May 13, 2024 · 56m · how-i-built-this
nutpods: Madeline Haydon
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
How I Built This chronicles how Madeline Haydon founded Nutpods, overcoming complex food science challenges, early funding rejections, and retail hurdles to build a market-leading plant-based creamer brand acquired in a nine-figure private equity transaction.
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 29.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 2.5 Guest teaching 2.7 Guest disagreement 0.5 Guy pushing back 0.1
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 45:10 Rejecting legacy retail wisdom
Madeline forcefully rejects the conventional playbook pushed by legacy food executives who dismissed direct-to-consumer e-commerce.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 24:40 Preservatives assumption challengeGuy Raz presses with the assumption that keeping the product shelf-stable required chemical additives, prompting an immediate correction.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 24:45 Aseptic processing breakdownMadeline corrects Guy's misconception about food preservation, detailing how steam injection ultra-pasteurization and sterile packaging work.
Guy holds their own ▶ 2:15 Host dairy industry synthesisRaz demonstrates his knowledge of consumer trends by citing historical milk consumption declines and detailing diverse plant milk varieties.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Announcement of the New Guy Raz Newsletter | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | Host opens with an introductory monologue framing the plant-based milk market with industry statistics before welcoming the guest. | |
| Family Evacuation from Saigon and Resettlement in Washington | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Madeline recounts her family's dramatic evacuation from Saigon in 1975 and resettlement in Washington State; Raz listens supportively. | |
| Working-Class Roots, Education, and Non-Profit Purpose | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Madeline describes her working-class upbringing, earning her MBA while working, and finding purpose in non-profit blood bank administration. | |
| Second Chances, Fertility Struggles, and the Tahoe Epiphany | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Madeline discusses her personal life, fertility challenges, and the moment in a Lake Tahoe diner that sparked the idea for a better coffee creamer. | |
| Kitchen Experiments and the Recipe-to-Retail Class | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Raz explores the initial recipe creation and testing, asking how it compared to existing alternatives in 2013 like So Delicious. | |
| The Kickstarter Launch and Underestimating Production Costs | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Haydon outlines launching the Kickstarter campaign, reaching out to paleo bloggers, and realizing she drastically underestimated commercialization costs. | |
| Formulating the Product and Overcoming Food Science Hurdles | 3 | 7 | 2 | 1 | Madeline educates Raz in food chemistry, explaining why homemade almond milk curdles in acidic coffee and correcting his assumption about chemical preservatives. | |
| Mid-Show Recap and Transition | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Madeline shares the emotional toll of angel investor rejections and navigating personal financial strain with her husband. | |
| The Carton Pivot and Building an Advisory Board | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Madeline describes feedback from a Whole Foods forager that prompted the pivot from single-serve pods to multi-serve cartons. | |
| Series A on CircleUp and Launching on Amazon | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Madeline details raising capital on CircleUp and using scarcity tactics to build rapid momentum on Amazon and at PCC Natural Markets. | |
| Defying Conventional Wisdom on Direct-to-Consumer Strategy | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Madeline explains why she rejected industry advice from a Silk executive insisting on immediate retail distribution over e-commerce. | |
| Mid-Show Teaser for Retail Expansion | 3 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Haydon outlines the transition to grocery retail and how psychographic shopper habits forced her to develop a chilled gable-top carton for Kroger. | |
| Series B Funding, Pandemic Surge, and National Scale | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Madeline explains how their established e-commerce supply chain allowed nutpods to scale rapidly during the pandemic. | |
| Strategic Acquisition, Leadership Succession, and Founder Reflections | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Haydon discusses the acquisition, selecting a successor CEO, and reflecting on the balance of luck, market timing, and execution. |
Statements from this episode (19)
Haydon: Nutpods concept serves multiple dietary niches simultaneously
“Just got to thinking about how I'm lactose intolerant, but then a concept like nutpods would actually work for all of these other different groups of people, including diabetic people or pre-diabetic people.”
Haydon: In 2013, Only Soy and So Delicious Coconut Creamers Existed
“The only two options was soy, and so delicious, all coconut.”
Haydon Avoided Family Kickstarter Funding to Ensure Validation Came From Strangers
“I didn't want family and friends because I didn't want the polite donations. I wanted like stranger people to tell me whether or not this was something that would resonate with them.”
Haydon: Developing Commercial Nutpods Formula Took Two Years
“She put me in touch with someone who would put together my formula, which took two years.”
A Single Tetra Pak Development Pilot Trial Cost Nutpods Up to $30,000
“So one pilot trial would be about 25 to 30,000 dollars.”
Haydon: Plain almond milk curdles in coffee without an emulsifier
“And you get almond milk, and it's great for drinking. But if you pour it into coffee, it will curdle. Because it doesn't have anything to emulsify. You're taking that alkaline product and put it in an acidic environment, and like any chemistry, it will have a …”
Haydon: Nutpods required approximately 28 pilot formulation trials
“Yeah, we ended up having about 28 different trials.”
Haydon Started Nutpods With Prepaid Green Dot Cards After a Personal Bankruptcy
“We actually had a bankruptcy to our name as well. Guy Raz: So you couldn't get credit easily? Madeline Haydon: No, I could not get any credit. In fact, we started a company with those prepaid green dot credit cards, you know, the one where you give 500 dollars…”
Haydon: Startups Must Put Advisor Equity on Vesting Schedules
“And that vesting schedule is very important because you don't want to have an advisor that is not being responsive to you or not giving you value and then you've already given them equity and you can't take it back.”
Haydon: Nutpods Raised Its Series A via CircleUp Platform
“Circle Up out of San Francisco. And it would matchmake Investors, two vetted companies, and then these companies, you know, had a built-in angel network, and then in return, Circleup made a percentage off of what was raised, and so that really was our Series A…”
Haydon: Nutpods Has Been Profitable for 5 of 9 Years
“For the nine years that we've been in business, we've been profitable for five of them.”
A Single Employee Can Scale Amazon Sales to $100,000 per Day
“I think the biggest thing is that you can't scale that retail without significantly increasing your team, but whether or not you sell a thousand dollars a day on Amazon or a 100,000 dollars a day, you can still do it with one person online.”
Haydon: Nutpods built a five-million-dollar online business before retail
“And I was just incredulous because this particular investor that I really wanted to invest in our company, just something he said about still doubting us, even when we had built this multimillion dollar business online past five million dollars and still had d…”
Haydon: Retail expansion made Nutpods unprofitable for the first time
“And that was the first year that we were not profitable because I had to invest in a sales team and brokers and pay slotting fees.”
Haydon: Launching a refrigerated product unlocked retail distribution with Kroger
“So after three years of trying to talk to retailers into putting us psychographically where we should be, which is in the chilled dairy set, we ended up saying, fine, we will make a refrigerated product. And that was the unlock with Kroger.”
Raz: Nutpods announced raising over thirty million dollars in 2019 Series B
“And you did in 2019, you announced that you'd raised over thirty million dollars in a series B.”
Nutpods Raised $42 Million Total, a Fraction of Competitors' War Chests
“When you compare even our, you know, call it 42, like total raised, that is a fraction of what our competitors had raised. Whether or not it's Super Creamer or Ripple or Calafia, it takes a lot of money to go into the grocery store.”