YouSaid · the spoken record

Koel Thomae

lines on the record: 86
first: 2024-11-25
most recent: 2024-11-25
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

“Some startup companies where they sort of say, well, we want to be where you are. And I'm like, okay, well, I don't know if I can actually help you because you have to be willing to work really hard and your eye cannot be on this big outcome, right? And that was never what it was about. For me in the beginning or for Rob, it was, you know, a passion around this product that kind of took on a life of its own.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a huge element of luck, right? I think about 2008 and sort of seeing this emerging trend of Greek yogurt. And in some ways, I actually think we thought we had missed the boat. Ultimately, we timed it just perfectly because it just reinvigorated the category, Greek yogurt. And we got to ride that wave with the big players. But coupled with that is, you know, as much as I may have disagreed with my business partners over different things, the one thing I think we can attest to is that we all worked really bloody hard. You know, I've mentored”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sort of feel like I'm back at university, that university phase, right, where I'm like, what the hell do I want to do with my life? And so I'm just exploring a lot of different things.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is. I don't think I'm going back into yogurt. Though I am very interested in sort of the dairy free space, I know that's sort of seems counterintuitive.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I didn't even want to shop the yogurt dial. I just didn't want to think about yogurt for a while. I decided I would say yes to any sort of travel opportunity. And I just needed to be like a little chill for a while and hang out with my kid, hang out with my family more, like probably one of the most important things I'll do in my life is raise a good human. And I finally have a little more time to focus on that.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was over a decade of my life that I literally, all I thought about was yogurt, which is a really long time to think about one thing. And I feel like I worked a lifetime in that decade”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No. So I sort of see these two very distinct chapters that I was involved with at NUSA was sort of like the wild west chapter. Professional chapter, which I think we created an amazing internal culture. And I had an absolute blast in sort of that second chapter because I didn't have the tension with my business partners anymore. And so...”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Incentivize. That's the right word. But you know, it makes a lot of sense, right? Like, we're in the middle of this growth curve. And to your point, we do bring a lot of value to the business at that point, even if we feel like we need to sort of start to hand over the reins.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We do. And actually, we rolled over a pretty significant minority ownership in the business. That was sort of how the deal was structured.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely, which was nerve-wracking, right? Like I knew this was sort of like. If we lose this deal, we're pretty screwed. Like, it was probably the most stress I've ever endured in my life.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We don't want to be acquired because, you know, Rob still really wants to be part of the business. I'm sort of on the fence. I could have probably gone either way. And then, you know, the Australian family just really wanted to sort of realize their investment. So we ended up hiring an investment banker and sort of running a process to find more of that private equity type investment that would support the growth and help us build out that team.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know creating real business opportunities or growth opportunities for our employees. And then we finally sort of got alignment around, okay, we don't think we want to sell to a strategic at this point. You don't want to.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe not the right team is not the right way to sort of view it, but it really was a bigger team, somebody that was positioned to take it into that 100 plus million realm because it does become a very different business, right? Like you are an important brand to retailers. There's just different expectations from your business partners. I mean, I feel bad for a lot of our employees that were with us from the early days in the sense that they never really got a lot of oversight. You know, we weren't building like actual career paths for these people. So even though we were a cultured product, I didn't feel like we had a great internal culture in the sense of.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So it was beginning of 2014. The Australians were starting to talk about wanting to take some chips off the table. And Rob probably could have just gone in perpetuity because he's a fourth generation dairy farmer, right? Like I feel like dairy farmer is people of that world just work hard and just keep going no matter what. And so it just became this sort of dialogue of like how do we solve all of these problems?”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a lot. And then, interestingly, we had sort of created or revolutionized whole milk yogurt, and we started getting big players coming in and directly competing with us. So within, I would say, sort of that 2012 to 2014 timeframe, there was probably six knockoffs that came into the market from Dannon, from Haine Celestial to even Kroger doing private label version of Nusa.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, to recruit the right people. And we essentially hide a salesperson without sort of that equity ask and literally had to fire them two months later, right? Like we just couldn't get the right people.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More conservative really didn't want to give up equity. And I understand that too. Like, I understand that perspective, but I think. Knew that that's what it would take to really recruit”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If we couldn't agree how to hire a real team of people to help us run the business When things start to really take off, sometimes founders need to get out of their own way.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my gosh, I mean ranging from should we pay ourselves, you know, I was sort of the poor business partner where I had to have that second job where the other two partners had businesses that they could rely on to pay themselves to, yeah, how to grow the business, you know, even with that mistake at Shopright, there was still sort of this pressure to say yes to every opportunity where I was sort of pushing back and saying we actually have to have more strategy if we want to keep cash flowing this rather than taking outside investment and then sort of coming into 2013, 2014 and I could just sort of see that we were going to hit this wall.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, for me personally, you know, it was my first time ever being in business. I could see that other companies were doing it, but I had a naive sense and trust in my business partners that we could just all get along and be aligned because things were pretty rosy in the beginning, but with growth and how to decision making, it just became readily apparent that we were all Not super aligned in how we wanted to go forward.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we never had a board of directors, we never had an internal advisory board. So it just became sort of butting heads as far as how do we continue to grow this business and put appropriate team members around it. Yeah.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“150 grand, and then we were able to offer some options. Ended up being the only person that we offered options to, which actually became a bit of a point of contention between the partners as we started growing even further.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, we were profitable at the end of 2012. We were close to a $20 million business, so we were able to pay people reasonable market, like competitive salaries, but it was still such a small team.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Which is, I mean, a good problem to have, but like how once you're sort of in the groove of selling. You know, because again, like in the back of my head, I have sort of like, okay, well, if I say no now, will that opportunity exist in 12 months?”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, so we launched, that was probably like midyear that we launched in Supertarget. They came back four months later and expanded us into a thousand stores, a thousand more stores.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're now probably operating at least four to five batches a week. So we're starting to butt up against what I would consider some capacity constraints, right? Because you're now having to bring on probably two shifts of people to work a seven-day schedule. And at this point, I'm happy to say we're out of the 10 gallon buckets. And so it was just sort of this constant leapfrog We've got at this point we have a line of credit from a traditional bank who's allowing us to buy more expensive equipment and we're just constantly investing in the manufacturing process.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't know they were from Target, no. No, they were hiding their badges. A lot of those buyers are pretty good at being stealth. Yeah, it wasn't too little post expo that we actually got an email from Target. I think Target maybe had been a little bit behind the curve with Greek and wanted to be ahead of what they saw as sort of the next evolution in yogurt. And they thought Nusa could be that. So they essentially offered us a test in, I think it was about 250 of their super target formats.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I still had this strong belief that New York could be a great market for us. And it's, you know, Shopride is an amazing retailer. Like they do a ton of velocity and a ton of volume. But for where we were at the time, it was too much. And I mean, they pretty much said you'll never sell at our store again. I was like, okay, but I'm not going to be a business if I don't do this”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And some Was such a hard time, even though I knew we were losing so much cash, it was a really hard decision to make because I knew that if we pulled out, that might be the last opportunity to ever sell at that retailer.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and to your point, yeah, so we've got 28 days of shelf life. We just get rejected at the dock. It takes another two days to get rescheduled. I mean, it was a nightmare. Was sort of a disconnect between what was coming from corporate down to the individual stores. So we were seeing. Not Was going wrong. And I mean, we were literally hammering cash for this customer from spoils to the slotting fees to not getting a much velocity because it wasn't getting set in all of the stores. And finally, I was like, this is not working. Like this retailer could sink the entire operation”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Come to learn that Shoprite is probably one of the hardest operationally retailers to work with. Like if you miss their delivery window by like five minutes, they'll refuse you and then you have to reschedule.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was really learning on the job for me. But yeah, so Shopright says we're going to, instead of charging you $100,000 out of the gates, we'll bill it quarterly. I'm like, okay, well, this sounds like something that we can. We can cash flow, so we launch. So we're already a hundred thousand dollars in the hole out of the gates.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we get this meeting with Shopright. We know that we have to invest with these retailers as far as potentially slotting fees and all of their in-store marketing programs. But we started asking and tried to get creative where we would say, look, we're willing to invest whatever that slotting fee is to get on the shelf. But can we put it in to demos? Can we put it into your retail marketing programs where we have a real opportunity to get off the shelf because we're proving out in Colorado that if we can get people to taste this product, it's going to sell. And interestingly, Shopright said, okay, well, we're willing to defer your slotting fees. We're going to give you a 12-month time horizon.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Said yes. So in 2011, we brought on a business development manager. He was an outside contractor. And a very good salesperson, let's just say. And at this point, we still have not ever sat down and created any type of strategy for the business. We're just pinch-hitting, like if an opportunity comes up, we're going to say yes.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, at that point, we were producing the product with about 28 days of shelf life, which is short. I know there's other products out there with even shorter shelf lives. But you add in shipping and like logistics of getting it onto the shelf.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we actually had a lot of inbound emails from out of state. And one of those inbound emails was actually from a retailer called Hive, which is in the Midwest in Iowa. And essentially, I don't know if I sampled him or somebody else did. The president of Ivy had been at the farmer's market and tried Noosa and loved it and basically told his dairy buyer to contact us that they wanted to carry it. So we said yes. And I think the learning from that was that yeses with the right partners were good opportunities. But we learned that not every opportunity was the right one.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were the only yogurt vendor. I still have to laugh thinking about how crazy it got. And that just sort of built a groundswell. And people obviously were then like, well, where can I get it? You know, if I can't make it to the farmer's market on the weekend. And at that point, we still were really only available at Whole Foods and a few independent markets.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that started spring of 2010. That was sort of actually a harder sell than Whole Foods was getting into the Boulder Farmers market. It's considered one of the top 10 farmers' markets in the country. So, you know, essentially, if you come to Colorado in the summer, you'll probably end up at the Boulder Farmers market.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It did. It absolutely did. And obviously, as we grew, I couldn't be in all of these places. But when you actually meet the founder of a business, there is sort of a more openness and emotional connection to trying something and believing in it. So I actually had a lot of friends and family do sampling events for me as well. I just I tried to think of as many avenues where I could get people to taste this product.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was, I think Max maybe 10 stores. So I would just sort of, you know, we hired a few other demo people, but just sort of rotating through those stores really sort of connecting with the store managers. Because I really, I think from my time as being a server, right? like really understanding relationships and how they can serve you when you're getting out of the gates. I really wanted to build those relationships with not just the store manager, but the people stocking the yogurt. So in a sense, I would not only sample consumers, but I would go and sample all the store employees as well.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, at that point, like just even trying to figure out how to source that puree was more than we wanted to address. And I think knowing that consumers are still pretty traditional, we wanted to sort of stay in that bandwidth of having flavors that we knew would sell. And mango was sort of maybe the most exotic in that lineup.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, only the Colorado stores because the Rocky Mountain region at that point, umbrella, I think Idaho. Utah, but the bulk of the stores were in Colorado.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The only thing that we had on the packaging, besides the name, Nusa, we had a little tagline that said Aussie culture, which obviously has a double meaning, Colorado Fresh. That was the only thing that implied. That there was sort of a link to Australia. Again, I think because it was in transparent packaging, you could see the freshness of the product, the fruit puree with the white yogurt really popped. And nobody on the shelf at that point in time was doing transparent packaging. So I just had this strong belief that if I had discovered it purely because I could see the product when I first tasted it in Australia, somebody else was going to take that leap of faith.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. It's eight ounces. It's going to take up all this space on the shelf. Like, you know, they're thinking all of these unit metrics. And I'm like, look, all I could do was be honest. I said, we have already invested all of our startup capital in this equipment, in this packaging. We can't pivot at this point. Like we've just got to go. So I just wore them down. I'm like, let's ignore the packaging. Let's think about the food. If you give us this opportunity, I will be in every one of your Colorado stores demoing the hell out of it. And we're going to make it successful.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they just see the packaging and are like, we hate your packaging. And I'm like, okay, I understand. I was like, but let's taste the food. Like, let's taste the yogurt. So we do a taste testing. They're raving about the product, but then they immediately go back and they're like, but we hate your packaging.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The shelf. Off the show. Exactly. And it actually didn't exist. So at that point, most yogurt was sort of between 5.3 to 6 ounces. And there was nothing. There was nothing available in stock packaging. Those sizes Was pretty adamant that we needed to be in transparent packaging. And so that ultimately led us into this eight ounce container. It looked more like a hummus tub. But with some refinement, I felt like it could stand out, it could be unique. But it was a little nerve-wracking because we knew that just by volume it would drive us to a higher price point on shelf. And so this is what we've got as we go to our first meeting with Whole Foods.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so by this point, we've invested in the equipment, we've invested in the packaging. And with the packaging, we really wanted it to be reflective of that first experience I had in Australia, which was transparency, letting the product sort of speak for itself. In that initial sort of startup capital, we didn't really factor in a custom mold. We just sort of assumed that we'd be able to find a traditional dairy cup that was transparent.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Certainly, right? I mean, again, taking it from this small vessel to a larger vessel to a larger vessel and trying to have consistency in the flavor profile was really unique. And it's sort of a testament to Rob, because it was sort of his engineering brain that really figured out how to develop that. I mean, we were making it in 10 gallon buckets for over a year, which gave the state health inspector a lot of heartache. You know, he gave us a pretty long runway. But out of the gates, he said, you can't do this long term.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I don't know that it ultimately was that complex, but I think part of what made it unique initially was that it was being made in 10 gallon buckets, which is crazy. Like, I mean, I remember doing runs to the Home Depot because we were running out of buckets. you essentially are cooling the yogurt faster because it's in a smaller volume vessel so that changes sort of the like the way the cultures are interacting with with the product i think the fact that we were infusing it with honey i mean there was certainly sugar added as well but infusing it with honey gave it a different flavor profile and what made that unique made it harder to scale as we grew”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rob's building his new bottling plant, and as things go with construction, it's delayed. Yeah, so we initially thought we were going to launch in 2009. The building's taking longer to get finished. I'm with the direction of the Australian family trying to find equipment at auctions and ultimately, you know, it really is we're going to push to a 2010 launch. Things are just too delayed. I think another thing to note too is just people thought we were crazy because this is coming off the heels of the global financial crisis. So I think there was sort of like, what? You're going to invest all this money. You're going to start a new business when the world is sort of. Employing. And I didn't even really consider that. I just was like, I still think even in hard times, people are going to invest in delicious food.”
2024-11-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Noosa Yoghurt: Koel Thomae · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT