"Revolutionizing the Protein Bar Market: So then the question became, do we think we can do it better than them? And we thought the answer to that was a clear yes, based off of certain ingredients and processes that we thought could be used that were not currently being used in the protein bar space to allow us to create this unprecedented protein to calorie ratio."

"Journey From Finance to D2C: I all growing up, I thought I wanted to work in finance. Like I was in middle school, telling my parents that I wanted to be a hedge fund manager, which is totally not normal. And then having an interest in finance, that led me to school at UPenn where I majored in finance there, learned a little bit more about different realms of the finance world and really honed in on an interest in one specific sector called private equity."

"Transitioning Careers for Healthier Living": "And two, that I would way more regret never trying than I would regret trying to do something that I cared about and was interested in and failing. So when I had that realization that I wouldn't actually regret doing it and failing, that really pushed me over the edge to go for it."

"Entrepreneurship Challenges and Successes": "By the early spring of 2023, we were doing a little under $2 million of run rate revenue per year and we're outgrowing our commercial kitchen footprint while also realizing that the production we were doing at that commercial kitchen was way too manual and not particularly profitable from a unit economics basis."

"Successful Business Partnerships": "Peter is extremely self aware and knows what he's good at and knows where he wants support and aside from just wanting someone to work with, he wanted someone like me because Peter is more creative and less reliable and I am more reliable and less creative and we make a good pair in that way."

"Healthful Ingredients in Protein Bars: And then you have what we're using, which is a blend of only fiber and allulose, which is a rare sugar that does not get metabolized by the body in the same way that traditional sugar does."

"Understanding Nutrition in Processed Foods: 'So it's super important to minimize calories coming from fat. To achieve a high protein per calorie bomb, we were able to leverage a great ingredient that allows us to essentially achieve the mouthfeel of fat without the caloric load.'"

"Importance of Branding: And you can choose the best branding agency in the world, but if you give them garbage, they're going to give you garbage back. And the quality of what you get is often the quality of the brief that you give."

"Branding Process: And it's sort of our cocky way of saying our bar is a masterpiece and not shying away from what we want to say in that realm. So we adopted the name David and then put together the visual identity from there, which we always, from the beginning, wanted to make sure that the guiding North Star of our product was going to be accurately reflected in the branding."

"TikTok's Influence on Brand Awareness": "So we're seeing TikTok as like a huge awareness builder for David, because one, initially we seeded a lot of product to people on the platform, and two, once people started talking about the product there, some videos started kind of catching hold and going viral, which then leads more people wanting to create content about it because they see other creators have gotten viral videos from it and they maybe if they post about the bar too, they'll get viral content."