Hitting The Mark

Michelle Penczak was my assistant for 3 years. Today she runs a 400-people strong brand employing military spouses that made #297 on the Inc 5000 last year. Squared Away is rooted in a mutual bond between people and philosophies and is doing what I keep advising most everyone to be doing: The brand is highly niche-focused, was born out of a personal necessity, and came with a tribe in-tow.

Alex Ostroy successfully combined his passion for cycling and art into a beloved brand that creates eclectic clothing for cyclists who crave self-expression in an industry known for the opposite. Coming from a graphic design and Creative Direction background, Alex’s story and advice will resonate with a lot of you who struggle with blending art and business, who doubt yourself when going with your...

Kim Pham is a first-generation Vietnamese-American, the daughter of refugees, and, together with her sister Vanessa, the Co-Founder of Omsom, the loud and proud Asian food brand of noodles and sauces.  This episode already ranks very high on my top favorite HTM interviews ever. When founders start with a why and figure out the how and the what in the process, that’s when you know great brand stori...

Marco Zappacosta built Thumbtack, the marketplace for home services, over the last 15 years. In 2021 Thumbtack had a $3.2 billion valuation and the highest number of professional listings, followed by Yelp.  In this episode, we dive into how Marco’s background from having entrepreneurial parents - his father co-founded Logitech nonetheless - and running his startup basically from straight out of c...

Michael Berkowitz was a commodities trader who switched to the fashion world after taking on coat-making as a hobby. Yes, you heard that correctly. So he shifted to what in plain sight could be seen as yet another commodity: making coats. But there is more to this story than meets the eye as he solved tangible problems while being credited with making 'quiet luxury' a new movement in the world of...

Hitting The Mark is back from its hiatus with guest host Kara Ebel interviewing Fabian Geyrhalter. We wanted to do something special for episode 101, and here we go! You know Fabian Geyrhalter as the host of this show, but today we spin things around and have Fabian in the hot seat talking about his innovative hardware startup for audiophiles and music lovers. Trendhunter calls Toneoptic 'progress...

This is episode 100 of Hitting The Mark and we worked for months to ensure we have the founder of an iconic brand for you. One most probably all of you know and many of you own a piece of the brand. To say we succeeded would be an understatement.  Travis Rosbach founded the world’s most used water bottle brand that took the nation, and the globe, by storm: Hydro Flask. From its iconic icon – pun i...

Tate Huffard launched Best Day Brewing last year, an alcohol-free range of craft beers for the fun-loving, hard-charging, adventure-seeking thirsty souls for whom good is just not good enough.  Packed with relentless optimism, a distinctive brand design, and a powerful ethos, Best Day sees its beer as a comma and not a period in your journey through the day.  Tate and I talk about the significance...

Nichole Montoya, together with a designer, co-founded Cheddar Up ten years ago. The platform helps over 100,000 groups and organizations collect payments and information to support and grow their communities. Nichole and I talk about how important design was to the success of the brand, how, as a product company, being highly aware of feature creep is a must to ensure the brand does not steer too...

Matteo Grassi went from breakdancing in Italy to traveling with a circus across Australia, then overseeing 7 e-commerce brands and lately launching Popup, a no-code online store-building platform that provides flexibility in customers' journeys. All of this said, Matteo also holds a Masters in Psychology and worked as a brand strategist.  What you get when you combine these life experiences and ed...

Suze Dowling is the Co-Founder of Gin Lane, where she helped launch over 50 D2C challenger brands like Harry’s, Hims, and Sweetgreen. She closed shop and the same founding team started Pattern Brands which now acquires and nourishes brands in the home goods space. Pattern's current portfolio of 7 brands includes Poketo, Onsen, and Letterfolk. So today we talk not only omni-channel, but omni-brand....

Charlie Weisman created a company that started by selling plungers, yes, the toilet ones, that are actually desirable. The brand is called Staff and it is quickly growing into a beloved suite of household essentials with bold colors, unique materials, and characters that are eager to help. At Hitting The Mark I pride myself on bringing you as much the well-known, as the unusual upcoming, brands th...

Steph Hon is the Founder and CEO of Cadence, the product innovation brand that brought you the modular collection of magnetic, sustainable, TSA-compliant, and leakproof Capsules that lets you store your must-have items from your medicine cabinet, jewelry box, and cosmetics bag so you can move through the world with ease and confidence.  I am certain you have seen the distinct and beautiful product...

Larry Birnbaum is the Co-Founder and CEO of ShopWorn, the e-commerce platform for customers who want to be the first to own authentic, unused luxury products while doing good for the environment.  This a fascinating proposition, one that challenges luxury brands as well as consumers to do something they used to be reluctant to do: Put trust in a discount reseller. It is also a two-sided marketplac...

Tomo Delaney, despite coming from a family of advertising, decided very early on that he wanted to work for Vogue, which he subsequently did and he spent his entire career in the fashion world in London and NYC. Up until the point where he decided to become a stay-at-home dad. Now he is selling organic food paint for kids.  This is a story that is being written as we speak about a brand that will...

Vladimir Vukicevic founded Meural and Rockethub, both companies that have been successfully acquired. Now with his third startup, he joined 2,000+ toothpaste brands in the marketplace.  To an outsider, it may seem like an overly competitive area to jump into and perhaps a bit random given his software and hardware background, but there is a deeply personal story behind Better & Better and to him,...

Ariel Kaye founded Parachute in 2014 to disrupt the bedding space by creating a brand people actually remembered and loved. And that is exactly what Parachute has very quickly turned into: a beloved home lifestyle brand with 20+ retail locations. In this episode, we talk about how Ariel’s brand and advertising background was fundamental to her ability to quickly connect with customers, the power o...

Joe Spector wholeheartedly believes in the immense power of branding, if done right and from the get-go. And he would know as he co-founded Hims, the D2C prescription and over-the-counter drugs brand that started off by selling erectile dysfunction and hair loss treatments and has since exploded into a 1.6 Billion Dollar public company together with the Hers brand. Moving into pet telemedicine wit...

Margaret and Ian Wishingrad come from the advertising industry and took a plunge into the food business. Three Wishes is their brand of better-for-you cereal that wants to be liked and purchased by literally everyone from young to old.  How they set the brand up to be on its way of accomplishing that, what works and what hasn’t, and why the proof is in the cereal is what we talk about in this insi...

Alex Matisse, who made it a strategic point not to name his brand after his famous last name (yes, he is the great-grandson of one of the most influential artists to ever live, Henri Matisse), co-founded East Fork, a pottery brand I cherish and study from the outside for a lot of reasons, all of which you will learn more about during this very sincere and insightful conversation.  Alex and I talk...

Sahand Dilmaghani founded Terra Kaffe, an innovative at-home espresso-brewing machine that seeks to upend the environmentally disastrous use of 'pods.'  Inspired by European coffee culture and the Bauhaus design movement the TK-01 machine is a beautiful piece of design simplicity and Sahand and I dive deep into the topic of sustainability, the perhaps misunderstood 'Made in China' brand, rituals a...

Josh Tetrick is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Eat Just company, a 1.2 billion dollar food startup founded 10 years ago, which is, according to Forbes, "providing justice for animals while addressing food scarcity and the climate crisis." If you enjoy a tough branding challenge, if you appreciate an improbable success story, if care about the environment and animals, if you eat eggs or enjoy the ta...

Vianney Vaute is the Co-Founder and CCO of Paris-based BackMarket, a marketplace that fights against planned obsolescence. 6 months ago the startup was evaluated at 5.7 billion and driven by their brand DNA of 'sabotage' the company keeps old tech devices around for longer hence positively impacting the environment. And yet they found a way to attract the large tech giants like Samsung to not fear...

Jason Stoddard founded an improbable made-in-the-US product company in the HI-FI space that is putting out high-quality, inexpensive units while innovating on many fronts. Fueled by the name Schiit his company has become a beloved brand.  Schiit is only 12 years old yet 7 years ago Jason already published a book detailing the eventful journey of the garage startup. Many of you know that I am now a...

Nathan Beckord founded Foundersuite, a brand that pretty much every founder heard of, used, or referenced.  Nathan and I discuss if infusing brand into early-stage startup pitch decks is of importance, if a catchy or descriptive tagline suits a startup better, the power of community in brand building and we talk about Foundersuite’s Teddy Talks which involves a ginormous teddy bear. Yep, a rather...