From Liability to Opportunity
The meat snacks category has a negative stigma — people associate jerky with junk food. We had the courage to separate the product from this stigma, swap artificial ingredients for healthy ones, and reposition it for today’s consumers — including women. Since companies in this category had been doing the same things for decades, it was easy to jump in and disrupt the industry very quickly.
Don’t Say the M-Word
When we talk about our products, we focus on their health benefits compared to, say, a Cliff Bar. We almost never say the word “meat” because we see ourselves in the healthy snacks industry. How we marinate our meats, our flavors — cherry barbeque, chili lime, and others — and our packaging all appeal to today’s health-conscious consumers. When someone as iconic as Oprah recommends our products, we know that we’re changing this category — and that’s really gratifying.
Live Case Study
You don’t just wake up one day and aspire to be in the jerky category. If it weren’t for Columbia, I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to take my idea seriously. The business evolved over the course of the MBA Program. The opportunity to have a new business concept and be in a room full of incredibly smart people from Microsoft to eBay to Apple and Goldman Sachs provided tremendous feedback. Steve Blank, whose entrepreneurship class I took, is still an advisor to the company.
What’s Next
We believe that over the next several years, protein-based snacking will be a large new industry. We expect to introduce meat-based bars with ingredients like oats, quinoa, and dried cranberries. We’ve raised two rounds of institutional capital with ACG [led by Julian Steinberg ’05]. We believe we will become a $100 million company within the next 24 months.