This content was created by Tim Draper. This content was uploaded by Tim Draper. This is a YouTube video titled "Starting Hint Water | Kara Goldin" (created 2017-12-18) containing a first-person account by Kara Goldin about founding Hint Water. The excerpt is a narrative/talk in which she describes moving from a tech career (VP at AOL) into the beverage/CPG world, developing an unsweetened flavored water using real fruit, learning industry terms (co-packer), early production and distribution challenges, a successful initial placement and rapid sell-through at Whole Foods, launching the product around the time of her planned C-section, and the hands-on role her husband played. She also recounts surprising facts about flavoring ingredients and encourages career risk-taking and continuous learning. Participants referenced include Kara Goldin (speaker), her husband, a Whole Foods buyer, and her son Justin.
Chapters
Definitely listen to me about this. He was an intellectual property attorney at a company called Netscape here in the Valley and had just left as well. And so I said, listen, if we can actually get people to move away from these healthy perception products versus plain water or something that just gets people to drink water with just a little bit of fruit in it, then we could actually change health in America. And that was my goal. It wasn't ever to go and launch a beverage company. I really saw it as like, as I had been fooled, I had been tricked, I had been on autopilot listening to marketers basically tell me like, have this, it will make you better. And I had seen for myself that it hadn't done that. So shortly after having this idea, I was taking fruit and putting it on the stove and boiling it on the stove. I would— Be very careful if you try that. I almost lit the house on fire multiple times after putting skins in a pot and not watching it carefully. Basically, what I was doing was boiling the oils and extracts out of the fruit, and not just using the pulp, depending on the fruit, but also using the skins of the fruit. So today, we don't do it in my kitchen anymore. We have a third party that that does this for us, but we're using real fruits. A lot of people ask us, why do you say it's vegetarian? This frightening thing that I realized as I was developing the product was that a lot of companies don't actually— when they use flavors and natural flavors, they are not using real fruit. So— and sometimes not fruit at all. So a little trick of the trade that I learned was that Many products use things that are all natural but are not necessarily what they are actually named. So cockroach wings are commonly used in flavorings. Bone marrow is also another thing that's used. A lot of people, even if you enjoy bone marrow, you don't necessarily want it in your water. So those are like little things that I learned along the way and I said, why can't somebody just use fruit. Like that just seems the way to do it. And it's expensive. And that's really the answer to it. So I looked at figuring out first in my kitchen and then found a co-packer to do this product. That's the lingo. It's called co-packer versus bottling. I kept running around the country looking for Looking on first on my computer, but looking for a bottler and they're not called bottlers, they're called co-packers. So it was a whole new language too that I had to figure out how to actually produce a product when I didn't come from the CPG or beverage industry. And so we produced the product and— or decided to go forward producing the product. Husband sort of— I can't say that I actually invited him in to actually come into the company with me, but I think he was concerned when he saw that I was writing $50,000 checks off of our personal bank account to buy bottles and caps and fruit and all kinds of stuff. So he was like, oh, you're going to the co-packing plant, I'll come with you, just to make sure that I wasn't going to put us into bankruptcy. And so he came along with me and saw how great it was that we were actually developing something that people could actually enjoy and drink and especially people like me who weren't plain water drinkers. And after doing— or I should mention prior to dragging him to the co-packing plant with me, I announced to him that I was pregnant with our 4th child, which was not a planned child, my son Justin who is 12 years old says, you really shouldn't tell people that I was an oopsie baby. But anyway, so that was a— so he was in my belly while I was looking at starting this company, which is super fun. And so after we got the product all in place, I went back to the guy at my local Whole Foods and said, listen, you told me to develop this product. And I've done it and we have a few cases for you. And it was the morning actually that I was having a planned C-section. So at 10 o'clock in the morning, we hop into Whole Foods in San Francisco on Franklin and California and I bring it over to him and I mean I'm like out to there. And he says to me, so you weren't this pregnant the last time that I saw you. And I'm like, I know. only a few months pregnant and now I'm actually delivering a baby this afternoon at 2 o'clock. And he thinks— he thought it was like so insane that I was actually coming in and trying to get him to actually put this on the shelf. And I tell people all the time, look, you do what works, right? Like he was— he put it on the shelf, I think because he really thought like this lady is absolutely insane that she's going to go deliver a baby this afternoon and dropping off cases. cases first. So I go in and deliver Justin and I get a phone call in the hospital the next day from the guy at Whole Foods and his message was the product is gone. And I said— I still didn't believe that we had started a company and that this was actually going to work and that people were actually going to buy it even though I had actually delivered it. And I said, who took the product? I really didn't believe that anybody bought the product. And so 10 cases later in 24 hours, and we were really the first company that had an unsweetened flavored water and were really pushing this concept of unsweetened. And so went home from the hospital, made a few more cases, deliver it back to Whole Foods and we thought, okay, we're off to the races. We've got a product. As I mentioned, a lot of the vocabulary around beverages, because I hadn't worked in a CPG company, it was very different from tech. And so for the next 2 years, we basically— we meaning my husband and I— jumped in and we were doing everything. We were We were manufacturing the product, we were selling the product, we were basically doing everything, doing every trade show. I dragged friends of mine from AOL in to actually help me work the trade shows and I loved it. And in many ways, like I look back on it and I've had— I've spoken at different things and said— and people have said, look, you were a Vice President at AOL, you had a great career in tech, like what made you do this? And I thought, like, I have always— I love learning. And that's the most important thing for me. And when I feel like I'm getting to a point of mastering something, I'm ready to move on to the next thing. And so that for me was— and I highly encourage you guys as you grow your careers to think about that because it doesn't mean that Just because you're on a path and you're continuing every year to get manager and director and going on and on, it doesn't mean that you have to stop there. Right? It doesn't mean that you have to stay on that path. And for me, I really, really needed to go do something and something that would really make a difference. And as I mentioned, I thought that that was a nonprofit initially. And when I got into the beverage industry, I really thought like this is creating that change that I really want and it's really getting me excited and I want to wake up every day and I want to go do this and I'm learning all along the way. So—
