The Startup Story

Michael Sharon, co-founder of Taika

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About this episode

This week's episode my guest this week is Michael Sharon, Co-founder of Taika. Taika is a stealth health brand that is looking to take CPG products that are consumed by millions of people every day and redesign them to be delicious and truly healthy for you. The brand has tremendous opportunities within many product categories but they're starting with coffee. They take 5 adaptogenic herbs that they bring to you in the coffee and it helps deliver focus and energy to your daily life.

What stood out to me was their packaging, but Michael’s story is incredible!

His story unpacks how he moved from South African and made his way to New York only to discover just how far behind our mobile technology was in 2002 especially as compared to the rest of the world.

This prompted Michael to launch his first mobile start-up. Now you might be asking ‘how does a mobile technology expert get to a place with launching a coffee brand?’, and well that is a great question and one that finds its answers through the halls of Facebook's headquarters in Silicon Valley but much like every start-up Story we need to start at the very beginning and Michael’s beginning is not like any other story that we have ever unpacked before.

In this episode, you'll hear:
  • How Michael was born in Israel then moved to South Africa as a child to a cult
  • How by the age of 10, he opted out of the cult when he found his love for video games and computers. But kept the vegetarian lifestyle until he was 38.
  • Michael shared how growing up he didn’t have a clear idea what his future would be, but he knew it would be related to computers.
  • How Michael went to University in South Africa and originally studied Computer science, mathematics, English literature and Astronomy. But he lost interest in computer science as it wasn’t challenging enough and ultimately, switched his degree to a degree in psychology and law but kept English literature.
  • While at University he was in a Band and after he graduated he started a production studio to create jingles to fund the production of his album.
  • How he went to work at Trigger as a brand strategist, this is where he had his first opportunity to sit down with the CEO and tell them the potential of their company.
  • Michael shares how he was let go from Trigger and used the opportunity to begin a graduate program.
  • In April 2002 he received a scholarship to NYU, his friends tried to persuade him not to go but he saw an opportunity in New York and wanted to take it.
  • While at University he was writing about mobile technology.
  • Michael shares how South Africa was a lot further ahead with mobile and bank technology compared with America, this sparked his entrepreneurial flare.
  • In 2005 he founded a Startup called Socialight, a location-based mobile social network. Another reason why he co-founded the company was that no one would hire him as he wasn’t an American citizen, so he hired himself.
  • How Socialight was ahead of its time and didn’t accompany the mobile technology at the time.
  • Michael shares how he joined Facebook as the Mobile Product Manager in 2008. He could take all of the ideas he had for Socialite and develop them on Facebook.
  • After 8 years he took a step back and assessed what he wanted to do.
  • Michael shares how he found the problem to Taika when at Facebook. Due to the high levels of stress, he was dealing with 5 to 6 cups of coffee a day, which wasn’t agreeing with him. So he went searching to understand how to create coffee that has the correct adaptative in it.
  • How he launched Taika in 2019 and tested it by adding a phone number on the front of it and changing its packaging every two weeks.
  • Michael explains the importance of creating a community through their CPG company
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    The Startup StoryBy James McKinney