Startup to Storefront

Today's guest is Alex Apostolopoulos, founder of the greek yogurt company Ellenos . Ellenos has gained quite the following in Seattle, drawing crowds through word-of-mouth advertising to their stand at the iconic Pike Place Market . But they wouldn't have even gotten to Seattle if it weren't for Yvonne Klein, a flight attendant who loved the yogurt so much that she would bring back cases of it whe...

Today we talk with Erica Rankin, founder of the edible cookie dough company Bro Dough. It's a guilty pleasure we've all indulged in at least once or twice. The problem has always been that those raw eggs that make it dangerous for consumption prior to being baked to golden perfection. Bro Dough isn't your grandparent's cookie dough though. It's vegan, safe for consumption, and packs an extra dose...

Today's guests are the Comfy brothers, Brian and Michael Speciale. As you may have guessed from their nickname, they co-founded The Comfy, and they are indeed brothers. The two of them took their idea for a wearable blanket and straight-up sprinted with it. They knew that they were sitting on such a hot ticket item that before they did just about anything else with their company, they were appeari...

Today's guest is Denise Woodard, founder of Partake Foods. When her daughter was diagnosed with severe food allergies, Denise struggled with finding snacks she could safely feed her. So she set out to create some herself. But it wasn't exactly smooth sailing. Her initial attempts were met with responses of "this is awful" from her daughter. And this is where it's important to note that Denise was...

Today's guest is Taylor Steele, founder of the tequila company: Solento. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you might have picked up on a common theme: career paths are almost never linear. Taylor's career path is even more proof of this, as he has gone from indie surfing-filmmaker to creative director of Corona beer in Australia to the head of a premier tequila company. For some, i...

Today we talk with Rachel Henderson, founder of Project Sunscreen . The goal behind Project Sunscreen is simple: get more people to wear sunscreen. It's not that putting on sunscreen is an inherently strenuous activity that keeps people up at night with anxiety. But there are friction points. Rachel broke these points down and addressed them by designing a product with a roll-on application and wi...

Today's guest is Joe Nicchi, founder of CVT Soft Serve. Like a lot of east-coasters who move out West, Joe found himself in Los Angeles searching for comfort food to remind him of where he came from. The problem was that Joe's comfort food was soft-serve ice cream, and LA really didn't offer that particular food group. Sure, there were ice cream parlors and frozen yogurt shops, but none of those r...

Today's guest is Ben Seidl, founder of Neyborly. In much the same way as WeWork or AirBnB reimagined how we work and vacation, Neyborly is reimagining how we interact within our community. Odds are high that there are a couple of vacant commercial real estate properties in your town. Some might see vacant properties as nothing more than urban blight, but Ben sees opportunity. Instead of sitting em...

Today's guests are Humberto Ibarra and Craig Cartozian, co-founders of Mandala Tequila. If it feels like tequila is in a golden age right now, you're not imagining things. Between the plethora of tequila varieties, celebrity-owned companies, and competition from its cousin mezcal, walking down the tequila aisle of a liquor store is sure to present you with any number of options. So if you're a teq...

Today we talk with Ralph and Caroline Walde, co-founders and the husband and wife chef duo behind Aymara Peruvian kitchen. The restaurant industry is constantly evolving, and trends can seemingly pop-up and disappear overnight. But one industry trend that is looking like it has some staying power is the ghost kitchen. Brick and mortar restaurants begat more cost-efficient food trucks, which have i...

Today's guest is Eliza Ganesh, founder of Sunwink. As is often the case in the health and wellness space, the founding of Sunwink came about as a result of a personal issue. Eliza was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease and sought a better way to fight the disease and lead a healthier life. She had to experiment a bit and incorporate feedback from her early customers, but she persevered and even...

Today's guest is Matthew Herman, co-founder of Boy Smells. What started off as a hobby turned into a side-hustle turned into a thriving business that even caught the attention of country music superstar Kacey Musgraves. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. It began as a candle-making experiment in Matthew's kitchen, trying to buck the gender norms of how candles have been traditionally made and m...

Today's guest is Gail Levy, founder of HFactor hydrogen water. Gail is a self-described "serial entrepreneur", but of all the companies she's founded, this one is the most personal. Gail watched as her friend went through painful chemotherapy treatments. Nothing was helping her recover from the radiation, and they tried just about everything available. Tragically, Gail's friend lost her battle wit...

Today's guest is Shane Heath, founder of MUD\WTR, a coffee alternative that boasts all the aspects that make coffee great, without leaving you waiting for the crash. Shane developed MUD\WTR first and foremost for himself. His coffee cycle went something like this: drink coffee, get a boost of energy, crash, repeat. He was fed up. So he started experimenting in his kitchen. After some trial and err...

Today's guests are Brandon, Dylan, and Elliot Kim, co-founders of Brevitē. Brevitē is a backpack company that started out when Dylan needed a camera backpack he could use while traveling. Brandon figured "why buy one when I can make one?" He grabbed a sewing machine and some raw materials and the first Brevitē backpack was born. For some, it may have stopped there. But the three brothers saw the o...

Welcome to season 3! Today's guest is Daniel Inskeep, a YouTuber and self-described "anti-guru" who together with his wife Rachel have built their Mango Street YouTube channel to an audience of over a million subscribers. There they focused on creating concise and informative photography and filmmaking tutorials, but they both have recently created personal channels that focus on their other inter...

Today we talk with Emily Schildt, founder of Pop Up Grocer. The name says it all. It's the here-today, gone-tomorrow grocery store with the most perfectly curated selection of small-batch, locally-sourced items. Today we talk with Emily about her plans in a post-Covid world, why she considers Pop Up Grocer to be a media company, and we find out her most important criteria for selecting a brand to...

Today's guest is Dr. Martin Bazant, professor of chemical engineering at MIT and who has recently made headlines for his app which helps calculate safe exposure times and occupancy levels for indoor spaces as it relates to the airborne transmission of COVID-19. Dr. Bazant has researched transport phenomena and fluid dynamics, as well as the physics of viral spread, so he was uniquely suited to len...

Today's guest is Alli Reed, founder of the skincare company Stratia Skin. You just heard one of the problems that Alli had with trying to buy skincare products from other companies. Her reading of the label to figure out what ingredients were in the product is not an anomaly. She obsessively pored through dermatology journals trying to figure out exactly what the skin needs to look its best and wh...

Hello and welcome to the Launchpad! This is an offshoot of the Startup to Storefront podcast where we talk to the founders of companies that are just getting started, and whose stories we find compelling. Today we talk with Ingrid and Ilana, co-founders of Tusol. It was Ingrid's own battle with Crohn's disease that led her to take a deep dive into her own nutrition and develop a smoothie recipe th...

Today's guest is Eric Jorgenson, author of the book  The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: a Guide to Wealth and Happiness . Now, if you're not in the tech world, you might be forgiven for not knowing the name Naval Ravikant. But to millions of people around the world, his teachings on business, investing, and life philosophy are the gold standard. Naval's story is an inspiration to many, from being a f...

Today's guest is Suzie Yorke, founder of the snack brand Love Good Fats. As the name implies, the brand is centered around bucking the notion that all fats are bad. This notion began back in the 1960's, when the sugar industry paid scientists to fudge their studies on the correlation between sugar and heart disease. Those scientists took their money and instead pointed the finger at fat. Suzie adm...

Hello and welcome to the Launchpad! This is an offshoot of the Startup to Storefront podcast where we talk to the founders of companies that are just getting started, and whose stories we find compelling. Today we talk with Jordan Nathan, founder of the cookware company Caraway. Born of an unfortunate incident where Jordan was actually poisoned by his Teflon cookware, Jordan set out to educate and...

Hello and welcome to the Launchpad! Over the past year of doing this podcast, we've grown, and so have our guests. We have always strived to cover every aspect of the entrepreneurial journey, from the ideation to the product launch and possibly even the exit. Most of our guests have been in the game for a while, but we know that those aren't the only stories worthy of telling. So we created this o...

Today's guest is Mayor Lindsey Horvath of West Hollywood California. In this election cycle, national political campaigns have taken over the entire news cycle. In the midst of this political fervor, it's easy to gloss over the local elections that are in many ways just as important as the national elections. Though you may not reside in West Hollywood, the lessons and experience that Mayor Horvat...