YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Kirban

lines on the record: 100
first: 2020-08-03
most recent: 2020-08-03
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

“And she said, Great, I need some information on the facility and so on, but it's going to take like three months to get the number, like three months. What the hell am I going to do for three months? Wait.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cases 20,000 cases. Wow. And so we were so excited for the product to land. And one day, I remember picking up the phone. It was the brokerage company. And the girl on the other end, she said, I need your registration number. It's a very specific type of number for low acid food products, which is what coconut water to TetraPack is. And I said, I have no idea what you're talking about. And she said, well, then you can't import it. And she was in charge of importing it, right? So I would have expected she would have known what needed to be done. And she expected I had done my research and I knew what needed to be done. And it didn't happen. And so she basically told me that we can't import the product until we have this number. I said, great, let's get the number.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was the beauty of what we were doing, that we didn't really get into this business understanding that, but pretty quickly, we realized that we would have a real business where we could sell some volume without a ton of brand building and marketing right off the bat.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, right off the bat, we saw it as a competitor to Gatorade. Because that's how it was drank in Brazil, and that's how it's drank across the tropical world.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and to be honest, I did such little market research. I didn't even know anything about Goya at the time either. It was just, the stuff tastes pretty good. It's really good for you. It's working really well in Brazil. You know, vitamin water was taking off at the time. There wasn't much else on the shelf that was healthy and functional and clean and better for you. And just thought, sounds like a good idea. And that was really the market research.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but I had already started talking to some. I met a guy on the street right near my house. I was going to get my morning cappuccino. I see this guy pulling naked juice out of the back of a truck. You know, I knew nothing about distribution or how beverages get to stores. And I went up to him and I said, are you a distributor? Do you work for naked juice or what's the deal? And he's like, you know, kid, I don't have time. I'm super busy. And I said, sorry, I've got this coconut water project I'm working on. And no, kid, not interested. So I went in the store, got my cappuccino, got my croissant, and the guy taps me on the shoulder and says, sorry if I was a little rude, I like coconuts. Tell me what you're doing. I told him. He told me he was a distributor for Naked Juice and other orange juice products at the time.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think we had in the bank 70, 75,000 in the bank. Right. And we spent pretty much all of it on the first production. So it was two containers of product, if I'm not mistaken.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, they recommended a company who was just getting started, and that turned out to be a disaster. They were getting up and running. They didn't know what they were doing. Coconut water is a very complicated raw material to work with. And they didn't survive as a company. And then we quickly shifted to the company in Brazil who was making the most common brand in Brazil. But we had started with this other one.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they're a Swedish company, Swedish family. They've been packing milk, think parmalot, things like that, and juices all over the tropical world for a very long time.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had all sorts of ideas. I could remember phone calls back and forth. And one day I remember I was sitting at my dining room table, phone rings. I pick it up. I'm like, what's up? He's like, fight a cocoa. I'm like, that sounds like a Ricky Martin song. And he's like, nope, that's it. And I'm like, you know what? It sounds good. And that was it.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we pretty immediately formed a partnership. We created an LLC, put a little bit of money in the bank. I remember when we opened up the bank account.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was actually, I put in, I think, if I'm not mistaken, $75,000 and then later put in, you know, I think the initial investment was $75 grand.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I had tried it over the years, right? I'd been to the tropics a bit. I had tried coconut water. But the first time I tried it in a package without my feet in the sand and the whole bit, I wasn't blown away. But when I started to see that it was outselling Gatorade in every sport drink in the grocery store in Brazil, I thought maybe there's a business here. Again, it wasn't about creating a big business. We never set out to create a big consumer goods business. It was, you know, let's see if we can make a little bit of money, never expected it to go further than New York City.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It sounded much more fun and interesting. I had no interest in being in the shoe export import business. And, you know, we started digging a little bit deeper while we were there. But then he said he's going to further develop the idea and so on and so forth. And then he came back to New York, I don't know, short period after with a more developed idea of creating a brand and selling it in the US. He didn't have the brand name or any of those things yet, but it was what he was really focused on. And I remember we were back in that same bar on Thompson in Houston. And I said, okay, if you do this, I'll do it with you. I'll invest some money, I'll invest some time, and let's do it together. And I remember we wrote down what each of our responsibilities were going to be. He was going to kind of find the supply and do all these type of things. And I was going to figure out distribution.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and it wasn't a wee thing, it was him, you know, like I'm looking at different opportunities. This is one of them. This is one of them. And this is one of them. I was more intrigued by the coconut water thing than any of the others”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We hung out a couple days in Sao Paulo, hung out with her and her friends and her family. But while I was there, I mean, you know.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the time, he wanted to just go down, check it out. He wanted to be with her. And so he went, he found his own place. And he didn't really have much going on down there. I went down to visit several months later and he's like, I'm going to stay.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So one of them, Ira, he ended up seeing a couple days later. And then we started hanging out together for the next week or two while she was in a short period of time that she was in New York. Yeah. And he ended up falling in love with her. And when she went back to Brazil shortly thereafter, he went back with her.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it is a cultural thing in Brazil more than just a beverage. And in a lot of the tropical world, it's a cultural thing. It's coconut water has all sorts of health properties and in every country in the world, every tropical country in the world, your grandmother tells you a different reason why you should be drinking coconut water. And it's an incredibly popular beverage that has a cultural connection beyond just being a juice or a beverage.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, coconut water actually did come up at the bar in a weird way. We were talking about food. We were talking about Sao Paulo. We were talking about restaurants. And somehow it came up coconut water, aguji cocoa. We actually remember afterward having a conversation about it, but it wasn't like, you know, at that moment at the bar, you know, anything specific besides one of those things that are great about Brazil.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we were at this party and we were there for a long time. It was like a February or something. It was cold. It was late at night. And I remember Ira saw these two girls leaving and convinced them to come back into the bar, take their coats off, and have a drink. They were from Brazil and we sat at the bar, we chatted, and we talked for quite a while.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we're both very similar in that we're very social, we like to have a good time. And we were always looking for business opportunities. I remember he wanted to start a power washing company. And I helped him, I bought a power washer and loaned it to him and created a little business there. I helped him with something else he was working on. And so we were kind of always doing some sort of business in a weird way, even though we didn't have a real formal business at the time. And so we were just hung out quite a bit.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Ira looked me up. I remember exactly where we met up. We met up at that same cafe that I was talking about. It was on Thompson Street in Houston. We hung out and we just hit it off. We became friends and we hung out all the time.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, Ira was from New York or from Israel originally, but grew up in New York City, and then went to study abroad in Florence. And I had just come back from Florence. A bartender who I become friendly with in Florence became friendly with Ira. And Ira was going back to New York to visit his family, you know, for something. And the bartender gave Ira a coffee, wine, a few other things to bring and said, find my friend. He's in New York. Bring this to him as a gift. Oh, wow.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess. Or people would strike up conversations with me. It's New York City. And I was always on my rollerblades and I was always outside. You know, it's actually funny. I think of myself almost as somewhat shy. My life has been the opposite. And I think it is strange.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, when I wasn't on the road and I wasn't traveling and I wasn't on one specific phone call because I was working from home, I was down at the local cafe down the street where I used to go every day having a very long lunch and talking to all my friends that were also there. And then I would probably, you know, sit in Washington Square if it was nice and sunny and read a book and start talking to people and meeting people and creating friendships and conversations.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I would say for anybody my age at the time, when most of my friends were graduating from college or starting their first year of work, I had a business that was up and running that was, you know, it wasn't printing money, but it was successful. And I was really balancing. Work and life, which I've always done. I've always taken very seriously.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was a slow burn. I mean, we, you know, it was a grind for many years. It wasn't until 2005, 2006 that we had a couple of big breaks. We brought in Marriott at the time as a customer and another large multinational who was in this space and started to actually make money. Before that, it was really like paycheck to paycheck, you know, trying to pay the bills type of thing.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but I was never really overly focused on looking for that thing either, right? I was just kind of doing and the software business was starting to, you know, we got a couple clients. There was no money to be, you know, made yet. Everything was going back into the business. And then when the software was a little bit more stable and ready to actually sell, that's when I decided that, and I remember exactly where I was. bought an apartment. I took the remaining money that I had. And then there was the break was a trade show, right? Right. It was a trade show that was formed specifically for the corporate housing industry. And it was at that trade show where we started getting real leads.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, my grandfather left me like $40,000. And that money was what I was to use for college. So that's part of the reason I decided not to go to college anymore because I felt I want to make this money last me a little bit longer.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, alright, so No, I actually went from Italy to New York, moved in with my sister in New York City and then eventually found my own place. And I was doing a few things. I was doing some promoting. I actually invested in and helped open an event space in Manhattan.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't even know if one day if I would come back and go to work doing that business. At one point I almost opened a bagel shop in Florence. I had no real plan whatsoever. Just wanted to take some time and experience and took courses at the university in European politics, which I just found very interesting. I traveled by myself. I think it was during that time that I really found myself and I know everybody says this, but it really was so impactful. It was a very impactful time in my life.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's during that time period that I was in Italy. And I could remember back then being on payphones on the street in Italy having conversations about should we invest and go to this trade show to show the software? Is it ready? Is it, you know, and, you know, that's before there were cell phones or anything else.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so originally it was just let's build this for my dad's business. And then we started, you know, showing it to some of my dad's friendly competitors. And we had our first sale. And then we created a business. And I was going back and forth to Orlando at the time. But there wasn't much of a business there. It was mostly development work that was being done.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it does everything from marketing of the apartments, from booking and scheduling to housekeeping, management, move-in, move out, billing. I mean, so it's a pretty large system.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was a friend of a friend actually. I met him in Orlando. He was a computer programmer and brought him in to help write this system for my dad's business.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Didn't have one, and it was around that time that my grandfather on my mother's side, who I was also very close with, passed away up in Connecticut. And so I went to Connecticut and spent some time with my grandmother helping my grandmother who had Alzheimer's. I was helping with all sorts of family matters and stuff at 19 years old. And then I went back and forth to Orlando, which is I was actually in the process of starting a business at the time with my dad and my friend, this computer software company that we were developing to help run my dad's business.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, to this day. And we're business partners too, right now. So for the past 25 years. So, yeah, no, it's definitely more of a friendship and a partnership. Yeah, absolutely.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Never even What do you want to do? Do you want to do that? Do you think you need a college degree? Do you want a college degree? And it was more of a question to me. And that was kind of the way I was raised with everything, right? Like even in high school, like, what do you want to be when you get older? Do you want to be an academic? Then if you do, you need to start really studying. If you don't, you need to get through. Like it was just a, especially back then, it was”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had a good time. I enjoyed it. But towards the end of the second semester, I realized I was actually sitting in an economics class and I was listening to a professor. And I remember not understanding what he was speaking about. And I remember thinking that I'm not learning anything from him. I'm spending money to go here. I could very easily not be here and use that money or make money, right? And so there was this moment. I remember exactly where I was sitting when I said, I'm done. Like school's not my thing. And about a week later, I was back in Orlando. And then that was it.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he knew. And super responsible, collecting keys, ensured nobody went anywhere if they were drinking. Nobody was driving really, really responsible. But they were big parties. And I was charging admission and it was a nice, successful venture at the time.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I went to actually a really small high school in this small town. And actually, so my junior year in high school, my dad started spending a lot of time in Florida because he was starting to build a business there, doing kind of vacation rental, property management stuff for tourists coming to Orlando and then corporate housing and things like that. And I was alone quite a bit my junior year and I would have big parties. I would charge admission. I turned it into a business. Every weekend I was making significant money.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. I just felt because even then, right, even though I was in these classrooms, I was still successful in things that I wanted to do. I was not the best athlete, but I worked hard and I was able to play ball and I wasn't the best, you know, I definitely wasn't a good student, but I was able to get by. And I just, you know, I just had this confidence from an early age.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“School was really tough. I had several learning disabilities from attention deficit disorder to form of dyslexia. And as I got into high school, they diagnosed me. And by diagnosing me, they put me in what we used to refer to as romper room, which was half the day in normal classes and half the day in basically special ed. It was a room with me and other kids who many of which had more complicated issues than I had. I knew I was very late in reading and math was really hard for me. And I had a clear goal. And that goal was to get C's and, you know, or get as close to passing as possible. And that was always the objective. And I always knew that I would be successful in whatever I did. But why did you know that?”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was like Yeah, it was a real fad. I mean, it just, you know, people stopped going and he pivoted very quickly. And, you know, that worked for a little bit of time and then just didn't work anymore.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everybody I went to school with as a kid had their birthday party at the roller skating ring. So it was good. So I got to go to all the parties, whether I was invited or not. Yeah. And then as roller skating kind of went out and wasn't the cool thing anymore, he turned the place into a rap concert hall. So I grew up 12, 13 years old, you know, hanging out with Beastie Boys, LL Cool Jay, you know, as a kid. It was really, really cool experience.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As a kid, my dad was an entrepreneur. My dad always had businesses before him. My grandfather always had different businesses. My great-grandfather, same thing. So I come from a long line of entrepreneurs. I don't think there's a single male in my family who's graduated from college on both sides. And my dad, when I was young, had a roller skating rink, which was awesome. And those were the successful days. And then he had other businesses that weren't so successful. And we went through periods of doing well and then other periods of not doing so well.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My mom ended up a few years later, ended up moving into New York City, so I'd spend weekends in the city, you know, and I'd still see her quite a bit, but I was super close with my dad.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mom got custody. I think my dad gave my mom custody, and my dad was actually packing his things and preparing to leave the house. And I packed my Snoopy suitcase, put it with all my dad's stuff. And remember, my mom coming home and saying, what's this? And I said, I'm moving it with dad. And she said, okay. And that was it. Wow.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would go in on my rollerblades because I could hit 50 stores in a day on my rollerblades, whereas if I was walking, it'd be a lot less. One of the early stores I went into, I found the store manager. First, he's laughing at me because I'm on rollerblades and I'm a sales guy without a polo shirt and a briefcase. And he takes a sip and he said, this is never going to work. Tastes like sock water.”
2020-08-03 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vita Coco: Michael Kirban · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT