YouSaid · the spoken record

Sarah Kauss

lines on the record: 92
first: 2020-04-06
most recent: 2020-04-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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

“Yeah, I think the word swell. I mean, it works perfectly because it's so positive. You know, it's so old fashioned of a word and the idea of swell is so old fashioned. You know, I was trying to harken back to the time that people weren't walking around with plastic water bottles and they were drinking water out of the tap or their filter at home. And the fact that we build wells for people, you know, we bring clean drinking water to people in need, you know, so the fact that we're separating the S with the word well sort of leans into the mission of what we're doing. everything that I was looking to do Sort of wrapped up into a word, which it turned out quite lucky for us.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then it's a logo and not a word. And of course I called my attorney and said, hey, can we do this? And he said, sure, yeah, that's no problem. Of course, this is after he had billed me for lots of time and hours and expenses and didn't come up with the idea himself. But it was the way that we were able to register.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's swell existed. So Swell actually turned out to be really difficult to register, but it was actually a business school friend of mine that said to me, you know, how are things going with Swell? And I said, oh, we can't use the name. We have to go back to the drawing board. She just, she was a banker. I don't know how she came up with this idea, but she said, well, why don't you put an apostrophe in the word swell?”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We like you, and we're going to tell you this. No one's going to buy this product if you call it, can't live without it. And so even though I hired them to create the website on the side, they helped me come up with some other names. And they actually came up with the name Swell. And as soon as I heard it, I knew that that was the right name.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is available if anyone's interested. Yeah, no, it turned out that was a terrible name for a water bottle company because I actually hired a team to help me build the first website. And I had them sign an NDA and I tell them my big top secret idea for starting this water bottle company that's going to change the world. And they said, okay. What are you going to call it? And I told them, can't live without it. And they just started laughing, just like you did just now, guy. And they said, you know,”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, it was the majority of my savings at the time. I actually convinced the factory to let me do a 50% down payment and a 50% payment 30 days later. So that helped a little bit. But I had a bit of a fire under me to sell.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I made 3,000 pieces and they were all blue. They were all the same size. They were all exactly the same. And I had them shipped to my apartment.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I actually originally really wanted to make the bottle in the US and spent a fair amount of time reaching out to factories in the US. And I couldn't find anyone that was interested in working with me. We just didn't have the scale. And I couldn't say that I wanted to make thousands or millions of pieces day one until I had the demand. And so I wound up finding that the factories that I had been connected with in China were willing to take a risk on small entrepreneurs and do a small run until we were really up and running.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, I wanted it to be really classic and really simple. I wanted it to be something beautiful and iconic enough that could be sold in the MoMA store, but I didn't want it to be like the ones in the sporting goods store with, you know, the Carabiners on the top and the neoprene on the side and the neon colors with the reflective tape. And I just wanted, you know, the whole idea was just to try to encourage people to drink tap water and not to use so much plastic. And so I wanted it to be as sleek and elegant as possible. And so I really just tried to make it functional more than anything.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I started designing the product actually in PowerPoint. Of course, now we have 3D printers and engineers on the T. We do things properly. But back then, I started with a line drawing that I had made myself and I thought, okay, how do I take this drawing and turn it into an actual product? And I just wound up taking my business girlfriend's out for coffees and say, this is what I'm struggling with. This is what I really need your help. How do I find a factory? How do I do this? And I wound up finding a friend of mine in school whose dad had made some products and could put me in touch with the right people and kind of send me on my way.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, to start the company, to buy the first initial inventory, build the first website. It seemed like a lot to me at the time, but when I really started getting into beginning to build the business, it actually wasn't going to take me very far.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, that's right. I think my downside risk protection was, you know, I still had my CPA at the time. So I thought, okay, if this really doesn't work out, I guess I could always go back to helping people with their taxes, which I really didn't want to do. So I was super motivated. But yeah, so I always thought there would at least be something for me to do if this went sideways.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, that's exactly what they said. Everybody, you know, closest friends included thought this was a foolhardy idea. I actually went to a business school, a classmate's wedding, and I was explaining, oh, I just quit my job and I'm just getting ready to launch this company. And what do you think about the idea? And one of my good friends jumped into the conversation and felt the need to defend me. And she said, but she used to have a really good job. And she felt so uncomfortable for me that I was explaining myself to a perfect stranger at this wedding that she almost wanted to defend my honor by saying, well, I used to have a business card that made sense to people.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That haven't because it actually works, right? It's like the thermos that keeps things hot and cold. But in a way that it's the thing to do instead of the avianance and the Fijis and the smart waters, if I could try to go after sort of that set that was using what they were drinking as more of a statement, the bottle needed to really be a statement piece.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, I found out that there were a lot of bottles out there, right? This was a very crowded marketplace. But what I discovered was there wasn't anything that really looked great. I mean, everything was appropriate for the gym. Everything was fine for hiking, right? But there wasn't anything that I thought could catch wildfire, like a fashion accessory, a thing. And so I thought it really needed to catch your eye when I designed this. It really needed to be Beautiful, for lack of a better word. And there were some bottles that were functional, but they were marketed for extreme camping and hiking. And that wasn't the market I was going to try to go after. And so I just thought if I could convert the non-converted, so if I can convert people to use a water bottle.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While I remember going to the sporting goods store, Paragon Sports in Union Square And I purchased one of every water bottle on the market. And started using them myself and passing them out to my friends and asking them to use them as well, just to try to get some feedback on how it could work better, how it could look better, how it could be packaged better, really just trying to educate myself on what was out there and what I wanted to build.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wrote that we were going to be the water bottle partner to fashion week and the TED conference and sold in Bloomingdale and changing the world. And I sat down and just started writing. If a product could do all this.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was. I started writing a little bit of a business plan. It's embarrassing to call it that now, but it was more of an outline, a manifesto of what I thought this company could be.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the hike, that if there was a company that was creating a better water bottle and you tried to tie it to a social mission by working on plastics and climate change and educating people about the water crisis, it could be really interesting to do something good while doing something good.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On that hike. It was one of those things guy that it was everything just came together. I just, you know, I was walking with my reusable water bottle. So for many, many years have gave up single-use plastic. I think part of it was, you know, boulder being part of me going to see you and, you know, being a very environmental school. And I grew up recycling. So there was, I always used a reusable bottle, but it was as hot in Arizona and we're hiking for a long time. And so I'm walking with this metal bottle on a hot day and drinking hot water. So the first thing that occurred to me is wouldn't it be great if somebody invented a water bottle that actually kept things cold? And then I had just recently been at my business school reunion at Harvard and they had a professor that made a presentation about climate change and talked about how those that are affected by the water crisis were only going to become worse in the future. And so I had this idea.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She said she loved to paint and she taught painting classes in high school, but she wanted to have a career and raise her family and she studied something else and she did something else. And she said, you know, now that I got through this cancer thing, I'm going to take painting lessons. And she said to me, she said, what is it that you voice wanted to do? And don't wait for healthcare. Don't wait for, you know, until you get my age to go do it. You know, what is it that you wanted to do? And I don't, it just, it all came out of me just in that conversation.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it was a really big, exciting moment. My mom had had breast cancer and was so brave and so strong and really got through it to the other side and was done taking all of the horrible medicine and we said, you know, if you can just get to the other side of this, we're going to go away and have a fancy spa vacation. So we went off to Tucson, Arizona, and it was one of those moments that because we were celebrating her health and really having those deep conversations and those thoughts about life. You get one and, you know, what are you going to do with it? And how do you want to spend your time and what's really important? And my mom started it and she said, you know, If I had to do it all over again, I would have been a painter.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I kept it inside. I would say that from the outside everyone thought that, oh, things were going pretty well. I think I was at the point in my life that I didn't want to whine and moan about. They seem to be high class problems about, oh, you know, I'm not feeling fulfilled. But I was working so much and I wasn't really making the time to think about what came next. I almost had to go on a vacation with my mom and really step away from the day-to-day of my busy life to even have any type of reflection time. I literally had to get outside of my own life, you know, in a place that required you to put your blackberry at the time away and not be so focused on, you know, the next ping that you're going to get on your email because I wasn't really making the time to think about my own personal situation and what came next.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My company had put me up in a month to month rented apartment because I was doing a real estate project there. So I was really living a nomadic life. They put me up in a studio apartment there.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I was really unsettled at the time. I liked my job. I liked the people, but professionally, I found myself sort of really wondering, was this all that there is? You know, I certainly was finally, you know, making a pretty good normal, decent salary, you know, being a VP at a public company. I had some stock options that would invest over time and, you know, was obviously helping me with my savings account. But helping me pay off my loans. I sort of started to get a little bit itchy, almost the same way that, you know, when I was at EY, I knew that I didn't want to become my boss's boss. You know, it was certainly a really interesting challenge to see if I could figure it out. But it wasn't necessarily the thing that was making me feel really excited about my career.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did. So, my previous roommate from before business school when I worked in California, she said, well, there's an interesting job at my company. I know you have no real estate experience, but they're looking for someone. And I was able to talk my way into international real estate development role for a number of years, helping to build big private partnerships, mostly laboratory buildings for scientists.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, I had a really hard time finding a job when I graduated. So myself and just a couple of my friends, we actually wound up staying at Harvard Business School and the school created jobs for some of us. So you're working in a position that, you know, quite honestly, I was making less after business school than I did before. You've got a massive amount of student loans. And you also just don't know when the economy is going to get better. And it was a really strange and difficult time for myself and a couple of my friends that wound up basically kind of sticking around and not finding our next step.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know it was. I mean, even my essay before I went into business school, I wrote about how I wanted to start some company at some point and do something. I just really was looking for that big idea when I was in school. And, you know, unfortunately, I didn't find the idea while I was in school. I was still searching for it when I finished school. I was actually at HBS during the time of September 11th. So the economy took a real change from the time when I started.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right, it really wasn't a thing when I was in business school. I think I took one half class on entrepreneurship, but it was more how to finance a business than how to start and grow a business. You know, now, of course, there's whole centers devoted to it and there's a lot of resources that I wish that I had had. But no, it really wasn't a thing back when I was in school.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Amazing and fantastic people in business school that I wasn't really networking with to help me with my business. They were just my knucklehead friends that were helping me get through this experience of school that now happened to be the movers and shakers of business. So I don't know that I needed to go to school to learn finance or marketing or operations, but I think for me it was the combination of the confidence plus the network of friends that kind of helped support me through the times that I needed.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was after a few years of really working with these clients, I just wanted to become one of my clients. And one of the common themes that my clients had were a lot of them had gone to business school. And so it was more just the gift of time of a couple of years to try to come up with some idea or some kind of what's next for me because I realized that EY I didn't aspire to be my boss or my boss's boss, but I met so many”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Agree. Absolutely. You know, in hindsight, almost everything that I did helped lay the groundwork for where we are today. But it didn't feel like that at the time. I was such a restless soul, right? I just couldn't wait to do the next thing and find myself and figure out what the universe had in store for me that I didn't realize that all of that was potentially very valuable and necessary steps to get to where we are now.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, after my first two years in Denver, I was getting a little bit itchy to try to do something different. And this was 2000, where all the dot-com companies were really quite exciting. And I kept reading about the clients that UID had in California. And they were all the dot-com companies. They were mostly new media companies and really the first DTC companies that I went to go work with. And it was really a bit of the Wild West because a lot of these internet companies were transacting potentially for the first time. And we were helping them think about and solve questions and problems that were absolutely brand new. So as non-glamorous as a tax role sounds, it was actually pretty interesting work just because of the types of individuals our clients were.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's basically right. I mean, I wouldn't say we were there to make everyone's lives miserable, but I can't say there was a single client that was ever happy to see us coming, that we give you this audit room somewhere in the basement without heat or air conditioning or window and say, oh, how long are you staying? Can you leave tomorrow? No one.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct, yeah. So I took the CPA exam right out of college and I went to work at Ernst Young, I think the weekend after I graduated and I was in Denver for two years working as an auditor. And then I moved to Los Angeles and I was still at EY and I worked in the tax division for two years.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was definitely like that. I actually think because I grew up with entrepreneurs that were always running a business, I think that I knew that I would go into business in some form or fashion from a pretty young age.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, I was as awkward as they come in high school. I had terrible hairstyle. I wish somebody had told me at the time that those big bangs were going to come back and haunt me in later years. I was certainly not a popular girl. I was a bit of a nerd. I was co-president of the Save the Manatee Club with my best friend. Love it. I was at a club called Deca. It was a business club. And I went to state and national conventions working on business problems. In my senior year, I was voted most likely to succeed in business.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Made it work. Yeah, they're still really very close. And I think that, you know, building a business, building a family, you know, going through all that together, it's a unique opportunity to sort of talk about your day and talk about your lives together, but they certainly made it work.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A genius, so you dropped your car off on one side and you had to walk through the retail establishments to pay for your car wash. And of course, you had to wait 15 to 20 minutes until your car was done. So why not buy a plant, an ice cream cone, and maybe some greeting cards while you're waiting? So it was sort of one-stop shopping.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Life was simple. Life was easy. You know, you could ride your bike outside, have all kinds of adventures. You know, there was always some kind of something to be discovered, you know, something to be built. It's a beautiful place to have grown up.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I am sitting in my bedroom in Jupiter, Florida. The reason I'm sitting in my bedroom and not my home office is my son, who's just under two, likes to come and knock on the office door and say, Mama, mama. So this was the quietest place in my house that I could hide. So it's a beautiful sunny day in Jupiter. I'm watching the boats on the Loxahatchee River go by. It's a bit bizarre that it's so pretty out given what's going on in the world.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so not only were there swell bottles at this trade show, but the swell bottles had won in a ward and had a ribbon on a display case at the trade show.”
2020-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · S'well: Sarah Kauss · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT