Will Nitze

Founder, IQBAR (iqbar.com) 🍫+💧+☕️

🍫 Founder/CEO, IQBAR (iqbar.com)
🎙️ Co-Host, "Eating Glass" Podcast
🎓 Harvard BA

Founder/CEO

We make superior brain + body fuel. IQBAR® plant protein bars, IQMIX® hydration sticks, and IQJOE® instant coffees are packed with the functional compounds you need to win your day.

🚨 New product line launch 🚨

IQBAR PB&J Protein Bites are live today, only at Sam's Club!

High-protein, high-fiber, low-sugar, "poppable," and nostalgic. Coming in hot at the absurdly good value of $9.98 / 15-pack.

It took a full year to figure out how to manufacture and perfect these (shoutout to Matt Stinson). They may just be the best things we've ever made.

Major thanks to Alek Guzman and the Sam's team for making this happen 🚀

On the Costco [dot] com homepage for the first time ever.

Pretty rad.

🚨 EXPO TAKE-AWAYS from airplane text exchange with Daniel Puckett:

→ Taste is still king
→ Good design / packaging is now a commodity
→ Not much true “innovation” - very few surprises
→ The breakfast category is under-served; big oppy
→ This industry has great humans; more collegial than others
→ Nutritional “no man’s land” is a death sentence; pick a lane
→ Most big booths have been in the game a while; build to last
→ Booths are only as valuable as how engaging folks at them are
→ Meat sticks are now ultra-competitive; chicken's having a moment
→ Protein everywhere; less fiber / creatine / GLP-1 stuff than expected
→ More loyalty erosion (bad for Big CPG; good for upstarts / private label)
→ A.I. wasn’t mentioned much, but when it was the tone was positive (CPGs will get more efficient / profitable; none of the "doomerism" you see elsewhere)

💭 Solid add-ons from the comments section:

→ A shocking number of honey companies (h/t Drew Mabry)
→ In chips, tallow continues to steadily grow (h/t Jeremy White)
→ International flavors - esp LatAm - was big (h/t Andres Siman)
→ This year was mostly "back to the basics" (h/t Eric M.)
→ Energy / attitude / quality was higher than past years (h/t Andy Godish)

- - -

CRITICAL CAVEAT: true insight into brands is *entirely invisible* at at Expo cuz it's under the hood. Supply chain creativity, manufacturing excellence, cash management, media buying efficiency, SG&A streamlining, negotiation prowess, contracting strategy, etc. etc. etc.

If the "engine" isn't assembled and maintained right, trends don't matter.

Today I witnessed a non-negligible cohort of folks walk out of Natural Products Expo West and immediately light up a cig.

Humans are an interesting bunch.

Extremely niche Expo observation…

Lithuania goes hard in the paint.

Must’ve dropped a milly on 100 feet of booth space plus an army of people.

Never forget - you aren’t just competing with rival cookie / chip / bar startups.

You’re competing with entire Baltic states.

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I've made the difficult decision to age in reverse.

Compete with me if you'd like. But I wouldn't recommend it.

"Mainstream weird" is the best brand positioning.

If you're too mainstream, you'll get knocked-off into oblivion.

If you're too weird, you'll never achieve major scale.

Mainstream weird is juuusssttt right.

Optionality is the desired end state.

But FLEXIBILITY is how you get there.

Create maximally flexible products. And positioning. And teams.

Heck, ensure your OWN BRAIN is maximally flexible. (Can you learn new stuff quickly? Can you change your mind quickly in light of new data?)

In today's environment where the chess board is violently shaken up on an annual basis, the most flexible player adapts best.

And...over time...wins.

Cash Allred

Associate Partner @ Antler Criticality

Follow me on Twitter @ AllredCash

Outside of work, my family and I love adventuring :)

All comments, messages, & posts reflect my personal opinions

Principal

The first Venture Fund for everyone. Join us!

We are already full steam ahead, but excited to formally announce my role as Associate Partner @ Criticality and Antler!

Huge thanks to Ryan Sommerville and the rest of the Antler team.

VC @ Criticality, focused on technical complexity and real-world urgency. Part of Antler US, investing at day zero.

New Mexico has supported more than $2B in economic impact via partnerships with the best funds in the world. Antler & Criticality are proud to be partners in this effort. From inception to industrialization, we are committed to building New Mexico’s next generation of category-defining companies.

Read the full report here: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gbFQVZaW

Nuclear, geothermal, and fracking were all invented in NM. Makes sense to have it be the energy hub of the future.

Advice I would give my child if they were in college right now:

1 - you can't seize an opportunity you don't have. Focus on getting the offers, not which one you would accept. 

2 - nobody knows what they are doing or how the world will look, so even a few hours a week of extra effort learning and working with AI will put you miles ahead. 

3 - learning changes threats to excitement. Yesterday a dentist in my neighborhood built an AI setup with his son who is studying accounting. His son is excited, many accounting students are scared. 

4 - I truly believe the future is bright, even if bumpy.

The pandemic temporarily removed the Bay Area's advantage from physical proximity to technical talent and capital. Tons of incredible companies were built outside of the Bay Area. 

Now with AI, the optimal size of an engineering team is small. It's easier than ever to build at a high pace outside of the Bay Area. We are going to see it happen again. 

There are also huge tailwinds for robotics, manufacturing, defence, energy, and other non-digital companies. Many will be far, far easier outside of California. 

If the companies can still tap into Bay Area VCs in the Series A+ stages, places like UT, TX, NM will be able to punch even higher above their weight.

A great startup's ability to recruit someone special doubles every six months. I have oberved that the founders who remember that don't grow their team too fast and create an environment the best people love (while shedding the rest).

There is a direct correlation between how much time founders are spending with AI and how seriously they take the changing future. There are moments every week that require rethinking everything.

One state is going to figure this out. Open the doors to data centers while demand is white hot, set up long-term tax plan, and get the equivalent of Alaska and New Mexico oil added to your state budget.

The significant overlap of entrepreneurs and optimists is just an indication that they are both intelligent.

Founding Dev is replacing every SMB Saas tool, customizable with AI. Super excited about where this is headed!

I’ve watched companies burn thousands of dollars on basic e-sign tools.

I once saw a company pay $18,000 to DocuSign just to use their APIs.
That frustration is exactly why I started Founding Dev.

Today, we’re launching our own e-signing tool built so businesses don’t have to get ripped off for common workflows.

- Create templates.
- Send documents for signing.
- Stay compliant with ESIGN, UETA (US) and eIDAS (EU).
- Use a powerful API.
- Import and edit templates however you want.

We built this so you don’t have to break the bank to get serious e-sign infrastructure.

If you’re interested, comment “esign” and I’ll DM you the link.

#saas #ai

Jonathan Gubbay is looking for an incredible data engineer to add to the team. Plaza is using AI to an extremely high level in their development process, definitely something to check out.

Founder at Plaza | Building Vertical AI for Multi-family Residential | Backed by Antler, Brickyard, & Flybridge

Excited to announce Plaza's pre-seed round! It's been a crazy year filled with a lot of personal and company growth. In the last year I welcomed my third child (3 kids under 5, FTW!), moved my family and GetPlaza.ai from Utah to Tennessee to honor the Brickyard handshake, re-structured the team and re-underwrote our engineering team to be AI-based, drank unhealthy levels of caffeine, started coding, lost a loved one, and made new friends in Chattanooga. Start-ups are incredibly hard, but through it all we have persevered and are doing very well. Truly extraordinary customers and team-members make it worth it in the end. 

I'm excited to keep building closely with our customers, and release Plaza 2.0 this year which I believe will change the real estate industry. Check out our new website getplaza.ai to learn more!

We are looking to hire one more extraordinary individual in the next 30 days, if that is you, please reach out to me. 

Grateful for our investors and supporters. We are thrilled to meet new people as we open up our shop window again and start selling in a couple of months. 

Cash Allred, Matt Patterson, Cam Doody, Ashby Monk, Elliott Donnelley, Jordan Clancy, Mark Fisher, Drew Tulchin, Julia Maltby

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