BIO: Kara Goldin is the Founder and CEO of Hint, Inc., best known for its award-winning Hint water, the leading unsweetened flavored water.
STORY: When Kara started her beverage business, she had zero experience in the industry. So she figured hiring people with impressive experience in the big beverage companies would help her business. Instead, they didn’t understand her vision, and thus there was no return on her vast investment.
LEARNING: When hiring, don’t be blinded by executives in big companies; they may not have the experience needed to run a startup.
“Trust your gut, fire fast, and hire slow.”
Kara Goldin
Guest profile
Kara Goldin is the Founder and CEO of Hint, Inc., best known for its award-winning Hint water, the leading unsweetened flavored water.
She has received numerous accolades, including being named EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2017 Northern California and one of InStyle’s 2019 Badass 50. Previously, Kara was VP of Shopping Partnerships at America Online. She hosts the podcast The Kara Goldin Show. Her first book, Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters, was released October 2020 and is now a WSJ and Amazon Best Seller. Kara lives in the Bay Area with her family.
Worst investment ever
When Kara started her beverage company, Hint, she came from a tech background and had never worked in the beverage industry. She didn’t know anything about the industry other than the fact that she drank beverages. Before that, she had never dreamt of being an entrepreneur.
When Kara launched her product on the shelf at Whole Foods, she decided to get industry experts to help get her off the right start. She did everything she could to find executives from Coke, Pepsi, and other big soda companies. Finding such people cost a lot of money. Taking the approach to work with people in the big companies was Kara’s worst investment.
The core of Kara’s product started from a problem that she was solving for herself, so she created her solution. Unfortunately, the industry experts that were out there that Kara so wanted all her answers from didn’t understand the mission and the purpose behind the product.
After spending a lot of money trying to get the so-called experts to help her push her product, Kara realized that the playbook they had gone through within these large companies was not the same playbook that she needed for her startup. She decided to stop looking for answers from the big companies, and instead, she believed in herself and found the solutions on her own.
Lessons learned
- Be careful when hiring big shots from very successful companies because they may not be able to handle the challenges of a startup.
- Curiosity, the ability to go out and try, and think outside the box are more valuable in an employee than experience.
- Hire slow and fire fast.
- Believe in yourself and have the confidence to find the answers you need to run a successful startup. You don’t have to rely on other people entirely.
Andrew’s takeaways
- When hiring people from the big business world, remember they may not have the experience of working in the small business world, so they may not be the right fit for you.
- Be careful of A-students because sometimes the skills required to get A’s in school are the exact opposite skills needed to succeed in business.
No. 1 goal for the next 12 months
Kara’s number one goal for the next 12 months is to push her new product line that focuses on getting people to get healthy.
Parting words
“Find those lessons out there that you can learn from and move forward.”
Kara Goldin
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