Sudden Coffee

“So we've done about a hundred K since January. We're at 20 K recurring.”

“I mean, you could have probably launched a crowdfunding campaign, come back around and raise money at a much higher valuation, but you know, you're, cause like right now you're deluding yourself by like, you're giving up like half the company.”

“Our customers are actually 35 to 55. They live outside of cities. They tend to live in suburbs. They have big houses. They're well-educated. A lot of them are doctors, professors, et cetera, but they live, you know, in a suburb of Nashville, for example.”

“I think that one of the biggest things that stands out was realizing that none of the investors drank coffee or only one of them drank coffee and we were like, okay, this is going to be tough.”

“When I get involved with a company, ok, and especially one that has such a bold brand, and that is where I want to direct my energy to, but I just for a 100,000 dollars, it's not, I can't say it's not worth my time, but in a lot of ways, I would need much more…”

“We raised 2.9 from Charles River Ventures as our lead, and then this is our second round, so we raised 500 K a year ago.”

“And we're now at the point where we're trying to raise a three million dollar round to really help us get to the next level of scale, both from a capacity standpoint and, but mostly from a marketing standpoint.”

“There's no patent around it. There's no defensibility, really.”

“As of spring, they've sold over a 100,000 cups of Sudden coffee.”

“I mean, realistically, it's not, it's never going to be better than the best freshly brewed coffee, but it's going to be, it's already better than 90% of what I get in good cafes.”

“One of the things I look for is I always look for two founders. I mean, I invest in more companies with two founders, and that's kind of a philosophy of structure, is that we definitely look for two founders.”

“What I see this as is not the best It's a, actually a marketing play. I don't see anybody going around saying, this is the best cup of instant coffee I've ever had. But I have, I, but it's getting people to accept it as the best instant coffee they've ever had…”

“Long term, our real vision is to sort of build the world's largest specialty cafe using technology to sort of abstract all of the things you get from a cafe.”

“Calais, the award-winning barista slash co-founder of Sudden Coffee, was no longer working full-time with the company.”

“This, it's good. It's not as good as like a great cup of coffee at Phil's would be, I think, or Blue Bottle.”

“The valuation on this round is 6.25 pre.”

“So our peak was in or July, we had 500 subscribers. I think now we're closer to 400.”

“There's no defensibility, really.”

“While they were busy trying to grab millennials, the people who were actually buying Sudden Coffee were middle-aged suburbanites.”

“The valuation on this round is 6.25 pre.”

“We launched a partnership with Equator Coffee, which is a San Francisco-based roaster, and that was actually a pretty big shift for us. It was the first time we'd started going into wholesale, and so we did a second partnership with Intelligentsia Coffee, and …”

“At three dollars a cup. It's never going to be, it's always going to be a niche product. Like it's not going to be daily use.”

“You know, I think we should have you know, two years earlier, like, hired a chemical engineer and started researching this from the beginning, but we were trying to sort of play it safe and iterate a little bit more”

“We raised 2.9 from Charles River Ventures is, is our lead, and then this is our second round, so you raised 500 K a year ago.”

“So we've done about a hundred K since January. We're at 20 K recurring.”

“So it'll be dollar 50 and it'll also allow us to triple our margin. You know, we've been setting, sitting at two 75 with a 20% margin. And one of our investors was like, there's no way you can build a brand with that. Like it need, you need to make it way chea…”

“I think like getting a founder that makes you believe, and then there are like some proof points and it feels like just the next change is the one that's going to make it. So like, if you can get an investor to believe in that, like that this next thing is the…”

“It's not patented currently.”

“When I get involved with a company, ok, and especially one that has such a bold brand, and that is where I want to direct my energy to, but I just for a 100,000 dollars, it's not, I can't say it's not worth my time, but in a lot of ways, I would need much more…”

“Despite the fact that they had just raised almost three million from investors, a couple months later, Calais, the award-winning barista co-founder, left the company.”

“So our peak was in, ah, or July, we had 500 subscribers. I think now we're closer to 400.”

“There is no, like, great leader in this space, and you have that opportunity, that's wide open for you.”

“Our retention scores, like on subscriptions went way down from what it was before.”

“I mean, realistically, it's not, it's never going to be better than the best freshly brewed coffee, but it's going to be, it's already better than 90% of what I get in good cafes.”

“I mean, you could have probably launched a crowdfunding campaign, come back around and raise money at a much higher valuation, but you know, you're, cause like right now you're deluding yourself by like, you're giving up like half the company.”

“Well, I don't think that having no patent means that there's no defensibility.”