The Startup Story

Kara Goldin, founder of Hint

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About this episode

My guest this week is Kara Goldin, founder and CEO of Hint Water. For those that may not be aware of Hint Water, Hint is an unsweetened flavored beverage. In fact, when Kara launched Hint she actually launched a brand new category. Prior to Hint there was no unsweetened flavored water beverage out there. Everything had chemicals and sweeteners.

What is really interesting about Kara’s story is that her background was technology and media, yet here she is leading a multi-million-dollar global beverage brand. I love Kara’s story because she didn’t allow “what she didn’t know” to stop her from moving forward with bringing a product, she created to improve her own health, to the larger market. The reason the doubts and doubters didn’t phase her is because she knew the consumer needed this solution…again…there was nothing else out there when she created Hint. It was her determination and mission that allowed her to silence the noise and focus on what had to be done in order to build the business and the brand the way she wanted to.

As inspiring as she might sound solely based upon my introduction, you can’t forget that NO success story happened overnight…in fact…most success stories start far earlier than many thinks.

In this episode, you'll hear:
  • She shares her first taste of being an entrepreneur while watching her old brother would fix up old Volkswagen and sell them.
  • She also talks about the other side of being an entrepreneur growing up her father was a ‘frustrated entrepreneur’, constantly being stuck under management.
  • At the age of 15 years, she moved away from home and lived with her sister in her college dorm. This taught her how to be independent and responsible from a young age.
  • She finished collage with a Major in Journalism and a minor in finance.
  • How she fell into a job at Time Magazine in subscriptions, the lessons she learnt from this first job she uses today in Hint.
  • She got a call from CNN to work there, then moved to Silicon Valley to find a job with Steve Jobs.
  • Moving away from the corporate world, Kara wanted to spend more time being a parent. With this she realized she hadn’t shifted the baby weight after having children and started to explore different diets. This is where she found the solution to her problem.
  • Drinking water is boring and adding fruit to it will spice it up but this is time consuming so creating an unsweetened water will cut down on time.
  • She did market research and found out that every drink has sweetener in it and so she created the first unsweetened drinks company.
  • With creating Hint, Kara not only created a new category of favored drinks but is the largest company for unsweetened water.
  • She calls herself an accidental entrepreneur.
  • She explains how she had a meeting with Coke Cola and the person dismissed her company and told her Hint will never be successful.
  • She shared how turning down a job opportunity with Google landed Hint their largest landing Facebook as their next biggest customer.
    • Resources from this episode

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    Kara Goldin’s Book ‘Undaunted: Overcoming Doubters & Doubters’: https://amzn.to/2N0L6MA

    Kara Goldin Podcast https://karagoldin.com/podcast

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    The Startup StoryBy James McKinney