· David Senra, Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S0: I don't know if Miami is the place, Miami Beach in particular, is the place you should be searching for a wife. [00:00:00] S1: I agree. And then I bought a place in New York and moved to New York. But in general, it's because, all right, so if I find something and fall for it, there's a really high chance that I'm going to go all in, I won't see my friends, lose my health, and I'll be 50 and single, and that's a version of the future I didn't really want. So I ultimately found my wife, and then all roads led back to protein bars. It required some humility of being like, that's my shtick. If I die, on my gravestone, it might say, "Protein bar guy." And I'm comfortable with that. Because at first I had some influence of Elon, like, "Oh, I need to go into, like, I'm not the food guy. I'm going over there. I'm not this. I need to prove something." But then I realized, I've been in the food business since I was 12. I have a deep intrinsic knowledge of it. And basically, once my non-compete was a year away, it just naturally happened of like, oh, started connecting the dots, like, this is what I should do. [00:00:00] S0: So wait, you're in the food business since you were 12. How old are you at this point where you're like, "I'm going to start another protein bar?" [00:00:00] S1: Thirty-four. [00:00:00] S0: Okay. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. So 34. Yeah, so my non-compete was October 6th, '22.
· Peter Rahal, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. So 34. Yeah, so my non-compete was October 6th, '22. [00:00:00] S0: How long that getting over that dialogue, that inner monologue where it's like, "Oh, I need to do something more impactful, or I have to do biology, or create hardware or something," and just like, "No, I'm going to actually stick to what I actually know and may be the best in the world at." [00:00:00] S1: It was three years. [00:00:00] S0: You had to convince yourself this? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. Mm-hmm. [00:00:00] S0: Wow. Okay. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. And a little bit of like, because I always think both as an investor when I looked at companies and then a philosophy for myself is, the leader of the company, if they have to pick up the phone to fix the product, they're fucked. Meaning, the leader has to be able to really deeply understand the product and be able to fix it. And then all those false starts were like, it's kind of dependent on something else, or I didn't have the time to get the deep enough understanding of the product to make that change. And so with food, I deeply know exactly what to do. So it just became really obvious. And got my wife and then started what is today, David. [00:00:00] S0: When we talked the other... Why did you laugh? [00:00:00] S1: It was a very clear process. All right, check your personal life before, so you don't ruin your personal life again, because you're going to go all in on something. And then once that's done, and then- [00:00:00] S0: It just so happens you got the family, the non-compete expires, and now you're back at this.
· David Senra, Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S0: It just so happens you got the family, the non-compete expires, and now you're back at this. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: But maybe your ambition when you were younger, because you started RXBAR when you were how old? Early 20-something, you said? [00:00:00] S1: Twenty-four. [00:00:00] S0: Twenty-four. But now the scope of your ambition is, David is not a bar company. That's the first of the products, but how do you describe what you're working on now? [00:00:00] S1: We don't want to tell people what not to eat. I think that's a lot of the food business. Like, "Don't eat this." It's demonization and it's pseudoscience. We want to make your favorite foods smarter. And so it's a really quiet approach. They're there and they're just more intelligent, they're more effective, they're objectively better. So we're going to do that across multiple categories. The protein bar is the wedge. I know it. That's what we use to get to scale. And once you get to scale, you can build the platform for there. You have the organization, you have the route to market, you have the R&D capabilities. So the protein bar got us our platform, and now we're proliferating into- Categories that just make sense for us and our technology. [00:00:00] S0: When you started David, you knew that you were not going to stay, that you wanted to build a food company- [00:00:00] S1: Yeah
· Peter Rahal, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah [00:00:00] S0: ... not a protein bar company. So, I'm going to just answer my question that I asked you the way you said it to me before, which I think was excellent, where you're like, "I have to be the best in the world at what I do in my category." And I was like, "Well, what's your category?" And you're like, "CPG." I go, "What does that mean?" You go, "Anything that you can buy in a store." [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: That's the size and scope of your ambition. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, we're competing with Nestle. I want to build the most important food company in the 21st century. [00:00:00] S0: And how big? What's the scale of some of these food companies? [00:00:00] S1: Nestle's 100 plus billion in revenue. They're real global as well. Pepsi's probably right around there. Real scale. [00:00:00] S0: So a couple hundred billion dollar companies. How many different products? [00:00:00] S1: Well, they have these enormous portfolio of brands. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: And then hundreds of brands. And then those brands are different by cultures or geographies. [00:00:00] S0: They grow by acquisition or no? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, mostly. [00:00:00] S0: Okay. Are you going to do that too? [00:00:00] S1: Probably it's on the table, but our core competency is the ability to build brands. So, I know how to create an identity and build a brand. So, for the next four years, five years, we'll probably just create brands, but I wouldn't rule it out later on.
· Peter Rahal, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Probably it's on the table, but our core competency is the ability to build brands. So, I know how to create an identity and build a brand. So, for the next four years, five years, we'll probably just create brands, but I wouldn't rule it out later on. [00:00:00] S0: Okay, so tell me what you know about building brands and identities. This could be interesting. [00:00:00] S1: The analogy I think of as a brand, it's simply just a human being. So a brand has a name, it has mommy and daddy, it's the founders, its parents. Those parents have DNA. This brand, this individual has values, it has a vision where it's going, it has other traits, tone of voice, has friends. Who do you associate with? [00:00:00] S0: Hold on. Explain that part to me. Who do you associate with? [00:00:00] S1: So, who are you going to do partnerships with? So David, for example, David Protein, is a partnership with Huberman. That's an alignment. We wouldn't do a partnership with, I don't know, Miss Rachel doesn't make sense. I'm sure she's great, but- [00:00:00] S0: Yeah
· David Senra, Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S0: Yeah [00:00:00] S1: ... just like a human, the social circle matters. And so in creating a brand, that identity, both from tone of voice, visual, what clothes it wears, who's its friends, its values, vision, you define that clearly and that there's like a North Star to it. The most important factor in building brands, it just takes time. So if you keep this identity, it can be dynamic in nature as it grows, but you are consistently doing that over time and with really great quality product and service. The timepiece is critical. You just have to be doing that over time. David's values are around intelligence, beauty, and discipline. And that's rooted in the story of Michelangelo's masterpiece, the sculpture of David. Those values are rooted in the symbolism of that masterpiece. And then the tool, the chisel, which is like this crude nail. But the meaning of a chisel is intelligence, discipline, and if you apply those things, you get a masterpiece, something beautiful. So that's the logic for David's brand and brand identity. So, if you have a crystal clear identity for a brand and its product offering, its position, the marketing actually becomes really easy. You just constantly hammer those points over and over and over again.