Kettle & Fire founder Justin Mares discusses how AI tools lower the cost and friction required to test and build consumer packaged goods brands.
Insight
Pre-orders on sketchy landing pages are the ultimate proof of demand
“If people are willing to spend 30 bucks on a product they've never heard, tasted, smelled, whatever, that doesn't exist on a landing page that looks like it was a scam, that is probably a pretty good sign that this is a thing that people really, really want.”
Insight
Solo founders using AI now have an advantage over multi-person teams
“Someone that has a big, or has like a strong opinion on a product they want to make, or a direction the world is moving, They're almost at an advantage with these AI tools relative to like a small or even medium sized team, because if you are someone that like…”
Insight
Founders should build in domains where their interest is top 0.1%
“I think that generally people should probably go to wherever they are, like, on the frontier and they are among the most interested, like, top .1% of people interested in a topic. I think that that frontier for most people is where you end up having a lot of g…”
Insight
Becoming a top 1% user of frontier AI models is high leverage
“Playing with just the frontier models, Claude, GPT, Gemini you know, it just makes a lot of sense, in my view, and becoming a, like, top one percent user, there's probably a few things that you can do that will be as high leverage as that.”
Assertion Supported
Justin Mares grew Kettle & Fire to over $100M in annual revenue
“By the end of the episode, people will understand the day one steps, really the day zero steps that I took to start Kettle and Fire, which is now a nine figure annual business.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mares generated $500 in bone broth pre-orders from $250 in Bing ads
“After the entire test was over we had about a 30% conversion rate where people ended up clicking the order now button, and so over the course of the two-week test that I ran to this janky checkout flow, to this bad landing page made almost 500 dollars in reven…”