Lewis: Selling Exo felt like a failure because his identity was attached
Gabi Lewis · Magic Spoon & Exo: Gabi Lewis and Greg Sewitz · Feb 12, 2024 · at 36:28
Gabi Lewis, co-founder of Exo and Magic Spoon, reflects on selling his cricket-protein startup Exo after failing to achieve its original mission.
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“It definitely felt like a failure for a while. And I think not only in the sense that we hadn't achieved the mission we set out to achieve, but we also self-identified as the cricket guys. We'd go to Expo West and trade shows, and we'd have our t-shirts that said, crickets are the new kale, or crickets are just tiny lobsters, and everyone would come over and say, oh, like, I love your product, love your brand, and we were pioneering that, and so, you know, a lot of our identity was wrapped up in it, so it definitely felt like we hadn't Done what we thought we were going to do, and that didn't feel great, but I think that that feeling didn't linger for too long, and then we were able to dust ourselves off and quickly pivot to, all right, what's next?”
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