YouSaid · the spoken record

Christian Tapaninaho

lines on the record: 65
first: 2022-11-07
most recent: 2022-11-07
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

“Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you enjoyed it, please help us spread the word. Tell someone about how I built this or post about it on social media. And thanks. If you want to contact the Team, our email address is HIBT at ID.wondere.com. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at howbuilbuiltis and mine is at guyroz. And on Instagram or at how I built this, and I'm at guy.roz. This episode was produced by Chris Massini with music composed by Ramtin Arab Louis. It was edited by Neva Grant. Our audio engineer was Gilly Moon. Our production staff also includes JC Howard, Casey Herman, Liz Metzger, Carrie Thompson, Alex Chung, Josh Lash, Sam Paulson, Catherine Cypher, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, and Carla Estevez. Our intern is Suzanna Brown. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“True Detroias are pretty great. All that cheese and pepperoni is so good. I always think of MM when I eat Detroit pizzas. I don't know why. Maybe because he's from Detroit”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yah When you think about this journey, how much of your success do you attribute to the work you put in and how much do you think has to do with just getting lucky? Christian, first to you.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Crazy, right? Like a Kickstarter to where you are today, I don't know how often do you just reflect on just that Christian you saw a gap, but that could have really been a niche market. It could have been like just nerds who were really into their pizza ovens.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I should mention because there are restaurants all around the world that have this seal, this AVPN seal, and it's cool. You know that the pizza in there is going to be pretty great. I think, I mean, it's been reported that your revenues are now over 200 million pounds a year. I mean, it's pretty remarkable given that you start as a Kickstarter”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. One of the coolest things is I think last year maybe the basically the Virachi pizza association of Napoli. This is like the, it's like Champagne can only be made in champagne, and this organization can only designate true Neapolitan pizzas to be like. You know, O flower and San Marzano tomatoes and buffalo milk mozzarella and like basil. And that's Is okay, and then they approved your ovens. Like they gave it the stamp of approval.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The other thing that began to happen is because you created a category and people were like, I can make awesome pizza at home, a lot of other people were like, this is a good idea, I'm going to make a pizza oven too. And now there are probably 30 or 40 competitive brands. I mean, even some of these older Italian pizza makers are making portable pizza ovens now. You've got, I mean, just going on Amazon now, you see brands that, you know, are clearly I'm just going to be charitable, inspired by the design of Uni. And, you know, you could look at it multiple ways. You could say, hey, I'm flattered. You know, you guys have done the tripod bottom. I like that, or I'm inspired by your dome shape. Or you can say, wait a minute here, this looks really similar to what we've done. So tell me about how you kind of approach competitors in the space.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a lot. And I mean, how did you deal with just like, because you mentioned that before the pandemic, you had staffed up around digital marketing, which is a smart thing to do because you were expecting steady growth. But you certainly didn't staff up in other areas because no one anticipated COVID and what would have happened. But I think you ended 2019 with about 50 employees.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's nuts. I mean, and that was purely because all of a sudden people were at home and they started to cook at home. How did you deal with the demand? I mean, you've got shipping delays, you've got manufacturing delays and massive demand.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wonder when you, I mean, you're going into 2020, presumably, you know, you're on this trajectory of growing, you now have got an office in Austin. So you are confident, but then COVID hits, right? I have to imagine that initially you were expecting like everyone else a significant slowdown.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wonder as more and more people, now you're like 2019, you're selling to people beyond just like pizza fanatics. You're selling to people who are really trying to experiment, and that means that a lot of them are going to suck at it at first. Most people, me too, everybody is going to burn their pizzas. It's going to get stuck to the pizza peel. Some people are writing like bad reviews of the product saying this sucks. I burned my pizza, but like, yeah, you're going to burn your pizza because it's going to cook it in ninety seconds. Part of what you had to do was to educate people around how to make pizzas, right?”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, hope he is. I think it was in 2018 that you changed the name from Uni U N-I to Uni O Ni And I should mention Uni means oven in Finnish. Literally means oven because the first one I had was a UUNI pizza oven. I remember I was like, wait, did I get the right one? But you guys had a brand and you had recognition and attention and you were growing, but why did you change the name?”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it strikes me as a really interesting approach. I mean, you sort of kind of hinted at this, which is they're so passionate. So they're like force multipliers. You get people contributing to the Kickstarter, then they're talking about it, and then it becomes this like viral product. And this is the thing. We've talked about virality on the show with Teslas work that way. People go into someone else's Tesla and they're like, I want this car. It's unbelievable. And I think that's a key to the growth of Unis is like you're making pizzas, and usually you have people over, and they're like, this thing is amazing. And they're like, how does this work? And you're like, yeah, you just slide it in. And then soon enough, they're making pizzas and then they go out and buy one.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, so I think in 2017 you launched another crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. I think this was your third. I mean, by this point, you probably could have gone to... Outside investors and started raising venture money and stuff. But really, this was. It was a privately owned company. You were not. Going out to, you know, all these investors and stakeholders, you were really keeping.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And yet here it's coming out of Edinburgh. I mean, were people in the UK buying it, or were most of your customers in warm weather climates outside of the UK?”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you think of outdoor pizza, think about like, you know, the Amalfi coast or southern Italy, not Scotland, not Edinburgh, not Finland.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, because it's this very unique design and shape, and once people start to see that it's working, then, you know, we know what's going to happen. So what's I mean, I'm not the first to point this out, but it is kind of amazing that this incredibly accessible pizza oven that makes Neapolitan style pizzas at home comes from a place that I love Scotland. My wife lived there for the first six years of her life, so I'm not dissing Scotland, but it's cold and dark and rainy for a lot of the year.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think it's a British thing, right? Because in America, you start a company, you're like, We're going to be the biggest in the world and take it over, and being ambitious is not something to be ashamed of. But I think particularly in Britain, it's like, keep your head down. It's just culturally different.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we come back in just a moment, how Christian and Darina start learning how to grow Uni gracefully until the pandemic hits, stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2015 and UNI is going through a lot of changes. For starters, after the disastrous rollout of those glass stacking bowls, Christian finds another manufacturer for them in China. And the brand is actually getting some traction to the point where Dorina quits her job at their other business so she can work full time at Uni. Also, around this time, they decide to move their family and the business back to Dorina's hometown of Edinburgh.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I guess this turns out to be a pretty major stumble for you, right? Because I read that shortly after the UniStack came out. You sent a letter to your Kickstarter backers because there was, I guess there was some people were not happy with certain elements of it. And the letter, which I've read, it says, you know, we've been going through some growing pains lately. I'm just starved of time. I can't keep on top of everything. Just a few of us are making this happen. And I know you even said the feedback for the first production run hasn't been all good. What were you hearing”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I guess by your second year in business, which is 2014, you guys are already rolling out your next oven. I guess it was called the Uni2. And you also decided to make an accessory called the Uni stack. Which is cool. It's like these three stacking glass bowls that you can put the pizza dough into to rise.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're still very much involved in this other business that you guys had, this educational creative consulting business, which Starts to mount like events. And conferences in the meantime, like just tell me how you were managing all that stuff in your personal life, your child, I think you had two kids by then maybe?”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, now meantime, it's just you, and I guess Darina's helping out too while she's trying to earn money, but also helping you out. So you're the product guy, you're the manufacturing guy, you're the customer support guy.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You knew that you were going to continue this, and now you were getting just organic orders in from some media. By 2013, you know, you're getting orders are trickling in every other day or so.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you get these first ovens out and the backers get them. And what's the feedback that you're getting? Because, you know, again, this is still 2013. There aren't that many YouTube videos on how to make pizza. So what was the feedback?”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, was anybody in your world in the educational consulting world like, hey, Dorina, what's that pizza oven thing that Christian's doing? Like, wait, what is this?”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You've got to pay the bill. So, what are you doing to pay the bills? I'm working. I mean, are you going to do this consulting work, right?”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my God, you just stood in the post office and just slapped all the labels on. Here you go, here's one, here's another one, here's another one Here's another piece of”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. All right, so you get this fabrication place in Finland to start making them. You've got the cash to do it, and you've got to fulfill those orders. And by the way, these are orders presumably not just from the UK, but from overseas too, from around the world.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Christian, when you went to Finland to this factory, I mean you had this crude, welded oven, but obviously you wanted to look nicer. And did they have an on staff designer or somebody who could help you kind of smooth it out and make it look a little nicer?”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's actually amazing that in Britain, which is a country of like, I don't know, sixty, seventy million people, you couldn't find, and in Finland a country of like four or five million people? There was a metal factory that could do this.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You were promising this to people and you didn't actually have a manufacturer. You were thinking, I'm going to have this metal shop dude down the block make him. And he was like, are you kidding? I can't make 100 pizza ovens. I'm making yard fences. And I'm imagining like you're starting to call numbers and you're like, hey, can you make pizza ovens? No, sorry. Can you make pizza ovens? Oh, no, sorry. First of all, I can't imagine there are many metal fabrication factories in the UK at all.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow. But once you have raised the money, you've got to deliver. And people are like, where's my thing? Where's my pizza oven? And now you can go to this guy, this metal shop guy, and say, All right, can you make these? And that's presumably what you do.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you don't show the whole oven because you're like, hey, you know, I'm trying to protect the IP, so I'm not going to show you the oven. So it's a little sketchy as you're like, who is this guy and this thing? And then you kind of make a pizza and... Was there part of it? I mean, Kickstarter was still so new, but was part of it also like maybe I'll get some media attention from this.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. All right, I've seen that video. Anybody can go watch it. It's the first Uni video. It's low production quality, which is fine. It should be. I mean, I hope at that point you didn't have a slick video because you didn't have any. Production budget audio is terrible. Barely could barely hear you. There's a weird music soundtrack in the background that's kind of there. And you're like, not sure if it's coming from the video or another part of your house. When I was watching, I was like, is that my kid playing music or is that in the video? Anyway, it's you.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the idea was you would have that same metal shop that made your prototype, you would just have him do like 50 of them.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Me come back in just a moment. How Christian gets lots of early orders for the oven, but then discovers that the fence maker down the street is not going to be able to fulfill them. Stay with us, I'm Guy Ros, and you're listening to how I built this. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Ros. So it's 2012 and Christian has just launched a Kickstarter video for his very first And the goal for this first campaign is pretty modest. He's looking to raise about ten thousand dollars.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But with that early prototype from the welder, that was the one you were going to go to Kickstarter with as the demo product?”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you knew and you knew how to make pizza dough because we know that from the story, but now you get this thing. You're like, okay, let's go. Here goes nothing. Do you remember the first pizzas that you made?”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So from the time you brought this home until the time you were able to cook your first pizza experiment, how many more days was that?”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, so four or five days later, you go to this welder and he hands you this basically a metal box. And there's like a hole in the back where you can just put in the wood pellets and light them up. Describe what it looks like.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“40 or 50 pounds. That's it. And it was just, he basically took sheets of steel and welded them together based on your design”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're like goat, you're like, I love it. Yeah. But when he came to you and he said, I think we can make this. And you're like, yeah, I'm excited. There's a lot of details to work out at that point. You'd be really excited. There's a lot of stuff that now's the easy part. You made the sketch awesome.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you start sketching these ideas and thinking, all right, I've got this concept. You bring this to Darina, and she's supportive right away.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow. And so when he talked about this, you're thinking this is the same kind of analogy with a pizza. Obviously, the technology is not as complex, but still, like massive pizza oven, small pizza.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trying to understand how you started to figure that out because you didn't have a background in engineering or even physics or chemistry. I mean. So, how did you kind of educate yourself about what to even begin to sketch the designs, like the dome shape or how the fire would work? How did you even know how to do that?”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it's cooking the pizza from the bottom, right? Exactly. It's got the pizza coming from the bottom, so it's not the same.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, so you're thinking this is annoying, but to install a pizza oven, it's thousands of dollars and it's a lot of wood, and you're renting a place. You can't do that, and you didn't have the money. So did you start to look around for another option?”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like that does these Neapolitan South pizzas, they're cooking them in ovens that are like seven eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit, 900 degrees Fahrenheit, which your home oven can't do. And just that heat creates this chemical reaction that builds that charred, bubbly... Beautiful pizza crust that you just can't do in your home oven.”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I guess we should pause here to explain something which is a home oven for very good reasons does not go above five hundred because then there'd be just home fires all the time. People would just like burn their houses down. So it's good. It's a good thing. It is a good thing. But when you go to a pizzeria,”
2022-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Ooni Pizza Ovens: Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT