198 - They Built a $490M Business with NO Money (using this one move) - Making It with Jon Davids

Episode 198 Summary: "They Built a $490M Business with NO Money (using this one move)"

Podcast: Making It with Jon Davids
Host: Jon Davids
Release Date: June 24, 2025
Episode Title: They Built a $490M Business with NO Money (using this one move)

Introduction

In Episode 198 of Making It with Jon Davids, host Jon Davids delves into the remarkable journey of Pete and Rashid, the entrepreneurial minds behind Chomps—a company that transformed humble meat sticks into a $490 million business without significant initial funding. This episode unpacks their strategic moves, the challenges they faced, and the invaluable business lessons that aspiring entrepreneurs can glean from their story.

The Genesis of Chomps

[00:00] Jon Davids:
“These guys sell meat sticks, and last year they made $490 million. But it took a while and they made a lot of mistakes on the way. Their names are Pete and Rashid and they run a company called Chomps.”

Jon introduces Pete and Rashid, highlighting their initial venture into the meat stick market. The idea was born out of Pete’s experience as a personal trainer in 2012, where he noticed his clients’ struggle to find healthy, convenient snacks. This observation led to the creation of Chomps—a brand dedicated to offering clean, protein-rich meat sticks.

Building the Brand: Early Struggles and Breakthroughs

Pete and Rashid began with a modest investment of $6,500, which they used to develop their product, establish a basic e-commerce presence, and execute low-budget marketing strategies, including Facebook ads and influencer outreach.

Sales Trajectory:

Year 1: $35,000
Year 3: $400,000

Their persistence began to pay off as sales steadily increased. However, the pivotal moment came unexpectedly when Trader Joe's expressed interest in piloting Chomps in one of their stores. Despite being a lesser-known brand, Trader Joe's was intrigued by the product's potential.

The Game-Changing Move: The Free Fill Strategy

[12:30] Jon Davids:
“Trader Joe's can sell Chomps at zero cost. And if it works, they can buy more. It's called a free fill.”

Pete made a bold move by offering Trader Joe's a "free fill"—providing a full store's worth of inventory at no cost. This strategy eliminated the risk for Trader Joe's, allowing them to test the product without any financial commitment. The result was immediate and astounding:

[15:45] Jon Davids:
“Chomps sells out at Trader Joe's in just a few hours on the shelf.”

This successful pilot led to a massive surge in sales, catapulting Chomps from $400,000 to $4.3 million within the year. The partnership with Trader Joe's opened doors to other major retailers like Whole Foods, Thrive Market, and Walmart, propelling Chomps into mainstream retail and leading to their eventual nine-figure revenue milestone by 2020.

Key Business Lessons

1. Remove Friction in Deals

Pete’s free fill offer exemplifies the importance of removing barriers to entry for potential partners. By eliminating the financial risk, Pete made it an irresistible proposition for Trader Joe's.

[25:10] Jon Davids:
“He knows they're hesitant, so he removes every reason they have to say no. And it works.”

This approach mirrors strategies used by successful companies like Dropbox and Casper, which focus on reducing customer hesitation to adopt their products.

2. Masterful Positioning

Chomps didn’t just sell meat sticks; they redefined the category. By positioning their product in premium retail environments and associating it with health-conscious, urban consumers, they differentiated themselves from traditional, gas station-bound meat sticks like Slim Jim.

[42:20] Jon Davids:
“It is masterful positioning. It's reframing and redefining the category.”

Chomps emphasized attributes like being clean, portable, and functional, aligning with modern wellness trends and appealing to a niche yet expanding market segment.

3. Counter Positioning Against Established Brands

Entering a market with established players necessitates a unique positioning strategy. Chomps effectively countered the existing market perception by associating their product with premium health standards rather than the mass-market, impulse-buy image.

[47:35] Jon Davids:
“You need to counter position. If not, you're just offering another option to the thing that already exists.”

This tactic ensures that the brand stands out and appeals to a specific target audience that values quality and health over convenience.

Financial Journey: Bootstrapping to Valuation

Pete and Rashid’s financial strategy was rooted in bootstrapping—starting with minimal investment and reinvesting profits to fuel growth. Over two years, they scaled from $35,000 to $400,000 in sales through relentless reinvestment and strategic marketing.

Significant Financial Milestones:

Initial Investment: $6,500 from Pete and Rashid
Short-Term Debt: Raised around $1 million from family and friends to fund the Trader Joe's free fill
2022: Sold a minority stake to Stride Consumer Partners for $80 million

[55:50] Jon Davids:
“And that's how Pete and Rasheed self-funded this business to a valuation of probably somewhere between 200 and $300 million today.”

Jon anticipates a potential acquisition by a mega food company within the next few years, projecting a valuation upwards of $600 million to $1 billion.

Positioning Deep Dive

Jon elaborates on the concept of market positioning, emphasizing its critical role in Chomps' success. Positioning involves shaping the consumer’s perception of the product through various facets like packaging, pricing, and retail placement.

Key Elements of Chomps’ Positioning:

Retail Partners: Placement in premium stores like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods.
Product Attributes: High-protein, low-carb, clean ingredients.
Target Audience: Health-conscious, urban consumers, such as Whole30 adherents and fitness enthusiasts.

[38:15] Jon Davids:
“Positioning is the story people tell themselves about your product before you say anything at all. And positioning is not one thing. It's actually the result of a bunch of little things.”

By meticulously crafting each element of their brand, Chomps created a compelling narrative that resonated with their target market, setting them apart from traditional meat stick brands.

Future Outlook and Conclusion

As of June 2025, Chomps stands as a testament to effective bootstrapping, strategic positioning, and innovative deal-making. Jon envisions continued growth and a probable acquisition, which would not only reward Pete and Rashid but also validate their business acumen.

[1:02:10] Jon Davids:
“That brand's growing super, super fast. And you know what? If that happens, it means they're going to make a whole lot of money.”

Jon concludes by celebrating Pete and Rashid’s journey, highlighting their perseverance, strategic thinking, and the importance of treating every customer interaction as a potential game-changer.

Key Takeaways

Eliminate Barriers: Making it easy for partners and customers to engage with your product can lead to exponential growth.
Strategic Positioning: Differentiate your product by redefining category norms and aligning with your target audience’s values.
Bootstrapping and Reinvestment: Starting with minimal funds and reinvesting profits can sustainably scale a business.
Leverage Opportunities: Be prepared to seize unexpected opportunities, as they can become pivotal moments in your business trajectory.
Customer Focus: Treat every customer interaction with utmost importance, as it could lead to significant business milestones.

Notable Quotes

Jon Davids [00:00]: “These guys sell meat sticks, and last year they made $490 million.”
Jon Davids [25:10]: “He knows they're hesitant, so he removes every reason they have to say no. And it works.”
Jon Davids [42:20]: “It is masterful positioning. It's reframing and redefining the category.”
Jon Davids [47:35]: “You need to counter position. If not, you're just offering another option to the thing that already exists.”
Jon Davids [55:50]: “And that's how Pete and Rasheed self-funded this business to a valuation of probably somewhere between 200 and $300 million today.”
Jon Davids [1:02:10]: “That brand's growing super, super fast. And you know what? If that happens, it means they're going to make a whole lot of money.”

Final Thoughts

Pete and Rashid’s journey with Chomps is an inspiring example of how strategic thinking, resilience, and innovative approaches can transform a simple product into a market leader. By removing friction, mastering positioning, and relentlessly pursuing their vision, they built a thriving business from the ground up. Aspiring entrepreneurs can learn valuable lessons from their story, particularly the power of strategic positioning and the importance of seizing pivotal opportunities.

For more insights and stories from successful entrepreneurs, subscribe to Making It with Jon Davids and join the community of innovators shaping the future of business.

Transcript

John Davids (0:00)

These guys sell meat sticks, and last year they made $490 million. But it took a while and they made a lot of mistakes on the way. Their names are Pete and Rashid and they run a company called Chomps. I'm going to tell you exactly how they did it and some big business lessons that you can get from their story. That's coming up in just a sec. Welcome to the podcast. My name's John Davids, but you all can call me J.D. i'm the CEO of Influicity, and on this podcast I like to share the stories of some of my favorite business and the people behind them. If that's your thing, go ahead and subscribe. Wherever you're listening to this, share the show with a friend and leave a review. That's how I know to keep making these things. Get my best stuff to your inbox@johndavids.com and now let's get to the show. You're listening to Making it with John Davidson. So let's go all the way back to the year 2012. Pete's living in Florida. He's working as a personal trainer. He's helping clients lose weight, get fit, and eat clean. But that last part is a bit of a problem. You see, Pete's clients are busy people, and they're grabbing whatever snacks they can find, usually stuff that's loaded with preservatives, sugars, and seed oils. Not too good for you. And he wants them to grab something better. So he teams up with his buddy Rasheed, and the two of them get to work. The guys draft a checklist of their perfect healthy snack, all the things that they would want to eat. So they come up with the perfect snack. And it looks something like this. Number one, it's got to be portable. It's got to be something that's easy for gym bags, lunchboxes, road trips. You can just grab and go. Number two, it's got to be shelf stable. You, you've got to be able to eat it hot or cold, no refrigeration needed. And number three, it's got to be good for you. High in protein, low in carbs, no junk included, none of that bad stuff. So they're thinking and thinking, and finally they land on meat sticks. And then they give it a name. Chomps. Now the guys scrape together $6,500, all the money they have to get this thing off the ground. And now it's time to really start hustling. So the crew starts selling these meat sticks online. They're running Facebook ads They're sending sticks to influencers, anyone who will take them and talk about them on Social. But it's a very slow start. In the first year, sales are about $35,000. And a couple years later they get to $400,000. And they're grinding and grinding. And then something kind of wild happens. They get a phone call from trader Joe's. And TJ's wants to pilot Chomps in one of their stores. But they're a bit nervous. After all, this brand is kind of invisible. No one's ever heard of these meat sticks. And Trader Joe's doesn't want to take a risk. They don't want to take a flyer on a brand no one's ever heard of. So Pete shoots his shot. He offers the meat for free. He makes them a deal they really can't refuse. Trader Joe's can sell Chomps at zero cost. And if it works, they can buy more. It's called a free fill. I'll talk more about that in a second. Anyways, Trader Joe says yes, it's a done deal and it pays off. Chomp sells out at Trader Joe's in just a few hours on the shelf. So Trader Joe's orders more. And this stick is about to explode. Sales that year spiked to $4.3 million, up from only $400,000. And then the phone starts ringing. Everybody wants to carry this protein snack. Whole Foods thrive market. Walmart sprouts meat sticks start trending as a good for you snack. And Chomps are the biggest stick on the shelf. In 2020, sales cross $100 million. These guys are in the nine figure club. And they haven't slowed down since. Pete and Rasheed put a fresh spin on a very old category. I mean, after all, meat sticks aren't new. Slim Jim was selling them 100 years ago. But Chomps made them cool. Instead of gas stations, these guys went to whole foods. Instead of processed, these guys went premium, blending clean convenience with functional food. And that's how you make $490 million selling meat sticks. Alright, so y' all loved this story when I shared it on my social Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, and of course my newsletter. And so many of you eat Chomps. Hell, I do too. I have one probably three, four times a week. Probably have some in the studio here somewhere. This is such a good story of bootstrapping a company and doing it the right way, being patient. And I want to get into the thick of this story and talk about some of the big lessons. So let's zoom out and take a look at the first big turning point in this story. This episode is brought to you by my new tool, the 1 Minute Marketing Roadmap, available at John Day. It's a fully customized report that shows you how people are finding you online and where you're losing sales. We've packed 10 years of research at Influicity into a smart AI powered tool that delivers real results. I'll tell you things about your business you probably haven't thought of. Go to johndavids.comroadmap and get your custom report. That's johndavids.com roadmap. So it's 2015. Chomps is about two or three years in and they're sitting at roughly $400,000 in sales, all direct to consumer on their own site and I guess on Amazon. But they're not in any retail nationally and they've been running ads on Facebook. They're sending samples out to influencers, social media. They're really in hustle mode trying to build out this D2C business and build a brand new. Now they're also heavily pitching retailers at this time and there's zero traction, which makes a lot of sense. You have to remember the meat stick category at this time is really just Slim Jim. And Slim Jim is a gas station brand, it's a vending machine brand. There's no premium meat stick category. Consumers aren't aware of this category. It doesn't have that Whole30 mom vibe just yet. And then around this time in 2015, a teenage girl tries Chomps and she loves it. And then this girl shares it with her dad and he loves it too. Now, I don't know what the girl's name was. I'm not sure what the dad's name was, but I do know that he's an executive at Trader Joe's. And the story goes like this. This guy sees his daughter enjoying this meat stick, which again, doesn't exist as a category. So he's curious and, and he starts to wonder if this product can exist in Trader Joe's. More importantly, can the category exist at Trader Joe's? Because you guys will remember from my Trader Joe's episode, these guys are really big on category development, product development, having stuff that's new and special and different, sort of like a treasure hunt for foodies. So this is kind of up their alley, the creativity here. It's got this executive wondering. So this VP reaches out to our boys at Chomps and, and he starts asking about the product and of Course, the story at this point isn't too good, right? It's a small brand. They're sitting at $400,000 in sales. Peanuts. There's no national distribution whatsoever. They're not in retail. But this is also a huge opportunity for Pete and Rasheed. This isn't some junior category manager kicking tires. This is a senior executive, somebody with real juice giving these guys the time of day. And just so you guys know, Trader Joe's doesn't just hand out shelf space willy nilly, they're notorious. Notorious for how they maximize sales per square foot. Again, I went into all this detail in my Trader Joe's episode. These guys don't carry many outside brands either. Most of their stuff, I think it was 80 plus percent is Trader Joe's branded. And they don't test new brands very often at all. So this is a really long shot opportunity for Chomps. And. And this is where Pete will make a move that changes everything. So he offers Trader Joe's his product for free. Not as samples, not as a demo, but he offers a full store's worth of inventory for free at no cost. The term for this is a free fill. Trader Joe's can put Chomps on the shelf, sell it at full price, and keep 100% of the revenue. There's no purchase order, there's no risk. Just test it. And if it moves, we talk. If not, we walk. Now, this is not normal. Trader Joe's doesn't ask for free fills and doesn't do these deals. It's not part of their process. This is Pete flipping the dynamic. He knows they're hesitant, so he removes every reason they have to say no. And it works. They stock one store, the product hits the shelves, and it all sells out in one day. Literally a few hours. Gone. So Trader Joe's calls back, we need more of this stuff. And now they're in business. And within a year, Chomps goes from $400,000 in sales to over $4 million in sales. We got a 10 bagger in just one year. And it just keeps growing. Now, of course, this is a super lucky break we're talking about. What are the odds that a teenager tries your product and she loves it and she tells her dad, and her dad just happens to be a VP at Trader Joe's. It's obviously not part of anyone's strategy, but it's also the reason why you need to treat every sale and every customer like they're the most important customer you've ever had. Because they just might be. And Even if they're not, it really is just a good way to do business. Kind of reminds me of that Michael Jordan line when he described how he thought about every game of basketball that he played. He said something like, every night I step onto that floor, I'm playing my hardest because someone might be seeing me for the first time and I don't want them to see anything less than my best. And that's how you gotta think about business. Every single time you serve a new customer, assume it's that person's very first time doing business with you. And assume that they, or their dad or their mom or their best friend is the person who, who can take your business to the next level. Because they just might be. You never know, you might have a Chomps moment just like this. And even if not, hey, it's a good way to go through business. I also love how Pete takes the friction out of this deal entirely with Trader Joe's by offering them the free fill. It's kind of brilliant. By saying, you guys can stock my product for free and just see if it sells, he's making it a no brainer for them. This idea of proactively removing friction shows up in some of the smartest business models out there, actually. In fact, sometimes it's the wedge that many companies have used just to enter the market and steal a lot of market share early on. Think about Dropbox. I would argue that their product, when it launches back in 2008, really just removes the friction before Dropbox. File sharing is clunky, it's confusing, it's expensive, which are all points of friction. So Dropbox comes along in 2008 and just melts away the friction. Casper Mattresses did the same thing, right? This mattress company comes along and they offer like 100 nights for you to try their mattress and if you don't like it, they come and pick it up. Full refund, no awkward in store returns, no questions asked, no conversation. Totally removes the friction. Warby Parker lets you try on glasses without standing under a fluorescent light with a sales associate watching you awkwardly. Right? You can just try the glasses on at home in your kitchen, texting photos to your friend while you do it. And Chomps. Chomps does the same thing. They remove the purchase barrier altogether. They give Trader Joe's the product for free. They make it really hard to say no. And it really pays off. And that's the lesson. You know, you can almost create like a friction free wish list for your business if you can do this as an exercise. Take out a piece of paper and just say, what are all the things I could do to totally take away the friction from somebody buying my product? Take everything away and pretend that cost and resources and time, it doesn't make any difference, Right? You can do anything you want to melt the friction away and then take a cold, hard look at that list and say, okay, now what can I actually keep? And what is just impossible to do? You'd be surprised. There's probably a lot of points of friction that are keeping people from buying your product that you can just erase, delete, and business runs as usual. But you sell a whole lot more to a lot more people. I heard this story where Airbnb did something similar, and maybe they do it on a regular basis, but the idea is they say, what would the perfect Airbnb experience be? Like, well, we would send a limo to your home to pick you up. We'd fly you somewhere on a private jet. When you get there, somebody would be there to empty your bags out and feed you a meal, right? All these things, and of course, a lot of them are totally unrealistic, but at least it opens your eyes up to what's possible. And maybe there are one or two things on that list that you wouldn't have thought of before, and then they actually make sense and they become a part of your process and make your experience much more friction free. So the next thing that strikes me about the Chomps story is, is really the concept of positioning. And I'll admit, when I was back in college taking my Marketing 101 course, the idea of market positioning didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I just didn't get it. But over time, I've realized it's actually everything. I mean, market positioning is so critical. And with Chomps, it's the reason they went from a niche D2C snack brand to doing nearly a half a billion dollars a year today. So here's what positioning is in super simple terms, because I'm not that smart. It's the story people tell themselves about your product before you say anything at all. And positioning is not one thing. It's actually the result of a bunch of little things. It's based on where people see it, who's talking about it, where you overheard about this product in the first place, how it's packaged, what it's associated with. A good way to think about it is just by playing word association. This is how I do it. So if I say subway, you think $5 footlong, maybe you think lunch Break or convenience. If I say sweetgreen, you think organic kale tech enabled bowls, startup lunch crowd. Right now you can buy lunch at both of these restaurants. They're both associated with lunch in your mind, probably, if you've been to both places. But they're very different positioning. Let's try another one. If I say Bud Light, you think tailgate, frat parties, generic beer. If I say Guinness, you think Rich heritage, Irish pub. These are all points of positioning. And brands go through all sorts of exercises to come up with positioning statements. And they drop these fancy maps and charts to lay everything out. But you don't need to even do that. You guys can do it with just word association like I do. What words do people associate with your brand, with your product? Are those the words you want them associating with your stuff? If not, you've got to do some positioning. All right, so let's get back to chumps here. This brand is all about positioning. It's all about it. And more specifically, it's about counter positioning. And that's an important point. Anytime you, you're coming into a market or challenging the existing players, you need to counter position. You got to do it. If not, you're just offering another option to the thing that already exists. And probably in people's minds, it's going to be a worse option because they already like the thing they have. So traditional meat sticks have a very specific positioning. It's a gas station impulse buy, right? That's what it is when you see a Slim Jim. It's a gas station impulse buy. It's something you grab with a bottle of Coke and, and maybe you regret it halfway through eating it. That's what the product represents in a lot of people's minds. Not in everyone's mind, but certainly in the minds of a chomps buyer. So the person who buys chomps today, who's their ideal customer right now? And they probably had that person in their mind, that healthy, urban person, when they were creating the product. They thought, okay, we're going for a fast paced, busy, health conscious, maybe a millennial crowd. I'm just making some of this stuff up. I don't know exactly what their ideal customer is, but they had it in their mind. And when that person thinks of a meat stick and their mind goes to Slim Jim, they probably didn't have a great impression of it. So that's where chomps starts. And they change the frame. So they take this old school, low trust snack and they drop it in a completely different world, a different Environment, a different context. It's not sitting on a gas station shelf anymore. Now it's in a Trader Joe's or it's in a Whole Foods or it's in a thrive market in a box next to a bottle of magnesium and gluten free pancake mix. It's not for truckers. It's for the whole 30 mom. It's for you when you're about to get on your peloton. It's for intermittent fasters. It's for the cold plunge crowd. It's for people who care about macros and seed oils and gut health and all that stuff. And suddenly, suddenly it's not a greasy meat stick. It's clean. It's portable protein. It's a functional snack. It's a product with purpose. Do you see where I'm going with this, my friends? It is masterful positioning. It's reframing and redefining the category. And then like I said, you, you need to reinforce it with a bunch of little things. Cause positioning is not one thing. It's lots of things. The pricing supports it. It's kind of expensive. That's a good thing. The packaging reflects it. It's more elevated, it's more premium. The retail partners reinforce it, right? They signal that this stuff must be good for you, or at least not terrible for you. Otherwise Whole Foods wouldn't carry it. And the customer believes it. That's the most important part. I was trying to think of other brands that have done counter positioning really well, and there are actually a lot of them. You see, to enter a market in an established category especially you have to do counter positioning. So one example that I really like is Native deodorant. This brand starts in 2015 and comes into a category that is super, super competitive. Deodorant is dominated by Old Spice, Secret, Gillette, Degree Axe, Speedstick, all owned by huge conglomerates. And there's even more. So Native comes along and runs a counter positioning strategy. And the reason I'm using this as the example is because at the beginning, at least, Native was only about counter positioning. The founder, Moise Ali, had actually talked about how he bought the early product in an Etsy store. He literally just bought this deodorant from an Etsy seller, rebranded it, threw up some Facebook ads and started selling this deodorant. So at the beginning, the product wasn't anything special. You could buy it on Etsy yourself. But he created a brand with counter positioning and eventually I think he starts making it himself, or at least sourcing it from outside Etsy. But Native was all about positioning at the beginning. And here's the story for full context. So traditional deodorants are full of ingredients and that nobody can pronounce. They're mass market, they're synthetic, and people aren't even really thinking about what's inside. They've just been using the same brand of deodorant since high school. So Native flips that. They position themselves as clean, natural, transparent. The stick looks simple, the ingredients are all readable, the copy is conversational, and they lean hard into the modern consumer, into their anxieties with aluminum and parabens and artificial fragrances. It's the same category, it's the same shelf. But Native just feels better for you. So we've got product, we've got packaging, and then there's pricing. They don't try to be cheaper. They actually try to be more expensive. They charge more money because the positioning justifies the price. You're buying a healthier lifestyle, so you expect to pay a little bit more. If it were to cost less, you'd actually wouldn't believe the product. You wouldn't believe the promise they're making. It would hurt the positioning. And you can pretty much copy and paste this strategy for chomps because they did the exact same thing and it worked. So that's what positioning is all about. And that's why positioning is really important, especially if you're competing against bigger players. Think about your positioning and how you're countering others in the market. All right, guys, let's look at the money, because we got to talk money. What kind of an episode of making it would this be if we didn't talk cold, hard, hard cash? Quick break. So I can tell you about Influicity. That's the little marketing agency I started in my apartment about 10 years ago. Well, fast forward, it is not so little anymore. Influicity works with some of the biggest brands in the world, building customer communities that drive revenue. We do this through influencers, podcasts, paid media, social media content, AI and so much more. You can learn more@influicity.com and hey, while you're there, check out our case studies. We have a lot of them. That's influicity.com so Pete and Rasheed bootstrapped from day one in 2012. They each chip in $3,250, so totaling $6,500 to launch their little side hustle. And that money goes into ingredients. It goes into a small production. Run a simple website and I'm sure some Facebook ads. Although Facebook ads didn't cost very much in 2012, it was a good time to be launching a business using Facebook ads. And they keep running very small production batches. I'd assume they're not making many sticks at once. They're building a basic e commerce website. I think Pete actually taught himself to use Photoshop and Shopify, so he's doing it all on his own. And then they market directly to consumers and niche retailers. So in about 30 days they sell out of their first production run, which isn't that hard when you're making super small batches. So now they've got a small profitable business, they reinvest and they do it all over again. More production, more product, more ads, more reach. And they do this for 24 months, two full years. And that's how they go from zero to 35,000 to $400,000 in annual sales. And that's when the Trader Joe's story begins. So they have to secure some bridge funding from family and friends to pay for that Trader Joe's inventory, that first free fill. So they give Trader Joe's some product for free. Now it's paid for, Trader Joe's comes back and they do a big, big order. And now the guys have to raise even more money. They kind of borrow it from somewhere to make that first order because that first order from Trader Joe's that they paid for was actually more than their entire previous year. So at this point they raise about a million dollars in short term debt again from friends and family over a single weekend. They scramble for this cash, they make their product, they pay for it. And then slowly they start to pay off the debt. And they keep growing totally off cash flow and loans until 2022. And finally in 2022, they sell a minority stake in the business to stride consumer partners for $80 million. And that's how Pete and Rasheed self funded this business to a valuation of probably somewhere between 200 and $300 million today. If I had to guess and if I had to look at my crystal ball, I would say that this brand gets acquired by a mega food company sometime in, in the next 18 to 24 months. All right, so here we are in June 2025, JD's calling it, I think Choms gets acquired by 2027, 2028 by a big company, probably for somewhere in the $600 million to billion dollar range. I'm just going off comps and you know what, I might be totally wrong, but I think these guys can do it. This brand's growing super, super fast. And you know what? If that happens, it means they're going to make a whole lot of money. And it means stride, who spent $80 million buying a minority stake, is probably going to get 2 or 3x their return on the investment. Not too bad. That's usually how the math works in these situations. So, guys, that's the story of Chomps. That's the story of Pete and Rasheed. What a brand. I love it. What a great story of building a physical product business, bootstrapping it to huge, huge success. Get my best stuff to your inbox@johndavids.com.