YouSaid · the spoken record

Ben Goodwin

lines on the record: 79
first: 2024-09-02
most recent: 2024-09-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, I mean, it would be absolutely asinine to not acknowledge that it's a mix. I was born with a brain that has allowed me to be do things that are hard for a lot of people. I'm sure my genetics have played into my resiliency. I grew up in a really bad situation, but I also grew up in a nice area. So one of the things that happened when I was a teenager going through my metamorphosis, I was able to go for walks and just psychoanalyze myself with my head in the clouds. And also how you facilitate self awareness and self development through all those different experiences.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm sitting on my cash, and then 10 years goes by, Olipop has disappeared, or I don't like what it's doing in the world anymore. I will not have considered that a win. Know, but going public's no walk in the park either, right? There's a whole bunch of minefields associated with that choice. What's nice is with the way that we're growing, I have no plans to sell the company right now. So I'm fortunate that I don't, we don't feel a lot of pressure from our investors because they're all so up on their money already.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and it's so artful that I'm just going to say it out loud. But I would say obviously I hear what you're getting at. If I just exit Ollipop and I'm like, oh, yeah, I've got my small amount of cash.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And now we're looking at similar trajectory in terms of the rate at which this category is achieving household penetration. I think the other piece of this as well is that traditional sodas pipeline of young consumers has collapsed over the last 10 years, there's been a 60% reduction in, let's call it Gen Z Gen Alpha traditional soda consumption. That's exactly. I mean, we're a big tent. We still work really great with Gen X and Millennials. And we over-index with these younger consumers. So I think we've got a really great opportunity. Be the spearhead of Soda, which is a great American institution, doesn't need to die off. It just needs to evolve.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have had triple digit growth every year since inception. In fact, in 2020, we almost had quadruple digit growth. And there is a lot of room, head room left to hit anything that even remotely resembles a ceiling. So exactly what that future looks like is still unclear, but for right now, we are just 100% focused on continuing to go after the enormous market opportunity that's still in front of us. Because the way that I'm conceptualizing this is this is the third wave of soda, right? You had traditional soda and then there was diet soda in the 1980s. I think in three or four years, diet soda became 25% of all soda sales. Yeah.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, and you're doing no demoing. So that was a really fascinating experience because obviously at the beginning of the year when the shutdowns occurred. Everybody was rightfully losing their minds. The prevailing logic at that point in time would have been this is an impulse purchase that people pick up when they're grabbing their sandwich. It turned out that for those customers that had discovered us and basically were falling in love with the brand, they were already considering it an essential shop for the week. So people weren't just going in and grabbing a can. They were going in and grabbing enough cans for the whole week because they were already making it a regular part of their consumption habits. But that was for me this real epiphany moment of like, oh my God, this something is happening here that's at a whole different level than I could have expected it would be.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we want it to be ready to transition when the time was right. So Walmart's one of our biggest customers now, but they approached us to go into the stores about 18 months before we felt ready to do it. Yeah. So what we knew from the beginning is we are looking to create a mainstream product that can go toe to toe with soda. We want to start in the natural channel to build up our early adopters, to build up our revenue base and our rudimentary...”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Looking for the future, so it, yes, it's the celebrity and the influencer crowd, but it's also senior buyers at mass grocery.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you're right. I think it was one of the first. But do you know who else frequents the Erewan Isles? Is the Walmart buying team?”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Billion. And the other thing that I find really funny about it is I don't hear the same level of outcry around protein supplementation, right? Like, you know, and nobody kind of bats an eyelash if somebody throws a scoop of protein in their smoothie. What do you think Lollipop's doing? It's doing the same thing. It's supplementing, but it's critically, it's doing it in a way that's incredibly enjoyable. And you might just use it to replace something that's not good for you.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I really appreciate you asking that question. One of the most common things I see in articles that are discussing the category usually with a hatchet style is experts agree that olipop and comparable beverages are no replacement for a healthy balanced diet. I totally agree All of that said. 90% of Americans are not getting adequate levels of fiber. 90%. And arguably, the FDA's recommended daily allowance of fiber at 28 grams is already a bit of a pittance Compared to what is actually historically been consumed by humans, and it's lower than the WHO recommendations around fiber consumption. So Lollipop has never been designed to replace a healthy diet. It's meant to help to complement the diet of a population that is chronically deficient in this absolutely essential nutrient.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but I think it starts with you, the outlier, right? Starts with the, and that's also why we chose to launch in the natural channel, because there are more folks with a little more expendable cash, and there's folks who are willing to try novel things outside of the norm in order to pursue their health, but it's also a product and a concept whose time has come. There is quite a deep pain point for a lot of American consumers that love soda, that have migrated away from the category because of how unhealthy it is. And by offering something that really scratches that itch, but the deeper you dig into the science, the more you actually come away feeling, wow, they're not messing around. This is actually contributing a benefit. That is the kind of equation that develops organic traction.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, look, one of the things that I love about the territory is more of an understood inevitability now. But at the time, even just the concept and the communication of a healthy soda was at that time an intrinsic contradiction. Like we felt like we had insider data that showed people want this. We also knew that it was like that contradiction creates mental stickiness because you look at it and you go like, healthy soda yes, no, I don't know. And then, okay, cute packaging, though, I'll try it. Oh my God, it tastes great. Oh, I look at the nutrition facts panel, then I look at the ingredients. So I had faith that if it tasted right and the pack was right, that just the concept of the healthy soda would create enough kind of mental noise for people that they'd want to try it. And I was right.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly, exactly. And then obviously, we knew, hey, we're going to need to raise some additional capital. And actually, a lot of the folks that we went back and spoke to were the investors from Obi that we felt like we had particularly enjoyed working with. And, you know, look, I think what some of these folks saw was that we had absorbed a lot of the lessons from Obi and that the new product was at a much higher, it was just a better level. I remember one of our Bay Area investors tried an early version of Strawberry Vanilla and was just like.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so all the kind of branding work formulation work, I think even maybe like the initial test run, that was all self-funded by”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, thank you. So the Ollie is short for Oligiosaccharites, which is a family of prebiotics that it's used in the product.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. So I tried a bunch of stuff. I tried monk fruit. I tried Stevia. I tried olulose. I landed on Stevia at the end of the day because the technology is farther along for Stevia. But obviously I understand that for some folks, especially less kind of skillfully put together formulas could be challenging.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there's a really specific flavor note in there. You instantly know what flavor I'm talking about when I reference it, right? So our tropical punch has a toned down version of that same note in it. So you're hopefully creating historical referencing but future focused ownable formulas.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yeah, and also all of our data shows that you are 100% correct. I mean, in terms of the earlier comment you made, good luck trying to get a bunch of people to switch their behavior if something doesn't lead with delicious flavor. And when we talk to our consumers and try to figure out, hey, what's contributed to our kind of growth and the high level of kind of advocacy that our customers have for the product really a lot of it is the emotional and flavor relationship first. In fact, that's core to my approach to formulation is every flavor has to have a hook in it that registers in some part of the brain in a nostalgic way.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that is funny because call me unsophisticated, but I don't, I certainly haven't historically thought in demographics. That is one of the nice things about going after something as large as a soda market.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's hilarious how simple my lab has always been, and it's still as simple today as it was back when I started. It's two scales that are very expensive, but one goes out three decimal places, one goes out two. It's a Vitamix, it's pipettes, and it's a soda stream. And I still use that exact same setup. We have a more complex lab in the Bay Area that we use now. But when I'm formulating, that's still...”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it has to say in solution, right? And it has to survive manufacturing. So Ollie Smart is cassava root, chicory root, Jerusalem artichoke. That's our fiber blend.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, literally my kitchen. I mean, by this time, this stuff is somewhat second nature to me, right? I know who to call. When I need to go find a bunch of samples of ingredients.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what we felt that we took away from Obi was that consumers didn't like the word soda, but they wanted to drink soda. And especially with low-calorie ingredients, you're building a structure where all of the elements have to click together just right to create a really compelling illusion.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I am only doing this again if I am coming back 10 times better and 10 times stronger with all the learnings from everything I've taken before. And if we're going back and we're going to do it again, we are going to punch through the board.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. That's right. Eventually, I did ring David up and say, hey, hey, I think I got another one. And he was, you know, I think he'll admit he was a little gun shy at first. We had both felt pretty challenged by our prior experience. And I think it was a real moment of reflection. Are we willing to sign ourselves up for that again? And obviously I think he got he ended up getting excited about the kind of strategy for formulation. But I think ultimately, you know, the thing that I landed on, which I communicated to him and I think resonated with him, was, hey, man, we didn't finish the mission. Like, we owe it to, I don't know, the world consumers, whatever, to ourselves.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's fiber prebiotics plus nutritional diversity, right? So we've got an ingredient mix called Ollie Smart, which has eight different ingredients in it. And again, the reason why that's important is because we've got three different sources of fiber right now. And so you're getting a large bolus of fiber, but you're not getting it from just the same prebiotic ingredient. And the reason why that's important is because if you are trying to benefit the microbiome, you want to bring up multiple strains of beneficial bacteria simultaneously if you overfeed one strain, you actually can just create a new imbalance. So the complex kind of functional formula is designed to be beneficial to digestive health. And it's been pretty meticulously arranged so that it's a bit more comprehensive in its nature.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's absolutely. And just to be clear, I totally understand why the category is often referred to as the prebiotic soda category, right? Because that's kind of the salient ingredient that it's easy to understand. But the bigger nutritional platform that the product offers is also important, which is fine.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Five or six cities. I walked 170 miles, and one of the things I wanted to do while I was over there was study their beverage market because I have always been very fond of Japanese formulation. It's really nuanced. It's balanced. It's subtle. It's intriguing. The flavor profiles are intriguing. And I started seeing some drinks that were over there that had fiber in them. And I was like, oh, that's really interesting that they've got all these drinks with fiber.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So it's a little less plucky to that effect. And it's just been very, very, very, very stressful. I mean, we got properly slapped in the face. Now, again, as somebody who'd been getting slapped in the face for years, I was like, it was a particularly brutal experience. And I also had a certain amount of that experience. I think David, so David and I did It's not like we lost contact, but we did take a little breathing space. I was like, okay, I'm like in my late-ish 20s. And, you know, I suddenly just got a small pile of cash. And so I'm thinking, awesome. I don't have to immediately go find another job or something. And my whole life, I'd wanted to go to Japan. And so I'm like, I'm going to Japan. So I spent about two weeks. I walked like a, I went.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, again, we made enough that we were able to live off of that and use it to start Ollipop. But yeah, it certainly wasn't the outcome that we were looking for. But it's also, you know, I don't know. You may know this about. Europe, and maybe it's changing, but the entrepreneur culture is quite different in Europe as well. Right. So if you fail as an entrepreneur, at least it's the way that David described it to me. If you fail as an entrepreneur in the UK, it's very shameful.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I mean, look, David, I think my impression is that was the most challenging life experience that David had had full stop.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Learning to trust myself has really been a lifelong journey for me, you know, coming out of a high trauma childhood. That's trust in general is not a strong suit of mine. Learning how to filter out the noise and figure out how to act on my instincts and my intuitions and my survival instinct has been key. But I think the other thing is to have a certain amount of self-respect for the fact that I had been in the trenches for years and years and years learning how to survive.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean A hundred percent, there were moments when exasperatedly, I would say I just spent seven years of my life on fire. That's how in certain moments it felt. The flip side of the I had gotten a lot of really useful market data. I had proved out the hypothesis that I was exploring, which was are consumers actually ready for a health-contributing soda. And I developed a lot of good relationships. And because of how we had exited, I had retained those relationships. And part of it was...”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was going along, but it just got to the point where, hey, it's untenable with the kind of current corporate structure that we have and the partnerships that we have, we simply just can't continue this. And in late 2016, we finally kind of washed our hands of the business.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the version that I can legally communicate is that we got acquired, the reality is we actually weren't having a drop off of product traction. The product was continuing to grow. I think we were, I mean, slower in comparison, but after that kind of two-ish years, we were up at about a million bucks in revenue. And yeah, we were checking a million dollars.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. That was the whole goal. So, what's the biggest non water beverage that exists? It's soda, right? It's a $42 billion industry with 97% household penetration. It's an absolute legacy product in the United States. And I have this theory that a healthy soda is going to gain some traction. And so we have the root beer, cherry vanilla. We had an orange grapefruit and we had a lemon lime. So those are our And it's just kind of broad enough blend that you can test it out. But guess what our top seller was? Yeah. And that's when I was like, oh, here we go.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was, I would say it was like it definitely didn't perform poorly. Because, in fact, there was a need state for consumers who wanted to drink a fermented probiotic beverage that didn't really like the taste of kombucha, right? And Obi was lower sugar than most of the kombuchas that were on the shelf as well.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Santa Cruz. Yeah, that's the nice thing. You've got all these health food stores. It's a great place to go start pounding the pavement. Had the kombucha market not existed, I don't think there would have been a space for Obi. But I think there was enough of an argument around you know that your shoppers in the natural channel are interested in fermented drinks. What if they could have something that was more powerful but didn't taste like vinegar? And that was enough of a hook that folks started to give us a try.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just this assorted network that we had built up enough rapport with. But yeah, we built up enough ground swell. And actually, it was really lucky because I think we'd been working for a little over a year with no salary at that point. And for David, that was like a very unusual experience. For me, it was somewhat normal, but for him, it was really unusual. And I think he was about at the level where he's like, I only have a couple more months of this, and then I'm going to have to go find a real job. So we were pretty much at the end of the pier for David in terms of how much longer he could go without some capital inflow. But we kind of jerry rigged enough partnerships together that gave folks faith and got enough people around the table writing checks at the same time that we pulled it in.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was very hard. It was very hard. It's just like you have the meeting and it's unclear whether they're going to move and then you just have the, you get strung along often. And eventually the first chunk of funding, I think we raised about 900K on our first go. And it was...”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I developed my own Stevia blend to sweeten the drink with because I didn't like any of the technology that was on the market. So this is one of the most skillful formulations I've ever tasted involving Stevia. And then... I just lambasted him with three hours of my obsession with the microbiome and health and how this all rolled up into the greater good for society. And he walked away very impacted by this dude is very serious about this and he wants to change the world.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he knew next to nothing about it. So when he tried my products, he was like, we've had teams working on Stevia, sweetened products at Diageo for so many years. I've tried more Stevia sweetened products than I can count.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I actually did ultimately make him the CEO of that venture. And one of the reasons why we landed there was again going back to now we're starting to reach out to investors and raise capital. And look, I just wanted permissibility to be myself. And I thought that the kind of more straight man that David tends to be and again, we've both changed a lot over the last decade. But at that point in time, that's kind of how the dynamic, you know, it's, I think that people really love to create.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Took one look at his face and she was like, You're gonna go do this thing with this guy, aren't you? And I think, and he looked at her and he was just like, yeah, I think I probably am. And I totally, you know.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, we talked on the phone. He's from northern UK. And that tends to be a fairly emotionally monotone group of folks like Liverpool area. And so I remember the first time I talked to him on the phone, I was like, this guy is not interested in working with me. But then I met with him two weeks later in Cafe in Palo Alto. And we really actually hit it off. And you know what's also very funny is that he had a job lined up. He had like a safe job lined up that was down the street from where his wife was working, and they had this pictureque fantasy of we're going to be in San Francisco, we're going to work these great safe jobs, we're going to see each other on our lunch breaks. Wow. He came home from the lunch meeting with me. And his wife.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think a lot of times when we feel insecure, we either shrink ourselves or we blow ourselves up to try to deal with the perceived threat or the trigger. And there's a real strength in staying your size and saying, you know, I'm not going to be reactive to what ultimately is probably another person's ego. But I'm not going to shrink myself. But I'm also not going to expand myself and go into this spiral that consumes me. And so that was actually a super valuable lesson that I learned out of that.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think that the cleanest way to analyze it was you really do need someone just mercilessly obsessed as you are on what's important about what you're doing, right? They can't have a problem rolling their sleeves up your co-pilots together in a plane that barely flies that's going a thousand miles an hour So you have got to be tight and focused And look, good entrepreneurs don't let anything go to waste. And so even when something absolutely implodes in their face and it's really, really painful, you've got to take a really useful lesson out of that. And I realize that a lot of my stress was actually coming from my own ego and that the best way to navigate this situation was staying your size.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. And it was challenging. And I was back out of cash. I mean, they were a high net worth individual, but it wasn't the right fit.”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I also just, you know, I also feel like in my early 20s, I had been probably just naturally a bit more arrogant. You know, it's the insecurity of being smart enough to be smart, but being young enough to just, you know, not know enough about the world. And I felt it was important that I find somebody to counterbalance any weak spots that I had. I mean, three of the four years I was in the RD process, I was looking for a business partner. I actually went through three or four rounds of looking for a business partner. I had one for a while. We didn't work out that we divorced. That was messy”
2024-09-02 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Olipop: Ben Goodwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT