Kara Goldin: Disrupting a Billion-Dollar Industry as a First-Time Founder
How an underdog went up against giants like Coca-Cola and Pepsi — and won.
After giving up diet soda for fruit-infused water in 2005, Kara Goldin regained her energy, lost weight, and wanted to help others do the same. She started Hint from her garage to help people fall in love with water, and the company is now one of the largest beverage distributors in the nation with $230M+ in sales. Hint has millions of passionate fans, and its popularity at companies like Google led Forbes to name it the “de facto drink of Silicon Valley”.
Kara has won awards such as Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneur, Forbes 40 over 40, and Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, and she was kind enough to share her advice for young, aspiring entrepreneurs. Here are five takeaways from her story:
1. Show Up When Others Don’t
Persistence is a common thread in Kara’s career journey. When looking for her first job out of college, she set her sights on Fortune Magazine. Most students would have waited for an opening and gone through a recruiter, but Kara took a more direct, proactive route: She wrote a personal letter to the managing editor, Marshall Loeb, expressing her interest in working for him. To her surprise, Mr. Loeb responded, thanking Kara for her letter and suggesting that she arrange an interview if she happened to be in New York.
Kara took this as an invitation, rather than a polite brush-off, and booked her tickets. She showed up at the human resources department, letter in hand, and asked to see Marshall Loeb. While they pushed back — as Marshall Loeb wasn’t available, and there were no openings at the company — Kara wouldn’t take no as an answer, and the receptionist eventually shared that there was an opening at the parent company, Time Inc. It wasn’t the role that Kara had anticipated, but it got her foot in the door and launched her career in media.
Fast forward to the early days of Hint, and Kara wanted to start selling the product at her local Whole Foods. She had received some interest from the regional manager, but he had not answered her emails or phone calls since she submitted the paperwork. Kara showed up with 10 cases of Hint anyways, and they decided to put it on the shelves. It sold almost instantly, and Whole Foods remains one of the strongest distributors of the beverage.
Kara landed her first job and her first major distributor by proactively creating opportunities for herself. These stories reinforce the fact that 1) opportunity comes to those who show up, and 2) asking explicitly and directly is your best chance of getting what you want.
2. Lean into Inexperience
In the last part of Kara’s book Undaunted, she recalls how a Coke executive told her that “it would be foolish to try to sell Americans unsweetened water, sweetie.” She emphasizes that most entrepreneurial ventures are dismissed as foolish, but the mark of a great entrepreneur is remaining undaunted in the midst of doubts and doubters.
Kara’s lack of experience is one of the reasons that Hint was able to disrupt such a crowded, mature industry. She leveraged her perspective as an outsider and a consumer to create a truly unique, differentiated product. Kara also was willing to challenge long-held, established beliefs — such as the impossibility of infusing a beverage with real fruit without using preservatives. If she had been aware of the many difficulties of accomplishing this feat, she may not have had the optimism and conviction to make it happen. In the end, the key insight came from experimentation with an expresso machine, something unlikely to have happened at a large beverage company.
Innovation often comes from outsiders who are curious, resourceful, and willing to challenge the status quo.
3. Learn to See Around Corners
During the 2008 recession, many of Hint’s retailers were cutting costs and demanding discounts. Even Whole Foods — one of their oldest and largest accounts — asked Hint for a buy-one-get-one-free (BOGO) deal, cutting prices and profits in half. As Hint was still in the process of building out its distribution network, many CEOs would have reluctantly accepted for fear of being removed from the shelves. However, Kara understood that deep discounting would dilute the value of the brand and send a signal to consumers that they had lost faith in the product.
Kara had the foresight to see around corners, realizing that if they could maintain their brand image while competitors compromised on discounting, Hint would be poised for incredible growth post-recession. The realization led Kara to raise more capital during this turbulent time, even though she had to accept personal liability for the company to maintain the same valuation.
In the end, Hint was able to hold onto the Whole Foods contract. By looking beyond the immediate challenge and clearly articulating a path forward, Hint weathered the crisis and came out on top.
4. Kill Complacency
In an early-stage company, the odds are you won’t make it — the default state is dead. This means that even during times of success, entrepreneurs can‘t be complacent. They have to think about how to move forward every single day.
In 2009, after many cold calls and handwritten letters to large chains, Kara received a reply from a Starbucks buyer. However, they were only interested in Hint’s Kids, a smaller product line. While this was great news, Kara had larger aspirations. Despite instructions not to bring samples of the core product, she managed to convince the buyer to try the blackberry flavor. Not long after, Starbucks decided to test it in stores.
Three hundred locations turned into a thousand, which eventually turned into 6,700 — every single Starbucks location in the United States. If Kara had accepted the limitation of only selling Hint Kids, the product would not have gained this much traction in stores. It was by killing complacency that she unlocked an unparalleled distribution opportunity and drove brand awareness across the country.
5. Take a Step Back
College students tend to set their sights on one career early on, which can limit opportunities for exploration. Kara points out that the only way to make an informed, thoughtful choice is to try out multiple opportunities and see how they align with your interests and strengths. This may require taking a step back instead of forward, but this bird’s-eye view helps illuminate the path that gets you farthest in the long run.
If you index too heavily toward success in the short term, you could end up in a career that leaves you uninspired and unfulfilled. Finding the problem that makes you excited to come to work every day, regardless of pay or title, is perhaps the single most important thing you could do as a young adult. Working on something you care about gives you the stamina to keep going when others burn out, connects you with the people who you’d want to hang out with after work, and ultimately leads to the most happiness. Hint’s success stems from its roots in Kara’s own story and her excitement about solving a problem others had overlooked.
In other words, make sure you’re on the right path before you start running.
To hear the entire episode, check out Seed Stage Stories on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Anchor! If you enjoyed this article, please follow me on Medium and check out Kara’s book, Undaunted. If you have questions, comments, or feedback, you can reach me at emcasey@stanford.edu.
