Feb 15, 2021 · 59m · how-i-built-this
Simple Mills: Katlin Smith
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of 'How I Built This', Katlin Smith shares how she transformed her personal dietary breakthrough into Simple Mills, evolving a homemade grain-free muffin mix into a $100 million clean-pantry food brand sold in over 28,000 stores nationwide.
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 36.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 1.0 Guest teaching 1.6 Guest disagreement 0.2 Guy pushing back 0.1
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 29:10 Challenging dietary restriction framing
Katlin pushes back on conventional niche dietary marketing, explaining that highlighting labels like paleo or grain-free actively turns off mainstream consumers.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 12:18 Questioning market research rigorGuy Raz presses Katlin on whether she conducted formal management-consultant-level market analysis before launching into novel flour alternatives.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 55:15 The truth about natural flavorsKatlin educates the host on how deceptive food labeling is regarding 'natural flavors,' revealing they are synthetic chemical extractives rather than real vanilla.
Guy holds their own ▶ 56:35 Sharing grain-free culinary techniqueGuy Raz actively shares his own home culinary knowledge, explaining how he uses almond flour and arrowroot starch as breading for grain-free chicken cutlets.
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: How I Built This Virtual Event with Jay Shetty | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Segment 1 contains an event announcement promo followed by show introduction framing the gluten-free and natural food industry trends. | |
| Katlin's Health Transformation and the Paleo Diet Discovery | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Katlin describes her grueling Deloitte schedule and how switching to an early paleo diet cleared her chronic fatigue and allergies. Raz listens supportive and asks standard clarifying questions. | |
| Brainstorming Real-Food Business Ideas and Pivoting to Baking | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Katlin walks through her initial brainstorming of real-food business ideas and why baking offered lower barriers to entry than sauces or meal kits. Raz facilitates the narrative smoothly. | |
| DIY Recipe Formulation and Sourcing Novel Alternative Flours | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Raz asks if Katlin conducted structured market research as a consultant, and she candidly admits she operated almost purely on intuition and local shelf observation. | |
| Choosing Muffin Mixes and Acquiring the Simple Mills Name | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Katlin explains settling on muffin mixes and picking the brand name Simple Mills after discovering the domain name was significantly cheaper than Simple Foods. | |
| The First Pitch to Whole Foods Market | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Katlin describes pitching her local Whole Foods grocery team leader with freshly baked samples, leading to an initial 12-unit purchase order. | |
| Commercial Kitchen Hacks, Bootstrapping, and Lean Manufacturing | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Raz explores the logistics of early production; Katlin describes rolling food-grade barrels across countertops to blend flour formulas without expensive mixers. | |
| Amazon Launch and the Danielle Walker Viral Endorsement | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Katlin explains early Amazon struggles until blogger Danielle Walker posted an organic endorsement that propelled Simple Mills to the top sales spot in muffin mixes. | |
| Contract Manufacturing, Luggage Logistics, and Direct Store Delivery | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Katlin shares the scrappy logistics of flying back from Vermont production runs with hundreds of pounds of mix packed into checked U-Haul boxes. | |
| In-Store Sampling Grind, Pitch Adjustments, and Customer Feedback | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Katlin explains learning not to lead with niche buzzwords like 'paleo' or 'grain-free' because it intimidated mainstream shoppers, learning to emphasize delicious taste instead. | |
| Mid-Episode Station Break and Upcoming Preview | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Mid-episode break and teaser outlining upcoming segments on business school and trade show lessons. | |
| Working Capital Crisis and the $200k Family Mortgage Loan | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Katlin details severe cash flow crunches from wholesale payment terms and how her parents took a $200k mortgage loan to rescue the company when angel terms fell through. | |
| Balancing Chicago Booth MBA Studies with Startup Execution | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Raz asks how Katlin managed MBA courses at Booth while running operations; she explains she intentionally weaponized class time for live company accounting and sales cold calling. | |
| Natural Products Expo West Shenanigans and Absolute Founder Focus | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Katlin laughs about handing out branded water bottles at Expo West, causing attendees to mistake Simple Mills for a water brand, and highlights the radical focus required to survive. | |
| Winning the New Venture Challenge and Closing Seed Financing | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Katlin recounts winning Chicago Booth's New Venture Challenge and leveraging the exposure to raise a $2M seed round, prompting her decision to leave the MBA program. | |
| Team Building Challenges and Expanding into Grain-Free Crackers | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Katlin discusses the steep learning curve of hiring and managing personnel, as well as the serendipitous origin of their cracker line from baked leftover cake mix. | |
| Direct Guerrilla Pitching to Regional Whole Foods Offices | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Katlin explains guerrilla tactics used to penetrate regional Whole Foods offices by flying unannounced with fresh muffins, and candidly details the leadership coaching required to stop micromanaging. | |
| National Distribution Scale and Uncompromising Ingredient Standards | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Katlin corrects the store count from 13,000 to 28,000 stores and explains why Simple Mills refuses to use 'natural flavors,' educating on how misleading flavor extraction really is. | |
| Pandemic Baking Growth, Culinary Uses, and Luck vs. Hard Work | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Raz and Katlin discuss COVID cooking surges, share culinary tips for using almond flour and crackers for chicken cutlets, and reflect on the combination of hard work and luck. |
Statements from this episode (22)
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: Initial market research was tracking almond flour at Whole Foods
“I think the one piece of market research that I did do is I watched the turns of almond flour at my local Whole Foods store. So I watched that it was almost always sold out. And so I could tell people were buying it.”
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.”
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 was named after $3,000 domain price blocked 'Simple Foods'
“At first, I wanted to name it Simple Foods, and I went out and searched the domain name for that, and it was 3000 dollars, and I couldn't afford that. So I was like, okay, what's better than Simple Foods, and came up with Simple Mills, and the domain name for …”
Whole Foods' first Simple Mills order was just 12 muffin mix bags
“And then they placed their first PO three months later. And that PO is something like two cases of muffin mix, which would be 12 units.”
Smith spent roughly $200 on kitchen rent in first six months
“I think across the first six months of manufacturing the product, I probably only spent 200 dollars on the kitchen.”
Smith mixed Simple Mills powders by rolling barrels across countertops
“I couldn't afford a mixer, which, It costs 2000 dollars, so I had defined this idea to put all of the powders into these food grade barrels, and then I would roll them back and forth across the countertop to mix them together.”
Katlin Smith: Danielle Walker's Facebook post sold out Simple Mills in an hour
“I think it was more focused on the retail path, but a few months later, a influencer, what's now called an influencer, discovered the product and wrote about it on her Facebook page, which just kind of astounded me, and we sold out of the product in probably a…”
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 invested $70,000 of personal savings and sold car for Simple Mills
“I mean, before it was all said and done, I put all my savings, which was about 70,000 dollars in it. I sold my car.”
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.”
Smith: Parents Mortgaged Their House to Loan Simple Mills $200k
“And my parents mortgaged the house to give me that money. They pulled 200,000 dollars, and they're not wealthy.”
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.”
Simple Mills sold only muffins for its first four to five years
“It was just muffins. It was still muffins for probably the first- Four to five years of the business.”
Early Simple Mills investment thesis was becoming the next Betty Crocker
“Since I started the company, I did always see expanding into other areas, but the investment thesis was largely based around being the next Betty Crocker.”
Simple Mills entered crackers after founder baked them from cake mix
“We thought about cereal, but we ended up going into crackers actually after I took our Cake mix home, and for whatever reason, decided to make crackers out of it and put it in my oven. And I brought them in the next day, and all of us sat around and said that'…”
Smith pitched Whole Foods buyers by showing up unannounced with muffins
“So I came up with this plan where we would go to every Whole Foods region, and we would email them the day before and say, I'm going to be in your regional office. I'm going to bring you baked muffins. Please, please, please meet with me for five minutes. I ca…”
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…”