How I Start $1 Billion Companies from Boring Products

- October 8, 2025 (5 months ago) • 01:19:12

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	So we have with us today the king of commerce, the titan of Target, the big man of the brand — Eric Ryan is here. You are the co-founder, the inventor of products that sit on a lot of people's shelves. There's some in my kitchen right now: Method soap was one of the big ones, Olly gummies that my kids have every day, Welly band-aids, and then you're an investor in a whole bunch more. So you are here and you're kind of the magic man when it comes to reinventing consumer categories. When we did our call before this, we agreed to do two things. I said I want to know your playbook: how do you do this? How do you go into the category and figure out which product to select and how to disrupt it? You have this, like, four-step process or whatever you outlined to me. The other thing is we agreed that we would each bring a couple of ideas — kind of half-baked ideas — of brands that we think an entrepreneur could go do, and we're going to pitch them back and forth to each other. We didn't tell each other beforehand, so we'll see what we came up with. How's that sound?
01:08	Eric Ryan	Amazing — that sounds great, and that is way too kind of an introduction. I'm so thrilled to be here, and I feel way too kind. Thank you.
01:15	Sam Parr	How big were some of these businesses, just so we understand the magnitude here? </FormattedResponse>
01:21	Eric Ryan	They are—they're both probably getting close to billion-dollar brands now. But would you go in and see, like, even 10 million units of soap or vitamins sitting in a warehouse? That's what always blows me away: how many units we actually move of these products that are sitting in people's homes today.
01:38	Shaan Puri	And I've been looking forward to this because I remember Sam used to host this conference called HustleCon, and he would invite founders and entrepreneurs to come speak. I didn't know your story at all; I was sitting there in the crowd. I remember you got on stage and you talked about how you started Method, how you started Olly, how you started Welly, and you had all these little phrases. You were like: > "I walked through the aisles... and I saw just a sea of sameness." You had a picture of the soap aisle—or the dish soap aisle—where every single one was green and had that old-school, my-mom's-cleaning-product look. Then you had this totally different-shaped bottle that was blue or purple or whatever, and it stood out. I remember the way you talked about it. I had never really thought about how much thought goes into which category to go into: how you actually bring something fresh and new to the table, and then how you hustle to get it off the ground. You had a great talk that day. I know that was, like, a decade ago, but if we can get even close to that, this will be a success from my perspective. You said it in passing just now, but Method is probably a billion-dollar brand now. Olly (the gummy vitamin company) is also probably between $500 million and $1 billion. That's pretty amazing. I think one of the other claims to fame is that Target loves you, don't they? I feel like somebody told me this: "Target loves that guy."
03:05	Eric Ryan	Oh, I love Target. It's a mutual love affair.
03:09	Shaan Puri	You've launched brands with them, even from the start, right? You have a kind of a unique relationship with them — is that right?
03:15	Eric Ryan	"I do. I mean, what we did back in—oh God—2002, when we pitched this idea of designer commodities, was at a time when no mass retailer worked with startups. Through a lot of Hail Mary passes and some good luck, we were able to be the first to kind of go in there, and it's just been an amazing partnership ever since."
03:33	Shaan Puri	Can we go over your process before we brainstorm ideas? I want to hear the process you outlined. I took a couple of notes so I can kind of prompt you. You basically told me three or four things that you do when you go in, because I was like — you've done this not once, not twice, but three times. I was like, can I nerd out with you a little bit?
03:51	Eric Ryan	Yeah, and as you get to hear, I'm really annoying to go to a grocery store with. To me it's like the Super Bowl of commerce. Every time I'm in a mass retailer, a grocery store, or a drugstore, I'm always hunting. I came out of— I have a really simple model, and it was built off this idea of what I learned in advertising: how do you take a really deep consumer insight and translate it to great creative execution? My core thesis as an entrepreneur is to look for these—like you said—white spaces where there's a sea of sameness and it just smells ripe to go in and do something different. What I do is look for a cultural shift or a big macro trend that the category has missed. In between that and where the category is, that's the business opportunity. In the case of Method, there were two big cultural shifts I found. One was this idea of lifestyling of the home. This is back in 2002. You look at dish soap more than you use it, but nobody thought about these products as part of the emotional connection to your home... making them decorative. </FormattedResponse>
04:53	Sam Parr	It's basically about looking good on your sink. I keep my Method soap next to my faucet, so it looks nice when it's on my counter.
05:01	Eric Ryan	"Exactly — which is because you look at it more than you actually use it, so it's a pretty meaningful part of the experience of buying dish soap."
05:07	Shaan Puri	At that time, did you see—what else did you notice where you're like, "Oh, that's new, that's new"? And then you applied that to dish soap. What else were people doing that you noticed was shifting before you did it?
05:18	Eric Ryan	Well, it's really in personal care. A lot of — I always say I'm a bit of a thief too. I don't steal from our competition, but I try to steal from as far away as possible. So in Method there were two areas I stole from. I stole from personal care. If you looked at the colors and the fragrances compared to home care — which were these really toxic cleaners at the time — I brought a lot of that personal-care approach over to home care. I also stole from housewares. I would always say I go to a department store, look at the beauty aisle, and then look at the housewares aisle up top. We stole all these beautiful vase shapes. We wanted these things to look like little "objects of desire" sitting on your countertop.
05:59	Shaan Puri	Okay, so the first thing you said was you look for a cultural shift that's happening that a category has missed. It's happening, and maybe it's happening elsewhere. Because what do they say about the future? "The future is here; it's just not evenly distributed." I love that. It's started to happen, but maybe it hasn't hit the home care aisle yet—or it hasn't hit...
06:19	Eric Ryan	I'll steal that from you. That's great.
06:21	Shaan Puri	That—it's not original; that's a bunch of VCs [venture capitalists] who like to say that one. Alright. So that's the first thing you do: are you looking for a new category, or are you looking for a preexisting, big category? What do you like to do? Some people would say, "Oh, that's already done; it's already saturated. I need to go find something that doesn't exist yet." They're making bets on what doesn't exist. It seems like what you did was go into things that already existed, and you weren't scared of the saturation or the fact that it's already been done for 50 years. </FormattedResponse>
06:53	Eric Ryan	No, that's right. I think it's much easier to make money by creating an iteration of something that already exists, because then you don't have to drive all the consumer education to explain something that's wildly new. Living in London in the '90s, I was super inspired by Richard Branson, as many entrepreneurs are. What I liked about him was that he had a model, and I think that's what inspired me to create a model of my own. His model is an entertainment model. He would go into really unsexy industries, like airlines, and apply that entertainment approach—something he really understood well. I was always inspired by this idea. If you look at any successful serial entrepreneur, they typically have a model. What I also loved about Richard was that he went into well-established categories that were easy to understand and simply put his twist on them. That very much shaped how I thought about approaching entrepreneurship.
07:45	Shaan Puri	And then you talked about being a thief. Can you give a couple examples there? You said, "I go to a big category. I walk through the aisles. I look for the sea of sameness. I look for a culture shift." Oh, sorry—you told me one other thing that was great. You said something like, "Have they made it unnecessarily... over, over, over, complicated?" And you went, "I think they're hiding something; there's an insecurity there if they've made this product category feel overcomplicated." Another one was taking themselves too seriously. Can you talk about those two attributes also?
08:16	Eric Ryan	Yeah, so I think any type of category is taking themselves too serious. As you said, they're probably hiding something — there's an insecurity there. A lot of my model, too, is going into these categories that are unnecessarily complicated. Can I really simplify it back and make it easy for the consumer? Also, I love categories that take themselves way too serious, and I love to bring almost an inner-child approach into the categories that I create. If you look at Method, it's kind of like what a kid would use to clean the kitchen. If you look at Ollie, I got adults to take gummy vitamins in masses — that didn't happen before. With Welly, I got adults to wear bandages with patterns and colors on them versus just the nude ones that are supposed to hide away with your skin but never really do. Now, what I try to do with that idea of a culture shift: so if you look at Method, it was both this idea of lifestyling the home, but also—at the time—you were asked to pollute when you cleaned, or use poison to make your home healthier. There was this other big macro trend of health and wellness and sustainability, but to your [unfinished thought].
09:20	Eric Ryan	You know, it was showing up in some categories, but it had yet to show up here. So it's really connecting the dots on those trends and bringing them to new spaces, which I find is kind of core to my model.
09:31	Sam Parr	I saw that you said one of your favorite ways to come up with ideas is to travel abroad. We had a guest named Kevin Ryan on the podcast. Kevin founded MongoDB, which is like a $30 billion software business. Very interestingly, he also started Gilt — you know, Gilt Group, the women's clothing site. He said he got the idea for Gilt when he went to France. He thinks he saw something called "the vendi" (I think it was called that), which was basically like flash sales for clothing. He talked about going abroad to find ideas. When you travel, are you going on trips just to find ideas?
10:08	Eric Ryan	Yeah, totally. I think, by far, it's where I get my best ideas—for a couple reasons. One: I just think better when I'm in motion. So, you know, walking retail with a cup of coffee in your hand—those ideas flow better than when I'm sitting at a desk. Two: we do these trend trips where we also take designers with us. Our goal is not only to spot ideas but to translate them immediately into a design that we can bring back. Also, when you're in a foreign country you're jet-lagged, which means nobody's bothering you. I think when you're jet-lagged you look at things a little fuzzier, which can be a good thing—it opens up new pathways. When you're walking retail and everything is foreign and you don't understand the language, trying to connect the dots between seeing what someone's doing in one category and whether we could apply that to another space is so much easier to do when you're outside your home market.
11:05	Shaan Puri	So what's an example? Where would you go? And what's an example of, maybe, an idea you had while you were on one of these trend trips that turned into a success with one of your brands?
11:16	Eric Ryan	Yeah, I mean, some of—I think one of my most favorite was, and this was like twenty years ago, so this was before collaborations became such a mainstream part of building any brand. We got Orla Kiely, who is really known for very expensive handbags and patterns, to do a collaboration with us at Target. As far as I know, it was the first-ever designer collaboration: somebody known for very expensive items bringing those patterns into a product that sold for $3. It was the first time Target ever did a designer collaboration at that price. That was out of London — it was a huge success. There was a building we saw in Japan that we absolutely loved; the way it was skinned, we turned that into a hand wash design.
11:56	Shaan Puri	"Like the shape of the building, or what do you mean?"
11:59	Eric Ryan	Yeah. The texture of the building — it was in Tokyo — had this incredible, kind of pillowed texture on the outside, and we used that as inspiration for a bottle.
12:09	Shaan Puri	And you're saying that, really simply: "We saw the texture of a building in Tokyo and then we turned it into a hand wash." That doesn't—those dots seem really far apart. Can you describe your actual process? So you go to Japan, presumably, right? Then what—do you just walk around? And he said?
12:31	Sam Parr	Said, "The texture of the building — that's, like, when you're on drugs. You're like, 'Can you feel this building? Wouldn't it be great if that was a bottle of soap?'"</FormattedResponse>
12:41	Eric Ryan	Okay, so I try to design everything like an object because it's all about creating these little objects of desire, especially when you're doing it in a category like soap that people have to buy and you're trying to turn it into something they want to buy. I look at everything through this idea of it being an object. I looked at a building — the building looks like an object — and it was easy for me to think, "Oh my God, that pattern, that shape, that texture is amazing. What if that little object was sitting on a shelf at a store versus in the ground as a building?" It's about trying to look for those types of patterns. The original Method bottle was this camping fuel bottle I found in Norway, and I just loved the shoulders on that bottle. So we translated that into our first ever product, because we couldn't afford an industrial designer at that time. I had to find something we could just riff off of.
13:33	Sam Parr	Hey everyone — really quick. I can already tell this is an episode you're going to be taking a lot of notes on, and that's kind of a pain to do while you're either watching or listening. So we actually made it really easy: we turned the entire episode into a downloadable PDF. You can download the transcript and look at the notes, so you can just sit back and enjoy the podcast now and get the notes later. The link is in the description below — click it if you want those notes now. Back to the episode.
14:01	Shaan Puri	You told me something that I loved. You said, "My favorite question when I'm doing these trips is, 'What if this but for that?'" You also said, "I'm trying to take one dot over here and then say, 'What if that was connected to this dot over here?'" You said something cool: the further apart those two things are, the more powerful the potential idea. It's not always going to work, but if you just look at your competitors and say, "Oh, we could do that too," that's not a very powerful idea. But if you take something from a whole different country, industry, or genre and bring it to your genre, all of a sudden you have something. By the way, an example that just came to mind: I have little kids, and the most popular show right now on Netflix is K-pop Demon Hunters. They basically did K-pop music combined with American kids' cartoons—which wasn't what people were doing before. You were doing CoComelon—a baby singing American nursery rhymes—and right now the most popular songs for five to eight year olds have half the lyrics in Korean, but they love it. It worked: they connected two different dots that seemed far apart, and it created a pretty powerful idea when it works.
15:12	Eric Ryan	Yeah, and first of all, you make me really miss being able to watch cartoons with my kids because they're all older now. That show—and what I think you're describing—is really about creating creative tension. The more two disparate ideas are that come together, the more creative tension you get. Method was really the first to do eco-chic. We brought together high design and deep sustainability. Those were two opposing ideas, but by bringing them together it created this creative tension. Also, when you have creative tension, you create a deeper experience that drives much more loyalty, and people stay within the brand. So that's exactly right. I try to look for the two most disparate ideas that could come together. The other part that unpacks is this idea of finding something that lives at the intersection of familiar and novel. If it's too familiar, it lacks complete differentiation. If it's too novel, it's incredibly foreign and it becomes harder to get somebody to try it. So I look for those ideas that bring together exactly what you just said—this creative tension—but with enough familiarity so you can jump into it, and enough novelty so it feels like a new experience. I know it's easy to say, but it's hard to find. That's the art form, I think: finding those intersections.
16:23	Sam Parr	I'm not sure what percentage of Welly or Method soap you would say was due just to the fact that it was a different-colored Band‑Aid or a different-shaped bottle. But if it's a high percentage, it's sort of insane. That's kind of a hard... you're like, "this seems almost too easy a little bit," right?
16:44	Eric Ryan	The more I try to innovate, the less successful I've been. I've moved more into that space of being too novel. I think I've failed more times by being too novel than by being too familiar. Like, we launched the most amazing laundry detergent years ago. It was 10x-concentrated, so it was the size of a shampoo bottle but for 50 loads of laundry. Because the bottles were so small, it was hard for consumers to believe it could be effective. This was an idea I got out of Japan, where I saw they had bigger laundry detergent brands but used these — almost like the AXE mouthwash — where you squeeze it and it's pre-measured. We turned it into a pump that dispensed a pre-measured dose. But it was so hard to get consumers to believe that something so small could be so effective, because they've been trained forever that a giant jug of laundry detergent is what you need to get your clothes cleaned. But yeah — I've usually over-innovated when I failed and under-innovated.
17:36	Sam Parr	It's... I think I saw a quote with you and Simon Sinek on his podcast. He said, "If it's hard, it's probably wrong." Then he said, "I know I have a good idea when I can't believe others aren't doing it." I think that when a lot of entrepreneurs want to grow their companies or start a new company — I know I fall victim to this all the time — I somehow think there's a correlation between... this sounds controversial, but there's a correlation between how hard I work or how hard something is and how much value a customer will get and/or how valuable my business can get.
18:06	Eric Ryan	Yeah, there's a kind of golden rule, and this came out of a lot of apparel and fashion: if you change one thing—if you do one iteration off the core—you have a higher probability of success. The second you change two or three things, you're most likely going to fail. It's almost like in advertising we used to say, "If you throw a consumer one egg, they're going to catch it. If you throw them two or three eggs, they're likely to drop them," because you're throwing too much change at them too fast, whether that's communication or a product. But I also think we live in such a surplus world of endless ideas and choices that it creates pressure to over-innovate, to be too different. And, to your point, like—if something seems so obvious, I always get tripped up thinking, "Well, why has nobody done this before if it's this obvious to me?"
18:57	Sam Parr	That's a really good insight — about the "just change one thing" idea. Do you think that applies across software companies or internet companies, or is it just commerce or fashion — things that are more consumable, that I can touch, feel, and wear?
19:12	Eric Ryan	I think it applies to everything, whether you're launching. I mean, even if you're within a B2B business, arguably you're just as distracted as a consumer as you are when you're... I think, I guess, a real consumer. I don't know that world as well, but I would imagine—again—that just creating simple iterations off of a successful model is way more likely to succeed than trying to create something radically new from scratch. When something radically new has started, I mean, think about it in the social space: MySpace, Friendster—it was really the third that got it right. It's just kind of simple iterations off of that first model.
19:51	Shaan Puri	I did a call the other day with an AI company that's raised a ton of money. They have a huge valuation—basically a nearly $1 billion valuation. They initially grew because AI is so hot: there was so much attention that people were willing to try a bunch of things. But now they're like, "How do we grow from here?" They reached out and said they really respected my growth ideas and wanted to do a growth session. I said I wasn't sure I could solve their problem, but I would jump on a call. On the call they started telling me all about everything, and I kept asking the same question: "Why would somebody choose to use you?" Most people today are using Tool A and you want them to switch to Tool B. So I asked, "Why is Tool B better than Tool A?" They replied, "Oh, it's way better in all these different ways." I said, "Great—just tell me the one that is the biggest, the one that would immediately convince me." They said, "Well, there's not really one." They were so focused on "we're better" that they forgot to say "we're different." They tried to throw four eggs at me—none of those eggs were very convincing, and they all just cracked. I wish they had just thrown me one egg and said: "Listen—for this type of person, here's the problem with the tools you're currently using, and we solve it this way instead." That, to me, would resonate. That would be the ideal scenario. I definitely think this applies to not just consumer products.
21:22	Eric Ryan	That only comes from pure ego. I think a lot of entrepreneurs—their ego gets in the way. They almost intentionally overcomplicate things to show how special the product is, and therefore how special they are. The best entrepreneurs I've met are the ones who take incredibly complex ideas and simplify them. Then it's easy for consumers to get it and for their teams to execute. I think that art form of simplification is the biggest hack in entrepreneurship. Yeah, the number of pitches I sit through—I’m like, "You're intentionally overcomplicating this to justify valuation or to justify your specialness."
22:00	Sam Parr	I think it is ego, but there's something strange. It's easy for you to think this because you've done it so many times. There's a weird mindset where you're like, "Wait — if I just change the color of the Band‑Aids, it's going to win." Obviously you've done a lot more than that, but within my company, with my employees, they'll say, "We have to do this, this, or this." I'm like, what if we don't do any of that and just make better ads? Or, you know, just do one thing. For some reason it's hard to conceptualize that a minor change to one thing can create a significant amount of value, because you think to yourself you have to work $1 billion worth of work—or put $1 billion worth of effort—in order to have a $1 billion idea. But often that's not the reality.
22:46	Shaan Puri	Well, can we do an example here? You talked a little bit about method. I want to talk about Ollie — maybe it's because I take it every day, maybe my kids take it, so it's very much in my life. You went into the vitamins category. Let's imagine — take you back; I don't know what year this was. You walked into the vitamins aisle and you saw a bunch of Nature Made–type products. Maybe Flintstones vitamins were still hanging on for dear life. You saw an opportunity. I just want to give you one prompt. He said something on the pre-call that was hilarious, Sam. He goes: > "I went into the aisle and I saw—okay, cool. First thing I observed: all of them were round. So I thought, 'Okay, I guess we're going to have square packaging.'" I just thought that was literally the funniest way of saying, "Well, I guess that's that." Then he said, "See, everybody's round, we must be square. If everybody was square, then we would have been round — it's as simple as that."
23:34	Eric Ryan	And there's no focus groups. There was no... it was like, "Yeah, okay — they're all round." So we had no choice but to be square.
23:41	Sam Parr	That's awesome.
23:42	Shaan Puri	And the other thing I remember was: vitamins used to be like a game of inference. You would see "Vitamin D," but you wouldn't know what Vitamin D does, right? You'd have to then know the purpose of Vitamin D, or the purpose of melatonin, or whatever the thing is that puts you to sleep. But you guys just wrote "sleep" and you wrote, like, "immunity"—you just wrote the benefit instead of the feature. I was like, "Oh, that was also a quite simple change to make." Can you talk about—take us back: you go, you walk into that aisle, or I don't know how it actually started?
24:15	Eric Ryan	But yeah, I sold Method, though I was still involved. For the first time in my life—I’m a pretty optimistic, happy-by-default person—I felt a little rudderless. I was like, “I’m an entrepreneur,” and suddenly I did not feel like an entrepreneur anymore. I was working for somebody else. I was also doing a project for Target to create what we called Made to Matter. The goal was to get them credit for carrying all these natural brands. We were looking for brands that connected with millennial moms, and we couldn't find any. We couldn't find one for the vitamin category. So I just went and literally walked the aisle. The first thing I noticed was people stressing out, trying to choose something that was healthy for them. Since I think I was studying the aisle, people assumed I knew what I was doing. People would just randomly ask me, “Do you know what magnesium’s for?”
25:06	Shaan Puri	They thought you worked there.
25:08	Eric Ryan	It was... yeah, they were just like, "Man."
25:10	Shaan Puri	"We're standing here, staring at us."
25:12	Eric Ryan	Just lost people in that aisle — it was a dog's breakfast. It was really hard to shop. The brands were super inspiring, but the packaging was terrible. That was the clue: dig here. The first thing I tried to figure out was, okay, what is going on? What is that big cultural shift this category is missing? What I figured out was that millennials view health and wellness as a lifestyle pursuit. The clue for me — and kind of what you said earlier about seeing trends in one area — was really SoulCycle and the way SoulCycle had repositioned fitness into something that was almost spiritual. I loved the branding of SoulCycle: the name, the whole identity. So my inspiration was: what would the SoulCycle of vitamins look like? If we reimagined a vitamin as a lifestyle product... then it's like, alright, well it has to be a square pack. I always want to design everything to have a sense of permanence — again, it's really designed as a product, not just a package. I wanted to design it like a jar, something you would want to leave out because if you left it out you'd most likely remember to keep taking it. It should also have intrinsic value. Then I realized, okay, we have to put a giant cap on it, so we might as well make the cap the logo. The whole idea — and this flowed really quickly, probably within days — was that it would be a square jar with a white cap, and that's what would make it iconic. From there it started to flow: everybody else is selling single ingredients — why sell biotin? Why not just sell beauty? Why sell melatonin? Why not sell sleep? Do these really unique blends. It was all in the spirit of making this thing easier to understand, but also, again, turning a vitamin into something you have to buy into — something you want to buy — a little object of desire.
27:02	Shaan Puri	That's amazing. We didn't talk about the hustle it takes to make them happen, because there's, like, the "artist brain" that you're talking about. You're like, "So then I took the roof of the Japanese hut — you know, the hut I was staying in — and that became the lid, and then I did this and I did that." But now you just have a product idea at that.
27:20	Sam Parr	A box.
27:21	Shaan Puri	But, you know, the cool thing about you.
27:23	Eric Ryan	"A beautiful box, though... don't get..."
27:24	Shaan Puri	"Me wrong." [fragment]
27:24	Sam Parr	It's the best — the best box.
27:25	Shaan Puri	Best box—people love this box. But, you know, entrepreneurs typically aren't the best in the world at a single thing. They're pretty damn good at a couple of unrelated things. So maybe there are better designers than you, or better product designers than you, but you also have the entrepreneurial hustle to go stand outside a natural grocery store and pass out samples. Or to keep showing up in some way that other people would have given up on five days ago—but you were still there, and that was the thing that gave you the break. You're top 20% in two different things rather than being top 1% in a single category. I'm just assuming—is that true? And are there any stories of the hustle it took to get into the stores, to actually get the momentum?
28:14	Eric Ryan	Yeah, super true. It's funny — as an entrepreneur, I think a lot about energy flow. When I'm working on something, if it's giving me energy back, then I know it's right. And to your earlier comment, "if it's hard, it's wrong" — that's a lot of the way I evaluate things. I'm working on a concept right now that I've literally been pushing water uphill. It's been painful. But last week it broke — I was like, "oh, there it is." Now it's flowing. I can't stop working on it because it's energy-giving; the narrative is coming together beautifully and each insight unlocks the next. In that case, I had to push water uphill for the last six months, trying to get it to a place where I could suddenly see it — and hopefully other people will see it too. To your point about execution: at the end of the day, ideas are easy; execution's the hard part. With Method, I think that was where we had to learn. Adam and I were two guys in a dirty flat in San Francisco with zero experience on how to make or sell anything. I think where persistence really paid off was having to sell into local San Francisco grocery stores where the manager made the decision. We would just show up at 6 a.m. to a grumpy manager and you literally had three minutes to pitch your idea for this new premium cleaning brand. I realized that, in many ways, selling was really a transfer of emotion. I don't think he ever believed in the product we were selling, but you had to get him to believe in you — and in some cases that you'd keep showing up until he said yes. That persistence matters. It's really that emotion, that energy, that's contagious. Find it first in what you're building and love it, so you can share that with other people and have the energy to keep going when things get hard — which, of course, they will.
30:02	Sam Parr	Do you look at a company like a project—like, "this is my art project and I'm going to jump from thing to thing to thing"? Do you acknowledge that, or are you more operational? Are you more operational?
30:12	Eric Ryan	I both... I'm a project guy at heart. I love the start, middle, and finish of creating something. But to build great companies, the operating side of it is so important. My core philosophy of building companies is this idea of artisan operators. I want to build companies that have incredible imagination and creativity—companies that can innovate but also run a really good, predictable business with strong supply chain and finance controls. Doing both is rare. If you think about it, there are so few companies in the world—Apple, Nike—that do both really, really well at scale. So I try to build teams and cultures that embrace being great artists and operators. At the heart of it, I do love projects. I heard Tim Koogle, who was on my board, say once that he referred to Yahoo as "a project." He started there as employee number six; the CEO scaled it through an IPO and beyond. When he referred to Yahoo as "a project," I thought that was pretty cool.
31:11	Sam Parr	"Do you have, like, an open check from Unilever or Target, and they're just like, 'Whatever you got going on, get after it and come see us in two or three years and we'll look at the traction and we'll just buy your company'?"
31:23	Eric Ryan	I wish it were that easy, but no — I'm going to agree.
31:27	Shaan Puri	In his chair, with a cat on his arm, right?
31:31	Eric Ryan	I mean, we've had a lot of success. We've had a lot of failures as well. Every one of them is hard, and hard in its own way. I'm moving over — I joined Greatcroft, and we're launching a new Greatcroft Consumer Brands Fund. I'm moving into the VC space. I realize my superpower of working with entrepreneurs is to help infuse them with energy, because I've sat in their shoes so many times and understand how hard it is. I love not being the quarterback on the field, always throwing the passes, but actually being the coach on the sidelines and coaching these young founders. It's just a thrill to do that now.
32:14	Shaan Puri	"You told me something kind of amazing. You said that you went on your trend trips — to Tokyo, or wherever you were going — and you took some people from Target with you during this brainstorming phase. You had this system that was kind of going to wow them. Can you tell this story about how you ran the 24-hour cycle that would wow them?"
32:34	Eric Ryan	Yeah. I mean, a lot of people—trend trips are quite common within consumer, especially among retailers. The problem is you come back with all these amazing photos and then you're buried in your inbox and in meetings you've missed. Usually it goes nowhere. The process that we found worked really well is: we'd kick off every trend with, like, "Okay—here, ground ourselves. These are the big macro trends." Then we'd hire somebody on the ground, whether for Asia or Europe, and we would go to all of the most influential retail that was occurring in that market. But everybody had almost like a scavenger hunt. You had an assignment. By the time we got to that pub at 5:00 to sit down for a happy hour, everybody had to have multiple ideas that they were excited about while being in the field. Then we would talk about it and pick a couple. As we were going to dinner, I would call it into our creative team who's sitting in San Francisco, where it's morning, and they would have all day to work on the brief that we had just given them. They would send it at the end of their day; we would wake up and then, at breakfast, we would present what looked like polished product ideas to Target. By the time we got on that plane to go home, we actually had sold in new products.
33:46	Sam Parr	That's how South Park makes an episode. Have you guys seen that? Matt and Trey will write all day, then they'll send it to their Korean editing team. The next morning they're like, "Oh, cool—thanks," and they just run with it.
33:58	Shaan Puri	I saw the podcast version of this, Sam. We do a thing where, whenever we have a guest on—especially in person—we bring a gift. I felt like this person took time out of their day; I want the experience to feel great. What makes a great experience when you're with somebody? I think giving a gift is a nice thing. Steve Bartlett, who's another podcaster, was on Jimmy Fallon the other day. Jimmy described his experience on the show: > "You guys do this incredible thing. I did the podcast with you, and when we got up and the episode was done, somebody from your team came and handed me this book. It's a photo book of printed photos from the podcast that they were just taking moments earlier. I've never seen anything like this." Steve's been doing TV production with Hollywood stars for years, but he was impressed by the extra effort to create a wow moment. In that case, it's the speed of the turnaround—similar to what you were saying. A lot of people will come up with mockups or product ideas two weeks later at a follow-up meeting, but the emotion is gone, and then the wow factor is gone too. </FormattedResponse>
35:03	Shaan Puri	Doing it in the twenty-four-hour cycle is that little extra — that entrepreneurial juice. I think most people wouldn't even think to go there. They'd assume there's an invisible fence and say, "You can't do that."
35:15	Eric Ryan	Well, like living in that state of make. Also, I love that line by Steve Jobs: "I trust people just not in groups." So it allows you... </FormattedResponse>
35:24	Shaan Puri	"To keep, really."
35:25	Eric Ryan	Small, agile teams that aren't overthinking things and are just living in that state of make — that's where the magic is. I'm such a huge student of SNL — Saturday Night Live — and their entire creative process. Any of the former actors from the show who's written an autobiography I've listened to. I think I know it by heart now: what they do Tuesday morning through [unclear]. There is something so powerful about being in that state of make. Now, with AI and digital tools that let us build and make things in real time, I think it's even more powerful. It's also where you see real talent versus people who don't know how to actually do anything; they only know how to manage. It's a place where builders and dealers really thrive, and managers kinda just get in the way.
36:08	Sam Parr	"I don't know if we should do it right now — maybe have a part two — but it would actually be awesome. I never realized Sean has an e‑commerce (ecom) brand. For all the people who are in the more physical space, it would be really fun to see how you use AI to ideate that. That would be really interesting. I've never thought about folks making physical products being able, or not being able, to use it."
36:30	Eric Ryan	Oh, I'm so bad with it right now. Like, last night I used it as a whole creative team and partner. It's absolutely amazing what you can do now.
36:38	Shaan Puri	I want to get to the brainstorm — we did promise. I basically said: outline your method and then let's use the method to come up with some ideas. I think that's fun, living in the "state of make" on the podcast too, right? How many podcasts would actually try that? So your process was: find a big category — ideally an already big category so you don't have to educate consumers about something new they haven't thought about buying. You want to find a sea of sameness where everybody's kind of doing the same thing. Look for a cultural shift elsewhere that hasn't applied to this category. Ideally, it's something that's overly complicated or where they're taking themselves too seriously. Then, to come up with your idea, you'd be a thief: find unrelated things and ask, "What if we did that over here?" You're trying to come up with a single stroke that cuts through the noise — that might be your packaging, your colors, your positioning, whatever it may be: the square bottle when everybody else is round. Then you have to hustle to get the momentum going. Alright, so I came up with a couple of — I'm calling these half-baked ideas because I don't think they're fully developed. I think one might be good, but the others are pretty tough. Did you have a chance to come up with some? If so, let's go back and forth.
37:42	Eric Ryan	Yes. Yep, I got a couple.
37:44	Shaan Puri	Okay. I'm gonna pitch you one, and then I want you to, you know, give me the "thumbs up" or the "thumbs down." Feel free to be brutally harsh — it makes for better content.
37:53	Eric Ryan	Alright.
37:54	Shaan Puri	Alright. I think this first idea is genuinely good. The other ones I don't really have a lot of faith in, but this one I genuinely believe in. I think about products that my mom takes that I'm going to take, because humans—if the world feels like it's changing really fast—biologically we're not changing that fast. When I see my parents, I'm seeing a future window into what I might look like or things that they prioritize that I don't really think about today. My mom was just over at my house, and one thing she takes religiously is fiber. She drinks fiber every single day. I'm in a world where I hear about gut health and the microbiome and fancy stuff, but she's like, "I need to take this to poop." That's the goal: "I need to take this to poop." I'm like, yeah—that's simple enough. So I looked at the brands she's using. Preparing for this podcast, I went to the grocery store and walked through the aisle. I saw "Metamucil," which to me sounds like a disease, and "Benefiber," which sounds like an Obamacare spin-off. The leading brands in the fiber category are completely outdated. I do think there's something familiar about fiber. I get pitched a lot of products that I don't know if they'll work, but if somebody said, "Hey, this increases the fiber in your diet," I would personally have pretty high conviction that that's good for me. I just don't want to take a grandma product—I would feel unhealthy taking that. I want a fiber brand that feels modern. In the same way I take protein or amino acids when I'm trying to be peak performance, I want fiber to feel like, "Yeah, I'm trying to be peak performance right now." I want to reinvent the fiber category.
39:35	Shaan Puri	Of view, I have an idea for how to do that: to get out of this kind of grandma product category and do a fresh take on fiber sharks. Alright—where do you... where does that land with you?
39:46	Eric Ryan	Well, let's start with the space, because if it's the wrong category then it's pointless to go any further. I think he found great white space. I agree—fiber is the new protein. Protein gets more and more saturated, and the record, you know, we're seeing huge growth across all areas of higher-fiber products. A place I would look is Costco: what fiber products are available there? You're right—it's the legacy brands. Nobody's really put a fresh spin on it. You could do it like—where would you steal from? I would steal from juice bars: a wellness, appetite-appeal approach. Like a modern green juice—what does a modern green juice look like as a fiber product? Then you can innovate on flavors around it. Another thing: it's a really great margin category.
40:39	Sam Parr	Right. I have this friend. Do you guys know what Kegel exercises are for men? I don't know.
40:45	Shaan Puri	How to do it? You're supposed to squeeze something inside, but it's... [trails off]
40:47	Sam Parr	So—what women have... women—anyone, the few women who listen to this—they know what that is. But for men?
40:54	Shaan Puri	All four of you, listen up. This part's for you.
40:56	Sam Parr	Yeah. For men, people apparently do Kegel exercises so they don't prematurely ejaculate during sex. I think that's the main thing. But I've got a buddy who made a...
41:06	Eric Ryan	"That's commitment, by the way."
41:08	Sam Parr	Well, I've got—yeah. I was like, "You must, you really need it." I have a friend who created a kegel exercise app for men, and he was promoting it. I was like, "Man, I see why a young—or any—man would want this. That's great. It sounds like you're doing great for the world." But my honor costs too much [unclear—possibly "my honorarium's too much"]. I don't want to be an influencer or a promoter for this. I wonder if there's a little bit with fiber, where it's like... I don't know if I want to talk about, you know, 'pooping more.'
41:36	Shaan Puri	So I did think about this, and I have two possible angles: we either lean in or we swerve out. Okay, lean in. Here's the lean-in path: look — poop is... yeah, poop is poop. It could be funny. I actually pitched this to our friend who came on the podcast, Hasan Minhaj. I said, "Hasan, got a product for you," because I thought he's so funny that his ad creative would perform better than anybody else's. It's almost like, you know, with any celebrity who hawks a product there's a little bit of a sellout nature. So it's almost funny to "sell out" for something that's so clearly silly. In that way, it might actually work for him — he gets a license to promote the product because it's a silly product. So one way is to lean in and actually have a comedian as the face of the brand who leans into the fun of it.
42:30	Eric Ryan	You can be the dude. The dude wipes right now.
42:33	Shaan Puri	Secured leaned into that to the use case. Alright, so then there's the swerve-out path, which was: "You're right — maybe it's not about... maybe it's not about — maybe the framing is a little more on metabolism or digestion." Like, you — maybe can — you work — can you use a different word? Because I don't know anybody that cleanses. Yeah.
42:48	Sam Parr	Like a cleaner system.
42:49	Shaan Puri	And I've never really heard of that many products that talk about, like, "this improves your metabolism," right? So you get away from the lower-intestine area and you sort of move up toward the stomach. You get a little away from the gross stuff and talk about metabolism. So those are my two ideas.
43:07	Eric Ryan	I love it. What I would do, if I were you, is create two very different concepts around that. First, I'd do a "dude, white potpourri" approach that just completely, unabashedly claims that function [unclear: "then to your"]. Then I'd go to a really elevated, almost beauty-like approach. </FormattedResponse>
43:28	Shaan Puri	And then what would you do? Would you test those in some way, or just look at them and feel which one feels right? Like, once you come up with two very disparate concepts, what would you do?
43:36	Eric Ryan	I like to solve the work in the creative, so I take those two concepts and work with a designer and creative team to really bring them to life. First, I'd ask: which one am I most excited about? Back to that idea of energy — which one am I personally excited about? I would share it with friends and family, because if they don't like it, why would anybody else? If I was really torn, I would do consumer auditions — not for the consumer to choose A versus B, but so I can hear feedback from consumers in a qualitative focus group to help guide my decision about which direction I want to go. I would also put it in front of retailers. I don't ask buyers to buy right away. I think most people go into buyer meetings with the intent of "I'm going to sell to you" — to prove myself — rather than "I'm here to improve myself." When I sit down with buyers, I always try to go in to improve and really invite their feedback into the process.
44:24	Shaan Puri	That's interesting — consumer auditions. I never heard that. That sounds good. I like that. That sounds way cooler than focus groups.
44:30	Sam Parr	Alright, rookie. What do you got to pitch, Eric? Let's hear.
44:34	Shaan Puri	It
44:34	Eric Ryan	Alright, so I'm gonna pitch arguably one of the most important institutions in America and arguably one of the lost institutions of America: the American diner. At one time, these beautiful, silver diners were really the first "third place" before Starbucks. In a world where more and more I think we'll see a backlash to AI and a desire to understand what is real and what is not, we're going to want these places of human connection and deep authenticity. There's also no better place to really start your day. So my pitch is—I'm gonna go back to SoulCycle again: I would create the SoulCycle of the diner. It would only be open from morning through lunch, so it's one shift. So it's a really good academic model. When you walk into it, it feels incredibly vibrant. I would do the entire place to feel almost like a modern barn with white beadboard and yellow accents. I would have a standalone grab-and-go juice and coffee bar, but the rest of the restaurant would be set up like a diner, with all stool/bar seating. I would design the counter to flow throughout—there are no separate tables—so you can get everybody around the counter for that communal feel. It's also really efficient for the staff to move through. When you pop in at 7 a.m., it's bopping—it's got great, great energy. It's just a place you would want to start every morning with that level of optimism.
46:14	Shaan Puri	Seating is kind of like those sushi bars where they wrap around—the conveyor-belt sushi bars. You're sort of borrowing that idea but applying it to the American diner. </FormattedResponse>
46:24	Eric Ryan	Yes, there's that... Oh, I forgot the name of it — that Parisian restaurant where the entire restaurant is built like a counter, but the counter kind of meanders. You have a full view of the kitchen. Though it's very communal, it's in-and-out: you don't have to seat anybody. It's also about creating this amazing energy. What I would want to do is take on Denny's and IHOP with that model.
46:46	Sam Parr	That's awesome.
46:47	Shaan Puri	Since we're in a creative brainstorm here, I have a what if for you. I have a how might we for you — you know what I mean? I feel like I need a hacky sack or something. Be creative with me here. Okay. So, in mobile gaming: I tried to make a mobile game once. Before I even made the game, I went and talked to a couple of guys who made really popular mobile games. I sat down and showed them a prototype, and they said, "Oh, dude, you have a TTF problem." I was like, "I don't know if that's a STD. I don't know what you're talking about, but I don't want a TTF problem." I'm sure — I'm absolutely certain — I have one, based on the way you just... he was disgusted with [sentence trails off].
47:26	Sam Parr	Or you're like, "Oh, thanks. I worked really hard."
47:29	Shaan Puri	So I was like, do I have too much or too little? Which way do I go? He was basically saying the most important metric in a mobile game's success is TTF — "time to fun". Basically, from the moment I click the button to open the app, how long does it take for me to have some fun? I was thinking, "Cool — open the app, registration screen, sign up, give me your email address. How about your phone number? Would you like push notifications? Would you like me to remind you?" </FormattedResponse>
47:56	Sam Parr	It's like...
47:56	Shaan Puri	"You haven't even tried the app yet."
47:57	Sam Parr	Right. Like—"How am I..." You're like, "What's my TTS?" They're like, "Never the fun."
48:00	Shaan Puri	He ever gave was no fun, and he was showing me, you know, an example. Mario is one of the classic examples of this. If you start Mario, the first level has no tutorial—there's nothing. Mario starts, a small Goomba walks toward you, and it's the easiest enemy to defeat. If you jump on its head, you get a satisfying, "Yeah—I squashed that bug." The next thing you do: there's a brick above your head. You jump up, you punch it, and you get a coin. You jump and punch the next one; you think it's a coin, but no—a mushroom comes out. You're like, "Oh my God, do I want this?" You get it, and you grow. So in the first fifteen seconds of Mario, you have learned all the controls: you've defeated an enemy, you've gotten money, and you grow bigger and stronger. It's like the greatest first fifteen seconds of your life. I have an idea for you, because I went to a diner this weekend.
48:45	Eric Ryan	Wait, hold on. Can we use, like, a "time — time to fun"? That's a new metric I'm gonna use for everything now. Whether you're... and it's like getting a restaurant, airline, my marriage — like, time to fun is off right now. Yeah, exactly. But it's like, yeah... removing all the friction to get to that experience: time to fun.
49:02	Shaan Puri	Can I front-load a little bit of the fun, right? I'm not gonna give you all of it, but can I get a piece of it here now because I need to, you know, hook you. So we went to a diner this weekend. From the time we got there—when we were all excited and my kids wanted pancakes—to the time we actually had anything fun (like any food or drink) on the table was about twenty-two minutes. I get it; they were totally busy. But I wonder if there's some way that, right when you walk in, there's something. Right after the diner we went to Costco. As soon as we walked in there was a Costco sample person, and my kids got something. They were like, "Hey, what is this place? We like this place," because they instantly got a cracker when they walked in. So I just wonder if with the diner you could do one thing, which is eliminate the wait and bring that TTF down—which is what we want. We want low TTF.
49:49	Eric Ryan	I'd love that. Okay, so what I think is: like Dunkin' Donuts Munchkins—we do a really great, gourmet cinnamon Munchkin. When you walk in, it's almost like a "sample": you grab a Munchkin as you walk in to go sit down, so you get that first little taste.
50:06	Shaan Puri	Do they have a smell too? Because that would be nice—double, to get two senses. Yeah, but you could...
50:11	Eric Ryan	Do a smoothie shot next to it, so it's a tray of smoothie shots and munchkins. That gives you that little boost and also takes the edge off your customers while they're waiting. The wait time will never feel as long.
50:20	Shaan Puri	Two other culinary steals. Maybe—okay, one other steal: we could do Five Guys. They have the barrel of peanuts, which I think is kind of what you're talking about. You go in and there are just free peanuts you can scoop. I love that—who doesn't love that? Other thing: my first business was a sushi restaurant. In a traditional sushi restaurant, when you walk through the door the entire kitchen staff— they don't turn to you, but they hear the door chime and they all react. The whole crew is like, "Oh, what's up?" It's basically the Japanese "what's up" and it basically means a customer is here: "hey, pay attention" or "welcome." I don't even know what "irassha" means [likely "irasshaimase," Japanese for "welcome"], but that's what they all say. I think you could also—if you talk about SoulCycle—there's a way to make the customer experience interesting when you walk in. I just wonder what ritual we could have when somebody walks through the door that would be welcoming, unique, and interesting as well.
51:15	Sam Parr	We're just... we're Neanderthals. Like, you know, we're going to talk about Aristotle and the philosophy of life and all this stuff. It turns out you just have to throw a bunch of nuts at my face when I walk in to get a burger.
51:29	Shaan Puri	I love a good high five.
51:31	Sam Parr	Yeah, you just gotta say "what's up" in Japanese, and I'm good.
51:36	Eric Ryan	I mean, you can picture the playlist in this place, right? Like the best morning music. There's something — they hit a button and "Good morning! Good morning!" comes over as people walk in, each time somebody opens the door. I love that time. I'm so fascinated with time [unclear phrase: "time to fund out"]. I think about vacations, like going skiing. [Unclear phrase: "time to fund could be really low — you're schlepping to..."]
51:57	Shaan Puri	Get to.
51:57	Sam Parr	"The hill sucks, yeah."
51:58	Eric Ryan	But everything now, I'm going to measure in TTL.
52:01	Shaan Puri	Well, when you arrive in Hawaii they give you a lei right when you get out the door—like a hotel check-in process. Normally the fun starts when you get to your room in Hawaii. As soon as you get out the door: lei, blue drink, fun—instant.
52:15	Sam Parr	Do you just, Sean, do you just have, like, a notepad of, like, all... like, do you have a ranking of "low"? Well, he said "travel."
52:21	Shaan Puri	So it just... you know what I mean — creative. Well, the... </FormattedResponse>
52:24	Eric Ryan	The arrival. My boyfriend always says, "There's nothing better than arrival drinks." Yeah... that's the best moment of a vacation.
52:31	Sam Parr	Would you ever get into a non— I mean, you've done the same category forever. Would you ever get into the restaurant business or something that's not what you've done?</FormattedResponse>
52:40	Eric Ryan	Well, I just tried building a retail business. I think what we built was amazing and I was super proud of it. It was working with the consumer, but it was just impossible to fund in this current capital cycle. What I tried to do was reinvent the American jewelry store. My theory was I always wanted to do retail where I could geek out on every expression — from the playlist to the scents (which we did), and even the way you're greeted. I'm a huge student of Danny Meyer and the way he thinks about it at each restaurant: fifteen seconds to be greeted, and even the service mantle — where does a salt and pepper go and how do you think every detail through? When you walk into a jewelry store, I found it to be an intimidating experience. You never felt like you'd belong; you had to ask for the world's smallest price tag to be turned over, and then you have to react to something you thought was $5,000 but is actually $50,000. The insight was that women's self-purchasing is driving growth in fine jewelry, but nobody was really creating an experience for them. So we created this brand called Cast. We opened three stores in the Bay Area. I wanted Willy Wonka — "Pure Imagination" — to play in a consumer's head when they walked in and for them to feel like a kid in a candy store again. Being able to sign leases, build out stores, and go omnichannel — we had an incredible partnership with Nordstrom, who put capital in the business — but it was so capital intensive that finding a path to profitability and then raising capital in this market was incredibly, incredibly difficult. That's one of those situations where you're like, "Alright, I'm sitting at the wrong table." Tony Hsieh would say, "Sometimes you gotta move poker tables." I realized I was at the wrong table. Gold pricing was spiking; diamond pricing was crashing. You couldn't sign a lease in these A-class [properties] because LVMH would eat up so many of these leases. I realized, like, if it's hard, it's wrong. It was hard.
54:34	Sam Parr	Business until you were like, "Alright, it's dead."
54:39	Eric Ryan	I worked on it from launch until it died. Yeah—about three to four years.
54:45	Shaan Puri	Oh, a lot.
54:46	Eric Ryan	A lot. Yeah, no—we worked hard at it. It was a fun business, like designing jewelry. Our team, our culture... Issa Rae was part of it, and we were on The White Lotus Season Two; the cast was wearing our product. We had a profound mark in the industry in a very short amount of time. But it was a business that nobody wanted to put capital into, unfortunately.
55:09	Shaan Puri	There's never been really great access.
55:10	Sam Parr	It's the easiest pitch at the moment. "Okay, so how are you an AI company?" I mean, it's not very appealing.
55:17	Shaan Puri	Sam, you know, he has great phrases. He had one in this story when he's telling about the jewelry shop. He goes, "It was like a plane made of gold... 'Love'—like, it was a great idea, but it was like a plane made of gold: it couldn't get lift. It couldn't get off the ground. It was too bad."
55:30	Sam Parr	And then.
55:30	Eric Ryan	The Hall of Fantasy went down the runway — it just could not get airborne. But if you look at it, it's Cass Jewelry — our store. I mean, I was super proud of what we built, but I picked the wrong space to try to innovate in.
55:44	Sam Parr	"Sean, do you want to tell him more of your horrible ideas, or... yeah, okay."
55:48	Shaan Puri	I got—I got another one here. You think, you think I had one bad idea? I'm a volume guy.
55:54	Eric Ryan	No. Your first one is a great idea. I would invest.
55:57	Shaan Puri	Thank you, thank you. Alright—so now it's about to fall off a cliff here, okay? I walked through the grocery store looking for that sea of sameness. Honestly, shout out to the grocery store—there wasn't a whole lot of categories that I saw. One that stood out to me was because I'm looking for everyday products. I'm looking for repeat purchases—something everybody buys—but I'm looking for a category where there's not a dominant brand. I don't have a favorite brand. I couldn't even tell you the name of four of the brands in the category. That's kind of what I was looking for. I'd like to introduce you to my company, White Label Chicken LLC. White Label Chicken LLC is getting into the chicken game. What we're going to do is white‑label someone else's chicken: we'll take chicken from somebody else. We're not going to get into farming, but we're going to put our own brand on it. "Because they're like, 'Sam, what's your top three favorite chicken brands?'"
56:48	Sam Parr	I don't know.
56:50	Shaan Puri	Don't know, Eric. You got a favorite chicken brand?
56:51	Eric Ryan	What's that about—like packaged chicken?
56:53	Shaan Puri	Packaged chicken, like...
56:54	Eric Ryan	"Grocery store."
56:55	Shaan Puri	You're going to go buy breast meat or whatever. It's $9 for the little mini tray.
57:00	Sam Parr	Yeah, that's a real... that's a weird, inspiring name.
57:02	Shaan Puri	Well, we're not the front-facing brand. It's not "White Label Chicken"—it's a working title. We're White Label Chicken LLC. I don't even know the angle yet. All I knew was: I can't believe there's no, like, shit—there's no oat leaf for chicken, you know what I mean? There's just not... not distinct chicken brands that stand for something and mean something. Whether it's about the flavor or it's pre-seasoned; whether it's about "this is man's chicken" and you're going to get your protein from this meal—this is what we do: we give you a little extra. I don't know what it is, but I just kind of saw that white space and I wanted to open the floor to you gentlemen to help me kind of workshop this.
57:43	Eric Ryan	This is where it goes—familiar and novel. So this is very familiar. How do you add novelty? It's interesting. You're right: as soon as it gets put in a dinosaur shape and breadcrumbs around it, it becomes— you know—dino nuggets. That becomes incredibly well branded. Or it gets served at a restaurant as a sandwich—Chick-fil-A. But the chicken itself... Foster Farms did a pretty good job of this out in California. It was really not the product; it was just their advertising that was so good. Goodby did [the advertising] years ago. Okay, so I think you've got to go back. I would turn it into an origin story. I wouldn't sell the chicken; I would sell the farm. And I would...
58:32	Shaan Puri	That sounds smart.
58:35	Eric Ryan	Right — this farm that is like...
58:36	Shaan Puri	Sounds cool. I wish I...
58:37	Sam Parr	"Hadn't said that, as if Don Draper wore hoodies."
58:41	Shaan Puri	"Don't sell the chicken—sell the farm, baby." I might say that to my wife later today, in any context.
58:47	Sam Parr	"Eric, do you have a pack of cigarettes that you could light up right now? It's really chilly up here."
58:51	Shaan Puri	"If you took out a cigarette right now, you would be the coolest man I've ever met in my life."
58:55	Sam Parr	Put your feet up, smoke a cigarette, and tell me about "sell the farm, not the chicken."
58:59	Eric Ryan	Because we don't want to think about the chicken—we murdered it, right? We want to believe that the chicken had a good life on this farm before it was killed. That makes us feel better about the quality of the chicken and about the chicken's short life. So I would build the whole brand around this heaven, this heavenly farm for chickens.
59:26	Shaan Puri	What if we create an Instagram account? We actually pour all our energy into the Instagram account of this incredibly aesthetic farm. It's like The Truman Show — it's just totally a set. Because, again, we're White Label Chicken LLC, so I'm starting with inauthenticity here. But I'm just thinking: what if you started with the social and you just made everybody's favorite farm? And then, from there, you're like, "Of course, if you're going to buy chicken, you'd buy it from your favorite farm."
59:53	Sam Parr	Dude, I’ve got a friend who exited a multi-billion-dollar consumer brand, and I was like, “Yeah.” So… he…
01:00:02	Shaan Puri	He thinks you're his best friend, but he's just a friend to you.
01:00:04	Sam Parr	Yeah, he might—he might use the word "acquaintance," and I use, you know...
01:00:10	Shaan Puri	Close friend.
01:00:11	Sam Parr	Yeah — close friend. We're a little bit different, but he was telling me this idea for his new business. Presumably he's very smart because of his previous success. He asked, "Do you know what free-range means, like free-range chicken?" I said, "I guess that means they're running around a farm." He responded, "No. The definition is like they've got a cage the size of, like, five by five." I forget the exact definition, but it was shockingly small. He's working on this thing where he's putting RFID tags — is that what it's called? Yes — in cows and in chickens. As they are scanned, the whole farm has the technology to see how far they're running. When they go to the kill bin [slaughter bin], their RFID is scanned. A consumer can, on his chickens — and this is a real thing he's already built — see what radius they were running around. This is his whole premise: people could actually see whether this is truly free-range chicken, or whether they were just in a small pen, essentially living in their own feces. There's a correlation between how healthy the farm was and whether they actually follow the rules.
01:01:23	Eric Ryan	Yeah. I think, to build an area too, I always say the framework is that you have to find the intersection of altruism and narcissism. In the case of Method, you bought it for very narcissistic reasons: you love the fragrance, you love the design of it. But the altruism — "it's good for me, good for the planet" — brought you back. If you can deliver on both, that is real power. We try to do that in all of our brands. So, in the case of our chicken farm here, we need to sell the narcissism: that this is the most organic, good-for-you, great-tasting chicken. But also the altruism: that you can feel good that, while they had a short life, they had a really good life. And I think you're right.
01:02:00	Sam Parr	It was a great six weeks.
01:02:02	Eric Ryan	Yeah, you know, it's almost like you steal from children's books. So you do the whole branding like it's a children's book of this magical farm. You even make the farmers who work there part of the overall iconography of the brand, and you make them heroes in it as well.
01:02:21	Shaan Puri	"Old McDonald had a farm. It's called Bingo Chicken."
01:02:25	Eric Ryan	Is Old McDonald's available? Old McDonald's chicken would be great. If that's available, does anybody own that? I think...
01:02:34	Shaan Puri	> "Because McDonald's — you'd have to be, like, old. You know, 'McDonald' — you have to do something weird with the spelling. Do you guys ever buy these eggs?"
01:02:41	Sam Parr	Yeah, all the time.
01:02:42	Eric Ryan	Yes, they're in my fridge right now.
01:02:43	Shaan Puri	Use the following: this is, like, what you're talking about — the sea of sameness or the commodities that they make. Look at the bottom here: Medium Brown Egg is literally the name of the product. It's in transparent, medical-style (sterile) packaging, so you just see the eggs. Then there's this Vital Farms label on top because they literally draw flowers and, you know, hay or whatever on the packaging. I'm like, "Oh — farm. Good. Farm-to-table. I'm doing good."
01:03:10	Sam Parr	And now that he says, "see is sameness," I'm like, "Oh — I do this all the time." The other day I bought yogurt because, instead of Greek yogurt, this yogurt was Icelandic, right? I'm like, "I don't know."
01:03:22	Eric Ryan	Like, do you know what that means? I'm in.
01:03:24	Sam Parr	Yeah... It was like, for some reason it's all Greek, and this is from Iceland.
01:03:29	Shaan Puri	"And do you have a theory on naming? Because you've named your products extremely well." </FormattedResponse>
01:03:34	Eric Ryan	Yes
01:03:34	Shaan Puri	"How would—how do you come up with names?"
01:03:36	Eric Ryan	So, the holy grail of naming is "one word, four letters." If you could do it, that's really, really hard. Naming a brand is the most difficult part of a startup because everything is taken.
01:03:49	Shaan Puri	"Do you use an agency, or do you just sit there and think?"
01:03:53	Eric Ryan	It's all different. I'm not good at naming, but I'm good at spotting a name. Method was—Adam was literally my cofounder. We were literally brushing our teeth at the same time and he's like, "What about Method?" I was like, "That's it." The lawyer's like, "You'd never get Method — it's way too generic." Then I asked my lawyer while he wasn't working, over drinks: "If you thought this name was really important to your success, what would you do?" He's like, "Hey, I'd go for it," because lawyers never want to be wrong... but they don't need to be bright. Ollie came from when I was working with Alan Dye, who was helping me — he was creative director at Apple — and we came up with "Ollie Slate," like Ollie for friendly. I wanted the name — with each case I come up with a jumping-off word. So for Method I wanted to represent technique. Right — so if you're in the gym you use good technique to get force, because this was going to clean without force. I was like, "We want something that represents technique," and he's like, "How about Method?" I was like, "That's it." With Ollie, everything in the category was pseudoscience — very folksy, like "Elk Centrum" or "Nature's Garden" or "Bounty." I wanted a name that just sounded friendly, so he came up with "Ollie Slate." Then we realized Ollie on its own — we were able to get it — so we didn't need the "Slate" part of it.
01:05:04	Shaan Puri	You're, like, ripping.
01:05:05	Sam Parr	Through the story, it's like insight, insight, insight. And you—you make it. You have what I call the "curse of knowledge": you think that this is... you're like, "Oh yeah, I just did this and then I just did that," and I don't...
01:05:19	Eric Ryan	Thank you.
01:05:19	Shaan Puri	They didn't even tell us that, and that was so interesting. What if we hadn't asked the question? We wouldn't have known. Someone asked, "How many more of those do you have?" It was like, "Oh, well, I just do this, of course — as one does: you pick a jump-off word and then you..." I said, "Oh, I don't do anything like that. I just look for things."
01:05:35	Sam Parr	Like that. Know someone's a master when they're fluid. They're fluid with this, and it's incredibly clear. When you describe the simplest things, you show that you are a master.
01:05:44	Shaan Puri	Jumping off word for "welly."
01:05:47	Eric Ryan	So for Welly, I wanted something about healthcare, and we actually came up with "Nightingale." Nightingale—because of the idea of the nightingale: she is this icon, and it's all about caring for you. Anthony Sparducci and Partners in Spade came up with Welly. Most every time—every name we came up with for jewelry, again—each time I saw the name it was like, no debate: that is it. Then it's all hands on: how do we secure this name?
01:06:20	Shaan Puri	Amazing. Do you have another idea?
01:06:23	Eric Ryan	One of my favorite foods — and something I watch my kids go through — is packaged cheese. I think Kraft Singles, mozzarella sticks... I have never seen anybody do anything really innovative. So there's this big delta in cheese, too. You go to the artisanal cheese counter, right? It is an art form. We have this place — we live on Shelter Island this summer — and this guy, Andrew, runs the "cheese wagon." It's literally a wagon. My wife and I will go there every few days just because we'll sit there and taste the cheese with him. It's like wine; he just romances it. So the gap is: if you look at all the categories that have taken a more artisan approach, and then you go shop packaged cheese, it's the same thing — cheddar, mozzarella. It has not changed. My favorite packaging form in the world are the roast baby bells, right? The wax, little "Pac-Men" that you split apart.
01:07:20	Sam Parr	Love it.
01:07:21	Eric Ryan	So, my idea is: I want to create a line of gourmet cheeses in the prepackaged Babybel wax forms. Really take what they've started and go super gourmet with different flavor profiles, and make that packaging form my own. I'd make it slightly bigger and in different colors. I would build a whole line of gourmet cheeses around it. If anybody wants to do this, please reach out to me.
01:07:51	Shaan Puri	Sorry — is this for you? Say it's for kids, or it's not for kids. You're just saying, "I want to do the gourmet cheeses but in this new packaging..."
01:08:00	Eric Ryan	"That aisle—yes. My boys love the Babybels. I want to do that for adults again: take something that's a kid product and elevate it as an adult product. There's just something so fun about opening up that little wax—it's very satisfying."
01:08:15	Shaan Puri	"Sam, you're a man-child. Where does this land with you?"
01:08:17	Sam Parr	Dude, I had three of these. So I do what I call redneck fitness food. Last night I just had three Babybels for dinner and I wrapped them in salami. It just piled into my mouth. I call it "balls of fun," and so...
01:08:32	Eric Ryan	Time — fun's really fast on.
01:08:34	Shaan Puri	"The hell this name to."
01:08:36	Sam Parr	What's that? You know, Sam's mouth—surprised. I don't know; we're still workshopping it. I'm not sure yet. But you could even squirt a little mustard at this ball. But yeah, this is great. I love those cheeses, and I think they only make Gouda and, like, the normal one.
01:08:54	Shaan Puri	What is it about that packaging? Does it actually—because it's kind of softer inside, right? Is that because of the type of cheese, or does the packaging do that?
01:09:03	Sam Parr	Well, I think it's already like that, but you could just, like, grab it. It's just like, "I'll grab them and I'll literally put it in my pocket," and as I'm walking... oh.
01:09:09	Shaan Puri	Grab-and-go cheese. Okay, gotcha. </FormattedResponse>
01:09:10	Sam Parr	And it's a single-serve. It's a single-serve, so it's super easy. But yeah, it's definitely a convenience thing — not necessarily a "better-tasting" thing.
01:09:19	Eric Ryan	But I think there's something very primal, too, about opening it, so it feels...
01:09:22	Sam Parr	Natural. It's very relieving.
01:09:24	Eric Ryan	Back the wax, like opening an orange. You feel like a little monkey just getting into your snack. And so it's... and a time to fun on that is three seconds. </FormattedResponse>
01:09:32	Sam Parr	Yeah, it's oddly satisfying whenever I peel back that wax. And when you peel back the wax — if you've ever done it — the two things open up, and the top part doesn't fall off the bottom part of the wrapper.
01:09:42	Shaan Puri	Yeah.
01:09:43	Sam Parr	You ever?
01:09:43	Shaan Puri	Seen oyster.
01:09:44	Sam Parr	Have you—yeah, it's like an oyster. Have you guys seen those new Coke bottles where you twist the cap off and then it peels back, and the cap, like, stays on the bottle?
01:09:51	Shaan Puri	No, I haven't seen that.
01:09:52	Sam Parr	Oh man — it's kind of like that. I love that. It's just delightful. </FormattedResponse>
01:09:55	Eric Ryan	It was just so... you can't fully recycle the bottle then, because the caps usually don't get recycled.
01:09:59	Shaan Puri	Now, we might be breaking the laws of physics here, but one of the most satisfying food experiences in the world is cracking the top of a Coke can. The sound... it's literally an iconic sound of the tab. I wonder if there's a way to create some similar, satisfying crack here. But I think I'm making a good idea bad here.
01:10:19	Eric Ryan	"You've over-innovated it. Yeah. Here—one, one iteration. Yeah."
01:10:24	Sam Parr	It's just Blue Bell or Babybel, whatever it's called—fancy cheese.</FormattedResponse>
01:10:28	Shaan Puri	I also had a cheese idea, so — great minds think alike. I also had a cheese idea. Yours is better, but I'm just going to say mine out loud in case there's something you want to steal out of the carcass of this idea that I'm about to give you. This is like a dying idea I had, but... So my mother-in-law came over. She's great, but, you know, she's got the mother-in-law thing a little bit — where she's like, "Well, I know the answers to the test and you're still trying to figure out the answers to the test, so let me just tell you what to do." For example, she'll say things like, "Oh, he'll love this — kids love rice." She just says these generic things, like "kids love rice," so your kid's going to love rice. I'm like, "No, no, he doesn't eat rice, doesn't like rice," blah blah blah. Or, you know, milk. One of our kids wasn't really drinking milk from a gallon or whatever, and she was like, "All kids love milk. Your kids are going to love milk." We're like, "You can try — be my guest — but this kid doesn't drink milk." I was waiting for the satisfaction of being right, and then five minutes later she's like, "Oh, he loves it," and I'm like, "No way." I go over, and basically what she did was she would pour the milk into the top of the cap and give him, like, he got to have a tiny mini cup, and he was into that. He was like taking shots of milk, like a spring breaker basically. I couldn't believe it, and she was like, "Change of presentation." So now this phrase — "change of presentation" — has become a big deal. Anytime there's a food my kid doesn't eat, it's not a question of whether they like it or not; it's, what is the change of presentation we need to do to get them to eat it? For example, bread — he didn't want bread. My wife takes a cookie cutter, like a star shape or whatever, and he gets to stamp out the bread, and now he likes that. We're like, "Oh my God — change of presentation."
01:12:08	Sam Parr	So now, your mother-in-law is the man of the house.
01:12:11	Shaan Puri	Well, I think she already was.
01:12:13	Sam Parr	And I.
01:12:13	Shaan Puri	I was in denial for a while, but I, too, have now bent the knee. Like the tech CEO sucking up to Donald Trump, basically — that's me now. I'm like, "Love me, love me. Can we get more gold in this room? Love it." So basically, my cheese idea is: instead of just slices of cheese, include a stamper. The stamper has shapes that they can stamp the cheese into, so they can play like Play‑Doh. Borrowing from Play‑Doh, you basically get the Play‑Doh shape cutters but apply them to cheese and sell them together as a little pack. I think my kids would love that.
01:12:47	Eric Ryan	I know how scalable that is.
01:12:50	Shaan Puri	You gotta add — that's the problem.
01:12:55	Sam Parr	"Don't know how you're..."
01:12:56	Shaan Puri	Going to sell mother-in-law. Did that come through? Was the audio good on that?
01:12:59	Sam Parr	When we sell 10 million versions of this, I don't know if we can afford the operations...
01:13:07	Eric Ryan	I agree with the insight of "change of presentation." I don't know if I agree with the application of it there.
01:13:13	Shaan Puri	Turning it into a toy — so, giving them a little thing they can do with the food. I like that idea.
01:13:20	Eric Ryan	That I like as well. Again, it's like it could be a durable... it's [to do with] how do you make it a consumable so it's an annuity and people keep buying it?
01:13:28	Shaan Puri	See, he's in the cheese, but he's a competitor now, so he doesn't like this idea because he's all about his artisanal cheese. This is...
01:13:37	Eric Ryan	"How would I do this baby's bell?"
01:13:40	Shaan Puri	Watch out — his cheese comes with a little stamper, and he's like, "Yeah, the haters said it wasn't scalable."
01:13:48	Sam Parr	Tade Shaw just pitched "Craft Singles" that come with a cookie cutter.
01:13:53	Eric Ryan	Exactly. I think he overcomplicated it. </FormattedResponse>
01:13:59	Shaan Puri	The story is key to the understanding of the idea. In fact, the label is going to include the entire story that I said, verbatim, in size 8 font.
01:14:09	Sam Parr	Instead of buying the chicken to support the chicken—or a good farm—we're going to be supporting Sean to stick it to his mother-in-law.
01:14:14	Shaan Puri	"What happened to the safe space where there's no bad ideas?" You're like, "Watch what I do — if you bring a weak, wimpy idea in here I'm gonna give it a wedgie." I want to leave you with a big-picture question. You've obviously done it; you've proven yourself, so that's good. You've made money doing what you have — you're financially secure and free and all that. What is the end of the story for you? What are you trying to do? Do you have somebody in mind, like a hero you want to be like? Do you think, 30 years down the road, "I want to have done X, Y, Z"? Do you not think about that at all? How do you think about your life? Because you could just keep doing this — it sounds fun — but is there a big picture?
01:14:54	Eric Ryan	Yeah, no — I'm a planner, so there definitely is a big, big picture for me. At the heart of it, I love building and creating, and if I wasn't doing that, I think I'd be really miserable. But what I don't want to do anymore is, you know, be a CEO.</FormattedResponse>
01:15:11	Sam Parr	Were you the CEO before? </FormattedResponse>
01:15:14	Eric Ryan	I've been CEO of my previous companies, yes, and I love being in it with a team—building every day, in the trenches with your team, helping steer the ship. I absolutely love that as well. But I'm at the stage of my career where, you know, the pressures of raising capital and being accountable to that capital... I want to be able to go back to projects and work across more things. So I'm splitting my time between continuing to incubate new ideas—then I hire a CEO and team and work alongside that team. I'm also moving over to join Graycroft to launch this consumer brands fund. Really, it's about being more of a coach now and helping work with entrepreneurs.
01:15:53	Shaan Puri	We've had a bunch of people come on here with that dream to have your cake and eat it too. "It's like, I want to be part of the idea and the start, but not the grind for ten years. I really want an operator to do that part." Some people have come on here and told us how they do that well. Other people have been like, "I don't know how to—I can't incept my idea and my energy into somebody else." That's a really hard transfer to do. Do you have, like, a talent for that? How do you—do you get the CEO to then run your thing? Do you have a strategy around that, or is it...?
01:16:21	Eric Ryan	It's hard, and that's what I've been doing. I've been doing more of an incubator model in my last few startups, where I've not been the CEO running it but I actually create the team. Really what I love doing is creating the concept, pulling together the team, and securing the capital. The part that has been really hard is actually finding those leaders. The reality of being an entrepreneur is iterative, right? You try something — it works or it doesn't. You're constantly iterating your way to success in those early years, which means you're running up against roadblocks and learning what worked and what didn't. What I found is there's a certain personality that can live in that uncertainty of a startup and stay committed to it. So when something doesn't work, instead of panicking they quickly start taking the clues, figuring things out, making adjustments, keeping the team confident, and bringing them along. That's the art of entrepreneurship. That is really, really tough to hire for, because the ones who are good at it want to create — they probably have their own idea that they're working on. I would hire very accomplished people, but their entire life had been fairly linear in their careers: I get good grades, it unlocks getting into a good college; I do really well at school, it unlocks getting the right job; each thing unlocks the next step for them. And that always works because they're incredibly smart, talented people — but that's not the reality in entrepreneurship. So what I saw was a pattern: I would hire these incredibly accomplished CEOs, and then as soon as things would start going wrong — which they always do in a startup — they would really struggle through the mental games of that. That's the hardest part of this model.
01:17:51	Sam Parr	"You're amazing. You know, every once in a while we have episodes where we're like, "We have to have a part two," and sometimes a part three and a part four. Hopefully that will be the case with you." </FormattedResponse>
01:18:00	Eric Ryan	No, let's do it. I would love to, and I feel the same. I'm walking away on Monday morning here with more energy, so I really appreciate it. It's been such a fun conversation. And if anybody out there loves our ideas and wants to pursue them, please, please reach out.
01:18:14	Sam Parr	What—ericryan.com? And then there's a Contact button. Is that right?
01:18:18	Eric Ryan	Yeah, you can go to gobstop.com. It's for this idea that I try to build these everlasting gobstoppers—brands that can choose to refresh themselves and stay on trend. You try to bake that into the center when you create something new.
01:18:36	Sam Parr	"You're a ridiculous human being. You're awesome. You have silly, crazy ideas, and yet you've been able to make potentially hundreds of millions—or even billions—of dollars off them. I mean, that's the dream. So thank you so much. You're—you're the best."
01:18:50	Eric Ryan	You guys are great. Thanks for a lovely conversation.

Discover

Listen

Catalog

Guides

Connect

How I Start $1 Billion Companies from Boring Products

Transcript