What-if
Mike Salguero believes ButcherBox would have failed if it raised venture capital
“If we had gone and raised money, we would not have a business right now, because if we had built a model that was like, oh, we're just going to, like, buy a bunch of customers and hope for the best, we would have, like, you know, it's a game of musical chairs,…”
Disclosure
CustomMade's collapse made Mike Salguero swear off raising venture capital
“I thought in my mind, I never want to raise money again.”
Opinion
Mike Salguero argues fat marbling is the wrong way to rate beef
“I don't believe that is the right way to rate the quality.”
Opinion
Mike Salguero argues transitioning to Impossible Burgers is not the environmental solution
“I don't think that the solution is let's move to impossible burgers.”
Insight
Marketplaces fail for bespoke goods due to high communication friction
“Getting something custom is an incredibly intimate back and forth conversation that can be, you know, dozens of back and forth communications before anything actually happens.
And we tried to like put ourselves into the middle of that.
And it didn't, it just d…”
Insight
Carrying diverse SKUs creates dangerous inventory risks for early DTC startups
“Because where you get into trouble is if you have a bunch of different SKUs, and you're trying to like, you know, carry them all in case the customer wants that versus that.”
Disclosure
ButcherBox paid influencers $10 monthly residuals for the life of a subscriber
“What we can do is we can pay you 10 dollars every month for the life of that subscriber.”
Insight
ButcherBox succeeded by targeting cooks wanting culinary flexibility instead of meal kits
“Right from the beginning, we were attracting a customer who, like, didn't want to be told what to do with their meat. We were attracting a customer who might be a little more adventurous in the kitchen, or might have some knowledge already, who wanted to be ab…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
ButcherBox revenue grew from $225 million to $550 million during the pandemic
“Going into the pandemic, I think we did two hundred and twenty-five million dollars, and coming out of the pandemic, we did four 50 and then five 50.”
Assertion Supported
Blue Apron's valuation collapse instantly dried up VC for subscription box startups
“Yeah, they were like a two billion dollar valuation, and now they're trading today at like a hundred million dollars. And so, what happened was, all of the venture capital for box subscription companies, it just dried up in an instant. And what you saw was a l…”
Disclosure
Mike Salguero plans for ButcherBox to remain an independent, multi-generational company
“If we are trying to build an iconic brand in meat, it just might take, you know, 25, 50, a hundred years. And so, yes, is there a possibility that someone swoops in and says, hey, let's buy a butcher box, and here's a price, and I'm like, okay, you know, like,…”
Insight
Staring at prospects long enough in direct sales usually closes them
“It's a great way to learn how to sell, because if you stare at someone long enough, they usually buy.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
CustomMade burned approximately $600,000 per month at its peak
“Yeah, we were burning it at about 600,000 dollars a month at our height.”
Assertion Supported
A co-founder bought CustomMade out of bankruptcy and pivoted to jewelry
“Seth and four other people remained at custom made. And essentially bought it out of bankruptcy. And he has done the miraculous job of pivoting it to a jewelry site.”
Assertion Supported
Grass-fed beef accounts for only about 2% of US beef production
“To date, there's not a lot of beef Raised in the United States that's grass-fed. It's about two percent of the overall beef.”
Assertion Supported
ButcherBox raised $210,000 on Kickstarter against a $25,000 initial target
“And so we did a 30 day campaign. We went out to raise 25,000 dollars, and we ended up raising 210,000 dollars.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
ButcherBox converted about 60% of its initial Kickstarter backers into recurring subscribers
“I believe we sent about 1100 boxes to different customers, and we got like 60% of them to sign up. So right away we had 607 hundred subscribers.”
Disclosure
ButcherBox outsources all processing, fulfillment, and support to maintain capital efficiency
“Our backbone, like the farms, the processing facilities, pick, pack, and ship customer service All of that was third party. And we do that to this day as one of the ways that we've been able to be very capital efficient.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mike Salguero made zero profit after selling 17,000 'Buck Fush' T-shirts
“I actually ended up with no cash whatsoever.”
