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- [00:00]
Guy Raz
This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card is designed with your iPhone in mind, making it easy to get started and even easier to use. Apple Card is a no fee credit card you can apply for right from the Wallet app on your iPhone. Apple Card has no annual fee, no late fees, and no foreign transaction fees. No fees, period. Every credit card should be this easy. Get started in the Wallet app today. Subject to credit approval. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.49% to 27.74% based on creditworthiness rates as of January 1, 2026. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app or@card.apple.com Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more@applecard.com you
- [00:57]
Anthony Cortez
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- [01:36]
Guy Raz
Hello and welcome to the advice line on How I Built this Lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Send us a 1 minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. And you can also send us a voice memo@hibtid.wondery.com and make sure to tell us how to reach you. And also don't forget to sign up for my newsletter. It's full of insights and ideas from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs. You can sign up for free@guyraz.com or on substack and we'll put all of this info in the podcast description. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti. Jonah, welcome back to the show.
- [02:32]
Jonah Peretti
Thanks for having me.
- [02:33]
Guy Raz
So you were first on back in 2017 to tell us a story about how you started Buzzfeed. And that was a long time ago. I mean, we did that live in New York City. It was fun. I had fun. Hope you did.
- [02:44]
Jonah Peretti
Yeah, it was great.
- [02:45]
Guy Raz
And if anyone listening missed that episode and you want to go back and listen, it's a great episode. It involves the founding of Huffington Post and Arianna Huffington makes an appearance in the show. All kinds of things happen. We will drop a link to it. Episode show notes. So basically, the Buzzfeed story really began about 20 years ago, back in 2006. For a time, it was the most fun place on the Internet. The site had online quizzes and listicles and I'm sure lots of you listening. Remember the famous dress? Was it gold and white or black and blue? I always saw gold and white myself. And over time, buzzfeed started to be talked about as the future of journalism. It even won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021. But today, the Internet is a much different place than it was when we first told this story. And buzzfeed, like many other similar sites like Vice and others, has faced its share of challenges. It was a recent article in the New York Times with the headline, can Jonah Peretti Save BuzzFeed? So, Jonah, let's start with that question. Can you save BuzzFeed? What's going on right now with BuzzFeed?
- [03:49]
Jonah Peretti
So I would argue that BuzzFeed is still one of the most fun places on the Internet. You know, tens of millions of people to BuzzFeed. We also have HuffPost, another Pulitzer winning news brand.
- [04:03]
Guy Raz
And so that you guys acquired I think in 2020.
- [04:05]
Jonah Peretti
Yeah, so I started it, you know, over 20 years ago and then it was sold to AOL and then had the opportunity to buy it back. So now, now HuffPost is our, is our news brand. And so we've had a lot of changes over the years. And the way the Internet works has really dramatically changed. The biggest difference is that content from publishers used to go viral on Facebook all the time. And everyone used to be on Facebook. Now now the social web is really fragmented. Some people are on Facebook, some on Instagram, some on TikTok. You know, some are quitting the apps entirely and trying to be more intentional with their attention and time. And so you don't see content from publishers fly across these social media the way you used to. And so our business has radically changed. Now people come directly to buzzfeed, coming to our front page, coming directly to our site and building community. So BuzzFeed now has really a very active comments section that we put a lot of attention into. HuffPost has had tremendous growth in membership. The biggest thing we have to figure out as a company is some of these legacy things that encumber the business. You know, so pre Covid real estate that we still have leases on, debt payments, some of the restructuring costs, like all these things have weighed down our business and we've made a lot of progress, but we still have more work to do on that. And I think one of the things that you cover in your. In your show is the way entrepreneurs have to continually reinvent their businesses and change what they're doing.
- [05:40]
Guy Raz
No question. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think about when you started this business 20 years ago. I mean, you were a younger guy and you've had a lot of experience running a business business now for 20 years as the CEO, but you are in a rocky period. It's not a secret that you've told investors that you guys are at risk of not continuing by the end of this year if you run out of cash. So give me a sense of what the game plan is. You also have said that you're optimistic about the future of the company, which is important. You should be. You're the leader. Tell me how you plan to turn this ship around.
- [06:18]
Jonah Peretti
Yeah, so we did. What happened was we disclosed what's called a going concern, and that is a technical accounting term that means that you have liabilities within the next year that you can't cover with your. With your current cash balance. A lot of companies have had those. We had one a couple years ago as well, that we resolved. So our plan and management's plan is to resolve that going concern and really going back to founder mode of saying, hey, we gotta reinvent the company for this near future and wanting investors to know there's risk to that. But also now we're getting back to what we love most, which is innovating and creating new things. We launched this new incubator branch office. We have new apps.
- [07:04]
Guy Raz
Yeah, tell me about that. This is all around AI apps, right?
- [07:08]
Jonah Peretti
Yeah. I mean, I think the apps use AI, but I think anytime you're building something new now, there'll be some AI aspect to it. The main thing isn't that it's AI. The main thing is that it's starting fresh to build things for the world as it exists today. One of the apps that is really fun is if you Search in the app. The Apple App Store is Conjure Camera. You get one challenge every day from a mysterious spirit and you take pictures with the camera and it shows you unseen things that are in the world around you. It's kind of like a Pokemon Go meets Instagram meets a new thing that couldn't have existed until a year or two ago. And so building things like that are really exciting for me because it gets back to the reinventing it and creating new things and seeing a lot of excitement in the new models that we're developing around community membership, programmatic advertising, new AI apps, and new ways of operating.
- [08:11]
Guy Raz
All right, well, it'd be interesting to follow and see what happens. And of course, I'm wishing you great luck. Are you ready to take a call from somebody who is looking for advice from us?
- [08:21]
Jonah Peretti
Yeah, let's do it.
- [08:22]
Guy Raz
Let's do it. Okay. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with Jonah Peretti, founder of BuzzFeed. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.
- [08:32]
Anthony Cortez
Hi, Guy. Hi, Jonah. My name is Anthony Cortez. I'm calling from Miami, Florida, and I'm the CEO and founder of motionflix. We bring movies beyond the traditional theater and into the open air, creating a five star cinema under the stars with plush seating, personal headphones, and elevated concession service.
- [08:49]
Guy Raz
Wow. Well, thanks. Thanks for calling in, Anthony. So it's motionflix. So you are a company that mounts outdoor movie experiences, basically, correct?
- [08:57]
Anthony Cortez
Yeah, we pop up pretty much anywhere. The beach, rooftops, backyards, anywhere you can think of.
- [09:03]
Guy Raz
And you bring everything. You bring the screen, you bring the chairs, you bring the headphones?
- [09:07]
Anthony Cortez
Yes, screen, headphones, concession. We have popcorn attendants that serve throughout the event. Everything that's in the theater comes to you and outdoors.
- [09:16]
Guy Raz
And you work with like companies hire you, like, who. Who pays for all this?
- [09:21]
Anthony Cortez
Yes. So a lot of it is property management companies that they have resident events, as, you know, a lot of the rentals. Now they put a lot of effort into their experiences and their communities. That's a big part of our clientele. And then we also work with Netflix and Prime to bring a cinematic experience to their originals, since they don't have really presence in movie theaters for their originals. So we've been able to do some great stuff with them. And then also cities will bring us on to do community events in their parks and sponsored events.
- [09:51]
Guy Raz
Nice. How did this business start?
- [09:53]
Anthony Cortez
Yeah, so I have always had a love for events and my business partner has a background in property management. So during COVID we kind of were just like everyone else, trying to figure out how can we adapt to this new way of living? And we found that there was a lot of budgets that weren't being used for resident events because of COVID So we kind of thought, how can we come up with a creative way for people to gather outdoors with proper social distancing and use these budgets that people. People have? So we kind of came up with the concept. It was supposed to be temporary, and then it snowballs, and now we're in Los Angeles, San Diego, Orlando, Tampa, now just Miami. We just launched.
- [10:34]
Guy Raz
Wow, that's awesome. Congrats. And tell me a little bit about your business. How what did you guys do in overall sales last year?
- [10:40]
Anthony Cortez
Last year we did a little over a million.
- [10:42]
Guy Raz
Nice. Okay, so before I bring Jonah in, what is your question or challenge you're trying to solve?
- [10:47]
Anthony Cortez
Yeah, since our business is seasonal, we do outdoor events, and cash flow can be challenging. How can we continue launching new markets ourselves while while also attracting aspiring entrepreneurs? We can invest in to operate and own a share of each market? And is this the right model to scale efficiently?
- [11:03]
Guy Raz
All right. Awesome. Jonah, Freddy, I want to bring you in thoughts or ideas or questions that you might have for Anthony before we tackle his question.
- [11:11]
Jonah Peretti
Yeah, I guess one question is, how much in advance do you promote a screening? And do you think it's important that people have a lot of advance notice or, you know, if you saw that there was going to be some really good weather in the winter or something, could you get people to come, like, more quickly to an event?
- [11:30]
Anthony Cortez
Yeah, that's a great question. So we're brought on typically by the location. So typically these locations will plan out their schedules way in advance. So typically in January or Q1, they're planning their programming for the year. So we usually already have kind of our set dates. And then we do have weather and what we call weather insurance. If there's rain on the radar, we will move the day at no extra cost to the client.
- [11:55]
Guy Raz
Anthony, I have a question for you. You mentioned that you're in Los Angeles and Miami and San Diego and a few other places. So your question is around how can we invest in entrepreneurs who want to operate these for us? Are you doing any of that right now or you and your partner running all these events in these different cities?
- [12:12]
Anthony Cortez
We are doing it right now, slowly. So the majority of our business, of course, is in L. A because of the love for film there and the we. So we do have a really great operations manager Leanne there that manages all of SoCal. And then I'm here, kind of expanding into Florida and working on that. My goal is to expand to all major cities kind of in the same business model where we give a salary and then a percentage of net profit to each partner.
- [12:39]
Guy Raz
Got it. Okay.
- [12:40]
Jonah Peretti
When you're thinking about these entrepreneurs who are doing it in other cities, what is it that keeps them from just, just, just going rogue and doing their own outdoor event? And like, what do they get from you that makes it feel like a no brainer to work with you instead of just kind of doing it independently?
- [12:59]
Anthony Cortez
Yeah, that's a great question. So luckily, because my business partner has the experience in property management, he's managed a few buildings. We've been lucky to really kind of know how to get fully insured with these properties that are on a national level. So we pretty much already have clientele as we open in each market. It's a really low risk for us and also the partners. So I'm wondering if that's the best way to do it or just having a team that. And we kind of manage it from, you know, wherever we are.
- [13:29]
Guy Raz
You know, we've done a few episodes over the years about franchise businesses and we did one recently on Wingstop and what they did well and why. Wingstop today is 3,000 locations around the world. It's the biggest, you know, chicken wings brand in the world. Why it worked was for three reasons. It was simple, a simple idea, just chicken wings. They created a replicable system and then eventually a brand. And you don't need all three of these things at first, but you do need the first two. You need a simple model and you need a replicable system. And it's the same story if you look at Dave's Hot Chicken or Five Guys and I'm talking about food, because when we think about franchises, oftentimes it's restaurants and. And so have you created a system or are you working on a system that can be replicated that is very clear and that has a whole operations manual and it's just a kind of a turnkey thing?
- [14:29]
Anthony Cortez
Yeah, we have. And with just like I always hear on this podcast, everything comes with lessons. So we have gone through a lot that we've documented and we've come up with solutions. We're also working with AI to create a training system that they can just log on through our website and learn how to set up a motionflix event within a few hours. And so we are trying to come up with those systems to make it something that we can duplicate easily in each market.
- [14:55]
Jonah Peretti
Yeah, I think this would be very hard, but if you could figure out a more real time way of being able to quickly spin up a movie experience that feels like something that is, could be pretty exciting and defensible, where like there's going to be a good weather day, you know, three days from now, and you have organizations or real estate or places that, you know, you can quickly spin this up and people get an alert that some iconic movie is going to show or some special thing is going to show. And it kind of like happens in this way that feels magical and fast and surprising and spontaneous. I love that. But it also might open up when there's gaps or extra. The way a pop up store will take advantage of real estate between one lease and another, they'll find a spot where they get really cheap real estate in a cool spot and do a pop up. Is there a way to make this almost like a real time platform where you're able to do this and people can connect to it and grab it and use it for the screening idea they have, no matter where they are in the country to make something happen quickly?
- [16:07]
Anthony Cortez
Yeah, that's a great idea.
- [16:08]
Guy Raz
So like a platform, like an Airbnb type platform. I mean, it's interesting because you could imagine that your business could become an events business down the road where movies are just one of the things that you're doing. Right. And so your question is about like, how do you scale this? And it sounds like right now the model you're kind of leaning towards is sort of like a, a company owned hub. Right. Where you guys own the cities, but you have people who are employees, you train them and they run it, which is definitely a model. I mean, there are other ways to do it. You could, you could find people who want to invest a small amount of money, you know, sort of buy into it, and then you guys provide the brand and the systems and the relationships and, and how to book these events and then you've got some sort of revenue split. Right. Which allows you to keep control over the brand and standards without having an employee, in other words. Right. Which is a, which could be great, but it's also a liability.
- [17:09]
Anthony Cortez
Yeah.
- [17:09]
Guy Raz
There's also a licensing model where you can just license it out, but that's riskier because the people who operate it may not operate it to the standards that you guys expect and want to maintain.
- [17:21]
Anthony Cortez
Right.
- [17:21]
Jonah Peretti
And then there's the marketplace model where you basically have real estate people who say, I have this space that's suitable for this. And I get to put which dates it's open, you know, more like the Airbnb model. And then you have a set of standards that you. You have for these kinds of things. And then it's like the freelance labor, the real estate and all. And then your brand all comes together where people can do that. And then partnerships potentially with, you know, the streamers that want to. That want to show movies too. So you can have selection of which movies you might have the rights to show. And you could potentially have something where it could really scale to be massive. But you'd have the challenges of a marketplace of priming the pump and getting the demand on all the different sides of the marketplace. But it could also be something massive.
- [18:10]
Guy Raz
Yeah, it's great. I mean, look, in person events, there's a lot of. In an era of sort of disaggregation and everybody kind of plugged into their computers. I'm sure, you know, there's a lot of talk and excitement about the future of live events. And I think that there's something to that because people do want to connect, they want to be around other people. So. And it sounds like you are leaning towards what? Towards. Towards actually having people as employees in cities around the country, training them and having them run the business in different cities.
- [18:43]
Anthony Cortez
Yeah, so I guess it's kind of my passion because I was given the opportunity when I was younger to have my first business and someone invested in me. So it's kind of more of a passion thing. And I wonder if that's really something that is scalable, is giving an opportunity to people that want to start their own business. And we put up the upfront cost because it's so low to start motion flicks in a location. And so it's kind of more like a passion. But I don't know if that's something that's scalable or a good way to.
- [19:12]
Guy Raz
I mean, a franchise model can scale very quickly. It's very risky and it requires a whole lot of work to maintain control over it. But it can be really successful and it can be a really fast way to scale a business. But you really have to have a clear brand. Right. People need to know very quickly what motion flicks means. It's going to mean great snacks and popcorn and comfortable seats and a really great sound system. If it means all those things, you have to really establish that in a bigger way.
- [19:44]
Anthony Cortez
Yeah, totally.
- [19:45]
Jonah Peretti
Early on.
- [19:46]
Anthony Cortez
Definitely.
- [19:48]
Guy Raz
Jonah, final thoughts for Anthony.
- [19:52]
Jonah Peretti
Just a random little extra idea, which is you should do One in the middle of winter, serve soup.
- [19:58]
Anthony Cortez
I love that.
- [19:59]
Guy Raz
Yeah. Blankets. Yeah.
- [20:00]
Jonah Peretti
It gets some social media pickup if, you know, these people went and picked the coldest day of the year.
- [20:07]
Guy Raz
Heat lamps, blankets, marshmallows, like a Buffalo
- [20:10]
Jonah Peretti
Bills game, but for a movie.
- [20:13]
Anthony Cortez
I love that. That's a great idea. I'm gonna do that. Thank you.
- [20:16]
Guy Raz
Anthony Cortez. A company's called motionflix. Thanks for calling in. Good luck.
- [20:20]
Anthony Cortez
Thank you so much. I just wanted to also say that I had this on my goal board to be on this podcast before you guys even had the advice line. And I was like, there's I'll be on this podcast because I know it's usually really established founders. So this is a full circle moment for me. So thank you so much.
- [20:33]
Guy Raz
Awesome. Well, thanks for calling in. Yeah, I mean, you've talked about this too, Jonah, about live events. You're really bullish on this, right? Like in person events.
- [20:42]
Jonah Peretti
I think that you can embrace AI and use it in products, but you also can counter program AI, which is people are sick of just digital experiences and want to connect with other people in the real world. And it's also scarce. You know, if all of a sudden software is sort of infinite and anyone can make Vibe code anything, then what becomes scarce? And it's spending time with real people in the world. And so I definitely think it's a good, a good area where there's going to be a lot of growth.
- [21:11]
Guy Raz
We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raz, and we've got the answers right here on the advice line on how I built this lab.
- [21:22]
Melissa Bermudez
Foreign.
- [21:35]
Guy Raz
Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Jonah Peretti. He's the founder and CEO of buzzfeed, and we are taking your calls. And let's bring in our next caller. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.
- [21:51]
Jonah Peretti
Hi, Guy.
- [21:51]
Andrew Bruce
Hi, Jonah.
- [21:52]
Guy Raz
Hello.
- [21:53]
Andrew Bruce
I'm a longtime listener and very excited to be on. My name is Andrew Bruce. I'm based out of San Francisco and the founder of CatSumo, which is a pet company focused on helping cats live longer, healthier lives through products that encourage play and relaxation, while also strengthening the bond between cats and their owners.
- [22:12]
Guy Raz
Okay, so cat products company. Tell me about your products.
- [22:15]
Andrew Bruce
Yeah, so the first product is an interactive cat wrestling glove that allows you to socially play with your cat it's like a puppet. Yep, yep, exactly.
- [22:27]
Guy Raz
Okay.
- [22:27]
Andrew Bruce
So I stumbled upon the idea in large part due to my parents, who have historically and somewhat ironically been ardent dog people. So I grew up in Kalispell, Montana, and as a family, we raised a litter of six Australian shepherds. And I have really fond memories of roughhousing with them as puppies. So it came as a complete shock when in 2023, my parents, they were traveling abroad in Greece. They called me and say, hey. And so we've fallen in love with a feral Greek kitten. We want to rescue her. Do you want her? And I graciously accepted. And a couple months after living with her, I realized just like those Australian shepherd puppies, she wanted to roughhouse. She was jumping at my legs, jumping at my hands and arms, and I realized I would like a toy to play with her.
- [23:12]
Guy Raz
Right. Harder. With a cat because you're gonna get scratched quite.
- [23:15]
Andrew Bruce
Yeah, yeah.
- [23:16]
Guy Raz
So this glove, it protects your. I'm looking at it now on your website. So it's like a. It looks like a cat and it's. Your company's called Catsumo. This is called the cat sumo, like a sumo wrestler. And I see it's got like catnip in it. So the cat's going for your cat sumo wrestler because it's attracted the catnip.
- [23:33]
Andrew Bruce
Yeah, yeah. So it's loaded with, you know, stimulants so that there are like mess free catnip bags that you can easily replace in seven locations. And I put some crinkle material in the ears and then you can manipulate the legs and the mouth. And it has realistic features. So it really does intrigue cats.
- [23:50]
Guy Raz
Cool. Tell me, so you started this business?
- [23:52]
Andrew Bruce
When I launched, the website was live November of 2023, and I had a viral video go December 31st of that year and left my full time job in April of last year.
- [24:07]
Guy Raz
Wow. What were you doing?
- [24:08]
Andrew Bruce
I was doing mechanical engineering and medical device.
- [24:12]
Guy Raz
Wow. So this has really taken off. Tell me how you're. And your sales are almost entirely through your website.
- [24:18]
Andrew Bruce
Yeah, so last year I was selling through my website at the beginning of the year and then got on Amazon and closed out the year doing around $1.2 million in sales.
- [24:29]
Guy Raz
Amazing. And these are. And you're working with a contract manufacturer in Asia, presumably?
- [24:34]
Andrew Bruce
Yes.
- [24:34]
Anthony Cortez
Yep.
- [24:35]
Guy Raz
Nice. Okay. So 1.2 million sales. Congrats. You quit your job. Before we dive in further, what's your question for us?
- [24:42]
Andrew Bruce
Yeah, so when you create a new product category and competitors quickly follow, what matters most for actually Owning that category long term.
- [24:51]
Guy Raz
Got it. Okay. Jonah Parde, I want to bring you in. Thoughts or questions for Andrew.
- [24:57]
Jonah Peretti
It's a really good question, especially with physical products because it is very common. People can go find the same factory and other companies can kind of mimic what you're doing and sell things for cheaper and undercut what you're doing. And so. So it's hard to keep your margins intact when that happens. A few possible ways to do it. Building a really strong brand, building community where people are subscribing to something, maybe connecting with each other. Good marketing where you're constantly hacking the attention economy, where you have new ways to get viral distribution, you know, some kind of membership or subscription based program where maybe you buy the product but you are subscribed to your catnip delivery or new additions or new changes or new toy, you know, or even a subscription box where a subscription. Where you get new cat things every month so that you have the customer for longer. But it is the right thing to think about because there's a weird dynamic of this kind of super connected viral Internet which is that oftentimes people have their best year of sales the first year because there's novelty and it goes viral and then it's like what do you do the second year and the third year? And it used to be you'd slowly build a business and it would take three years before you got any traction. And that felt like painfully slow. But it also had more forecastability and predictability. And I think within a kind of more viral Internet you need to figure out how do you either keep going viral or how do you lock in core customers into a tighter community or subscriber.
- [26:39]
Guy Raz
Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, Andrew, I'm sure you are aware that I just did a quick search here on Amazon. If you type in Katsumo, there are knockoffs. And that's a challenge, especially for a small business to try and fight. I mean, you can spend a lot of time and money trying to fight it, but what you have is a memorable name and a funny kind of viral product. And as you know, in, in this business, speed matters sometimes. Actually all the time, more than perfection, right? Because it's a, this was a viral product. And so the winners aren't always the best or the cheapest products. It's the ones that are moving fastest. And I think now you really need to hit the gas on, as Jonas said, new versions, maybe bigger or smaller versions for other kinds of pets, for dogs, maybe limited drops, like different colors of the cat. Or themes. Maybe that's really what you want to lean into.
- [27:41]
Andrew Bruce
Yeah, no, I completely agree. I actually just got back from China and was designing a few accessories to release this year and plan on building out with product variations and having certain product lines in the coming year. But I also wanted to ask you both and, Jonah, you're in the news industry. Is there an opportunity here to have people partake in the community where we start to prop up cats and their owners? And you could buy into some sort of feed, or it would be basically wrestling footage. We cat enthusiasts are really fun to work with. I mean, it's been so fulfilling working with a lot of these creators and hearing customer feedback come back, and I want to somehow harness that.
- [28:30]
Jonah Peretti
I mean, I think what you're getting at is if you buy a Catsumo product, you'll also get to be part of this media experience where people are posting their cats and you might post your cat and you're part of more of a community.
- [28:43]
Andrew Bruce
Right.
- [28:44]
Jonah Peretti
If that becomes more of a thing, then the competitor product, you don't get that. You know, there's not the network, there's not the community, then that's more enduring. And so sometimes it can be the media channels and the customer feeling like, oh, I'm going to get featured on the Katsuma page or, you know, whereas the. Whatever, knockoff Karate cat is just like a cheap product that I buy, but I'm not part of something bigger.
- [29:15]
Andrew Bruce
Yes, precisely.
- [29:16]
Jonah Peretti
One other thing on the media front is you could have a Katsumo cam in the glove.
- [29:21]
Guy Raz
Oh, yeah.
- [29:22]
Jonah Peretti
It broadcasts video of the fights and
- [29:24]
Guy Raz
then a GoPro inside the. Inside the glove.
- [29:27]
Jonah Peretti
Yeah, yeah. Like a little camera. And then that could go into a feed where you just have, like, a webpage that just has an endless feed of. Of what people are doing with them.
- [29:38]
Andrew Bruce
So I've done it. I cut a little hole in the head of one and then put a little insta360 go camera there. And I've only posted one video of it, but it performed pretty well, and it's very entertaining to watch.
- [29:50]
Jonah Peretti
And that could be a way to build the little media network that creates community.
- [29:55]
Guy Raz
That's cool. The brand is called Katsumo. Andrew, Bruce, good luck. Thanks for calling in.
- [29:59]
Andrew Bruce
Thanks so much for having me.
- [30:01]
Guy Raz
Okay, next up after the break, another caller with another business challenge. Hi, I'm Guy Raz, and we're answering your business questions right here on the advice line on how I built this lab. Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz and today I'm taking calls with BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti. Jonah, what do you say? Should we bring our next caller?
- [30:38]
Jonah Peretti
Let's do it.
- [30:39]
Guy Raz
Welcome to the advice line. You're on with Jonah Peretti, founder of BuzzFeed. Tell us your name, where you're calling from and just a little bit about your business.
- [30:45]
Melissa Bermudez
Hi Guy. Hi Jonah. My name is Melissa Bermudez and I'm calling from Newburyport, Massachusetts. I'm the co founder and CEO of Unrefined Foods. We make mornings easier for busy families with farm to freezer nutrition they can trust. Our frozen muffins are just like homemade but better loaded with stone milled organic grains, real fruits and veggies, just a little maple syrup and they're ready to eat.
- [31:08]
Guy Raz
All right, thanks for calling in. So Melissa, and what makes them different from, I don't know, like a, you know, another muffin that you would buy.
- [31:16]
Melissa Bermudez
So there are not many frozen muffins in the grocery store that are ready to eat. So we make everything with 100% organic stone milled grains. So that means we're truly taking a wheat berry, which in our opinion is the original superfood. Milling it, keeping all the nutrition and flavor of the entire grain intact and taking that fresh flour, putting it in our muffins and a ton of other really great ingredients you'd use at home if you were trying to make power muffins like olive oil again, real fruits and veggies, maple syrup, whole milk eggs. And unbelievably, there's nothing else like it in the grocery store that we are aware of.
- [31:54]
Guy Raz
And tell me, how long have you guys been around?
- [31:57]
Melissa Bermudez
Yeah, we started just over a year ago. We launched right around the holidays. 20 all direct to consumer and farmers markets. And we've been in wholesale for about eight months now.
- [32:11]
Guy Raz
And so wholesale meaning you're selling what kinds of stores are these? Small local co ops.
- [32:15]
Melissa Bermudez
Exactly. Yep, small independent retailers. We're really close to Boston so there's a lot of home delivery services that we also sell to and that's really how we want to grow. We did direct to consumer. As a frozen product, it's a little tricky. I did actually used to work in frozen meat, so the logistics of delivering are pretty straightforward for me locally we've been able to learn a ton through that. But to meet pretty much our ambitious vision and goals, we really do want to grow through wholesale.
- [32:45]
Guy Raz
And right now or in your first full year, how'd you guys do in
- [32:48]
Melissa Bermudez
sales we did about $30,000 in sales in 2025. And that was mostly direct to consumer through the website. Exactly. Yep.
- [32:57]
Guy Raz
All right, Melissa, before we dive in further, what's your question for us?
- [33:00]
Melissa Bermudez
Yeah. At a time when so many companies are competing for the attention of our target customer, busy parents, how should we think about crafting our message in a way that stands out and really importantly, gets people talking?
- [33:13]
Guy Raz
Okay, Jonah Peretti, a lot to think about here. First of all, thoughts or more questions for Melissa.
- [33:20]
Jonah Peretti
How do you defrost them? Like, I know, you know, toaster waffles and things like that you defrost, but like, how do you defrost a muffin?
- [33:28]
Melissa Bermudez
Super easily. So they're all individually packaged the way we sell them. You throw them into a lunchbox, they're ready to go by snack time. Or you can throw them in the microwave or the toaster and feed your family anytime.
- [33:41]
Guy Raz
Yeah. Cool.
- [33:42]
Jonah Peretti
Yeah. And the other thing, I think it is really hard to get people to talk about muffins. You know, I know people might talk about recipes and things like that, but, like, in terms of the idea of something going viral, you're competing for attention against, you know, what I call snarf, which is, you know, content that provokes anger and fear and is super novel and super high stakes. And if you want to get organic distribution, you need to find things that are pretty novel, surprising, that might even shock people. So it's a tricky question, like, how could you make muffins surprising and novel and polarizing and exciting to people on social media?
- [34:32]
Guy Raz
I think that's interesting. I think your other challenge, but I think it's surmountable, is you're in the education business here, right? Because there are a million healthy options, right? Healthy is a really jammed category. Healthy foods, healthy this, clean, organic. And so just calling them healthy or clean is not going to be enough. I think really what you want to focus on is I'm a parent. I couldn't find anything I trusted to feed my kids, so I had to make them myself. And then you really want to start to educate consumers about things that might seem plainly obvious to you but are not to many people in the stores. For example, you are milling your own grains, Right. And I think you mentioned you're using stone mills, is that right? Yeah, exactly. Most people don't know that by milling grain in stone mills, you preserve more of the nutrients of the wheat berry. But really what you want to do is use any channels you can social media, ideally to start to explain to people what's the difference between milling a wheat berry yourself versus a big muffin manufacturer. I would make videos where you see, you open up the muffin and you show people what it looks like inside and why you can deliver. Like you just mentioned why you are able to deliver more nutrients, as you argue, in the form of a muffin, an easily consumable product, than just a sugar bomb that somebody might be buying at Starbucks or something.
- [35:59]
Jonah Peretti
Yeah, but if you want to be financially successful in this venture, you should also slowly increase the amount of sugar in the muffins over time so that you first get a reputation for being really healthy. And then each year there's just a little more sugar, just a little bit more, a little more. You know, it's a trend that you see again and again and again in the food space. You see this like, like creeping in even of companies where the founders are well intentioned. Slowly they're like, oh, to compete I gotta add a little more. Eventually you're eating cake.
- [36:33]
Guy Raz
I would not recommend that path, Melissa. I think there's enough of a market, it may not be an enormous one, but enough of a market that would be interested in what you're going after. What I think is interesting, where you have an opportunity is your brand is called unrefined foods, it's not called muffins. Right. And so I imagine that you want to use the same principle around stone ground grains, wheat. Right. And create other food products, right?
- [36:59]
Melissa Bermudez
Yeah, exactly.
- [37:00]
Guy Raz
Crackers or cookies or other things that you would make out of grains.
- [37:06]
Melissa Bermudez
Exactly, yeah. I like those ideas a lot. And we have really struggled about this. Like, is this for kids, is this for busy families? The more I've been in the market, I really believe it's also moms who are not feeding themselves and need a product like this. This because yes, there's something we need to do to get folks talking and realizing this is for them. Because I know it's a crowded space and I also know when I talk to our target customer, they're like, there is nothing like this. This is exactly what I need for my family. And trying to just figure out how we convey that for those customers are like, oh yes, this is exactly what I wanted you to make for me. Yeah, that's what we're trying to figure out.
- [37:49]
Guy Raz
You know, one thought I had was I'm looking at your nutritional values and you've got a lot of fiber, over 30% of daily recommended fiber, 9 grams. Still a lot of fiber. And if you could put that on the front of the package so right now, the package doesn't tell me. It tells me almost nothing about what you're describing. It just says stone milled wheat. It doesn't say real and nourishing. Doesn't mean anything. It would almost want to see like a little cartoon drawing of you on the front with like a little bubble that says, I couldn't find nutritionally powerhouse packed food, so I had to make it myself. And then maybe on the back of the box you got a little story. Not everybody reads that, but you may want to really emphasize the fiber on the front. And you could add protein. You could make them high fiber or high protein muffins. Think about a brand like chomps. We've done chomps on this show. These are meat sticks. They are grass fed Slim Jims. Right. The guys that created that brand were really targeting men who were going to the gym who wanted a hit of protein. The majority of their customers are moms on the go. Moms. And that's what they started to see very rapidly. So they really started to see that shift early on. And it also changed how they messaged the product. So, of course, men and women are buying the products, but most of their customers are moms on the go. So if you start to think about that customer, well, what's going to appeal to them? It's things like fiber and protein. Right. And so, you know, low sugar, high fiber, high protein. I would really think about emphasizing that on the front of the box.
- [39:30]
Melissa Bermudez
Yeah.
- [39:30]
Jonah Peretti
Another kind of idea is, is there a way to package what you're selling that has a little bit of novelty or brings a little bit of extra value? Like, for example, could you have little messages or poems or something on the bottom of the wrapper so you drop it in your kid's lunchbox and each day they get a different little fortune cookie or a muffin message on the bottom, something like that. Or could the customer actually have a little tool that lets them personalize the messages so that, you know, and using some kind of printing on demand or something like that, where they could have their muffins stamped with the message they want to send to their kids? Something that makes. That adds to the narrative and the story and makes them stand out even more.
- [40:17]
Guy Raz
Yeah, for sure. Melissa Bermudez. The brand is called the Unrefined Foods Company. Thanks for calling in. Good luck.
- [40:23]
Melissa Bermudez
Yeah, thank you so much. This has been a really special opportunity. Appreciate it.
- [40:29]
Guy Raz
Jonah, before I let you go, a question that I ask everybody who comes onto the advice line, which is if you were you know, with 20 years now of experience running this business, if you could go back to where you were in 2006 when you were just starting out BuzzFeed, and you could give yourself some advice, knowing what you know now, you know, 20 years on, what would have been helpful for you to know back then,
- [40:50]
Jonah Peretti
I feel like advice is somewhat overrated. It's like, there's these moments in time when the world opens up and there's possibilities to create new things, and they're kind of rare, and you have to be in the right place. And reading all of the. I'm not trying to, like, take a shot at some of your audience. Audience, but, like, reading everything about founders and knowing everything about, like. And sometimes I've seen that lead to paralysis, where people. People have trouble just getting obsessed with something that they notice in their life and just throwing themselves into it because they can't help themselves because they're obsessed with it. And I'm happy that when I was young, I got obsessed with, you know, how did things go viral on the Internet. And I, like, followed that path because I think. Think there's only. You need a confluence of something that you're truly obsessed with and an opening in the world where that thing can be something bigger. And, you know, there's a million tactical things that if I had a time machine, I could, you know, like, not. Not do a SPAC acquisition where we take on a bunch of debt, you know, before and go public without raising capital. That was that. I would tell my younger self not to do that, but we're digging our way out of that. Out of that particular predicament. And the important thing is that you find a path that is truly something where you can't help yourself doing it. Not that you've thought about every option and are pursuing the one that you think is the best option. It usually doesn't work that way.
- [42:20]
Guy Raz
Yeah. Jonah, thanks so much for coming on the show.
- [42:23]
Jonah Peretti
Thanks for having me. It's fun.
- [42:24]
Guy Raz
That's Jonah Peretti, founder and CEO of BuzzFeed. And by the way, if you haven't heard Jonah's original How I Built this episode, you should go back and check it out. Give it a listen. We'll put a link to it in the show Notes. And here is one of my favorite moments from that interview.
- [42:39]
Jonah Peretti
I come out and Ariana's having breakfast. So then we have our meeting. She's talking about, you know, what she wants to do, what she wants. I don't even really remember. It just was kind of, you know, it was like, she was charming and smart and, you know, fun to talk to. And then a little while later she's like, you have to meet Phil Angelini. She's running for governor of California. And then like, Ariana's introducing me to Philangelini's, but Ariana is like, is like introducing me to Phil Angelini's. And he's like, he should be your head of digital, you know.
- [43:09]
Guy Raz
And I'm like, what? Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free@guyraz.com each week. It's packed with tons of insights from entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever. And if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one minute message that tells us about your business, the issues or questions you'd like help with, and hopefully we can help you with them. And make sure to tell us how to reach you. You can send us a voice memo@hibtid.wondery.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there and we'll put all this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Kathryn Cipher, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Casey Herman, and our audio engineer was Kwesi Lee. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, Carla Estevez, J.C. howard, Chris Masini, Carrie Thompson, Neva Grant, John Isabella, and Sam Paulson. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to How I Built this.