Guayakí

“We actually did not lay anyone off through that experience, and I bring it up only because it was a big decision, and it was kind of formative to how we grew. We decided that everyone would take a pay cut rather than lay people off, and so the Samiyas, we took…”

“One of our competitors is owned by Pepsi and they're on the Pepsi trucks and they have unlimited distribution, but it's not really working. And I think it's because it's just premature. You know, the market's not ready. There's not enough customers that know a…”

“We got to a hundred million without Costco, Walmart, Amazon, any of those big retailers that are usually a big part of it.”

“So he basically says, give me 10 or 20% of the business, and I'll send you the yerba.”

“I mean, I think we had nine personal credit cards maxed Chris and my brother, Steven and myself, we got every, you remember that time that was that time. In the mid nineties, they just started sending everyone credit card offers. So we just like said yes to th…”

“And I think Steven Dolmiguel and I personally served over five million cups of mate.”

“How do we grown fast out of the gate? We wouldn't have figured out the bottle or the can. We wouldn't have had those products. We probably would be owned by someone already because it seems like the faster you grow, the faster you kind of hit that plateau.”

“One time our LA distributor, I wasn't doing the presentation, but the person on our team that did it, They had to follow body armor and body armor brought in their new investor, Kobe Bryant.”

“Yeah, we got a 50,000 dollar bank loan locally.”

“If you drink the Argentine stuff that's sun-grown, it's really like almost offensive, unless you grew up drinking it. It's pretty bad tasting.”

“So, 2019, end of 18, end of 19, I think we raised about thirty million, and most all of that went to, all of that went to distribution. That was purely a hundred percent distribution.”

“I think in the natural foods industry at one point, our bags were the number two selling tea and the loose was like number six.”

“And had we done that, we probably would be two or three times bigger than we are now, but we also might be that size and getting canceled, you know, or we might be not involved.”

“He was actually the very first one who started helping out Alex and I, even before Steven and Chris, because he actually ended up kind of joining as a quote unquote intern and helping drive up like the first eight tons of Yerba Mate from Los Angeles to Slowtow…”

“From like probably 2004 to 2011, we weren't profitable, but we were always close, you know?”

“We also had this insight that, and I think Pierre actually came up with this, was that we could either be a gentle rain, meaning that we can spend a little bit of money in market nationally, or we can create thunderstorms. And the idea was like, let's focus re…”

“At those smaller numbers, you can really find people that are really believe in the mission and vision and will stay with you long term.”

“When we raise money, we raised it with no exit strategy. And typically that's the first question investor has is, well, how am I going to get my money back? And we would say, we're not sure we're not ruling out selling, but it's not something we're focused on.”

“So we started putting honey and soy milk in the mate and making mate lattes. And then the, like the percentage of like maybe 15, 20% of the people actually trying and liking it went up to like 50 or more.”

“And it turned out when they sold to Unilever, they created two small venture fund, two, five million dollar funds, one run by Pierre Ferrari called hot fudge and one run by Chuck Lacey called Bardrock. And so they were both our first bigger investor, bigger me…”