Ben Hindman spent a decade building Splash, a venture-backed event marketing software that powered events for Salesforce, Facebook, Amazon, and Spotify. He sold it to Cvent/Blackstone last year. Now he's selling lollipops.

This is the story of why a successful software founder walked away from bits and is building with atoms - starting with the world's first functional candy: Le Lick.

What you'll take away:

- Why the move from software to CPG is a "full 180-degree flip" - and why 45-day iteration cycles change everything about how you build

- The shadow side of being an "empath CEO": when people - pleasing quietly becomes bad leadership, and how Ben's wife became his sharpest advisor

- A counter-intuitive lesson: 60% of people don't like cherry, 25% don't like honey, 50% don't like coconut - and why building a product means accepting that "your purple is not my purple"

- How a self-described dyslexic/ADD learner built three regularly-scheduled book clubs to hack his own brain

- Why Ben thinks momentum - not strategy, not product - is the single most important thing a founder has

Chapters:

00:00 Cold open - "I am a recovering tech CEO"

00:30 Splash: from event planner to software CEO, and what it looked like at its peak

04:50 Selling to Cvent/Blackstone - and why the sale was actually a relief

06:20 Treating business like a full-body art project (blessing and curse)

09:55 Introducing Le Lick: the world's first functional candy

12:45 The flavors - and what they taught Ben about taste buds

17:40 The CPG reality check: $11K in sticks from China and 45-day iteration cycles

21:50 Building the team: equity, no cliff, and hiring for mission

23:50 Momentum as a superpower ("I call it Benergy")

27:20 The shadow side of being an empath CEO

28:45 Why his wife is his best advisor - and why it took until 38 to learn

30:00 The hack: making your life and your work indistinguishable

32:00 Fatherhood lessons (from someone who didn't want kids)

34:30 A learning system for a brain that hates reading

36:15 What Ben's changed his mind about recently

🔗 Links:

- Le Lick: https://enjoylelick.com

- Ben on Instagram: @bennydotevents

- Le Lick on Instagram: @enjoylelick

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