Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Erickson: Taking outside capital causes founders to lose control of destiny

Gary Erickson · Clif Bar: Gary Erickson · Oct 3, 2016 · at 10:07

Gary Erickson, founder of Clif Bar, reflects on why he avoided raising outside capital when launching the company.

0:00 / 0:13exact quote · 13.0s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“You know, I never thought of either looking for outside money or wanting outside money, and maybe that was a good thing of my naivete, because once you do that, you know, you lose control of your destiny.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Gary Erickson

Insight
Erickson: Challenger marketplaces must offer differentiated products, not just better values
“You can't be an Etsy with better values. You got to be Etsy with a different product.”
Gary Erickson May 9, 2024 ▶ 30:28 Advice Line with Gary Erickson of Clif Bar
Disclosure
Erickson backed out of selling Clif Bar minutes before signing
“So halfway around the block, I decided not to sell the company, and then I felt completely free.”
Gary Erickson Oct 3, 2016 ▶ 19:33 Clif Bar: Gary Erickson
Insight
Erickson: Launching directly into mass retail usually fails without niche base
“You have to have that foundation first, and then from there you go out. If you're going to try to go mass market, you have to have so much funding to be able to do that, and chances are it's not going to work, because you've got to build that base.”
Gary Erickson May 9, 2024 ▶ 4:48 Advice Line with Gary Erickson of Clif Bar
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
PowerBar sued Clif Bar over ads, inadvertently creating industry buzz
“Our insurance picked up the tab, and we ended up settling with Power Bar, but it created this buzz in the bicycle industry where people said, hey, have you heard of Cliff Bar?”
Gary Erickson Oct 3, 2016 ▶ 9:39 Clif Bar: Gary Erickson
Assertion Supported
Quaker Oats offered $120M for Clif Bar on $40M in sales
“We got a deal, we got an offer for a hundred and twenty million dollars on forty million dollars in sales.”
Gary Erickson Oct 3, 2016 ▶ 16:33 Clif Bar: Gary Erickson
Assertion Supported
Erickson took on $60M in debt to buy out his co-owner
“Secondly, my partner wanted out, so I had to negotiate a deal, and so that was seven months of negotiation, and third was I had to go out as, Our attorney says, dialing for dollars. I had to go find sixty million dollars.”
Gary Erickson Oct 3, 2016 ▶ 20:26 Clif Bar: Gary Erickson
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 800 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.