Ilay Karateke is on a mission to bring Labneh to kitchens around the United States, or maybe this is more of a sprint than a mission because her brand, BEZI, is moving fast. Product development started in the kitchen a year ago. Today, they're in stores across New York City with e-commerce starting in December, and I can almost assure you that nati…

Together with his brother, Ben Checketts co-founded Rhone, an athleisure wear brand inspired by the quality of Lululemon and the urge to craft a stand-out label for men. The brand is driven by the pursuit of mental fitness and Ben’s philosophy on branding is both refreshing and insightful. We talk about naming, focus groups, how brands are shaped y…

Matt McLean ventured into the organic juice business 25 years ago with one goal: to fuel families with uncompromised nutrition. Today, Uncle Matt’s Organic produces the #1 bestselling organic orange juice nationwide. Matt is hustling the same way he did 25 years ago with new product launches and market expansions happening as we speak. We talk abou…

Aleksandra Medina and Katrin Kaurov co-founded Frich (which stands for 'F***ing rich'), a financial literacy app for Gen Z that breaks the money taboo and makes it a social topic. Frich busts into the world of corporate finance backed by a brand that could not be any more differentiated and authentic. With their fists in the air, Aleksandra and Kat…

Episode 109 brings us Rockwell Shah, the CEO, and N.B. Patil, the Co-Founder & CTO of Ozlo, an innovation startup in the sleep technology space. All three of Ozlo’s Co-Founders are former Bose veterans and they acquired and licensed assets from Bose to resurrect the discontinued but beloved Sleepbuds. This episode is a fascinating conversation abou…

Joan Nguyen is the Co-Founder and CEO of bumo, a brand that provides outstanding on-demand childcare for families and employers. Bumo considers itself in the business of 'parent care' and today you can learn all about the TLC she and her Co-Founder put into crafting the bumo brand very hands-on, strategic, and filled with raw authenticity. Trust is…

Bennett Maxwell is the Founder and Chairman of Dirty Dough, one of the fastest-growing restaurant concepts in the US with 70 locations and another couple hundred in development. In this episode, we get to hear how Bennett’s authentic reaction to a lawsuit that could have taken the business out instead created brand buzz, helped build his tribe, and…

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 persona…

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…

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 th…

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 run…

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 mak…

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 m…

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…

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…

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…

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 g…

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 to…

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 …

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…

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 dis…

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 b…

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 p…

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 abil…

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 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…

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 sinc…

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 perha…

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 enviro…

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 attr…

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…

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 whic…

David Coté and Julie Poitras-Saulnier run LOOP Mission which collaborates with major food industry actors to save perfectly good, but rejected products discarded before reaching grocery stores and transform them into products such as juices, smoothies, sodas, beer, gin, soaps, and dog treats. I have to be frank and I can cut this intro very short: …

Nick Green is the Co-Founder & CEO of Thrive Market, a membership-based online platform that makes healthy living easy and accessible to all. Since launching in 2014, Thrive Market has grown to more than 1 million paying members and become a touchstone example of a mission-driven company at scale. In addition to offering great natural and organic p…

Christina (Fagan) Pardy founded Shit That I Knit, a brand of sustainable high-quality knit-wear that one would say besides its name– although the contrary is true – has become known around the world. Christina was recently on the TODAY show and Shit That I Kit was the official Team USA brand partner for beanies and mittens this past Winter Olympics…

Gardar Stefansson co-founded Good Good, a company from Iceland that makes waves around the globe with its no-sugar-added breakfast and brunch products. To me, startups like Good Good are extremely exciting since they have to embody all the components of great brand strategy: From starting with a niche product for a niche audience - while allowing t…

Andy Hunter founded Bookshop.org with a mission to disrupt Amazon’s book sales and put them back into the hands of bookstores. He sees his brand to be the MC and hands the mike over to the people who sell and love books. A mesmerizing uphill battle that you can witness him slowly winning by means of passion, dedication, and shared values between bo…

Brice Partouche founded Satisfy, a performance fashion brand for runners to unlock the high. He wouldn’t say it, but I can: Satisfy is quickly developing into a cult brand and we spent ample time talking about Zeitgeist, culture, and community. Brice and I discuss how NFTs can be used to create access to a brand, the link between running and creati…

Adam Rich co-founded Thrillist by sending out an e-mail newsletter to 600 people about things to do in NYC. Well, as they say, the rest is history. I talk with Adam about how a newsletter turned into a trusted brand and a global multi-platform media monster hitting the eyeballs of more than 300 million people a month, how understanding and sticking…

Together with Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Michael Mohr founded Houseplant, a lifestyle brand rooted in cannabis that creates and curates thoughtful, design-led original products. By unifying the words “house” and “plant,” the brand has created an entirely new cannabis experience through curated, one-of-a-kind expert insights from Rogen and Goldbe…

Doug Zell is the Founder of Intelligentsia Coffee, a beloved brand that established itself as a leader in what came to be known as third-wave coffee. Intelligentsia embodies a quest for superior quality and sophisticated design, but it is furthermore about the overall impeccable brand experience that those of us who have visited one of the 15 US lo…

Angela Jia Kim founded Savor Beauty with a strong brand ethos inspired by a career as a concert pianist. What caught my eye about Angela's brand was how she checks off all the boxes a brand in her space should, and she does it seemingly with ease: farm-fresh small-batch organic products, cutting-edge technology, 100% non-toxic clean formulas, made …

David Neeleman is the Founder of 5 airlines and changed the way people experienced surprise and delight by flying JetBlue. During the pandemic, he launched his latest airline brand, Breeze, and I sat down with David to talk about what branding means to him, what makes great company culture, how a book inspired the JetBlue brand, and his preferred a…

Chris Boyd is the Co-Founder of Monday, a Southern California distillery that crafts non-alcoholic spirits such as gin and whiskey. The brand is only a year old and its impeccable design caught my eye from day one. Chris and I talk about how community and authenticity are key to building his brand. And he is walking that talk as he has 1,366 shareh…

Chris Meade, 28 years young, a Forbes 30 under 30 nominee, invented a new sport with his co-founders that mixes Four square with Volleyball. Today you can catch Crossnet on ESPN and the product sells in over 3,000 locations in the US and around the world. Chris and I talk about naming not only a brand, but a sport, how to create not only momentum b…

Vicki von Holzhausen utilizes her background as a designer for Audi and Mercedes to innovate on materials that are truly sustainable through her eponymous vegan leather bags and accessory brand. Vicki and I discuss the weight of her brand promise, The Conscious Code, how she bootstrapped a luxury brand, how she showcases accountability by using her…

Kara Goldin is the Founder and CEO of Hint, Inc, the brand synonymous with the leading unsweetened flavored water in the US, loved by millions. Within minutes of listening to Kara, you will understand why she became as successful as she has and why she is such an influential voice in business. Kara shared an outpour of crucial lessons for both entr…

Natasha Case founded Coolhaus with her then-girlfriend – now-wife – in 2009. Inspired by her architectural background and a drive to create the best ice cream sandwich available, the couple bought "a piece of shit postal van masquerading as an ice cream truck’ on Craigslist for $2,500 dollars and towed it to the Coachella Music Festival using AAA."…

Jeremy Parker bought the url swag.com to disrupt the boring and outdated promotional products industry. Swag should stand for something new, and be bought differently, and it should be stuff people actually want to keep. That vision turned into reality as swag.com had 2000% growth over the last three years, made it onto Number 218 on Inc’s Top 500 …

Max Johnson built a tremendously impactful business over the course of the last 4 years through simple necklaces that celebrate female goddesses and leaders. The brand, Awe Inspired, was born out of Max's mother’s desire to empower fellow cancer survivors. From the journey of blindly walking into brand agencies on Madison Avenue to learning how per…