Getting Called “Sweetie” Helped this Entrepreneur Create a Multi-Million-Dollar Business
Last week at Pizza & 40s, Kara Goldin, the founder of Hint, told a story that fired me up.
The setup goes like this:
In 2004, Kara Goldin was drinking 10 Diet Cokes a day, had bad acne, and was tired all the time. Wanting to change her diet while also not giving up her love of tasty beverages, she started making her own water by boiling fruit skins and mixing the oils with water. She called her concoction Hint.
However, six months after launching Hint, Goldin was ready to quit.
Although sales were growing and Hint was being sold in stores across the Bay Area, she was struggling to figure out the shelf life of the beverage. Obviously, understanding when your product needs to sell by is not only important to the business, but to the customer’s health… aka it’s a big deal.
And because Goldin – who had never worked in the food industry before – launched Hint on the premise that Americans deserve a natural, low-sugar beverage, she wasn’t willing to use the easy fix that most beverage brands use: preservatives.
Daunted and worried that she couldn’t scale the company, Goldin called a Coke executive who she was hoping would take over the company.
“Listen, I’m in San Francisco. I’ve never done beverages before. I worked in tech and you can just have this company. I launched it, we’re in 10 markets around the Bay Area, and it’s doing pretty well.”
But then, the Coke exec interrupted her.
“Sweetie,” the executive said. “Americans love sweet.”
“And I was like… did he just call me sweetie?” Kara said. “I just put the phone down and lost him for five minutes. And then finally, a light bulb went off. He really thinks Americans love sweet.”
“And so,” Goldin said, “I have runway to go and launch this company because he’s not focused on a company with no sweeteners.”
This conversation inspired Goldin. Now, 12 years later, Hint Water is doing tens of millions of dollars a year in sales. And companies like Apple, Facebook, and LinkedIn stock their fridges with Hint’s variety pack of flavors.
Funny enough, 18 months after this conversation with the Coke exec, Kara was told by a friend that Hint was not only on Coke’s radar, but was listed on a slideshow during a Coke meeting on potential competitors. “We can’t let Hintget to the point of VitaminWater,” the slide read.
VitaminWater was purchased by Coke for $4.8B.
Listen to your naysayers… not because they’re right, but because it’s fuel.
BTW, Hint is giving Tumblr readers a chance to get the variety pack delivered to your door for $18 using this special link. Go forth, and stay hydrated.
Last week at Pizza & 40s, Kara Goldin, the founder of Hint, told a story that fired me up.
The setup goes like this:
In 2004, Kara Goldin was drinking 10 Diet Cokes a day, had bad acne, and was tired all the time. Wanting to change her diet while also not giving up her love of tasty beverages, she started making her own water by boiling fruit skins and mixing the oils with water. She called her concoction Hint.
However, six months after launching Hint, Goldin was ready to quit.
Although sales were growing and Hint was being sold in stores across the Bay Area, she was struggling to figure out the shelf life of the beverage. Obviously, understanding when your product needs to sell by is not only important to the business, but to the customer’s health… aka it’s a big deal.
And because Goldin – who had never worked in the food industry before – launched Hint on the premise that Americans deserve a natural, low-sugar beverage, she wasn’t willing to use the easy fix that most beverage brands use: preservatives.
Daunted and worried that she couldn’t scale the company, Goldin called a Coke executive who she was hoping would take over the company.
“Listen, I’m in San Francisco. I’ve never done beverages before. I worked in tech and you can just have this company. I launched it, we’re in 10 markets around the Bay Area, and it’s doing pretty well.”
But then, the Coke exec interrupted her.
“Sweetie,” the executive said. “Americans love sweet.”
“And I was like… did he just call me sweetie?” Kara said. “I just put the phone down and lost him for five minutes. And then finally, a light bulb went off. He really thinks Americans love sweet.”
“And so,” Goldin said, “I have runway to go and launch this company because he’s not focused on a company with no sweeteners.”
This conversation inspired Goldin. Now, 12 years later, Hint Water is doing tens of millions of dollars a year in sales. And companies like Apple, Facebook, and LinkedIn stock their fridges with Hint’s variety pack of flavors.
Funny enough, 18 months after this conversation with the Coke exec, Kara was told by a friend that Hint was not only on Coke’s radar, but was listed on a slideshow during a Coke meeting on potential competitors. “We can’t let Hint get to the point of VitaminWater,” the slide read.
VitaminWater was purchased by Coke for $4.8B.
Listen to your naysayers… not because they’re right, but because it’s fuel.
BTW, Hint is giving Tumblr readers a chance to get the variety pack delivered to your door for $18 using this special link. Go forth, and stay hydrated.
Our #Model @omarigordon loves @hint_water you guys should try it out! Not only is it tasty it’s good for you too! #StayHealthy #StayHydrated #Water #HintWater #InstaMood #PhotoOfTheDay #PicOfTheDay #Follow
hint's mango grapefruit is officially August's flavor of the month! if you haven't tried mango-grapefruit yet, you ought to try it soon! happy summer hintfans! "drink water, not sugar"
Any young adult living in or around the metropolitan area has experienced the struggle of trying to find a decent gig for the summer. If you are lucky enough to find someone willing to hire you for 3 months with descent pay and hours, it will most likely just be a typical day to day job maybe waiting tables, caddying golf courses, or working in the family business. Not to put any of these occupations down because I've done most of them, but there is something missing with these typical jobs, There is a void in them that hint has found a way to fill for me. For the first time in my life I'm excited to get up and go to work, and see what what the day has in store, because theres always something happening here in the Big Apple within our extraordinary sales team, 3 months into it and I've yet to experience a "slow" or "easy" day.
I'm a people person and love interacting with new people and building new relationships, which I quickly learned is a staple of successful sales work. And here with hint there is opportunity to do that at any second of the day, weather it's seeing how the weekend was for one of many friendly Whole Foods team members, or selling our amazing product to someone who has yet to experience it. Did I mention I get to be in the GREATEST city in the world at Least 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (No offense San Fran). New York city is always moving at a pretty fast pace, and so we as a team must keep up to get whatever is on the agenda done. I have the pleasure of working for one of the best bosses I've ever had, Tim Galligan, our regional sales manger for NY. When I first spoke to Tim about the job over the phone he gave me a brief rundown on what it was like and as good as he made it sound, it turned out to be 100 times better! Few kids my age can say that they are spending the summer doing something new, that they love, and getting paid with invaluable experience (the bi-weekly paycheck definitely helps as well). As much as I've already learned, I have a long ways to go, which is why I plan on staying with hint as long as possible, and returning next summer. My eventual goal is to join the SoCal team out west and spread the love of hint throughout southern california, as well as fufilling a life long dream of living out there (get the hint Kara and Theo?:) ) So to answer the question why am I a "hintern", I simply got lucky and fell into something that turned out to be an experience of a lifetime. Going i to August I don't even want to think about it ending, luckily I'll have
plenty of work to do in our busiest month to keep my mind off of it!
