The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 24 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Dry blending is easier to co-manufacture than alternative baking, says Smith
“Finding a manufacturer who's willing to blend together flowers is a lot easier than finding a manufacturer who's willing to make a cracker out of an alternative ingredient. And so it's kind of starting at a place that's a little bit easier and then moving to t…”
Flowers Foods plans to acquire Simple Mills for nearly $800 million
“I also want to share that just this month, Simple Mills announced plans to be acquired by Flowers Foods for almost eight hundred million dollars. Caitlin will continue to lead the brand, and if the name of that company, Flower Foods, sounds familiar, it's beca…”
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.”
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…”
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: 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 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: 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: 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.”
Simple Mills Is #1 Natural Cracker, Cookie, and Baking Brand
“Today we are the number one largest natural cracker, cookie, and baking mix brand in the natural channel”
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.”
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: 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 …”
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: 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.”
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: 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.”
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 sold her car and maxed credit cards to fund Simple Mills
“I definitely had to do some very creative things on my own side to fund the business. So selling my car and maxing out credit cards and crazy things like that.”
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 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.”