Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
Full method →
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 5 5.00
Q Doug Boughton. And, and who is Doug? Tell me about Doug. How'd you meet Doug?
A So I met Doug in late 2012 in a, uh, lawyer basketball league, actually, and he, he was also not, not happy about being a lawyer. Yeah, no, he kind of worked at a firm similar to mine, and he actually emailed me for two reasons. Number one was he was leaving his firm to start his own law practice, and he was pitching me as a client, uh, which was actually very, very intriguing, because I was gonna need investment pretty soon. And the second thing was he was involved with a startup That was at the spot that I was in like a year, year and a half prior, and was looking for advice on like, hey, how do you, you know, uh, get into a store? Kind of the basic questions.
AI assessment note: “I met Doug in late 2012 in a, uh, lawyer basketball league”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q But, but how did you come across the idea of making ice cream? Like how, how did that happen? I mean, cause initially from what I gather, You didn't make this to sell it. You were just like, let me try to make some ice cream for myself.
A Yep, exactly. Uh, and it comes down to Greek yogurt. Um, I was, I don't think there would be a Halo Top without Greek yogurt. I was eating Greek yogurt once, twice a day. Um, I like to limit my sugar intake, so I wasn't getting the Greek yogurt that had, like, the sugary fruit on the side that comes with it. I would get the plain stuff, and I would add my own fruit, and I would, you know, add stevia to it, uh, Like a zero calorie sweetener. I think everybody at this point knows what stevia is. And I was eating that so much that eventually I began to freeze it in a very bachelor style way. Like seriously, just put it in my Ikea bowl and put saran wrap over it and put it in the freezer for a couple hours. Um, and then I basically got sick of the tang of Greek yogurt and made a, uh, like an analog, just kind of like, just looking at the nutritional facts and using some cream here and some Egg whites here and some sweetener here to try to mimic ice cream.
AI assessment note: “got sick of the tang of Greek yogurt and made a, uh, like an analog”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q There was sugar-free ice cream in 2011, but there wasn't Greek yogurt ice cream that was sugar-free? As far as you know.
A Yeah, frozen Greek yogurt hadn't come out. I'm not too aware of any sugar-free ice creams, but, um, it was actually a big decision at the beginning as to whether to make, uh, frozen Greek yogurt or to make that concoction I made, which would become Halo Top. Which was light ice cream. And on one hand, frozen Greek yogurt would be such an easy sell to stores, uh, into the public. Um, but on the other hand, all of these Greek yogurt companies, whether it's Chobani or whether it's just Ben and Jerry's or something, they could make a frozen Greek yogurt at the snap of their fingers. Whereas my little light ice cream concoction was much more unique and had a different value proposition in that it, it didn't have Tang basically. So I had to make that decision as to what I wanted to start my company around.
AI assessment note: “frozen Greek yogurt hadn't come out. I'm not too aware of any sugar-free ice creams”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q Did you tell him what kind of ice cream it was?
A No, no, and this is what I'm getting at. Uh, I, he said, what are you making? And I was, of course, paranoid about, like, every entrepreneur is, a little too paranoid about, someone's gonna steal my idea. And I was a lawyer, so I had a bunch of NDAs at my disposal, so I had him sign an NDA, uh, and he was really curious, you know, what, what the hell am I making? And this guy was, uh, he was really cool. He was old school L.A. and more like big Aviators at all times. He must've been 70. Just a cool guy. So I show up, uh, like a couple days later with my little recipe and my ingredients that I bought from smart and final. And, uh, he's like, so what are you making? And I'm like proudly, like I'm making the first all natural healthy ice cream. And he just looks at me and is like, oh, so it's not weed. He was just, he was just so sad about that. He was really hoping I was making weed ice cream. I broke his heart.
AI assessment note: “No, no, and this is what I'm getting at.”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q So, so how did you come up with a new name?
A When they sent me the cease and desist, uh, my marketer, Said, ok, let's stay with the heavenly angelic concept. Eden is four letters. Why don't we just go with Halo? H-A-L-O Creamery. And I said, well, ok, first, Halo to me is a video game. You know, second, maybe there's some trademark issues with that, because it's a very basic name. And I thought Halo Top rolled off the tip of the tongue, and the gold lids were kind of like, you know, the top was a halo. So I was like, let's do Halo Top. We fought back and forth because that would have taken a lot more packaging changes, uh, just to go from halo top to halo. Uh, and I'm like, no, let's do halo top end of story. And the funny thing is in retrospect, like even my close friends, when I'm like, you know, the, the top is a lid. So it's like the top or the top is a gold lid. So it's like the top is a halo. They're like, I had no idea that was even the case. I had no idea. And This whole fight over Halo Top was pretty much for nothing.
AI assessment note: “And I thought Halo Top rolled off the tip of the tongue”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q So given that the cash flow situation was challenging, And you were certainly not profitable. Um, what was your cash situation like in 2014?
A The entire company was funded by my legal salary and my credit card debt. And the good thing about being a lawyer is that you have high income and you get huge credit limits. I guarantee you my credit card companies really regretted that. But I was funding it through my legal salary and through about 300,000 in credit card lines, credit card debt. And, uh, uh, as could be expected, that eventually ran out. You know, we're kind of hanging by a thread in, in, in a number of stores. Like, you know, your cells are just on the cusp to where we could almost discontinue you or lower your SKU count. So, uh, yeah, we, it was not a runaway success by any stretch.
AI assessment note: “funding it through my legal salary and through about 300,000 in credit card lines”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q How are you dealing with that demand? I mean, you had one co-packer as far as I understand.
A Yeah, we, I can't quite remember if we had one or two co-pack. I think we had a, I think we had more than one, but, um, it was just immediate, all hands on deck. Uh, this is where Doug really shined, because he was run, he was COO. Um, there are only so many ice cream factories in the nation, and they're all taken up, so we had to beg and cajole to, like, get space, and our co-packers were like, what is happening with this brand? There's no way you're possibly Ordering this much product. And so we were working out ways to build on to their factory, not by our own factory, but to do a kind of build and lease, uh, thing where we put a new line in their factory dedicated to Halo Top.
AI assessment note: “we were working out ways to build on to their factory”
