Dec 26, 2024 · 47m · how-i-built-this
Advice Line with Serial Entrepreneur Marc Lore
Marc Lore · 13m spoken Guy Raz · 13m spoken Ben Bailey · 6m spoken Ryan Thompson · 4m spoken Lindsay Shores · 3m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Host Guy Raz teams up with serial entrepreneur Marc Lore on The Advice Line to deliver strategic, real-world advice to early-stage founders navigating product customization, retail distribution, and regional expansion. Lore also shares hard-won wisdom on executing bold business model pivots, maintaining pricing power, and recruiting elite talent.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 32.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 4.8 Guest teaching 4.3 Guest disagreement 1.2 Guy pushing back 0.7
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 27:35 Pushing Back on Emergency Pricing Assumptions
Marc Lore pushes back against relying solely on high convenience pricing, urging Lindsay Shores to price for mass market adoption rather than captive airport emergencies.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 25:29 Challenging Retail Price PointsMarc Lore immediately presses the caller on whether the $5.25 price point can be lowered to $4.99 to optimize consumer conversion.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 5:48 Redefining Status Quo RiskMarc Lore educates the audience on why sticking to an existing business model carries greater hidden risk than making an aggressive operational pivot.
Guy holds their own ▶ 31:45 Military Knowledge and Industry ContextGuy Raz demonstrates domain expertise by accurately identifying the relocation of the 10th Mountain Division to Fort Drum, surprising the founder.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marc Lore on Diapers.com, Jet.com, and Founder Mindset | 6 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Guy Raz demonstrates strong background knowledge recalling Marc Lore's investor quote about selling a dollar for 90 cents and details of the Amazon/Walmart acquisitions. Lore warmly reflects on the missionary versus mercenary mindset without tension. | |
| Pivoting Wonder from Mobile Kitchens to Brick-and-Mortar | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Raz prompts Lore about pivoting Wonder from food trucks to brick-and-mortar locations. Lore explains his philosophy on objective risk assessment, sunk costs, and trading silver for gold in startups. | |
| Advising Chomp Chocolate on Customization and Premium Branding | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Ben Bailey presents Chomp Chocolate's custom bar dilemma. Raz and Lore both contribute tactical advice on leaning into end-to-end bean-to-bar quality, customization, and storytelling like fine wine. | |
| Advising BabyGoGo on Travel Retail and Pricing Economics | 4 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Lindsay Shores presents BabyGoGo's pocket diaper kits. Lore challenges the high per-unit price point, pushing for a long-term scale and consignment strategy while Raz emphasizes immediate impulse placement at airport checkouts. | |
| Advising 10th Mountain Whiskey on Regional Market Dominance | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Ryan Thompson seeks advice on scaling 10th Mountain Whiskey. Raz shares Pentagon-era background knowledge about the division, while Lore delivers sharp strategic advice to dominate regional market share before expanding nationally. | |
| Marc Lore on Spotting Top Talent and Embracing Risk | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Raz asks Lore what single piece of advice he would give his younger self. Lore emphasizes that hiring top 5 percent talent with proven career track records outweighs interview charisma. |
Statements from this episode (12)
Lore and co-founder didn't celebrate selling Diapers.com to Amazon
“We had a big vision for what we wanted to accomplish, and it was cut short. So, yeah, it was, I mean, you would think after a sale like that, we made, obviously, a lot of money, me and my co-founder, but we said, do you want to celebrate? You want to go grab a…”
Lore killed $30M in revenue and 450 trucks to pivot Wonder
“Telling the board 450 trucks on the road and thirty million in revenue. We're going to take that to zero. We're selling the trucks. We'll take revenue to zero.”
Lore: Founders must ignore sunk costs and pivot toward superior opportunities
“You have to have the mentality that you start off a startup, and you're sort of digging for silver, but you gotta be on the lookout for gold all the time, and you might just see gold, and when you see it, you gotta go for it, and it doesn't matter what egg on …”
Ben Bailey invested $700,000 of his personal funds into Chomp Chocolate
“So I put 700,000 dollars in is everything I had and that got us open.”
Chomp Chocolate hit $750K in year two and paces for $1M
“We did 400,000 dollars the first year we opened. And then 750,000 last year. And this year we're set to do a million dollars and 70% of that's coming from e-commerce, so.”
Chomp Chocolate rejected 2,000 retail stores due to cash flow constraints
“We've also had to say no to like a lot of big stores like over 2000 stores in the last year, because, you know, I can't, I have the factory and the production equipment, and technically we could produce more chocolate, but funding another crew and then the pur…”
Lore: Big chocolate brands cannot execute a customizable direct-to-consumer model
“There's no way a big company can do the sort of build a bear type approach and chocolate. And so you could really own that market.”
Lore: Price for scale and take zero margin to expand market
“I'm always Thinking about scale and working backwards, and I would say, you know, at sort of ten million units, what's your cost, ah, of the display and the packaging, you know, like, and then figure out what the retail price would be off the back of that, and…”
10th Mountain Whiskey generates over $2.5M in annual revenue
“We're a little bit north of 2.5 million.”
Lore: Deep regional penetration is more valuable to acquirers than shallow national
“If you are thinking about selling it, then it would be more valuable to have deeper penetration in a regional market than a shallow penetration in a national market.”
Lore: Interviews cannot assess candidates; hiring must rely on track records
“Thought I can interview somebody and find out if they're good, and you just can't. It comes down to resume. You have a history. You've been in the workforce. What have you done?”
Lore: Entrepreneurial opportunity lies in low-probability, massive-upside bets
“Cause you know, corporations, they just tend to shy away from risk and low probability outcomes. And I sort of gravitate more toward Low probability outcome, but massive upside. And I think that's where the opportunity lies for an entrepreneur.”