Gabi Lewis
Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Magic Spoon. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Gabi Lewis co-founded Magic Spoon in 2019, building a high-protein, zero-sugar cereal brand that scaled from direct-to-consumer online sales into major nationwide retailers. He previously co-founded Exo in 2013, an alternative-protein startup known for manufacturing cricket-flour protein bars until its acquisition by Aspire Food Group in 2018.
1shows
1appearances
20statements
4resolved
3supported
1contradicted
75%fully supported
Everything Gabi Lewis said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Lewis: Legacy cereal brands are declining because they ignore modern consumer demands
“So the cereal category is, Is enormous, about eleven billion dollars, and it's been declining slightly, and people would actually say that to us as a reason for why we shouldn't go into that category, and we said to them, hey, why has nobody created a cereal, …”
Lewis: Magic Spoon gave influencer investors bonus equity based on attributed sales
“Actually, what we did when we founded Magic Spoon is we created an equity pool for these influencers who are investors in the business, and based on the revenue they drove through their sites or email lists, we divided up this bonus equity pool Amongst them af…”
Lewis: Novel foods mainstream when hidden in familiar formats like California rolls
“There's a long history of foods that at one point were viewed as bizarre in the U S you could look at sushi, for example, which 50 years ago, eating raw fish was a little bit strange to most Americans, and the way it became popularized was that a chef in LA cr…”
Lewis: Kickstarter excels at generating press and concept validation over capital
“Yeah, in hindsight, Kickstarter probably wasn't the easiest way to raise money, but it was an amazing way to get attention and get press and prove the concept.”
Lewis: Early investors told Magic Spoon founders to avoid the word 'cereal'
“You know, some investors we spoke to were so anti the idea. They actually said to us, okay, you can do this, but don't use the word cereal. That's a dirty word. You've got to call it clusters or rebrand cereal somehow.”
Lewis: Impractical cardboard cereal boxes beat resealable pouches by evoking childhood nostalgia
“When you think about it, a cardboard cereal box that doesn't reseal at the top is actually not the most practical packaging to use. A stand-up pouch that you can reseal from a purely practical perspective Perhaps makes more sense, but that doesn't create the s…”
Lewis: Half of Magic Spoon's 2022 funding provided liquidity for early investors
“It's also worth mentioning that we've raised a little over a hundred million, but the most recent round, which was about a year and a half ago, about half of that round went to some early investors to give them liquidity.”
Lewis: Magic Spoon outperformed Exo primarily due to product-market fit
“The truth is, we're doing some things differently, but we're doing a lot of the same things, and it's working so much infinitely better now, partly because we've learned from some mistakes from XO, and we spent five years banging our heads against the wall, bu…”
Lewis: Early protein bars were mostly candy bars masquerading as health food
“The main idea was that let's just create a protein bar that is legitimately good for you, unlike at the time what was mostly a sea of candy bars masquerading as health bars.”
Lewis: Protein bar businesses are easy to prototype at home
“The amazing thing about developing a protein bar business is you can make a basic version in your kitchen. You're just mushing ingredients together, forming it, and you can make lots of different iterations of it.”
Lewis: Tim Ferriss, Robb Wolf, and Mark Sisson invested in Exo
“We were able to leverage what at the time was almost all of the names in the paleo world, whether it's John Duran, Mark Sisson, Rob Wolf, Tim Ferriss, all of those people who came on board as advisors or investors in the business.”
Lewis: Exo did roughly $1M in revenue in its first year
“The first million dollars or so, which was roughly what we did in the first year after launch, was faster and easier than anybody would have predicted for a company selling cricket bars.”
Lewis: Magic Spoon raised $1M pre-launch from Collaborative Fund and influencers
“So we raised a million dollars pre-launch, half of it from this VC fund, collaborative fund, and half of it was actually from Health Amonis influencers, who wrote small checks into the business and could then help us eventually launch it.”
Lewis: Magic Spoon operated exclusively direct-to-consumer for almost three years
“And we ended up running this business purely direct to consumer for almost three years.”
Lewis: Magic Spoon exceeded its year-one monthly sales target within days
“So our first month, I think we were hoping to maybe do a hundred grand a month in sales towards the end of our first year. We blew past that after a few days.”
Lewis: Magic Spoon raised over $100M across four years
“We've raised a little over a hundred million over the course of four years.”
Lewis: Magic Spoon is excluded from Whole Foods due to allulose ingredient
“Actually, currently, Whole Foods doesn't have products with allulose in them, so that, that's the reason we're not in Whole Foods currently.”
Lewis: Same influencers generated 10x more sales for Magic Spoon than Exo
“Even down to the first month of Magic Spoon, we did a post from one of the same influencers that used to promote XO, and whereas at XO, if they did a post on Instagram about us, maybe generated a few hundred dollars, with Magic Spoon, that same influencer was …”
Lewis: Magic Spoon quickly became the best-selling cereal brand on Amazon
“We then launched on Amazon, very quickly actually became the number one best selling cereal on Amazon.”
Lewis: Selling Exo felt like a failure because his identity was attached
“It definitely felt like a failure for a while. And I think not only in the sense that we hadn't achieved the mission we set out to achieve, but we also self-identified as the cricket guys. We'd go to Expo West and trade shows, and we'd have our t-shirts that s…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Gabi's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Magic Spoon | 1 | 20 | 75% 3/4 | full record on How I Built This → |