Predicting The Turn w/ Dave Knox

Tim Heitmann started Double Good as a 500-square-foot popcorn shop on Navy Pier in 1998 and grew it into a wholesale business that sold to Costco, QVC, and FTD. Then a handwritten letter from a fifth grader who had raised $300 for his band trip made Tim question everything. He walked away from wholesale and poured the company into a fundraising side business that was barely 5% of revenue.In this episode of Predicting The Turn, Tim shares the full arc: how he spent five years quietly building a fundraising tech platform with just three people in a WeWork office, why he focused obsessively on competitive cheerleading as his beachhead market, and how COVID did not create the pivot but revealed a platform that had been five years in the making. When growth exploded in 2021 (400% in Q1 alone), Tim explains the brutal reality of scaling manufacturing, watching SLAs blow from 10 to 47 days, and building a blackout feature to throttle demand before it killed the brand.Tim also explains why Double Good has never taken outside investment, why he thinks in decades instead of quarters, and how he is building an executive team and governance structure so the company can outlast him. If you care about purpose-driven brands, patient entrepreneurship, and what it really takes to disrupt a 100-year-old industry with technology, this one delivers.- From a Navy Pier popcorn shop to a fundraising tech platform- The kid's letter that redirected the entire company- Building the tech platform with 3 people in a WeWork over 5 years- Why competitive cheerleading was the perfect beachhead market- The 4-day fundraiser model vs. the industry standard of 30 days- COVID as accelerant: 400% Q1 growth in 2021- Scaling crisis: SLAs from 10 to 47 days, 3,300 open tickets- Why Double Good has never taken outside investment- Building an evergreen company that thinks in decades

Will Nitze started IQBAR in 2018 to solve his own problem: long hours, a bad diet, daily brain fog. He designed the formulas for cognition, low net carb, low sugar, low glycemic. What he didn't know was that the rest of America was about to get obsessed with that exact macro profile for a completely different reason: weight loss. When keto took off, IQBAR was one of only three keto-compliant bars on Amazon. That lucky overlap was the first of several step-change moments that took a 15-person team to over 100% compound annual growth for 8 straight years, and into the shelves of Costco, Sam's Club, Walmart, and Target.In this episode of Predicting The Turn, Will unpacks why startups beat legacy CPG on speed rather than size, why he runs the entire company with a "benevolent dictator in every division" model instead of bloated marketing teams, and how IQBAR raised a little under $10M across 8 years without a single egregious fundraise. He also breaks down the move from D2C to mass retail, why packaging becomes the billboard when the shelf replaces the digital feed, and how the Bites launch turned into an incrementality test in real time.If you care about how emerging CPG brands actually scale inside Costco, Sam's Club, and Walmart without blowing up their cap table, this one is a masterclass.Key Topics- Why IQBAR's brain-health formulation became accidentally keto-compliant- The 15-person "benevolent dictator" operating model- Raising under $10M across 8 years and why bootstrapping isn't a virtue- Working capital reality when you move from Amazon to Walmart and Costco- Why packaging becomes the #1 marketing lever in mass retail- Building a platform brand across bars, hydration, coffee, and Bites- Running incrementality tests to avoid cannibalization- The three step-change moments: keto, Costco, Thomas Keller partnership- Picking a North Star that keeps you fired up in year 8

When there wasn’t enough fruit to make a juice business viable, Califia Farms co-founder Greg Steltenpohl looked out the window of his Central Valley factory and noticed something: demand for almond milk was quietly exploding. That pivot—from citrus to almonds—transformed a struggling startup into one of America’s leading plant-based beverage brands, with products in more than 20,000 stores nationwide. Now CEO Dave Ritterbush, the former Quest Nutrition chief who guided that company to a $1 billion acquisition, is placing new bets on organic lines, nutrient-dense formulations, and a foodservice strategy built not on retailers but on baristas.

Most grocery stores added “healthy” end caps; Thrive Market built a GLP-1 filterthat instantly rewrites your entire cart instead. In this conversation, Thrive Market’s Chief Marketing Officer Amina Pasha breaks down how strict EU-inspired ingredient bans, AI-generated smart carts, and a radically limited 7,000-item assortment are turning decision overload into trust and growth. For C-suites, founders, and brand leaders, it’s a playbook on using data, mission, and merchandising to stay ahead of the most health-obsessed generation of shoppers yet.

When Lucy Postins started The Honest Kitchen in 2002, she didn't just launch a pet food company — she lobbied the FDA to create an entirely new standard for human-grade pet food. Two decades later, the brand she built is the leading human-grade pet food in North America, with a 50/50 revenue split between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retail. CEO Will Lisman, who stepped in three years ago after a career spanning Hershey, startup leadership, and brand building, is now scaling the mission while positioning the company against headwinds in affordability, pet adoption, and a category he believes is a decade behind human food in its health-and-wellness evolution.