Skin in the Game with Matt Weiss, Founder and CEO of RIND Snacks
Matt Weiss joins the show today to talk about his journey to becoming the Founder and CEO of RIND snacks. RIND is a functional snack brand in the better-for-you CPG space that offers a line of unique whole fruit snacks that maximize nutrition and minimize food waste. In this episode, Matt shares with us his story of growing up in Miami, to starting his first company right before the .com bubble burst, to working in finance for nearly 20 years before starting RIND in 2017. He talks about the art of asking good questions, how attending Expo West inspired him to start RIND and why he believes no one is born an entrepreneur.
Stairway to CEO · Lee Greene, Matt Weiss
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Show Notes
In This Episode You’ll Hear About:
- His story of growing up in Miami and having to move to Boca Raton after Hurricane Andrew destroyed his childhood home when he was just 12 years old
- The decision to study Spanish and attend a liberal arts college
- How three of his buddies from Duke decided to start a college incubator, creating a place for hopeful entrepreneurs
- How he landed in investment banking, staying in the field for 20 years, and the fundamental things he learned
- The key things he believes make a great entrepreneur
- The energy he felt from attending Expo West, and how it inspired him to start a snack brand
- Why he chose to do a snack brand, as he's always loved the snack industry and choosing dried fruit because he noticed the white space for dried fruit
- How his great-grandma inspired him to be an entrepreneur and helped shift his perspective on being interested in healthy foods
- How RIND has managed to become available in over 3000 retail stores nationwide, including Whole Foods, Wegman's, and CVS.
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Quotes:
“I held a lot of different jobs so I could understand the value of work and that it is hard and it is, backbreaking sometimes. There's value in all sorts of work.”
“I didn't want to go into a conventional job or career because it felt like there were just too many exciting, shiny new things going on.”
“I wanted to create something out of nothing and create something that had impact and meaning.”
“When you’re learning, it doesn’t feel like work.”
“There is a curiosity that gnaws at most entrepreneurs, it's a thread that needs to be pulled when they encounter something that excites them or they've encountered a problem where there may be a better solution to it.”
“There is going to be resolve that is required to actually push through every single obstacle that is going to be against you. And by definition, you're doing something totally new and novel that hasn't been done before. There is no roadmap it's going to be brutal.
“You're an idea person until you take a first action step, and then you become an entrepreneur.”
“When fruits are growing in an orchard, the skin or the rind is the most nutrient potent part of the fruit because it's exposed to the elements and the environmental stress of the growing season, that it has the most antioxidants and flavonoids and fiber.”
“Sometimes the safer decision is the riskier decision.”
“You have to share a vision with customers and stakeholders about a company that can stretch into multiple categories with a value proposition that works across all of those categories.”
“We are not a bag of peels, we're the whole fruit and a snackable slice of the whole fruit.”