3 ms·

none of the things you just mentioned are easy or cheap, so i feel like minimizing the "what they're doing" part is a bit strange, or maybe that's just how i re

none of the things you just mentioned are easy or cheap, so i feel like minimizing the "what they're doing" part is a bit strange, or maybe that's just how i read your text. most businesses when analyzed on paper like this are very simple, or are re-packaging existing ideas. that's not something i would put against a business idea. having said that, the primary reason i pound cold brew instead of making 2 or 3 aeropresses every morning is because i don't like boiling water, and grinding, and waiting, and cleaning up. some people find it all very mindful and relaxing and zen and whatever, but for me it's just a pain in the ass, so for me personally $2.50 for something i could just pay $1 (on average) in a big concentrated cold brew growler is perhaps a weird price point.

freese 10y ago
Yup. In theory making good instant coffee is a pretty simple idea but I can tell you that if I knew what I know about the process I'm not sure I'd start this business all over again.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > I can tell you that if I knew what I know about the process I'm not sure I'd start this business all over again. And yet, those often make the best businesses. Businesses that do not require extensive domain knowledge are easy to copy, businesses that have no 'moat' (barrier to entry) tend to be overrun by competition initiating a very early race to the bottom in price where the only thing that matters is to hit the largest possible scale as soon as you can. Having a moat like this gives you breathing room, so cherish it. Hard is good in startups.
  - freese 10y ago
    Now that you put it that way I definitely agree with you.
  - BrailleHunting 10y ago
    Hard is good when something can be patented, kept secret, heavily regulated or otherwise defended. Mr. Wonderful and Mr. Coffee will knock this off in μseconds if there's any traction.
    - iamacynic 10y ago
      > Mr. Wonderful and Mr. Coffee will knock this off in μseconds if there's any traction. good. excellent. the more ripoffs the better. in what universe is the giants copying the small startup a bad thing? validation, validation, validation. validation, validation, validation. validation. val. i. da. tion. one more time. validation. i wish i could think like you, i really do. i would probably be much happier with everything in the world and in my life.
      - richthegeek 10y ago
        I know your username literally spells it out, but my god are you a dickhead.
        dang 10y ago
        Please don't make the thread even worse by reacting uncivilly. If a comment is egregious, flag it and move on. (To flag a comment, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top. There's a small karma threshold, currently 30, before flag links appear.)
alaskamiller 10y ago
The tone might have been negative, so my apologies. There's a lot of value add that Sudden is bringing to the table. Most obvious being sourcing, second being operations, third being logistics of getting the boxes to you, then lastly fourth--and most important--is marketing. Coffee for the most part is bullshit, much like the wine industry. A small part of the audience want to hobnob about taste. For some reason everyone complains about Starbucks coffee or McDonalds coffee and somehow suddenly everyone knows what coffee gruel tastes like. The rest of the audience will just take what you craft and pour in milk and sugar to their liking, aka Philz. Along with having so many people in the industry, cutting through the signal to convince you to remember the brand, to get you to try it, and to get you to believe it's superior is almost all the work. On the global scale it's the equivalent of coffee farmers in Yunnan, China spending millions of dollars to convince you that Chinese coffee is just as good if not better than coffee from elsewhere like how wine people try to convince you something grown out of Napa or Champagne isn't good. And to be fair the last time someone did this was some folks in South America using the marketing idea of a guy in a poncho and hat with his mule, and that worked really well. So it's to say the challenge is process and marketing. Both are hard. But hard is good. Most people shy away from hard work to min-max their way through life. Coffee people tend for the most part admire and adore hard work. It's the reason why they insist on doing things the long way, hard way, right way. And that in turn is what makes this exciting. But to flip it back, identifying the context of this was my aim. 1. Instant coffee is already a CPG thing you can buy off the shelf. 2. Then the preppers came up with the freeze drying. 3. And now someone is mechanizing it. And it's going to be hard. And whether that's going to be a better thing or not, well, maybe it wouldn't matter. Techies could be drinking Ensure or Slimfast but instead they choose diarrhea-inducing Soylent because marketing is all that matters. PS. Hard also means they're locked out of a lot of things. This won't be mainstream, there's no economies of scale for margins to give to retailers to have it be on shelves. And if and when they do upgrade to industrial scale they lose the hipster cache. Tough calls to be made, but either way hard is always more fun.
- zloof 10y ago
  Great response - appreciate the clarification and all makes sense. Yeah, those are all the real challenges we face. Marketing for us is a big one - as many people have pointed out about our website :-) I think it's our job as a business to figure out a way to make it mainstream. It's going to take creativity, hard work, and a great tasting product - but that's the challenge we are signing up for to be honest. We are not here to make a niche product. Everything we are working towards is making this something the majority of people can enjoy. If you talked to my parents in the 70's, the idea of a Starbucks style cafe where you pay $5 for an iced latte was ludicrous, but now it's mainstream (I'm not saying its a ripoff either, its just something we didn't know we'd want). What we see is a huge gap in the market. If you live in a select few big cities, you have this huge exposure to specialty coffee and it tastes great. If you live anywhere else - it is a whole lot harder to experience coffee that tastes this good. We believe that the average person truly does want to experience great tasting coffee - they just don't have access. *Caveat that I always add - that doesn't mean there isn't room for other coffee either. McDonalds is a mainstream burger restaurant but there is still a place for 10 other fast food companies, a whole spectrum of high end burgers, etc. We aren't trying to replace every way to drink coffee - just provide a new alternative that tastes awesome. Really enjoyed your comments - thanks for writing!

freese 10y ago

Yup. In theory making good instant coffee is a pretty simple idea but I can tell you that if I knew what I know about the process I'm not sure I'd start this business all over again.

jacquesm 10y ago
> I can tell you that if I knew what I know about the process I'm not sure I'd start this business all over again. And yet, those often make the best businesses. Businesses that do not require extensive domain knowledge are easy to copy, businesses that have no 'moat' (barrier to entry) tend to be overrun by competition initiating a very early race to the bottom in price where the only thing that matters is to hit the largest possible scale as soon as you can. Having a moat like this gives you breathing room, so cherish it. Hard is good in startups.
- freese 10y ago
  Now that you put it that way I definitely agree with you.
- BrailleHunting 10y ago
  Hard is good when something can be patented, kept secret, heavily regulated or otherwise defended. Mr. Wonderful and Mr. Coffee will knock this off in μseconds if there's any traction.
  - iamacynic 10y ago
    > Mr. Wonderful and Mr. Coffee will knock this off in μseconds if there's any traction. good. excellent. the more ripoffs the better. in what universe is the giants copying the small startup a bad thing? validation, validation, validation. validation, validation, validation. validation. val. i. da. tion. one more time. validation. i wish i could think like you, i really do. i would probably be much happier with everything in the world and in my life.
    - richthegeek 10y ago
      I know your username literally spells it out, but my god are you a dickhead.
      - dang 10y ago
        Please don't make the thread even worse by reacting uncivilly. If a comment is egregious, flag it and move on. (To flag a comment, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top. There's a small karma threshold, currently 30, before flag links appear.)

alaskamiller 10y ago

The tone might have been negative, so my apologies. There's a lot of value add that Sudden is bringing to the table. Most obvious being sourcing, second being operations, third being logistics of getting the boxes to you, then lastly fourth--and most important--is marketing. Coffee for the most part is bullshit, much like the wine industry. A small part of the audience want to hobnob about taste. For some reason everyone complains about Starbucks coffee or McDonalds coffee and somehow suddenly everyone knows what coffee gruel tastes like. The rest of the audience will just take what you craft and pour in milk and sugar to their liking, aka Philz. Along with having so many people in the industry, cutting through the signal to convince you to remember the brand, to get you to try it, and to get you to believe it's superior is almost all the work. On the global scale it's the equivalent of coffee farmers in Yunnan, China spending millions of dollars to convince you that Chinese coffee is just as good if not better than coffee from elsewhere like how wine people try to convince you something grown out of Napa or Champagne isn't good. And to be fair the last time someone did this was some folks in South America using the marketing idea of a guy in a poncho and hat with his mule, and that worked really well. So it's to say the challenge is process and marketing. Both are hard. But hard is good. Most people shy away from hard work to min-max their way through life. Coffee people tend for the most part admire and adore hard work. It's the reason why they insist on doing things the long way, hard way, right way. And that in turn is what makes this exciting. But to flip it back, identifying the context of this was my aim. 1. Instant coffee is already a CPG thing you can buy off the shelf. 2. Then the preppers came up with the freeze drying. 3. And now someone is mechanizing it. And it's going to be hard. And whether that's going to be a better thing or not, well, maybe it wouldn't matter. Techies could be drinking Ensure or Slimfast but instead they choose diarrhea-inducing Soylent because marketing is all that matters. PS. Hard also means they're locked out of a lot of things. This won't be mainstream, there's no economies of scale for margins to give to retailers to have it be on shelves. And if and when they do upgrade to industrial scale they lose the hipster cache. Tough calls to be made, but either way hard is always more fun.

zloof 10y ago
Great response - appreciate the clarification and all makes sense. Yeah, those are all the real challenges we face. Marketing for us is a big one - as many people have pointed out about our website :-) I think it's our job as a business to figure out a way to make it mainstream. It's going to take creativity, hard work, and a great tasting product - but that's the challenge we are signing up for to be honest. We are not here to make a niche product. Everything we are working towards is making this something the majority of people can enjoy. If you talked to my parents in the 70's, the idea of a Starbucks style cafe where you pay $5 for an iced latte was ludicrous, but now it's mainstream (I'm not saying its a ripoff either, its just something we didn't know we'd want). What we see is a huge gap in the market. If you live in a select few big cities, you have this huge exposure to specialty coffee and it tastes great. If you live anywhere else - it is a whole lot harder to experience coffee that tastes this good. We believe that the average person truly does want to experience great tasting coffee - they just don't have access. *Caveat that I always add - that doesn't mean there isn't room for other coffee either. McDonalds is a mainstream burger restaurant but there is still a place for 10 other fast food companies, a whole spectrum of high end burgers, etc. We aren't trying to replace every way to drink coffee - just provide a new alternative that tastes awesome. Really enjoyed your comments - thanks for writing!