Katlin Smith
Founder and Advisor, Simple Mills. On 2 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutivesimplemills.com ↗
Katlin Smith founded Simple Mills in 2012, developing clean-ingredient, grain-free baking mixes, crackers, and snacks that expanded into more than 30,000 retail stores nationwide. She built the brand into an industry leader in the natural food category before orchestrating its sale to Flowers Foods for nearly $800 million.
2shows
3appearances
38statements
6resolved
4supported
2contradicted
67%fully supported
Everything Katlin Smith said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Katlin Smith: Chicago is the best US city for CPG talent
“There's probably no better place in the United States to recruit consumer talent.”
Smith: Ingredients labeled as natural vanilla extract are typically chemical extractives
“So, like, when you see, like, natural vanilla extract, the one thing you can be sure of is that is not vanilla. It is typically chemical extractives”
Katlin Smith: Packaging design is a consumer brand's top marketing vehicle
“Having a really good package design is something that is really important because it's the, it is your number one marketing vehicle. As a consumer brand.”
Smith: Legacy CPGs often spend $50M to launch one product line
“A lot of times to launch a single brand or a single product line in some of these CPGs, they spend fifty million dollars”
Smith: Funding consumer startups is easier now than a decade ago
“It's also it's become a lot easier to get funded as a consumer business in the past 10 years than it was then but at the time, just, everyone just wants the tech unicorn, and so, like, why am I gonna invest in a baking mix company?”
Design food products to fit existing co-manufacturer equipment, Smith advises
“How do you lean into what naturally contract manufacturers want to do? And so what products naturally come out of that? So you're not trying to get them to do something that's too weird or too hard for their model.”
Dry blending is easier to co-manufacture than alternative baking, says Smith
“Finding a manufacturer who's willing to blend together flowers is a lot easier than finding a manufacturer who's willing to make a cracker out of an alternative ingredient. And so it's kind of starting at a place that's a little bit easier and then moving to t…”
Smith: Health food must taste good unconditionally, not just 'good for gluten-free'
“So it couldn't just be this product that tasted good for fill-in-the-blank, good for paleo, good for gluten-free, and needed to be something that tasted good. Good. Full stop.”
Smith: Simple Mills became Amazon's top-selling muffin mix ahead of Martha White
“Full stop. It was probably something like 50 to a hundred units a day, and Martha White was number two.”
Smith: Restrictive Diet Pitching Scares Consumers Away Over Taste Fears
“And when you talk about all those things, it scares people off. Like, people think it's not gonna taste good.”
Smith nearly lost majority ownership to a family friend's $200k offer
“If we had done that deal, I wouldn't own the business today. It was very fortunate that it fell through.”
Katlin Smith: Student founders fail by trying to do everything well
“I watch a lot of other students who try to start companies while they're in business school not succeed, and I think part of it is they try to do everything well, and you just kind of have to choose at some point and say, this is going to be my number one”
Smith: Sponsoring consulting externs gives startups affordable high-caliber talent
“It's someone who works for a consulting firm, but gets sponsored by the consulting firm to leave for six months. And so it's a really affordable way to get great talent.”
Smith: Big food brands avoid eliminating natural flavors due to margin impact
“We make a lot of decisions that large food companies wouldn't. Like you take, for example, Natural flavors. Like, we don't use natural flavors, and it kills our margins in places. That's a decision that it's hard to make for a large food company because they d…”
Katlin Smith: When Simple Mills started, no grocery products used almond flour
“This is a time where nothing in the grocery store is made out of almond flour. I think it had just shown up as an ingredient on shelves”
Katlin Smith sold her car and maxed credit cards to fund operations
“I ended up selling my car and maxing out all my credit cards and getting, spending all my savings just pretty much on working capital.”
Katlin Smith's parents mortgaged their home for her $200,000 seed capital
“My parents end up they were really upset about this because they've been a long time family friend, and I come home and tell them this, and they decide to mortgage their house and give me 200,000 dollars.”
Katlin Smith repaid half her parents' $200,000 loan to reduce stress
“I mean, we ended up raising our first round about four months later. And when they, when we raised the first round, I actually asked that half of it get paid back because it was just, it's so stressful having your family's money on the line like that.”
Simple Mills' first three funding rounds came entirely from angel investors
“All of our initial investors, and in fact for a long time like our first three rounds were all angel investors.”
Katlin Smith: Simple Mills raised under $10 million in its first eight years
“To give you a sense, in our first, call it eight years of business, I think we raised less than ten million dollars.”
Simple Mills maintained a 96% fill rate during supply chain crises
“We maintained something like a 96% fill rate when competition was happy to be at 80.”
Simple Mills Is #1 Natural Cracker, Cookie, and Baking Brand
“Today we are the number one largest natural cracker, cookie, and baking mix brand in the natural channel”
Smith: In 2012, the Paleo Movement Was Nascent and Fringe
“And back in 2012, which is when I really had this realization, paleo was just like, and it's in a very nascent form. There were just like these fringe bloggers out there”
Smith: Inexperience in baking enabled unconventional grain-free product development
“Actually, it played to my advantage because I came in with just a complete naive view on how you bake something, and so I would just put these things together and see if they worked versus saying, you can't make a baked good out of almonds.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Katlin'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 | Founder and Advisor, Simple Mills | 2 | 26 | 33% 1/3 | full record on How I Built This → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Founder and Advisor, Simple Mills | 1 | 12 | 100% 3/3 | full record on Masters of Scale → |