YouSaid · the spoken record

Nick Saltarelli

lines on the record: 72
first: 2021-12-23
most recent: 2021-12-23
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

“Mind if I plugged a podcast for everybody that's listening We go deep. Our podcast is a roundtable between us three founders. It's called Midday Squares Uncensored. We roundtable the trials and tribulations of growing the business.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know exactly what it is. I've had so many kind things, but I'm going to give a shout out to my cousin Frank. My dad passed away and my cousin Frank moved into my house for nine months to just be with me because he knew I was having a really rough time. He stopped everything. Out of his apartment and just moved into our house and just stayed there for nine months and didn't leave until the house was ready to mourn the death properly. And I think about that all the time. I don't think he understands how big of an impact. I think he downplays it when you say that. It's the nicest thing anybody's ever done for me.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had more left in the tank to bring that distribution globally and really push forward and own that supply chain. And I think founders shy away from it because it is very hard to do it. And you get tired. But when you get tired, I say just take a one month vacation and come back.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That they sold their manufacturing rights. I mean, it's pretty obvious for me that manufacturing is a core competency is something we should hold very close to our chest. And so going back to the beginning of our conversation, I am a huge believer. Leslie is a huge believer. Jake's a huge believer in my partner is in tight skew count global distribution. And so 90% of our energy goes in every day. I know you asked me that the other day, like, where do you spend most of your time? It's fundraising to continue to grow our footprint from a manufacturing perspective and two, getting the operations downpacked. Because once you have the ops down packed, you will create a competitive mode that very few are able to compete with. If I was sitting here with Peter Rayhall who started RXBAR, who I'm the biggest fan of, I would say, I wish he didn't sell RX-Bar because he”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To read. Everybody says, well, why don't you outsource your manufacturing in those countries? I answer that question is go read Coca-Cola's Disaster and Pepsi's disasters with selling franchising rights to manufacturing. There's also a huge company called Bariatrics in the protein bar space that sold their franchising rights to Europe. The European entity is now bigger than the North American entity and is trying a hostile takeover on the North American entity. The problem with selling franchising rights is you put yourself in a really, really peculiar situation of incentives not being aligned. It's almost impossible to get those incentives aligned on contracts. I would argue that, and this is what I say to our investors a lot too, it's crazy, I understand, to have to run manufacturing globally, but if you go look at what Coca-Cola is having to spend now to buy back the rights for many.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Flavor. So, we're going to do two more ultra mainstream flavors, and then we're trying to grow as fast globally as possible. What we've been working really, really hard on is we finally got the blueprint of the manufacturing down packed. And all of the manufacturing plant is built from items that don't come from Canada, sadly, supply chain going back to that. So it doesn't really matter where we build these plants, but it's about making sure we're servicing North America in an incredible way. And Mexico's our next stop. I mean, we have huge demand building in Mexico. The question is, how are we going to service Mexico? And it will probably have to be in a plant. And then we need a plant in the EU because UK has one of the largest plant-based communities globally. And so Whole Foods has already started getting the ball rolling with us to distribute there, but we can't do it because of the shelf life component. So I think this is an interesting case for a lot of the listeners will love this too. And this is where history is so fucking important for entrepreneurs.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just raised $10 million to continue our growth trajectory. We're launching distribution in the US and Canada every day. So in Canada, we're in almost every grocery store except for Costco and Walmart. And in the US, we have sprouts, we have Whole Foods, we have Target coming online, hopefully Trader Joe's soon. MITI Squares is really get to $100 million of revenue within the next three years in the North American market. We're finishing out the full buildout of version one of the plant here. So it's 90% automated. We're getting it to 100% automation. And then right away, we're flipping the switch of how do we expand our manufacturing footprint. And so we're going to release two to three more flavors to your point, what we've learned, we've learned a lot. We're going away from two squares down to one square packages. We're shifting the next products that you see come out are going to be super mainstream flavors like the peanut butter.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't allow for mom and pot manufacturing. And that's a mentality that needs to change in order to build a really rich manufacturing ecosystem. You need to get people excited about that type of building where you start slow, build momentum, get funding, invest in automation, invest in plant and go. Also, on the manufacturing piece, I just want to give a huge shout out to Leslie, who's my partner, also my wife. She built the whole thing with her team from start to finish and just made it happen when nobody said she could. So shout out to Les.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nobody, nobody would find us, not our government, not our banks, not investors, nobody wanted to fund it. So what do you do if you want to build a manufacturing plant? You either have to have money from somebody and or you start building demand with shitty gross margins. We've always been scrutinized for our shitty gross margins early on, but we had a plan of where we got to. And I would say Boulder Food Group, shout out Dayton Miller, Boulder Food Group took a huge risk on us, gave us that first check into the business that allowed us to stay in the pocket and build more momentum until we finally convinced our government to help fund our manufacturing process. And so what I would say is what I learned from watching the Chinese is that they have all types of different grades of manufacturers in North America for some reason. We don't champion that. We only champion really sophisticated manufacturing plants.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You came in. People that want to get into manufacturing build momentum and fund manufacturing well their margins suck. If you start with shitty manufacturing operations, your margins are going to be low. But this allows you to build momentum, to build revenue to show to banks, to show to investors that we have demand and now we can actually start automating. So let me take that to midday squares. When we started, we were at a dollar 40 of manufacturing costs. So every pack costed us a buck 40. We have that down to, I want to say 19 cents now or 18 cents. We've gotten it all the way down on there. Our product cost has decreased. The actual raw materials and purchasing power has decreased by another 40% from where we were in the condo to now. And the reason why is we were out there at the beginning trying to get funding. We wanted to build a plant. Nobody.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More complicated than it could be as complicated as you make it or as non complicated as you make it. I think the mentality here in North America is you have to start really massive in manufacturing all the time, which is not true. In China, you see mom and pop manufacturing shops being set up every day that start with shit infrastructure and grow into incredible infrastructure. Midday Squares case in point started. We got to a million dollars of revenue manufacturing in our condo. Literally, we moved all of the materials out of the condo. We got it certified by Health Canada. We had to build a second kitchen. It wasn't a polished kitchen. We just weren't allowed using our core kitchen. You start building process and line. And that is what launched us into manufacturing. I've heard so many stories of processors setting up super big plants like $50 million plants at the get-go before revenue.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My friend's father gave us this great opportunity to go work in China and do quality assurance for everything that they were manufacturing over there, that huge lighting company. We lived in Hong Kong, but we would spend Monday to Friday in all of manufacturing districts in China. And so I got to really live in those plants, feel them. I think one of the main things that you learn in manufacturing is that the process of how you set up everything is more important than when anything is running. What I mean by that is in China, they are so regimented to the setup process, meaning you get all of your efficiencies in how you set up your day, your plan, where things are located, how movement structures are going to happen. If you don't get the start right, the flow doesn't happen the way you want it to happen. Making things doesn't need to be.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Part of our marketing effort of getting in there and selling good vibes because what's better than a moment where you're sharing that good vibes and I think a lot of the midday squares growth trajectory is showing to people that you don't have to take yourself too seriously and you could still build a billion dollar business. Like you don't have to sell your soul in the making and you don't have to act the way you believe society wants you to act. And I think that's catching on big time with our fan base.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's figure out how we turn granulated coconut sugar into powdered coconut sugar because we could get granulated coconut sugar. And this woman had a machine in her father's warehouse of machinery and said, hey, I'm going to send it to you. It's free of charge. All you guys got to do is pay for shipping. We're rooting for you. And like 24 hours later, a machine shows up and we solve our problem. And ever since that day, we go to the gram for everything, all of our problem solving. We were laughed at for a large part. Like for instance, we would go do dancing every meeting we make, whoever we're in front of, we make them dance and we get up and we loosen it up. We put on some good music and we dance. A lot of people ridiculed us for being children at the beginning and acting unprofessional. That good vibe started to spread to the point where to this day we've been brought in from Google's offices, Facebook's offices to pump people up. And it became a huge.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Months that means we were screwed because we didn't have labeling. It's not like you can just put any other sugar because you don't have labels. Your labels don't meet the requirement. I mean, you can't ship. We were Jonesing. Like we were about to go into a period of where I really believed we were going to end up in a situation of shutdown production for two months. We were hustling, trying to get shit done. Call after call. We just couldn't get a solution going. And then we were in a room and we're like, why don't we just go to the gram? Why don't we go ask our audience to help us? So we put out, we broadcast this message being like, this is what's going to happen if this doesn't happen. Could you guys help? I shit you not in 24 hours, this woman from New York State gets in touch with us. Her father had a plant that basically had all this machinery in it. And at this point, we realized we were able to get granular coconut sugar. So our problem solving had shifted instead of looking for powdered coconut sugar.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it really just exploded to now we have our media teams five people. We had a producer that we stole from television channel. She was doing stuff on TLC in the US. So it really works like a newsroom. You know, we have storylines going at all times in Midday Squares, the production and editorial team comes together in the morning. They kind of figure out where the week's going, what challenges we have ahead, and then they try to capture the story in a meaningful way. to the point where this is how powerful storytelling is. And I tell this story all the time. Last summer, there was a mass shortage of powdered coconut sugar. You could not get it in North America. And we bring it in from the Philippines usually. At that point, we couldn't even get one coming in. So they had sent us a batch that for whatever reason was declined by our quality assurance team. And so now we had a gap of where we weren't going to be able to get coconut sugar for two months. If we didn't get coconut sugar for two months,”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For investors, they're like, I'm not understanding here. You're telling us you're building a manufacturing plant. You have three people. Your first hire is a videographer. You're spending this money on this. This is the classic. You should be spending your money here. Always, you should spend your money here. Okay, great.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would show the pictures and it just I tell you to this day man it hasn't stopped and the production quality had just kept on getting crazier and crazier and crazier I would say we've built the entire business off of telling a reality television show style episodes on our social media and then Jake had the brilliant idea of bringing that storytelling to LinkedIn and LinkedIn is typically a boring platform for content. So we were doing Instagram storytelling on LinkedIn and that exploded. That's how we start getting every retailer in the country was through that aspect. And our first higher ever criterion, boom, another contrarian move. We hired a videographer, not a salesperson. We had no budget and we went out there and hired literally a person to videotape everything we were doing all day and turn it into many episodes. When we were pitching out for our first round, that was a big concern.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The excitement led up, people literally started messaging us saying, What are you guys doing? And so the day that it happened, we announced midday squares, we started a chocolate company. Everybody was like, what? And what we did that day was we put each product on our site for 50 cents and we only did it in Montreal because we couldn't pay to ship it out. So we knew that, okay, let's get a 50 cent credit card transaction coming through. Guess rid of all people that want free product. And people went nuts buying the product. And we were on the ground all day as it was going on. And then what that ended up happening was all these orders came through that allowed us to have more content to speak to our audience. And then every time we would make...”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's act like a musical band instead of selling records, we sell chocolate. That was the big pitch. And I was like, okay, I see this. Not sure if it's going to work. How does this help us sell chocolate? He said, because at the end of the day, if people become emotionally connected to us, they'll become emotionally connected to the chocolate because the chocolate, it does its job. We've created a great product. Now we have to get the emotional connection in. So literally two months before we got to market with Midday Squares, again, apported for the listeners because a lot of people use this as an excuse. Nobody had followers. We didn't have followings. Not one of us had followings. I think my Instagram had like 500 people of all people I know. We just started recording what we were doing in development for the product and we would post it every day on our individual saying something come in soon, something coming soon. People were excited about locally in Montreal, what we were going to do. Oh, that's another contrarian piece that we'll get into. And then as”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To really get midday squares out there. It was his big day. Number one, it took us three months to even convince him to join this company. But on his opening day, he put together this presentation. It was actually brilliant. At the time, I wasn't sold on it right away, but it was literally Elon Musk plus Kardashians plus Shark Tank equals midday squares showed us Shark Tank's numbers. They were on a tear, number one viewership for their time slot. And so he's like, I believe this next decade is going to be for the entrepreneur, what the last decade was for celebrity chefs. Our job is to tell a great story of entrepreneurship without the hustle porn and do it in a way where we record everything and act like a bend. And this was another fascinating. He had like all the 90s bands. He said, let's take the playbook of the 90s of music bands, like the Spice Girls Baxter Boys.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That if he went to colleges and got people excited, that there would be some type of widget that could be sold into that community and tried so many different things and nothing was really sticking except for this sweatshirt that said Jason Hunter on it. What was so fascinating to me was the community that he was building like literally every university student in Canada at one point was rocking these sweatshirts over their actual alma matter. Then it got out of hand. He was flown out to two NFL camps to do pre-game speeches. Like it was crazy. I saw this happening and I'm just like, what the hell is going on over here? And we would speak all the time. And he said, man, I don't know. I just show everything and stuff happens. So we started playing with this idea where we want to work together really badly because I feel very strong operationally. He was really strong on storytelling. When we started putting together the pitch of how we were going”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two really interesting insights here. Two of the biggest CPG companies in the world own their media houses. Ferrero Rochet in the book Making Nutella World, fascinating book, by the way, is they talk about at one point the owner says, screw this, we're not outsourcing our marketing anymore. We are buying an agency. We're integrating it, we are controlling our own media house in Red Bull. Red Bull does not outsource any of their media. It's completely vertically integrated. And so when we're getting ready to start the company, I'll be very honest. I'm an introverted extrovert, so I spent all my weekends pretty much me and my wife were like alone in a forest up north, but my brother-in-law, who's our third partner, is like the most extroverted person ever. I was watching him for a year prior to starting Midday Squares. He had this company called Chase and Hunter. And that company was fascinating because he didn't really know what he was doing operationally. There was no real business.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Figuring out how to get cocoa, and we would get to make our own chocolate. And to this day, I really believe if you put our product in your mouth and close your eyes, you would know it's midday squares no matter what.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the chocolate that we were going to make, they would always tell us when we were speaking with them, hey, if you guys want custom chocolate, you got to start buying by truckloads. We don't have the money to buy by truckloads. So now we're put into a corner of where we have to choose to make a chocolate that everybody else on the market's using. And I remember my wife really pushing us to say, screw this, we're going to learn how to make chocolate from scratch. We're going to control the supply chain. That's going to allow us to control fat ratios. That's going to allow us to control how it hits the mouth and really make a chocolate that's unique to us. And again, early on, everybody said that's a waste of time, that's a waste of energy. You shouldn't be chocolate making. You should be focused on branding and putting the manufacturing together of the whole product, not on the actual chocolate. And we double down on that process as well too. And that to this day, when everybody was crunched in the supply chain, I think we were in a really good place because we didn't have to rely on the end of the supply chain. We were just.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It goes back to this ideology of where you start to say, okay, what are they doing? What could we do that's opposite and give us a competitive advantage? That was one of those decisions. How we made chocolate was another decision. Everybody in the industry said it's not worth making your own chocolate. You should probably use Barry Calbot, Cargill, pre-made chocolates. Like, I don't know if you know this, but Hershey's doesn't even make their own chocolate anymore. They outsource it to Barry Kellett does all their chocolate. That made semi-sense, but the problem is that when we're looking at chocolate suppliers, we had to use their specs on chocolate. We have to always conform to what they wanted out of us. And at the end of the day, and this is something I like to talk about a little bit too, is for entrepreneurs that are going to take on big CapEx ventures, how to take those mini steps to get there and get conviction. When we were looking”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mars contracts in every other store. So, like, when we were going into the stores, especially early on, we were never competing with them and we still don't to this day on shelf space because they're in the shelf stable section. And they usually have contracts in those areas. Number two, produce has been around for as long as we can exist. Produce has six-day shelf life. Six days. We have a hundred-day shelf life. I think going into the fridge was a huge contrarian move at the time. And the reason why it was exciting, I'll give her a shout out. Mayoko is a woman that has been helping us. She worked at Mars for a long time. And Mayuko told us, I really believe in what you guys are doing. And I can assure you that if you go after the big guys playing their game, you will get destroyed. They understand too.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going into the fridge was something that everybody was telling us you cannot build a big business in the fridge. How are you going to build a big business with having a refrigerated supply chain? That question kept on coming up. And when you speak with investors or people in the industry, the answer is not ever an educated answer. That's always a telling sign for me when it's time to scratch really deep. It's, oh, refrigerated is very hard. What the hell does that mean? Like, what does that mean? Why is that bad? Just because it's hard. I mean, and so when we were looking at it, there were two things here that was really interesting to go into the fridge was one, A, we believe that you can actually develop a product that tastes incredible in the fridge because you don't have to optimize for two-year shelf life that I think are going away. And B, it allowed us to stay away from Hershey's.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And ask yourself, are we making this decision because this is what people are telling us or because we've derived this decision from our own data? And that, I think, has been something that's been very powerful for us at Midday Squares and the decisions we've made.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Need to speak to language. It is monster. And that was like, hey, if we do all our peer founders or even big companies are so focused on this monster diversification that if we stay really, really core and focus on global distribution, we could probably build a really monster company. That's contrarian. I know you're probably sitting here and being like that makes a lot of sense, but we are scrutinized for that all the time amongst investors and the industry. But literally, the number one algorithm that we use in decision making at midday squares, every single person uses it here is, what do we believe the herd would decide on in a decision we are going to make? And let's explore a completely opposite decision to the herd. That doesn't mean that every single decision you make has to be contrarian. It means you should probably take a pretty good fucking look at every decision.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Only Reese. Right there, it's so obvious that you don't need large skew count in order to make monster revenue. We started focusing on what are the areas of business in CPG that are huge and ready to drink beverage is huge. Snacking on the go is huge and chocolate. This was crazy. When we started looking at the data on chocolate, I think it's up to $140 billion traded annually. And I'm not even sure that calculates what's happening outside of Europe and North America. It's the fastest growing snacking item in emerging countries like China. China just surpassed the US in per capita consumption of chocolate. It requires no education. Almost anywhere you are in the world if you give somebody chocolate, they know exactly what you're doing. It's a form of endearment. It's a form of happiness. It's a form of you just know. You don't even.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bar in CPG is so low that if we actually create a product that tastes delicious, I think we can do massive damage. So that was hypothesis number one. Hypothesis number two is let's not go into a super niche market. At this point, when I was doing a lot of reading on food, we launched this in 2017. I became super interested with my wife in developing a food company in 2015. We had no idea it was going to be midday squares. And so when I was doing a lot of reading, I realized that a lot's changed. If you look at all the revenue from publicly traded CPG companies, this is where it becomes fascinating. 80% of revenue is usually derived from like three core skews. And we're talking massive portfolios. Like Hershey's portfolio is so big, but yet 3.4 billion or 2.4 billion, don't quote me on that, comes from REIT.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm using regular flour and the contract manufacturing is processing for you, and I come to them with my product, they pressure a lot of people into trying to change their ingredient index. They'll say, hey, why don't you use wheat? We're already carrying it in our distribution center. Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? And what you notice quickly is they're trying to push you into the mold so that they can have the highest possible efficiency on their machines with the lowest possible turnover. Lots of founders, I believe, are scared of an opposite choice, which is not to go the co-packing route. And they end up succumbing to the pressures of contract manufacturers. And so you consistently have these products that are being turned out that taste the same. They literally use the same flavor houses, the same supply chain on raw materials. And so that for me was just like, holy crap.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I give you any aisle, I blindfold you and we take five random products in a category, you will probably not be able to taste the difference between those five companies. And the reason is the consolidation from the 90s to now has happened in a massive way that there's very few manufacturers at scale making product. So what's happened is that CPG companies and manufacturing companies are no longer aligned on product development. And so I would say R&D has completely just been shot on in CPG. Founders coming into it usually have great ideas that are squashed and they happen at midday squares by contract manufacturers. And the reason is a contract manufacturer is incentivized to basically make everything on their line as homogenous as possible. So let's say you're using wheat flour.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can go to a manufacturer, put on a fancy label, and become a multimillionaire pretty quickly. And so all these people started to rush into it. Here's the fun thing, though, about this whole thing. And market cycles exist everywhere, by the way. You see it in public markets. Cycles happen everywhere. So somewhere in the late 80s and 90s, divestiture started happening at Big CPG amongst Procter& Gamble. People had this idea that they were now at critical scale, that they can offer”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obvious that people were rushing into technology, and I think people were rushing into it because the business models made a lot of sense. But people a lot are forcing products. That's just my opinion into what could we build in software. Not everything has this exponential growth, great SaaS products, there's great disk, great that, but not everybody has the ability to go and take it. And my viewpoint, I had nothing there. But I kept on looking at what was happening in CPG and I was like, oh my God, there is really massive opportunity over there. So I started researching a little bit more. And what you realize is that CPG1 is not a winner-take-all market. And when we were doing more research in it, you start to realize that all of the founders that were coming into the CPG market were looking for easy wins. So I think the media created this warped vision of CPG that.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You give a data set average inputs, whether you know it or not, you revert to the average. If you need to have an unaverage outcome, you must, by definition, make above average bets or below average bets, but be out of the average. It doesn't guarantee that you're going to have a positive success or a negative success, but it guarantees for sure that you will have an outlier outcome if you really feed the data set with unaverage data inputs. And so that changed my entire process of thinking, literally if you come to my condo on a whiteboard, it says when you find yourself on the side of the majority, stop and reflect. I was in software. Now, the thing, though, is I think you know this better than anything. In investing, the only way to beat it, you got to have contrarian bets at some point in the place. You have to be against the herd on thought in some way, shape, or form. And for me, it was increasingly...”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I went to University of Ottawa, and I had this one teacher that really, really changed the entire thinking of everything for me. And I think this is so important for the audience. Literally, the beginning of the year put on y-axis x-axis on the board and started plopping all these dots. It was computer science or physics class. I can't even remember, but it was one of those two that we did a University of Ottawa. And basically he put all these dots on the graph and then he drew the median line through it. And then he circled the outlier on top, the outlier on the bottom. He said, I don't really give a shit what you guys take away from this semester as long as you take away this one thing. And this one thing could be applied to everything, and this is the beauty of math, is that it is physically impossible to feed a data set with average inputs and have an unaverage outcome. And I know that sounds so simple, but it was like, oh my God, that's so true.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just by being out there with good vibes, not really demanding anything in return, just really being a steward of adding value, I was able to really turbocharge my network really quickly because when you host TechCrunch and you get to put your name with that and the people around it, everybody's like, well, who the hell is this kid? Like, who is Nick? And that was my moment of building what ended up being this incredible community of entrepreneurs, VCs, which actually led to the investment in midday squares. And I say this story because there's no reason why I should have been the person to host TechCrunch. The only reason why I got that was simply by asking, what could I do for people that I see online? How could I help them? And in return, shit happens. And that was something, again, what are mentors? Mentors aren't necessarily people that give you playbooks. I just watch Rory. We literally just had a conversation a week ago. I tried to tell him, dude, just watching you operate.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To fill up an event, but I knew two guys in the scene that did have it, so I just started calling them. There was this guy LP who owns Busbud.com, which is like the Expedia for buses. And he was huge in the scene. Knew everybody and everybody. I'm like LP, I got TechCrunch. They've never been here. This is going to be a huge event. Could you help me put it together? We did so well in Montreal. TechCrunch gave us Toronto too.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I bought that package. I ended up getting a dinner with John in Brooklyn, went there, and again, this is again like the opposite approach to everything. Don't ask, stop, give, just be a steward of value and life will treat you well. Showed up to dinner, didn't ask for anything, just listened to John's story. Just kept on asking him, like, here's my skill sets, here's where I can help you. He was marketing his book. I was really good at that stuff. And at the end of the dinner, he's like, it's so weird. Like, you don't want anything. I said, man, I'm just pumped to be here. He's like, well, I got something for you. TechCrunch had never been to Canada at that point. You know, they do TechCrunch live events. He's like, would you like to host TechCrunch in Canada for the first time? I'm like, what? Like, you're going to trust me to do that? He's like, yeah. He's like, you seem like you can pull this off. I'm like, hell yeah. So get back to Montreal. All of a sudden, everybody starts answering my phone. I knew I didn't have the capacity.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely out of your mind. And like Trevor had told me at the time, he didn't take it seriously. That's fine. I don't take it negatively when people say that. Why would you take me seriously? I haven't proven to you why you should take me seriously yet”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So always be fundraising, even when you don't have a business. No joke. Trevor from Alliance Consumer Capital. So he was the VC that funded Barkthins, had really huge success with it, has now created another firm called ARIA VC. He could go on record and say this. I called him, I tried calling him and I tried messaging. I tried emailing him. In 2016 and said, hey, I don't have an idea yet. I'm an entrepreneur. I really think that because of my background in technology and software engineering bringing an outsider mentality into CPG that we can have some success, I know I don't have an idea yet, but we should probably get to know each other. And so I've been doing that for a long time of where I cold call venture capitalists when I don't have ideas to build the relationships before fundraising actually starts. And it's funny because a lot of people will think you're.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every bloated company has incredible assets, every bloated company go fishing all the time. Till this day, he still goes fishing in there. He just bought over a company called Vodi. They do all high speed x-ray technology outside of airports. So their clients are Amazon packages going through. So there's so many packages being moved that there was this fledgling manufacturing operation in Montreal that was trying to go after military operations, but he saw e-commerce exploding and that the need for high-speed x-ray machines were going to continuously increase. And so again, bought himself into a distressed asset and has really turned it around. I think they're pretty much almost one of the leaders, almost all Amazon centers use their product. But every bloated company has dead assets. Dead assets are just two moves away from being billion dollar businesses.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When he was dealing with sharks, people call it. I think sharks is this fancy word to tell people that are assholes that they're sharks. They're not apples. They're sharks, is that you don't yourself have to ever move like an asshole in the world. And if you treat people well, those deals will go further. Even if they don't go through, those deals will come through somewhere in the future. That is so true to the point where I want to say mid these squares is first investment was from a person I met six years before Midday Squares existed at a rooftop cocktail event for a startup. And even though we both knew we were trying to get something done for years together, it never got anywhere, but I love that we always treated with each other came through. And I remember when we did our first raise, everybody was like, well, that was so easy. How did you pull that off? So no, six years of relationship building in these things. And then lastly, I know I said too is.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every single deal is literally one phone call away, even if you do not know at all any person on the other side of the table. It's literally as simple as if you see value creation, it doesn't need to be more complicated than the next step is to pick up the phone and get in touch with a person on the other side. At all means, and a lot of people will say, well, that's easy because we already had a network. No, that's not true. He didn't have any network in a lot of the areas that he would end up selling the business to or end up bringing investors in. It was the grind for him to find who he was going to put the deals together with and bring the right people to the table to get it done. Two is you do not have to conduct yourself as an asshole. And that was one thing that he would constantly drill into my head was even.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when we sold the company, I was the first person in the room to hold a check. And a lot of people said there was a check. Yep, there was actually a check that came through. It was like 95 million in change. And I just looked at this and I was just like, wow, we did this in two and a half years. Well, you did this in two and a half years. I put a very, very insignificant part in it. And that just changes your perspective on everything, you know? So Rory is a legend in Montreal. Every entrepreneur here knows it from the biggest to the smallest. And this was the man that put me in the game.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the iPhone called airborne entertainment. And I saw that company go from a startup with three people to a hundred million dollar exit in two and a half years, three years, literally just bringing the team together, getting it done. And to the point where like, just to show you the relationship is when we sold the company to the Japanese firm throughout the entire due diligence, Rory brought me to every single meeting in the due diligence process, brought me to the first opening meeting with the Japanese firm. And when we sold.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That led to one more monster company, which was Airborne Entertainment. And I worked for each one of his companies up until from the age of 13 to 20 every single summer in real jobs with him. So for instance, like airborne entertainment, I'll never forget, we were sitting on a couch one day. iPhone didn't even exist yet. All had flip phones. And he's always looking for deals. He was always looking for businesses that needed some type of turning point to take off. So there was these two gentlemen that he knew in Montreal that had a deal for ringtones, music ringtones. They were doing some good capital with it. They were bringing some good revenue, but they didn't really know where to take it further after than that. And we were sitting in the room one night, and he saw all of us on our flip phones text messaging. And at that point, he was like, wow, this is going to be huge. And they actually created the first app store. So they were before the app.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he founded PaySafe and it was out of Montreal. Again, went back to Bell. Bell at this point in time had this division that they didn't know what to do with, which was a credit card processing division. It wasn't set up for the internet era, took the asset from them, and became really, I would say, the largest payment processor in 2000, 2001, 2002, spun that company off, took it public. It was valued at $2.5 billion when they took it public. And he just kept on doing this. So at this point, I had really come into his life when he was hitting it big. He had just took the company public. That time, pay safe was not called PaySafe. I forget the name of it. We'll get back to it. But he took that company public and removed himself from that. And we were starting to get really, really close. I was friends with his daughter. I ended up dating his daughter. He only had three girls. He never had a boy. So we became really, really tight. And he just started taking me everywhere, literally everywhere.”
2021-12-23 · Invest Like the Best · Nick Saltarelli - One Foot in Front of the Other - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 54] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source