much were they how much were they gonna invest, by the way? They were gonna invest three million dollars. Three million dollars. Okay, which was gonna be transformational, presumably. Yeah, definitely. And it was gonna allow us to realise some of these dreams and All along the way we had been prepping to like Make these

So in the eleventh hour. We like exchange wire information, we gave him our bank information, we signed the documents, like the legal docs essentially is like our new operating agreement. And they didn't sign. So we we found out that the money wasn't there. They went radio salon on us for a couple days. And uh after like a day or two we were able to connect with one of the team members and he

told us that they weren't gonna be able to invest in us. What? Wait. They sent you term sheet. That's basically a contract.

It is. And we And then after the term sheet we negotiated like these long form deal documents and, you know, had a hundred thousand dollar legal bill. So what happened when you got on the phone of the Partner. It was like a venture capital firm? Yeah. So when we got on the phone with him, he um

Told us that. Some of their other Portfolio companies hadn't been performing well. So They were the money that backed them.

Got cold feet. And just decided to stop any deals that were in the works. They were gonna stop'em all. and uh kind of regroup for a minute. So We were like furthest down. There were three other businesses that were impacted. We were furthest down.

And uh what it did was It put us in July of twenty eighteen with No deal.

We ran out of cash because we were banking on this deal and it The deal itself went a little bit longer than we thought. The negotiations. The negotiations, yeah. And it left us in the middle of the summer, which is like a really hard time to try to start a new deal. So We had nothing. We were in a really tough spot. When we come back in just a moment.

How Jeff and Jennifer figure out how to keep the business afloat. And even begin to experiment with other types of snacks. So spoiler alert We will soon be talking about how to make a cheese ball puff. Stay with us, I'm Guy Roz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

And PR. Hey, welcome back to how I built this from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the end of two thousand eighteen. Pipcorn has just lost a big potential investment. And the whole business?

Is starting to feel Pretty fragile. We just didn't have money. Like at all. So

What we did was we pivoted really quickly to our friends and family. Our parents, Teresa's parents, Teresa's sisters. and some friends just kinda bailed us out. Wow. And then because they bailed us out, we were able to

and restart a process in January of twenty nineteen. Yeah. So what did you do? So

kind of a short period of time we were introduced to a couple of folks and we wound up signing a term sheet that was very different than the first deal, but we were able to raise six million dollars. in May of twenty nineteen. How? So

In the time period from July of twenty eighteen to when we close our deal in May of twenty nineteen. That was when we really went back to the drawing board and said like Okay, we're not just a popcorn company. We have this amazing raw material and this heirloom corn. So

We started tinkering. And what we came up with were two initial products that we loved. One was a chip. Like a a corn chip essentially that was in a shape that you could dip into dips and eat and like a frito like a frito, exactly. Um But it was made with this heirloom corn that was incredibly delicious, high quality. Heirloom corn frito. Yeah.

Yeah, so that's that was the first one that we really product that we really love. The second one was What we quickly realized was gonna be the future of the company, which was our our cheese balls. Cheese balls. Yeah. So good. That's everyone's reaction. So we very strategically thought like Let's get into some extruded products like popcorn shelf spaces going a little bit more towards these puffed items.

Let's see what we can do there. quickly realize that like there's a space here to create something that is so nostalgic and so fun, And so different. That has never been done in natural with heirloom corn with organic cheeses, with no artificial anything. And to take it one step further, if you flip over a

package of a cheese snack that you might have at home. there's a good chance that that cheese puff has natural flavors in it. Which is way better than artificial flavors. But it's still something that is, in our minds, shouldn't be in a cheese seasoning. So What we did was we removed all those natural flavors, so 100% of the cheese flavor you get in our cheese ball comes from real cheese.

Which is like A novel idea, but it's kind of like not many people are doing that. Not just cheese flavor. But actually just cheese like shavings or you know, powder. Yeah, exactly. you guys felt like

Now we should actually become a snack foods brand and make other snacks based around this heirloom corn. What was the vision in your in your minds? What did you want? To make Pipcorn. What you want it to be like the fridole of sort of natural and organic foods? Like what what what in your mind were you thinking?

Yeah, I mean to a certain extent we wanted to Take all of these snacks that we loved eating as kids. And Taking those snacks and making them Okay to eat?

was something that was really exciting to us. It's like de junking junk foods essentially, like There's a way to clean up these nostalgic favorite snacks. Let's we have this relationship with Whole Foods. They're a captive audience. They love innovation. So like we can have we can sit across the table and talk about What do we want this brand to be? And then they can actually like help us get there. So

We had some ideas that we've been working on for a really long time. And twenty eighteen was like the moment when we thought, you know what, like Let's do it. How hard is it to make a cheese ball? I mean, popcorn's easy. You just put it in uh with some heat and shake it around you got popcorn.

Yeah. There's like an extruder and and like A long process for a cheese ball, right? Yeah, it's uh As easy it is to make

A bag of popcorn. It's it's That in the ultimate Yeah, it's the inverse. So you're essentially taking corn meal, like corn grits. And you're putting it into a tube. That has a screw inside of it.

That Does two things. It acts as an auger, so it pushes the corn down toward the end of the tube. Yeah. And then when it gets to the end of the tube Yeah.

create so much heat and friction. that it essentially liquefies the Corn grit and forces it. Through a plate. That has some kind of a shape on it.

And uh turns it into a puff. So To get that to happen, it has to be the proper moisture content in the corn. The extruders have to be at the right speed, the right temperature. It's not easy to do, especially using like a whole grain item like we are, because Usually when you do these manufacturing things on a high level, you want to control every single variable. Everything.

And that's how you get a consistent product. And we're the opposite. We're we're using heirloom corn. There's so many variables that people can't control. So Usually when you get a puff Again, if you flip over the package of a puff you might see like degermed yellow corn as a first ingredient. And what that means is the germ of the corn or the tip, the pointy part, that's where like a lot of the nutrient is, honestly. And It's

The Enemy like Extruders can't work with the germ of the corn. It clogs it, it doesn't extrude, it makes a mess. We don't take it out of our corn. That's why it's a whole grain snack. We leave it in.

Um so it's hard. I mean, that's all to say. It's a hard process that once you get it, you can replicate it, but it's hard to get it right. So in the factory is it like is it like one of those nerf guns that's just like shooting out those like Round nerve pellets. It's just like shooting out Cheese puffs? Yeah, that's exactly that. Can you imagine a Nerf gun cheese puff plaster? How awesome would that be. You might need to make that.

Mm. You basically you were able to transition from a popcorn company to a snack company. Yeah, and I think what what kinda getting back to your question of how do we get this deal done.

We had these things lined up, so We sold it into Whole Foods. We're not just popcorn anymore. We have chips, we have Cheese balls. We have other things we can do. We met with the cracker buyer and said You know, we have

All of this corn flour that's a byproduct of our cheese balls, let's upcycle it into a beautiful Heirloom corn based cracker. And that's how we went about this innovation with the cheese balls and the dippers was like work with the copackers to develop it, but like do a lot of sampling, a lot of taste testing. Like we always whenever we innovate, we always start from like what would we snack on all day long. And then build from there. Some pressure.

I imagine that took some pressure off because you didn't have to make it yourselves and pack it yourselves. On the other hand, a six million dollar uh investment in your business actually Is a new Kind of pressure, right? Definitely. I mean not having the manufacturing was a huge weight and uh there was that was a long time coming. But

Raising money there's a lot of pressure because now Especially for a brand like ours that didn't raise money for you know seven years. To then have This new relationship And these new partners.

I mean it's just a different totally different way of doing business. Um so yeah, and and then like, you know, the goals that we set in the beginning of the year. I is like we gotta hit these goals. You know, it's it's not as fluid as when it's kind of a startup Bootstrap lifestyle. Yeah.

Um you've got this investment. This happened in twenty nineteen. You get this investment and I'm assuming twenty nineteen was probably a great year for you, right? I think that that was the year that you you you hit Five million in revenue, is that right? Yes. Yeah. So you go into twenty twenty.

presumably like every other business doing very well, and then the pandemic hits. Yeah. I'm assuming at this point. You know, a lot of your revenue's coming from traffic in stores. People just go into the aisles.

Were you preparing? yourself for austerity measures and prepare for A huge hit in revenue?

Yeah, we Yes. The short answer is yes. We We did a ton of work. to be visible on the digital shelf. I'll let Jen talk about all the things that we did on the D to C side, which is the new the new normal. Yeah. Yeah, so a lot of what we did with the website was

for education, right? Like so that people in the store would come to our website and they would learn about heirloom or they would it was way more education focused rather than conversion focused. And so I think in that mo you know, in March we had to make a ton of really fast changes to make sure that like It operated in the way that like was easy to buy, was quick, like you know, like what did you guys do? I mean I think there was lots of little things like This sounds really simple, but

you couldn't jump to each product while being on one page. So you couldn't be on Sea Salt Popcorn and see the other popcorns. And that sounds small, but when you're shopping and you want somebody to like not get bored or not get frustrated that they can't just go to the next product, you need them to be able to jump around. But if your website is built for like education and sales, like you're you want them to kind of like brow. You want them to like learn about other things and Find the thing they're looking for where When you want conversion, you want to show them.

What? you want them to see. Um and so we did little things like that. I think you know, we've always had a really strong Email business, uh like newsletter. Following

But we implemented And started using SMS. When people get a text they then read it and then they they order it at at higher higher levels, higher rates. Yeah. And you can just communicate in a more casual way. And we've really built a community around our brand, so it's kind of more How did you guys get

Um build like a mailing list and stuff. Is this simply people just signing up? On the website when they ordered? Yeah, we you know, we were fortunate that like Obviously when we're on Oprah and Shark Tank, you get a lot of people coming. So Think that's how we have a ton of people on it.

but also running ads. So we had never run any ads previous to like before twenty twenty. And so I think when we started running ads, whether you buy or not, you come to our site, you probably want a coupon and you join the list. I think you're available. in like ten thousand stores. across the US and uh what's percentages like direct to consumer through the website and and what percentage I'm assuming mo more of your sales are through stores or or is that not not right?

No, that's correct. Yeah, I think it's like twenty percent, twenty twenty five percent on online and then the rest is wholesale. I guess your your projected revenue for this year is like twelve million dollars, which is Which is a huge jump. And you guys now have

Still you're still pretty small, right? You've got just five total employees. Is that is that right? By the way. Yeah. And so I have to assume that you are

Close to profitability or maybe even profitable? Yeah, we're close. We um We're we're projecting profitability by end of next year. But yeah, I mean it's the the business that we're operating today is definitely different than what we

had been operating where You know, without a doubt. marching towards profitability to really set ourselves up for the for the next chapter. And by the way, I mean I'm curious, i th this this may or may not have had an impact on your business, but Um there was a

A a lot of attention paid. two black owned businesses um in the middle of last year, obviously because of the protest against racial injustice and there were there were earnest and let's say some less earnest attempts to support black businesses, but they're Th there was

sort of a groundswell and we know this because um We you know, we talked to some founders who experienced that, um black owned uh businesses. W were you did you see any of that connected to your business at all, in any way? Yeah, and I think it was I I was talking to a friend and we kinda described it as bittersweet, you know? Because it's like

The support came after Obviously George Floyd getting murdered and you know, obviously years and years of injustice that it took this for then people want to want to support us. So I think it's a very bitter sweet moment, but What's amazing is we are getting the support and that people are

Wanting to support Black and brown brands, you know, and minority own brands. And I think where it feels good is when it's companies or people who are reaching out to you who have always supported you and they're just amplifying it. I think the part where it gets Confusing.

of how to feel about it is when you can tell it's an opportunity for them to lift their brand. Right. And it isn't actually about lifting. us as a black founded brand. So I think that that was a really tricky thing and I think it's tricky because it's like something so personal that affects us. who we are and who our family is and navigating this at the same time as

Trying to I don't know. I I think it's just been like an i really, really interesting few months of how to be really grateful, but also like Kind of really Eye opening of

What people's Why they're doing the things they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's interesting because there are some brand that You know, where

the fact that their black owned businesses are more connected to to what they make. Like like the lip art. We had Melissa Butler on and She created this brand because she felt like Cosmetics companies weren't You know, they weren't making products for black and brown women.

you know, they weren't making the kinds of cosmetics that that she and her friends wanted. And so Who she is in her story is so connected to that product. Your product is so connected to the idea of heirloom corn. Right. Like Based on our conversation over the last few hours, I

I would think that the sort of the core identity of what you put out into the world is Based on this amazing Product that you Discovered. Has

The last year. I don't know. brought your own personal identities. Closer to the center of What your brand represents in your minds?

I mean I think it would be hard not to. Yeah. go through this year and be like a little bit more kind of intertwined with what's going on in the business and my personal life. I think that You know, being a minority founder, being a black founder is something that

is a who we are, right? Like we were asked the question recently, What's it like to be a black founder? We're like How we're We've this is just who we are. Like I don't even know how to answer that question, but I feel like having us wrapped up into this business a lot more. And Teresa too on like

You know, Teresa's Chinese and and Pushed recently. And really in twenty twenty since Covid to like this push to stop Asian hate is like

Another thing that's just like We c we can we can speak to so many people as founders, so let's do it. What's changed for me is I think the way that I'm Treated or the way that I guess

I refuse to be treated anymore. And I think that has given me a lot of power this year. Like I th I You know, in the past I've always just laughed off. Somebody says a comment to me that's Racist or sexist or homophobic or whatever it is, I laugh it off because I feel awkward and I don't want them to f you know, I just want to m m make the situation end, right? Like that's what we all do.

And I think what this year has really given me is like I don't cosign those things anymore, right? Like I don't I'm not rude, I just won't laugh. Like and I think that that has been really shifted a lot for me because I Didn't feel I felt responsible in those moments to make

it go away. And I don't feel that anymore, and regardless of How people change like People haven't changed how they treat me, but I think my reaction has definitely changed, and I think that's been Just something that I'm very grateful for coming out of

this year and realizing I was doing so much of Mm. When you guys think about all you've been through now and Where you're heading. I mean

At some point, and we know this'cause of all the people who've who've who've been on the show and have had I've started food brands. Including Angie's boom chick-a pop. At some point There's an acquisition.

Offer. Or in some cases they they reject the acquisition offer like Like Cliff Bar. But At some point it'll come.

You know, a big brand or General Mills or a Free O Lover, I don't know who it is. And um Is that something that you think you'd be open to down the road? I mean I mean it it could be a life changing amount of money and

Could put you in a a position where you could Pretty much do whatever you wanted to do. It is that Prospects sound attractive to

To both of you. Yeah. You know, that was um We have a lot of ideas. I I d I wouldn't say that I ever thought I'd be the popcorn guy followed by the heirloom snack guy. And uh you know, I know Jen feels a similar way and Teresa as well. And

Yeah, I mean In terms of an acquisition, I think it's something that we would be, you know, to the right partner too. Like you can really start to see some amazing things happen. And sometimes the founders stay on and Sometimes they move on, but um, you know, for the right partner that can really take Pipcorn to the next level and maybe some accomplish some things that we just might not be able to. Like that's uh That's an attractive thing'cause we're we're making something that we want to be around forever. And whether or not we're the ones, you know, running it.

we we we want it to have, you know, staying power. And I think there's something really exciting there. Your parents must be so proud of you guys that you're a brother and sister and you're working together and you build this from really from nothing. Yeah, they're so proud. They're the best. They always talk about they're like, we miss the old days because they would always come up to Harlem or wherever it was helping us do things and They're just happy that, you know, we're still working together, we still get along.

We're still growing. We're still learning and I think that's That's all they want. Yeah. Yeah, there were moments like in the early days, like in Let's say twenty thirteen, when we were

At that kitchen in New Jersey, my parents live in New Jersey. And we would be popping, delivering, bagging, stamping, and We were so tired. Like we were just

P. And they would get in the car, drive an hour, hour and a half. to the kitchen. you know, at eleven o'clock at night, just to like tag us out. They would do the dishes for us.

Clean all the equipment. Mop the floor. Wi down the walls, get it ready for the next day. So we could go home and get like three hours of sleep and then come back. And they would just do it because You know, they were so excited for us and like they saw how tired we were. So like any slack they could pick up, anything they could do, like they were just in.

What do you attribute your the success of your brand and the growth you know, all all the things that happened to you. I mean Some people say oh I was lucky, some people say I worked hard, some people say it was Yeah, other factors. I don't know.

D is there is anything you think about when you when you think about why? You got to where you got to today. Yeah, I think I think it's a lot of hard work. It's a lot of luck.

there's a there's a certainly a component of like right place, right time. Like look at the Oprah thing, you know? But it's also like A level of humility and a level of connection that is really important too. Like Be a good person.

And Try to do the right thing. And uh, you know, in business, that stuff really matters, especially as a founder of a brand who's like going into the meetings, talking to people, like Those connections are really important. And then W one thing that we always honestly joke about is like Don't let the highs get you so high.

And don't let the lows get you so low. Because being really low is is hard and it's uh there's a lot to work through as as a founder. But those super high highs like getting that Oprah, getting that Shark Tank and stuff. That can also be crippling if you don't deal with it the right way. So like we've learned over the years because of these amazing experiences, like

The not getting super low is maybe an obvious one, but Not getting super high is kinda hard too,'cause you gotta stay right in the middle so you can continue operating. That's always been like a lesson that we remind ourselves. Hm. Chiffre. Yeah, I would agree. I think there's pockets of luck that happen through your life. I think like

Yeah. You know, and they come back. You miss one Another one happens. And working hard, I think that We worked so hard and we just never stopped. There's been so many moments where maybe we should have stopped, but we didn't. And I think that the mix of like

Not giving up. Pivoting and knowing when to like really give everything to that moment where like the universe is opening up and you're like super lucky. Yeah. Such a key, and I think that's helped us so much.

That's Jennifer and Jeff Martin. Co founders of Pipcorn. Along with Teresa Zoe. And by the way, a few years ago, the three founders ran an experiment to see if you could make popcorn only by harnessing the heat from the sun. So they went out to the hottest place in the world.

Death Valley, California. set up a solar cooker and it worked, they popped some Death Valley popcorn and even sold some of it. But even before they went to Death Valley, they tested the solar cooker on the sidewalk at the corner of 113th and Park Avenue in New York City. And yes. It actually worked there too.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you're not a subscriber, please do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to write to us, our email address is hibt at npr.org. If you want to follow us on Twitter or at How I Built This or at GuyRodz. And on Instagram, you can follow at how I built this NPR or my account at Guy. This episode was produced by JC Howard with music composed by Ramteen Arablui.

Thanks to Janet U Jung Lee, Liz Metzger, Faris Safari, Dereth Gales, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to how I built this. This is NPR.

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