22 ms·

A janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (2017)

780 points by andygcook 7y ago

bmmayer1 7y ago
This is one of the best business stories I've ever read. It embodies the core principle of the American dream: that you can really make it if you are dedicated, work hard, and strike out on the right idea. It also highlights the importance of good leadership, to recognize good ideas no matter where they come from, and bottom-up management techniques that emphasize collective ownership of a company's products and success.
spacedog11 7y ago
Very interesting.
- JimBrimble35 7y ago
  indeed
crankylinuxuser 7y ago
The days when someone can start as a janitor or in the mailroom and climb to the top is done. Companies used to hire everyone in the company. Janitors were part of the company. So was mailroom staff. So were secretaries. Everybody was part of the whole. Now, companies contract out everything but their core thing. Janitors come from a low-paid 3rd party service. Mailrooms are no longer a thing (there's no such thing as emailrooms, unless you count exchange admins). All those things that allowed somebody to start at the bottom rung in a company and climb up have been systematically destroyed and/or removed.
- bredren 7y ago
  FWIW, this is what pushes energy and opportunity into the entrepreneurial marketplace. You work in these companies as a contractor, learn about problems and start something new. Crowdfunding and free marketing distribution platforms exist to aid your small venture. Just as this old story may be less likely today, new stories of entrepreneurship continue to be written without the inclusion of PepsiCo. If anything these giants exist as acquirers.
  - Frondo 7y ago
    I don't think any janitor working for an outsourced company is learning about problems. For the most part, people try to ignore that the cleaning staff are there at all. They don't talk to them and they certainly don't engage with them as equals -- for the most part, of course. How would a janitor working for Aramark, emptying trash cans after everyone's left for the day, "learn about problems and start something new"? Even the "start something new" bit doesn't really make sense. You're going to get an appointment with a funder on the pitch of "I'm a janitor with Aramark, and lately I've been working at the Johnson corp...."?
    - camjohnson26 7y ago
      Even back then most janitors did not rise through the ranks. Montañez specifically went above and beyond his job responsibilities to network, learn about the business, and be the best janitor on staff. His success still required luck and maybe that kind of luck is hard to find these days, but he was also prepared to take advantage of that luck when it arrived. Most workers, no matter their level, just do the bare minimum to get by.
      - bredren 7y ago
        Yes, the key is this person looked at their entire job differently. They never were looking to only be an average janitor. Jan Koum went from welfare to WhatsApp with his key job as a contractor to yahoo via Ernst & Young. This is about the person and how they use resources at hand. The loss of corporate identity in low levels positions may have fallen away but other opportunities now exist.
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    > FWIW, this is what pushes energy and opportunity into the entrepreneurial marketplace. You work in these companies as a contractor, learn about problems and start something new. There's an awfully lot of implied and stated "IFs" in that sentence. One can only tap the 'entrepreneurial marketplace' if you have or have access to Capital. That marketplace has no room for low paid people, with low to no influence. And another thing about starting on the ground floor of a company is being part of the culture and changing it from within. Whereas a "contractor" is just some 3rd party interloper that already has the skills and technique to be hired for a specific set of highly qualified skills. And if you think a CEO would listen to a gig-economy'd janitor or through Manpower, try asking them. > Crowdfunding and free marketing distribution platforms exist to aid your small venture. To recommend crowdfunding as some solution is a joke. Again, you need Capital to make the 2 minute catchy video and slick marketing to get people. And those vids usually cost around USD 20k to 50k. I guess you could go the beggars route and use a gofundme. But usually people are in the similar socioeconomic status as their family, friends and peers.
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  I'm not convinced this is objectively bad. It may be that the benefits outweigh the costs. But I do think this is one way in which the "American Dream" was broken.
- camjohnson26 7y ago
  That’s a fatalist outlook. The ceo in the article was humble enough to recognize a good idea when he saw it and not judge the presenter by where he came from. Most bosses would’ve laughed him out of the room when he held out his arms and said he thought they could win this much market share. Credentials can only get you so far, at some point intuition is important. Leaders and recruiters need to pay more attention to drive, work ethic, and character than to where someone went to college or what their job title is. This is the way things used to be and they can be that way again.
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
    I mean, my assumption is the CEO at the time he asked this, was already thinking about the potential of the product itself as a good idea at that point in the presentation. He already knew he was talking to the janitor, I doubt he really expected a realistic estimate of market share. But yeah, I think a huge part here is actually that Montañez went with the best he could do, he didn't snap back about not knowing or get awkwardly uncomfortable about being out of his element or his knowledge base. He presented his idea enthusiastically and he stood by it. And I think you can pick up that sort of attitude in people, and that's what may have moved him past "contributed an idea" to "worth including in continuing to develop it".
- sdegutis 7y ago
  I'm not sure that's inherently a bad thing. Yes, loyalty should be rewarded, and employees should not be treated like resources but as people with inherent dignity. And I can see that its unethical to hire external workers to avoid treating them well. But if laws are made to protect and enforce their rights and dignity, then how is this kind of outsourcing system worse than hiring everyone as a full time employee?
  - notfromhere 7y ago
    it means upward mobility for the non-top 20% is way harder
- Tiktaalik 7y ago
  Games industry is probably one of the few jobs where you can work your way up to the top role from the bottom. It's still not uncommon at all for executive producers that manage entire projects to have started as game testers that would have been paid a low hourly wage.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Games companies hire their own cleaners and mailroom and they make it through to the C-suite? Your comment takes a tone suggesting disagreement but the content agrees completely with the parent. If you started in a technical role then you manage to reach a top technical role then you haven't done the "start in the mailroom" progression at all. Are games testers even taken on straight from school at age 16 or do they have to have a degree to get in the door nowadays?
    - Tiktaalik 7y ago
      Games testing isn't a technical role. Anyone can do it. It's a minimum wage job with no real qualifications.
- trefn 7y ago
  It may just look different now. At my company (Mixpanel), the modern equivalent is our support team, which is filled with smart, hungry people who want to get their foot in the door in tech. Now, we have former support folks all over the company (sales, sales engineering, services, software engineering, product - just to name the departments I can think of offhand), who are often our top performers as ICs or who have grown into leadership roles. Some have left to start their own companies. It's actually been one of our most effective hiring channels!
  - rhizome 7y ago
    This is something I've been wanting to ask at interviews, "how many people who work here were hired with a different title?" I'm pretty sure that promoting from within is an extremely strong indicator of resilience.
  - ts4z 7y ago
    At your company, the modern equivalent is the janitor, who cleans your office -- but doesn't work directly for Mixpanel.
- danso 7y ago
  It might be that it's harder on average for the lower/lower-middle-income worker to work their way to the top in, but it may be also the case that the Internet and social networks (even amid the saturation of professional influencers and their ilk) provide opportunities for the lower-rung to get sudden and prominent recognition, albeit not from their own workplaces.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jameane 7y ago
  So true! Now you are lucky is an IC on a team can be groomed to even be a manager.
- Johnny555 7y ago
  Mailrooms are no longer a thing They haven't completely died, my company has a mailroom with someone that delivers mail to each floor, receives packages (including larger shipments at the loading dock) and stamps outgoing mail.
ripvanwinkle 7y ago
Inspirational. I'd love to hear names of companies today where folks feel their work place culture might allow something like this to happen.
- Frost1x 7y ago
  For some reason, this story reminds me of Hamdi Ulukay and the story behind Chobani from his TED talk: The anti-CEO Playbook: https://www.ted.com/talks/hamdi_ulukaya_the_anti_ceo_playbook/ https://www.ted.com/talks/hamdi_ulukaya_the_anti_ceo_playboo... It gave me respect for a company I wouldn't think twice about. Both cases show solid longterm leadership strategy in a world chasing quarterly growth.
- jonathlee 7y ago
  I work at Nucor and know of several people who have done exactly this in the 20 years I've worked here. They started working in a entry level production position and worked their way up to department manager, division manager/VP, senior VP and even CEO in one case.
  - simonrobb 7y ago
    I've almost finished reading "Good to Great" (an excellent read, for whoever hasn't read it already) which analyzes Nucor's company culture. Nice to hear the reality matches the analysis.
rootedbox 7y ago
Frito Lay was a great place to work at because they did promote up, and they also hired the best. I would often be in meetings where one logistics manager went to MIT and the other logistics manager would be someone who started at a plant boxing chips.
- hanniabu 7y ago
  That's the way to work in my opinion. I worked at a place where just because I had an engineering degree I was around 25 years old managing a manufacturing plant full of 40+ year olds that have been working the lines since they graduated high school. It makes absolutely no sense. The best I could do was just make sure they had all the supplies and everything they needed because they knew every machines and issue inside and out and there was absolutely nothing I could help them with in that regard. Would have made 100x more sense having one of our maintenance guys or line workers promoted into a managerial position.
  - codesushi42 7y ago
    Thank you for being humble. Experience is worth a lot more than credentials on paper. This is a truth that SV turns a blind eye to.
    - bnjms 7y ago
      This is the thing that encourages so much adolescent angst. They've a sense that they know as much as most of the adults they interact with. And a realization everyone just makes it up as they go. And somehow we don't share with each other the value of experience and no one shares failure is the currency of experience and young people should be almost failing a lot.
  - mrmonkeyman 7y ago
    Manager != production drone. You don't need production expertise to be an excellent manager. You said it right, just make sure the guys have everything they need and get out of their way. That is the manager's job. Promoting these guys will backfire.
irrational 7y ago
“I do have a Ph.D.,” he responded. “I’ve been poor, hungry and determined.” Love that.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  I hate it. I think it belittles Ph.D's and denigrates the people who don't have them suggesting that you need to deflect the question because you [sarcasm] couldn't possibly have a skill set that's of high worth unless you actually had done a Ph.D [/sarcasm]. Bleurgh. FWIW my highest level of qualification is a bachelor's degree and I work in a position that doesn't require any formal training at all.
  - Aearnus 7y ago
    I think you're overthinking it. It's a cute quote.
  - intuitionist 7y ago
    sounds like you are a Ph.D., but the Kanye West version
  - martyvis 7y ago
    His Ph.D response was a retort to people questioning his qualifications to conduct lectures. Almost every real Ph.D certainly deserved them, recognising their knowledge or research in their field. However many of those with Ph.Ds were not the best lecturers and teachers they could be when I was an undergraduate at university. They actually hadn't been taught to teach effectively and present their knowledge in way that others could absorb. (Thank God for good text books and helpful tutors in my case). It sounds like Richard Montañez' experience in the "school of hard knocks" may well have set him above many regular Ph.Ds in capability to lecture and teach.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Well, exactly. You don't have to have a Ph.D to be an expert, to be a good lecturer, etc.. But having a Ph.D is nonetheless a demonstration of a particular high-level of learning, research, and technical ability.
bendbro 7y ago
Very impressed with the janitor's vision and the CEOs good leadership. A poor leader would have quashed the process when the janitor could not justify his idea. Being a good leader, the CEO came up with a solution to determine the viability of the janitor's idea. The difference between seniors and juniors is experience, and that experience can partially be defined by your "moveset". A janitor would not know it is possible to run a limited trial, but the CEO would. I have found that managers are often amenable to ideas from their workers. But, if a worker does not have a full moveset, it will be difficult for the worker to pitch an idea in a way that is actionable, and he will be turned down.
- spaceflunky 7y ago
  Great comment. It takes a hell of a CEO to squash any ego they have and stop to listen to the janitor about what direction their business should take.
camjohnson26 7y ago
This is a fantastic story. There are a few ethical problems including Montañez plagiarizing parts of his presentation and having friends and family buy out the products in the test market, but overall he refused to accept imposed limits and accomplished something phenomenal. One interesting thing is that Frito-Lay had no products targeting Latinos, and no one on the highly paid marketing team did anything about it. The janitor saw the problem immediately, but for some reason the entrenched interests were unable to see it. The CEO by contrast was humble enough to take Montañez’s call, let him give a presentation, and overlook that presentation’s weaknesses to see the good idea at the core. Also interesting is the backlash he faced from those same executives, jealous that someone less qualified was being successful. As humans we hate to see others doing better than us and try to push them down. No wonder social mobility is so difficult.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- WalterBright 7y ago
  > plagiarizing parts of his presentation I don't agree. He copied parts of it from examples in a book on marketing strategy. One writing a book with samples in it would expect someone to use those samples. It's the whole point. Otherwise, it's a useless book describing things you can't use.
  - notatoad 7y ago
    Yeah, if this was for a school assignment on marketing, that would be cheating. If it was something he was publishing under his own name, that would be plagiarism. But if you're giving a presentation to your bosses, pretty much everything is fair game.
    - bshipp 7y ago
      If my programming tasks--comprised of Github snippets and Stackoverflow answers--were graded by any University TA I'd certainly fail too. But I'm getting appraised by different standards in the workforce than in school. The workplace doesn't care what I've learned, they care what I've done. if I choose to spend 3x the effort writing a library from scratch instead of recycling work that has already been published I wouldn't last very long.
JimBrimble35 7y ago
The real hero of this story is the CEO who decided to take this guy _and_ his idea. He could have easily taken the idea and ran with it on his own, with Montañez spending the rest of his life mopping floors. I wonder how likely this scenario would be in today's world. I have found personally that many companies are unwilling to take risks on employees who aren't formally qualified, even if they demonstrate the skills to operate at far beyond their current pay grade. Second real hero of the story is his wife. How important is it to have people around you who will enable you do things you aren't qualified to do because they believe in you unconditionally? All of the importants.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  > The real hero of this story is the CEO who decided to take this guy _and_ his idea. He could have easily taken the idea and ran with it on his own, with Montañez spending the rest of his life mopping floors. A practical question, and a moral one: Would it be have worked out had the CEO tried to steal Montañez's idea, given Montañez came up with the spices himself? Does someone merely not doing something unethical, at no cost to themselves, make them a hero?
  - danso 7y ago
    "real hero" is definitely overstating it – I'd hope we as a society haven't reached the point where doing the decent thing is seen as going above and beyond. Hopefully the CEO saw it not only as just the right thing to do, but also the smart (and legal) thing to do – Montañez's story could in the long-run inspire more innovative ideas and culture at the company.
    - JimBrimble35 7y ago
      Sorry, but we have _definitely_ reached that point. Granted I'm extremely cynical, but stories like this are outliers and not the norm. And not simply because of the scale of the success. Read my other comment on why I consider the CEO the hero of this story.
  - MisterBastahrd 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
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WalterBright 7y ago
I love this story. It's not about how Montañez "got lucky" - it's about how he, in several key spots, set himself up so luck would find him. It's a great American success story.
- axiom92 7y ago
  Also from the article: > Six months later, with Montañez’s help, Frito-Lay began testing Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in small Latino markets in East Los Angeles. > If it performed well, the company would move forward with the product; if it didn’t, they’d scratch it — and Montañez would likely return to janitorial duties. > So Montañez assembled a small team of family members and friends, went to the test markets, and bought every bag of Hot Cheetos he could find. > “I’d tell the owner, ‘Man, these are great,’” he recalled. “Next week, I’d come back and there’d be a whole rack.” :-)
  - dharma1 7y ago
    growth hacking 101
  - fma 7y ago
    If I remember correctly, Sid Meiers would call up computer stores and ask if they had his games in stock because he wanted to buy it. He'd call several times and eventually the stores would reach out to him to buy it.
    - blarg1 7y ago
      I wonder if he had to come up with different voice disguises.
danso 7y ago
Great story. When I read the headline, I immediately thought of D'Angelo Barksdale's cynical speculation about the inventor of Chicken McNuggets being a "just some sad ass down in the basement of McDonalds, thinking up some shit to make some money for the real players": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyg_v7Vxo4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyg_v7Vxo4A
_revolutionary 7y ago
"Hey, what if we made Cheetos really spicy..."
darkpuma 7y ago
I just wish they'd make them hotter. Takis are kicking their ass in the spicy snack aisle.
- bluedino 7y ago
  I have never found any flavor of takis to actually be “hot”
  - darkpuma 7y ago
    Not "capsicum hot" per se, but very flavorful. More salty and acidic I guess. But it's a very bold and complex flavor, a top tier snack imho.
    - domsnar 7y ago
      I recently moved to Europe and can not find any vendor that supplies Takis. For me they are basically crack and I can't get my fix. Maybe it's for the better, as I can go through two large bags in one sitting..
- mffnbs 7y ago
  I find the XXTRA flaming hot cheetos to be particularly hot. I'm the type of person that finds most "hot" things to be rather mild, but these I have to pace myself with.
- nathankunicki 7y ago
  I tried the XXX Hot Flaming Cheetos a few months back. I like spicy foods, but my bodily functions were impaired for days. Perhaps give them a shot.
thtthings 7y ago
Best thing i ever read on HN
rb808 7y ago
> “it’s not about who you know — it’s about who knows you.” I've never heard that before, its an awesome quote.
- michyous 7y ago
  Whenever I hear "It's who you know" my response is - and has been since my teens is - "It's not about who you know, It's who wants to know you." I'm sure someone said it before me. You can usually visualise the processing going on in the few seconds of silence that follows.
dom96 7y ago
This is a great story. I'm surprised to not see Ketchup Cheetos[1] mentioned in the linked timeline[2], those are by far my favourites so I wonder what the story behind them is. 1 - https://americanfizz.co.uk/image/cache/catalog/european-products/cheetos/cheetos-ketchup-85g-800x800.png https://americanfizz.co.uk/image/cache/catalog/european-prod... 2 - https://www.timelinemaker.com/blog/featured-timeline/history-of-cheetos-timeline/ https://www.timelinemaker.com/blog/featured-timeline/history...
- FreeKill 7y ago
  I've always found it interesting that ketchup flavoring on frito lay products were not a bigger thing. In canada, ketchup flavored chips etc. are a very popular flavor and have been around for decades. Just never seems to really have caught on elsewhere until somewhate recently.
  - dom96 7y ago
    Oooh, another reason to visit Canada. My love for Ketchup Cheetos comes from Poland, where ketchup flavoured crisps are fairly popular as well.
debatem1 7y ago
That's an incredible story and props to the guy, but let's not tapdance around the fact that this is incredible specifically because social mobility on this scale is extremely rare. It took both exceptional determination and unbelievable luck to make this happen. How many others have the doggedness and skill, but not the luck? How many of them are still mopping today?
- whenchamenia 7y ago
  Just because there is 'mobility', does not entice all to seek a different 'status'. Many are content to be a happy human, and think those terms are silly at best.
  - debatem1 7y ago
    I'm sorry, but the belief that you can be happy and poor in America is hippy-dippy nonsense left over from an earlier and more equitable age. Nobody is happy watching their child die of a treatable disease, and no amount of inner peace will make your family's eviction ok. Thinking that those things are silly is a mark of inexperience and foolishness, and is no wiser than Candide's insistence that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The reality is that social mobility is a cornerstone of the American dream specifically because it actually does buy a better life for those who get it. The fact that such mobility does not exist for many who would choose it is a black mark on us and our society, and one we need urgently to correct.
- Macross8299 7y ago
  >because social mobility on this scale is extremely rare Rare only works as a qualifier when comparing it to some other probability of social mobility, either in an ideal or real system. The US has higher social mobility than most actual countries in the world and is pretty much middle of the pack in social mobility when it comes to developed (OECD) nations [0] If I recall correctly, there was another case of a janitor working her way up to becoming a C-level executive at Microsoft and HP. Capitalism with a social safety net is what affords this social mobility because it doesn't matter what your credentials are if you can find a market for a novel product like Montañez did. You can argue about how much of a social safety net is required to prevent the poor from staying poor forever, but it's still capitalism that provides the impetus that lifts people up to where they don't need the social safety net anymore. Compare this to a society where you're hooped if you're born into the wrong caste or without party connections and US social mobility doesn't seem that rare anymore. [0]: https://www.oecd.org/inclusive-growth/inequality-and-opportunity/The-Issues-Note-Social-Mobility-and-Equal-Opportunities-May-4-2017.pdf https://www.oecd.org/inclusive-growth/inequality-and-opportu... figure 2
greghatch 7y ago
> “It hit me that I had no idea what he was talking about, or what I was doing,” Montañez recalled. “I was shaking, and I damn near wanted to pass out…[but] I opened my arms and I said, ‘This much market share!’ I didn’t even know how ridiculous that looked.” >The room went silent as the CEO stood up and smiled. “Ladies and gentlemen, do you realize we have an opportunity to go after this much market share?” he said, stretching out his arms. Huge smiles from me here. This really amplifies the willingness of this CEO to listen and promote good ideas. I don't have a ton more context but I can relate to this janitor in many ways and this reaction from the CEO would be incredible. I'm so glad it happened this way and that it came from the janitor's perspective.
- coupdejarnac 7y ago
  I would have loved to work for a CEO like that.
- elicash 7y ago
  That quote is missing some context that I think makes the story even more impressive. So, this was before the Hot Cheeto idea. Montañez was looking for ways of advancing inside of the company and had asked a salesperson if he could trail him as he did his routes. This was on Montañez's day off work, so it was unpaid. The advantage to the salesperson was an extra set of hands for unloading. He saw the shelf or whatever the terminology is and how much FritoLay product they were selling in the individual stores. That's what he had in mind when he used his arms to say how much market share. The question scared him (apparently he and his wife hadn't gotten to the "market share" chapter in the book they got from the library) until he remembered that day following the salesperson and so the punchline is that he thought he nailed the answer.
starpilot 7y ago
My takeaway: there are huge potential markets in people who are not like me. The execs were probably completely unaware of this market, and it took an outsider to hold their hand and bring it to them. I love flaming hot cheetos and know tons of people who do, but there is no way I would have thought of taking the hot pepper / other spices from a traditional Mexican food (elotes, which I had in LA) and adapting them in this way. The fact that everyone I interact with forms an upper class monoculture (white/asian, college educated, 20s-40s, mostly US-born) means that I have huge blindspots. I wonder what huge businesses could be created catering toward senior citizens, for middle aged people working retail, recent Asian immigrants, working single fathers, and so on.
- GuiA 7y ago
  Then again, there is the tale of dulce de leche M&M’s - trying to tap into such a market, only for it to fail terribly. https://mms.fandom.com/wiki/Dulce_de_Leche_Caramel_M%26M%27s https://mms.fandom.com/wiki/Dulce_de_Leche_Caramel_M%26M%27s
  - mcny 7y ago
    My guess based on what I read from the grandparent post is there was probably some poor product fit. Perhaps we would have done better marketing it towards "gringos"? From your link: > In July 2001, Dulce de Leche M&M's were introduced in five markets with large Hispanic populations: Los Angeles, San Diego, Miami, Florida; Mcallen-Brownsville, Texas; and San Antonio, Texas. The flavor never became popular with the Hispanic community, who preferred existing M&M's flavors, and it was discontinued in most areas by early 2003. Perhaps there is an opportunity in introducing it to people who don't have previous experience with this flavor? Just thinking out loud...
    - chasontherobot 7y ago
      As someone who ate those Dulce de Leche M&Ms, what would've helped is if they were any good or bore any resemblance to the flavor they were named after.
shripadk 7y ago
I loved this article but I loved their Newsletter conversion page the most! I never thought I would feel warm and fuzzy after giving away my email address to subscribe to a newsletter of all things! Live to learn something new everyday!
mentos 7y ago
Read the whole article but did not see any mention of if he was compensated at all for his idea?
- rconti 7y ago
  It didn't say anything about him being compensated directly for the idea. Presumably as he moved up the ranks he got compensated via profit-sharing. In the same way the highly paid guys who were SUPPOSED to be inventing new things like this (but didn't) were also compensated. And the same way they would have been compensated if they developed some hot new product (eg, at their same rate relative to the profit sharing of the whole org).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
miguelmota 7y ago
What a great and inspiring story. > “Nobody had given any thought to the Latino market,” recalls Montañez. “But everywhere I looked, I saw it ready to explode.” It's incredible what a new set of eyes with different perspectives can bring to the table.
z3t4 7y ago
> “How much market share do you think you can get?” "I opened my arms and I said, ‘This much market share!’" Brilliant answer for a stupid question that was probably meant to put him down. > Frito-Lay began testing Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in small Latino markets in East Los Angeles. If it performed well, the company would move forward with the product; if it didn’t, they’d scratch it So Montañez assembled a small team of family members and friends, went to the test markets, and bought every bag of Hot Cheetos he could find. Also brilliant, as such a "test" would certainly fail due to no marketing, likely intentional by the exec's and politics.
- 11thEarlOfMar 7y ago
  This was the same CEO who took a call from a janitor. It wasn't a put down. This was an interview, and the question was open ended on purpose to see how he responded.
  - jackvalentine 7y ago
    The CEO wasn't the one asking the question.
test6554 7y ago
My asshole would like to have some stern words with that guy
phillco 7y ago
This is very well written. They get in, they tell the story, they get out.
gumby 7y ago
man I love this story. And I wonder how many huge multinationals are smart enough to let something like this happen? And this is why VCs often say they prefer teams with just domain expertise to teams with just the technical expertise, if the team doesn't already have both.
arkades 7y ago
This article ends right before the actual interesting part begins. Janitor takes some food his company produces, adds spices, makes a shitty pitch deck and profit? Cool, but... this could have easily happened in a dozen different configurations and gone nowhere. This is more luck than anything else. The interesting story begins after that. This guy didn't end his career there - so, presumably, he was't a one-hit wonder. We have an illiterate janitor who suddenly got swept into the orbit of the CEO, without any business or operational acumen. He somehow -how??- managed to learn the ways of the new tribe, learn business, learn to read and write, learn how to lead a business unit, and do it well. This guy came out of nowhere, and had to zero-to-sixty from manual laborer to - what? executive? What position did they put him in? How did he ramp up? What kind of support did he get, if any? What kind of education did they provide him with, if any? There's a long, interesting story between "janitor" and "successful VP", and they neglected to tell almost any of it!
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >He somehow -how??- managed to learn the ways of the new tribe, learn business, learn to read and write, learn how to lead a business unit, and do it well. This guy came out of nowhere, and had to zero-to-sixty from manual laborer to - what? executive? What position did they put him in? How did he ramp up? What kind of support did he get, if any? What kind of education did they provide him with, if any? When you get an opportunity like that not learning isn't a realistic option. You do whatever to take advantage of the opportunity.
  - Cyph0n 7y ago
    Trust me, it takes a motivated (and talented) individual to push through something like that. I would wager that the vast majority of us would never have taken it this far.
- thundergolfer 7y ago
  thehustle.co as a publication is catered to young 'hustlers' who very much buy into the capitalist American Dream. This is a hype-article for the 'anyone can make it' myth, a myth that fuels culture of overworked young people[1] struggling against structural changes they're told to ignore. [1]. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-w...
HillaryBriss 7y ago
This is my favorite part of this story: “It seemed there was a group of [executives] who wanted it to fail,” he later told the podcast, The Passionate Few. “They thought I got lucky. They were paid big bucks to come up with these ideas… they didn’t want some janitor to do it.”
RickJWagner 7y ago
What an awesome story. ....he was going to be the “best janitor Frito-Lay had ever seen” That's the enabler, right there.
zaroth 7y ago
“How much market share do you think we can get?” Arms spread wide, “This much!” That is just too perfect. Who’s cutting onions in here?
justanegg 7y ago
pre movie boost article?
mxfh 7y ago
What about those 300k employees in the 80s? That just sounds way off-scale and hints to sloppy editing elsewhere. The only number close to this is what they call their direct distibution system customers. This article NYT from 1986 mentions 26.500 employees: https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/02/business/frito-lay-s-go-it-alone-ploicy.html https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/02/business/frito-lay-s-go-i...
rocketraman 7y ago
Wonderful story. Both the janitor and the CEO epitomize Ayn Rand's "ideal man": > "The moral issue is: how do you approach the field of work given your intellectual endowment and the existing possibilities? Are you going through the motions of holding a job, without focus or ambition, waiting for weekends, vacations, and retirement? Or are you doing the most and the best that you can with your life? Have you committed yourself to a purpose, i.e., to a productive career? Have you picked a field that makes demands on you, and are you striving to meet them, to do good work, and to build on it -- to expand your knowledge, develop your ability, improve your efficiency? > If the answers to these last questions are yes, then you are totally virtuous in regard to productiveness, whether you are a surgeon or a steelworker, a house painter or a painter of landscapes, a janitor or a company president." (HT: http://gusvanhorn.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-janitors-multi-billion-dollar-idea.html http://gusvanhorn.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-janitors-multi-bill...)
jayeshsalvi 7y ago
Inspirational story, but let's not forget about the nutritional value of the Cheetos (or lack thereof)
kitten_smuggler 7y ago
Wow, its been a while since I've read something that inspirational!
gdix 7y ago
What a nice feel-good story which is totally not a marketing/PR concoction, albeit a brilliant one. The story is literally the Cheeto version of Good Will Hunting. Do you all honestly believe none of the hundreds of food scientists working at Frito-Lay thought of making a spicy version their snacks?
synchronos 7y ago
Here's an insightful interview with the man himself - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADnYF7srPK0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADnYF7srPK0
l0c0b0x 7y ago
When he broke the news to his family, his grandfather imparted a piece of advice that would always stick with him: “Make sure that floor shines,” the man told his grandson. “And let them know that a Montañez mopped it.” As a Latino with humble beginnings, this brought tears to my eyes.
edisonjoao 7y ago
love this

780 points by andygcook 7y ago

This is one of the best business stories I've ever read. It embodies the core principle of the American dream: that you can really make it if you are dedicated, work hard, and strike out on the right idea. It also highlights the importance of good leadership, to recognize good ideas no matter where they come from, and bottom-up management techniques that emphasize collective ownership of a company's products and success.

spacedog11 7y ago

Very interesting.

JimBrimble35 7y ago
indeed

crankylinuxuser 7y ago

The days when someone can start as a janitor or in the mailroom and climb to the top is done. Companies used to hire everyone in the company. Janitors were part of the company. So was mailroom staff. So were secretaries. Everybody was part of the whole. Now, companies contract out everything but their core thing. Janitors come from a low-paid 3rd party service. Mailrooms are no longer a thing (there's no such thing as emailrooms, unless you count exchange admins). All those things that allowed somebody to start at the bottom rung in a company and climb up have been systematically destroyed and/or removed.

bredren 7y ago
FWIW, this is what pushes energy and opportunity into the entrepreneurial marketplace. You work in these companies as a contractor, learn about problems and start something new. Crowdfunding and free marketing distribution platforms exist to aid your small venture. Just as this old story may be less likely today, new stories of entrepreneurship continue to be written without the inclusion of PepsiCo. If anything these giants exist as acquirers.
- Frondo 7y ago
  I don't think any janitor working for an outsourced company is learning about problems. For the most part, people try to ignore that the cleaning staff are there at all. They don't talk to them and they certainly don't engage with them as equals -- for the most part, of course. How would a janitor working for Aramark, emptying trash cans after everyone's left for the day, "learn about problems and start something new"? Even the "start something new" bit doesn't really make sense. You're going to get an appointment with a funder on the pitch of "I'm a janitor with Aramark, and lately I've been working at the Johnson corp...."?
  - camjohnson26 7y ago
    Even back then most janitors did not rise through the ranks. Montañez specifically went above and beyond his job responsibilities to network, learn about the business, and be the best janitor on staff. His success still required luck and maybe that kind of luck is hard to find these days, but he was also prepared to take advantage of that luck when it arrived. Most workers, no matter their level, just do the bare minimum to get by.
    - bredren 7y ago
      Yes, the key is this person looked at their entire job differently. They never were looking to only be an average janitor. Jan Koum went from welfare to WhatsApp with his key job as a contractor to yahoo via Ernst & Young. This is about the person and how they use resources at hand. The loss of corporate identity in low levels positions may have fallen away but other opportunities now exist.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  > FWIW, this is what pushes energy and opportunity into the entrepreneurial marketplace. You work in these companies as a contractor, learn about problems and start something new. There's an awfully lot of implied and stated "IFs" in that sentence. One can only tap the 'entrepreneurial marketplace' if you have or have access to Capital. That marketplace has no room for low paid people, with low to no influence. And another thing about starting on the ground floor of a company is being part of the culture and changing it from within. Whereas a "contractor" is just some 3rd party interloper that already has the skills and technique to be hired for a specific set of highly qualified skills. And if you think a CEO would listen to a gig-economy'd janitor or through Manpower, try asking them. > Crowdfunding and free marketing distribution platforms exist to aid your small venture. To recommend crowdfunding as some solution is a joke. Again, you need Capital to make the 2 minute catchy video and slick marketing to get people. And those vids usually cost around USD 20k to 50k. I guess you could go the beggars route and use a gofundme. But usually people are in the similar socioeconomic status as their family, friends and peers.
Waterluvian 7y ago
I'm not convinced this is objectively bad. It may be that the benefits outweigh the costs. But I do think this is one way in which the "American Dream" was broken.
camjohnson26 7y ago
That’s a fatalist outlook. The ceo in the article was humble enough to recognize a good idea when he saw it and not judge the presenter by where he came from. Most bosses would’ve laughed him out of the room when he held out his arms and said he thought they could win this much market share. Credentials can only get you so far, at some point intuition is important. Leaders and recruiters need to pay more attention to drive, work ethic, and character than to where someone went to college or what their job title is. This is the way things used to be and they can be that way again.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  I mean, my assumption is the CEO at the time he asked this, was already thinking about the potential of the product itself as a good idea at that point in the presentation. He already knew he was talking to the janitor, I doubt he really expected a realistic estimate of market share. But yeah, I think a huge part here is actually that Montañez went with the best he could do, he didn't snap back about not knowing or get awkwardly uncomfortable about being out of his element or his knowledge base. He presented his idea enthusiastically and he stood by it. And I think you can pick up that sort of attitude in people, and that's what may have moved him past "contributed an idea" to "worth including in continuing to develop it".
sdegutis 7y ago
I'm not sure that's inherently a bad thing. Yes, loyalty should be rewarded, and employees should not be treated like resources but as people with inherent dignity. And I can see that its unethical to hire external workers to avoid treating them well. But if laws are made to protect and enforce their rights and dignity, then how is this kind of outsourcing system worse than hiring everyone as a full time employee?
- notfromhere 7y ago
  it means upward mobility for the non-top 20% is way harder
Tiktaalik 7y ago
Games industry is probably one of the few jobs where you can work your way up to the top role from the bottom. It's still not uncommon at all for executive producers that manage entire projects to have started as game testers that would have been paid a low hourly wage.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Games companies hire their own cleaners and mailroom and they make it through to the C-suite? Your comment takes a tone suggesting disagreement but the content agrees completely with the parent. If you started in a technical role then you manage to reach a top technical role then you haven't done the "start in the mailroom" progression at all. Are games testers even taken on straight from school at age 16 or do they have to have a degree to get in the door nowadays?
  - Tiktaalik 7y ago
    Games testing isn't a technical role. Anyone can do it. It's a minimum wage job with no real qualifications.
trefn 7y ago
It may just look different now. At my company (Mixpanel), the modern equivalent is our support team, which is filled with smart, hungry people who want to get their foot in the door in tech. Now, we have former support folks all over the company (sales, sales engineering, services, software engineering, product - just to name the departments I can think of offhand), who are often our top performers as ICs or who have grown into leadership roles. Some have left to start their own companies. It's actually been one of our most effective hiring channels!
- rhizome 7y ago
  This is something I've been wanting to ask at interviews, "how many people who work here were hired with a different title?" I'm pretty sure that promoting from within is an extremely strong indicator of resilience.
- ts4z 7y ago
  At your company, the modern equivalent is the janitor, who cleans your office -- but doesn't work directly for Mixpanel.
danso 7y ago
It might be that it's harder on average for the lower/lower-middle-income worker to work their way to the top in, but it may be also the case that the Internet and social networks (even amid the saturation of professional influencers and their ilk) provide opportunities for the lower-rung to get sudden and prominent recognition, albeit not from their own workplaces.
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jameane 7y ago
So true! Now you are lucky is an IC on a team can be groomed to even be a manager.
Johnny555 7y ago
Mailrooms are no longer a thing They haven't completely died, my company has a mailroom with someone that delivers mail to each floor, receives packages (including larger shipments at the loading dock) and stamps outgoing mail.

ripvanwinkle 7y ago

Inspirational. I'd love to hear names of companies today where folks feel their work place culture might allow something like this to happen.

Frost1x 7y ago
For some reason, this story reminds me of Hamdi Ulukay and the story behind Chobani from his TED talk: The anti-CEO Playbook: https://www.ted.com/talks/hamdi_ulukaya_the_anti_ceo_playbook/ https://www.ted.com/talks/hamdi_ulukaya_the_anti_ceo_playboo... It gave me respect for a company I wouldn't think twice about. Both cases show solid longterm leadership strategy in a world chasing quarterly growth.
jonathlee 7y ago
I work at Nucor and know of several people who have done exactly this in the 20 years I've worked here. They started working in a entry level production position and worked their way up to department manager, division manager/VP, senior VP and even CEO in one case.
- simonrobb 7y ago
  I've almost finished reading "Good to Great" (an excellent read, for whoever hasn't read it already) which analyzes Nucor's company culture. Nice to hear the reality matches the analysis.

rootedbox 7y ago

Frito Lay was a great place to work at because they did promote up, and they also hired the best. I would often be in meetings where one logistics manager went to MIT and the other logistics manager would be someone who started at a plant boxing chips.

hanniabu 7y ago
That's the way to work in my opinion. I worked at a place where just because I had an engineering degree I was around 25 years old managing a manufacturing plant full of 40+ year olds that have been working the lines since they graduated high school. It makes absolutely no sense. The best I could do was just make sure they had all the supplies and everything they needed because they knew every machines and issue inside and out and there was absolutely nothing I could help them with in that regard. Would have made 100x more sense having one of our maintenance guys or line workers promoted into a managerial position.
- codesushi42 7y ago
  Thank you for being humble. Experience is worth a lot more than credentials on paper. This is a truth that SV turns a blind eye to.
  - bnjms 7y ago
    This is the thing that encourages so much adolescent angst. They've a sense that they know as much as most of the adults they interact with. And a realization everyone just makes it up as they go. And somehow we don't share with each other the value of experience and no one shares failure is the currency of experience and young people should be almost failing a lot.
- mrmonkeyman 7y ago
  Manager != production drone. You don't need production expertise to be an excellent manager. You said it right, just make sure the guys have everything they need and get out of their way. That is the manager's job. Promoting these guys will backfire.

irrational 7y ago

“I do have a Ph.D.,” he responded. “I’ve been poor, hungry and determined.” Love that.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
I hate it. I think it belittles Ph.D's and denigrates the people who don't have them suggesting that you need to deflect the question because you [sarcasm] couldn't possibly have a skill set that's of high worth unless you actually had done a Ph.D [/sarcasm]. Bleurgh. FWIW my highest level of qualification is a bachelor's degree and I work in a position that doesn't require any formal training at all.
- Aearnus 7y ago
  I think you're overthinking it. It's a cute quote.
- intuitionist 7y ago
  sounds like you are a Ph.D., but the Kanye West version
- martyvis 7y ago
  His Ph.D response was a retort to people questioning his qualifications to conduct lectures. Almost every real Ph.D certainly deserved them, recognising their knowledge or research in their field. However many of those with Ph.Ds were not the best lecturers and teachers they could be when I was an undergraduate at university. They actually hadn't been taught to teach effectively and present their knowledge in way that others could absorb. (Thank God for good text books and helpful tutors in my case). It sounds like Richard Montañez' experience in the "school of hard knocks" may well have set him above many regular Ph.Ds in capability to lecture and teach.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Well, exactly. You don't have to have a Ph.D to be an expert, to be a good lecturer, etc.. But having a Ph.D is nonetheless a demonstration of a particular high-level of learning, research, and technical ability.

bendbro 7y ago

Very impressed with the janitor's vision and the CEOs good leadership. A poor leader would have quashed the process when the janitor could not justify his idea. Being a good leader, the CEO came up with a solution to determine the viability of the janitor's idea. The difference between seniors and juniors is experience, and that experience can partially be defined by your "moveset". A janitor would not know it is possible to run a limited trial, but the CEO would. I have found that managers are often amenable to ideas from their workers. But, if a worker does not have a full moveset, it will be difficult for the worker to pitch an idea in a way that is actionable, and he will be turned down.

spaceflunky 7y ago
Great comment. It takes a hell of a CEO to squash any ego they have and stop to listen to the janitor about what direction their business should take.

camjohnson26 7y ago

This is a fantastic story. There are a few ethical problems including Montañez plagiarizing parts of his presentation and having friends and family buy out the products in the test market, but overall he refused to accept imposed limits and accomplished something phenomenal. One interesting thing is that Frito-Lay had no products targeting Latinos, and no one on the highly paid marketing team did anything about it. The janitor saw the problem immediately, but for some reason the entrenched interests were unable to see it. The CEO by contrast was humble enough to take Montañez’s call, let him give a presentation, and overlook that presentation’s weaknesses to see the good idea at the core. Also interesting is the backlash he faced from those same executives, jealous that someone less qualified was being successful. As humans we hate to see others doing better than us and try to push them down. No wonder social mobility is so difficult.

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WalterBright 7y ago
> plagiarizing parts of his presentation I don't agree. He copied parts of it from examples in a book on marketing strategy. One writing a book with samples in it would expect someone to use those samples. It's the whole point. Otherwise, it's a useless book describing things you can't use.
- notatoad 7y ago
  Yeah, if this was for a school assignment on marketing, that would be cheating. If it was something he was publishing under his own name, that would be plagiarism. But if you're giving a presentation to your bosses, pretty much everything is fair game.
  - bshipp 7y ago
    If my programming tasks--comprised of Github snippets and Stackoverflow answers--were graded by any University TA I'd certainly fail too. But I'm getting appraised by different standards in the workforce than in school. The workplace doesn't care what I've learned, they care what I've done. if I choose to spend 3x the effort writing a library from scratch instead of recycling work that has already been published I wouldn't last very long.

JimBrimble35 7y ago

The real hero of this story is the CEO who decided to take this guy _and_ his idea. He could have easily taken the idea and ran with it on his own, with Montañez spending the rest of his life mopping floors. I wonder how likely this scenario would be in today's world. I have found personally that many companies are unwilling to take risks on employees who aren't formally qualified, even if they demonstrate the skills to operate at far beyond their current pay grade. Second real hero of the story is his wife. How important is it to have people around you who will enable you do things you aren't qualified to do because they believe in you unconditionally? All of the importants.

jakelazaroff 7y ago
> The real hero of this story is the CEO who decided to take this guy _and_ his idea. He could have easily taken the idea and ran with it on his own, with Montañez spending the rest of his life mopping floors. A practical question, and a moral one: Would it be have worked out had the CEO tried to steal Montañez's idea, given Montañez came up with the spices himself? Does someone merely not doing something unethical, at no cost to themselves, make them a hero?
- danso 7y ago
  "real hero" is definitely overstating it – I'd hope we as a society haven't reached the point where doing the decent thing is seen as going above and beyond. Hopefully the CEO saw it not only as just the right thing to do, but also the smart (and legal) thing to do – Montañez's story could in the long-run inspire more innovative ideas and culture at the company.
  - JimBrimble35 7y ago
    Sorry, but we have _definitely_ reached that point. Granted I'm extremely cynical, but stories like this are outliers and not the norm. And not simply because of the scale of the success. Read my other comment on why I consider the CEO the hero of this story.
- MisterBastahrd 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

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WalterBright 7y ago

I love this story. It's not about how Montañez "got lucky" - it's about how he, in several key spots, set himself up so luck would find him. It's a great American success story.

axiom92 7y ago
Also from the article: > Six months later, with Montañez’s help, Frito-Lay began testing Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in small Latino markets in East Los Angeles. > If it performed well, the company would move forward with the product; if it didn’t, they’d scratch it — and Montañez would likely return to janitorial duties. > So Montañez assembled a small team of family members and friends, went to the test markets, and bought every bag of Hot Cheetos he could find. > “I’d tell the owner, ‘Man, these are great,’” he recalled. “Next week, I’d come back and there’d be a whole rack.” :-)
- dharma1 7y ago
  growth hacking 101
- fma 7y ago
  If I remember correctly, Sid Meiers would call up computer stores and ask if they had his games in stock because he wanted to buy it. He'd call several times and eventually the stores would reach out to him to buy it.
  - blarg1 7y ago
    I wonder if he had to come up with different voice disguises.

danso 7y ago

Great story. When I read the headline, I immediately thought of D'Angelo Barksdale's cynical speculation about the inventor of Chicken McNuggets being a "just some sad ass down in the basement of McDonalds, thinking up some shit to make some money for the real players": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyg_v7Vxo4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyg_v7Vxo4A

_revolutionary 7y ago

"Hey, what if we made Cheetos really spicy..."

darkpuma 7y ago

I just wish they'd make them hotter. Takis are kicking their ass in the spicy snack aisle.

bluedino 7y ago
I have never found any flavor of takis to actually be “hot”
- darkpuma 7y ago
  Not "capsicum hot" per se, but very flavorful. More salty and acidic I guess. But it's a very bold and complex flavor, a top tier snack imho.
  - domsnar 7y ago
    I recently moved to Europe and can not find any vendor that supplies Takis. For me they are basically crack and I can't get my fix. Maybe it's for the better, as I can go through two large bags in one sitting..
mffnbs 7y ago
I find the XXTRA flaming hot cheetos to be particularly hot. I'm the type of person that finds most "hot" things to be rather mild, but these I have to pace myself with.
nathankunicki 7y ago
I tried the XXX Hot Flaming Cheetos a few months back. I like spicy foods, but my bodily functions were impaired for days. Perhaps give them a shot.

thtthings 7y ago

Best thing i ever read on HN

rb808 7y ago

> “it’s not about who you know — it’s about who knows you.” I've never heard that before, its an awesome quote.

michyous 7y ago
Whenever I hear "It's who you know" my response is - and has been since my teens is - "It's not about who you know, It's who wants to know you." I'm sure someone said it before me. You can usually visualise the processing going on in the few seconds of silence that follows.

dom96 7y ago

This is a great story. I'm surprised to not see Ketchup Cheetos[1] mentioned in the linked timeline[2], those are by far my favourites so I wonder what the story behind them is. 1 - https://americanfizz.co.uk/image/cache/catalog/european-products/cheetos/cheetos-ketchup-85g-800x800.png https://americanfizz.co.uk/image/cache/catalog/european-prod... 2 - https://www.timelinemaker.com/blog/featured-timeline/history-of-cheetos-timeline/ https://www.timelinemaker.com/blog/featured-timeline/history...

FreeKill 7y ago
I've always found it interesting that ketchup flavoring on frito lay products were not a bigger thing. In canada, ketchup flavored chips etc. are a very popular flavor and have been around for decades. Just never seems to really have caught on elsewhere until somewhate recently.
- dom96 7y ago
  Oooh, another reason to visit Canada. My love for Ketchup Cheetos comes from Poland, where ketchup flavoured crisps are fairly popular as well.

debatem1 7y ago

That's an incredible story and props to the guy, but let's not tapdance around the fact that this is incredible specifically because social mobility on this scale is extremely rare. It took both exceptional determination and unbelievable luck to make this happen. How many others have the doggedness and skill, but not the luck? How many of them are still mopping today?

whenchamenia 7y ago
Just because there is 'mobility', does not entice all to seek a different 'status'. Many are content to be a happy human, and think those terms are silly at best.
- debatem1 7y ago
  I'm sorry, but the belief that you can be happy and poor in America is hippy-dippy nonsense left over from an earlier and more equitable age. Nobody is happy watching their child die of a treatable disease, and no amount of inner peace will make your family's eviction ok. Thinking that those things are silly is a mark of inexperience and foolishness, and is no wiser than Candide's insistence that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The reality is that social mobility is a cornerstone of the American dream specifically because it actually does buy a better life for those who get it. The fact that such mobility does not exist for many who would choose it is a black mark on us and our society, and one we need urgently to correct.
Macross8299 7y ago
>because social mobility on this scale is extremely rare Rare only works as a qualifier when comparing it to some other probability of social mobility, either in an ideal or real system. The US has higher social mobility than most actual countries in the world and is pretty much middle of the pack in social mobility when it comes to developed (OECD) nations [0] If I recall correctly, there was another case of a janitor working her way up to becoming a C-level executive at Microsoft and HP. Capitalism with a social safety net is what affords this social mobility because it doesn't matter what your credentials are if you can find a market for a novel product like Montañez did. You can argue about how much of a social safety net is required to prevent the poor from staying poor forever, but it's still capitalism that provides the impetus that lifts people up to where they don't need the social safety net anymore. Compare this to a society where you're hooped if you're born into the wrong caste or without party connections and US social mobility doesn't seem that rare anymore. [0]: https://www.oecd.org/inclusive-growth/inequality-and-opportunity/The-Issues-Note-Social-Mobility-and-Equal-Opportunities-May-4-2017.pdf https://www.oecd.org/inclusive-growth/inequality-and-opportu... figure 2

greghatch 7y ago

> “It hit me that I had no idea what he was talking about, or what I was doing,” Montañez recalled. “I was shaking, and I damn near wanted to pass out…[but] I opened my arms and I said, ‘This much market share!’ I didn’t even know how ridiculous that looked.” >The room went silent as the CEO stood up and smiled. “Ladies and gentlemen, do you realize we have an opportunity to go after this much market share?” he said, stretching out his arms. Huge smiles from me here. This really amplifies the willingness of this CEO to listen and promote good ideas. I don't have a ton more context but I can relate to this janitor in many ways and this reaction from the CEO would be incredible. I'm so glad it happened this way and that it came from the janitor's perspective.

coupdejarnac 7y ago
I would have loved to work for a CEO like that.
elicash 7y ago
That quote is missing some context that I think makes the story even more impressive. So, this was before the Hot Cheeto idea. Montañez was looking for ways of advancing inside of the company and had asked a salesperson if he could trail him as he did his routes. This was on Montañez's day off work, so it was unpaid. The advantage to the salesperson was an extra set of hands for unloading. He saw the shelf or whatever the terminology is and how much FritoLay product they were selling in the individual stores. That's what he had in mind when he used his arms to say how much market share. The question scared him (apparently he and his wife hadn't gotten to the "market share" chapter in the book they got from the library) until he remembered that day following the salesperson and so the punchline is that he thought he nailed the answer.

starpilot 7y ago

My takeaway: there are huge potential markets in people who are not like me. The execs were probably completely unaware of this market, and it took an outsider to hold their hand and bring it to them. I love flaming hot cheetos and know tons of people who do, but there is no way I would have thought of taking the hot pepper / other spices from a traditional Mexican food (elotes, which I had in LA) and adapting them in this way. The fact that everyone I interact with forms an upper class monoculture (white/asian, college educated, 20s-40s, mostly US-born) means that I have huge blindspots. I wonder what huge businesses could be created catering toward senior citizens, for middle aged people working retail, recent Asian immigrants, working single fathers, and so on.

GuiA 7y ago
Then again, there is the tale of dulce de leche M&M’s - trying to tap into such a market, only for it to fail terribly. https://mms.fandom.com/wiki/Dulce_de_Leche_Caramel_M%26M%27s https://mms.fandom.com/wiki/Dulce_de_Leche_Caramel_M%26M%27s
- mcny 7y ago
  My guess based on what I read from the grandparent post is there was probably some poor product fit. Perhaps we would have done better marketing it towards "gringos"? From your link: > In July 2001, Dulce de Leche M&M's were introduced in five markets with large Hispanic populations: Los Angeles, San Diego, Miami, Florida; Mcallen-Brownsville, Texas; and San Antonio, Texas. The flavor never became popular with the Hispanic community, who preferred existing M&M's flavors, and it was discontinued in most areas by early 2003. Perhaps there is an opportunity in introducing it to people who don't have previous experience with this flavor? Just thinking out loud...
  - chasontherobot 7y ago
    As someone who ate those Dulce de Leche M&Ms, what would've helped is if they were any good or bore any resemblance to the flavor they were named after.

shripadk 7y ago

I loved this article but I loved their Newsletter conversion page the most! I never thought I would feel warm and fuzzy after giving away my email address to subscribe to a newsletter of all things! Live to learn something new everyday!

mentos 7y ago

Read the whole article but did not see any mention of if he was compensated at all for his idea?

rconti 7y ago
It didn't say anything about him being compensated directly for the idea. Presumably as he moved up the ranks he got compensated via profit-sharing. In the same way the highly paid guys who were SUPPOSED to be inventing new things like this (but didn't) were also compensated. And the same way they would have been compensated if they developed some hot new product (eg, at their same rate relative to the profit sharing of the whole org).
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miguelmota 7y ago

What a great and inspiring story. > “Nobody had given any thought to the Latino market,” recalls Montañez. “But everywhere I looked, I saw it ready to explode.” It's incredible what a new set of eyes with different perspectives can bring to the table.

z3t4 7y ago

> “How much market share do you think you can get?” "I opened my arms and I said, ‘This much market share!’" Brilliant answer for a stupid question that was probably meant to put him down. > Frito-Lay began testing Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in small Latino markets in East Los Angeles. If it performed well, the company would move forward with the product; if it didn’t, they’d scratch it So Montañez assembled a small team of family members and friends, went to the test markets, and bought every bag of Hot Cheetos he could find. Also brilliant, as such a "test" would certainly fail due to no marketing, likely intentional by the exec's and politics.

11thEarlOfMar 7y ago
This was the same CEO who took a call from a janitor. It wasn't a put down. This was an interview, and the question was open ended on purpose to see how he responded.
- jackvalentine 7y ago
  The CEO wasn't the one asking the question.

test6554 7y ago

My asshole would like to have some stern words with that guy

phillco 7y ago

This is very well written. They get in, they tell the story, they get out.

gumby 7y ago

man I love this story. And I wonder how many huge multinationals are smart enough to let something like this happen? And this is why VCs often say they prefer teams with just domain expertise to teams with just the technical expertise, if the team doesn't already have both.

arkades 7y ago

This article ends right before the actual interesting part begins. Janitor takes some food his company produces, adds spices, makes a shitty pitch deck and profit? Cool, but... this could have easily happened in a dozen different configurations and gone nowhere. This is more luck than anything else. The interesting story begins after that. This guy didn't end his career there - so, presumably, he was't a one-hit wonder. We have an illiterate janitor who suddenly got swept into the orbit of the CEO, without any business or operational acumen. He somehow -how??- managed to learn the ways of the new tribe, learn business, learn to read and write, learn how to lead a business unit, and do it well. This guy came out of nowhere, and had to zero-to-sixty from manual laborer to - what? executive? What position did they put him in? How did he ramp up? What kind of support did he get, if any? What kind of education did they provide him with, if any? There's a long, interesting story between "janitor" and "successful VP", and they neglected to tell almost any of it!

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>He somehow -how??- managed to learn the ways of the new tribe, learn business, learn to read and write, learn how to lead a business unit, and do it well. This guy came out of nowhere, and had to zero-to-sixty from manual laborer to - what? executive? What position did they put him in? How did he ramp up? What kind of support did he get, if any? What kind of education did they provide him with, if any? When you get an opportunity like that not learning isn't a realistic option. You do whatever to take advantage of the opportunity.
- Cyph0n 7y ago
  Trust me, it takes a motivated (and talented) individual to push through something like that. I would wager that the vast majority of us would never have taken it this far.
thundergolfer 7y ago
thehustle.co as a publication is catered to young 'hustlers' who very much buy into the capitalist American Dream. This is a hype-article for the 'anyone can make it' myth, a myth that fuels culture of overworked young people[1] struggling against structural changes they're told to ignore. [1]. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-w...

HillaryBriss 7y ago

This is my favorite part of this story: “It seemed there was a group of [executives] who wanted it to fail,” he later told the podcast, The Passionate Few. “They thought I got lucky. They were paid big bucks to come up with these ideas… they didn’t want some janitor to do it.”

RickJWagner 7y ago

What an awesome story. ....he was going to be the “best janitor Frito-Lay had ever seen” That's the enabler, right there.

zaroth 7y ago

“How much market share do you think we can get?” Arms spread wide, “This much!” That is just too perfect. Who’s cutting onions in here?

justanegg 7y ago

pre movie boost article?

mxfh 7y ago

What about those 300k employees in the 80s? That just sounds way off-scale and hints to sloppy editing elsewhere. The only number close to this is what they call their direct distibution system customers. This article NYT from 1986 mentions 26.500 employees: https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/02/business/frito-lay-s-go-it-alone-ploicy.html https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/02/business/frito-lay-s-go-i...

rocketraman 7y ago

Wonderful story. Both the janitor and the CEO epitomize Ayn Rand's "ideal man": > "The moral issue is: how do you approach the field of work given your intellectual endowment and the existing possibilities? Are you going through the motions of holding a job, without focus or ambition, waiting for weekends, vacations, and retirement? Or are you doing the most and the best that you can with your life? Have you committed yourself to a purpose, i.e., to a productive career? Have you picked a field that makes demands on you, and are you striving to meet them, to do good work, and to build on it -- to expand your knowledge, develop your ability, improve your efficiency? > If the answers to these last questions are yes, then you are totally virtuous in regard to productiveness, whether you are a surgeon or a steelworker, a house painter or a painter of landscapes, a janitor or a company president." (HT: http://gusvanhorn.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-janitors-multi-billion-dollar-idea.html http://gusvanhorn.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-janitors-multi-bill...)

jayeshsalvi 7y ago

Inspirational story, but let's not forget about the nutritional value of the Cheetos (or lack thereof)

kitten_smuggler 7y ago

Wow, its been a while since I've read something that inspirational!

gdix 7y ago

What a nice feel-good story which is totally not a marketing/PR concoction, albeit a brilliant one. The story is literally the Cheeto version of Good Will Hunting. Do you all honestly believe none of the hundreds of food scientists working at Frito-Lay thought of making a spicy version their snacks?

synchronos 7y ago

Here's an insightful interview with the man himself - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADnYF7srPK0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADnYF7srPK0

l0c0b0x 7y ago

When he broke the news to his family, his grandfather imparted a piece of advice that would always stick with him: “Make sure that floor shines,” the man told his grandson. “And let them know that a Montañez mopped it.” As a Latino with humble beginnings, this brought tears to my eyes.

edisonjoao 7y ago

love this