Kavnia Coffee Company was established by Olivia vonNieda as part of her quest for perfect home cup of cold drip coffee. For non-coffee afficionados, cold-drip coffee is the next evolution beyond cold brew coffee. Cold brew is made by soaking the coffee grounds in cold water. Cold drip passes a mist of water over the beans, creating coffee one drop at a time, creating a more intense flavor and picking up more of the subtle flavors of the coffee.
Cold drip coffee is prized by coffee buffs, but to date, it’s difficult and expensive to produce at home. It’s really only available at high-end coffee houses. vonNieda set out to find a way to make it more accessible, applying her formidable engineering and business skills.
Along the way, she needed to find money and resources to help her. She found resources at mHub and The Hatchery, both incubators based in Chicago. And she was eventually successful at pitching for funding, although it required a major pivot in Kavnia Coffee’s business model.
vonNieda shares the story of Kavnia Coffee with The Savvy Entrepreneur, with plenty of advice and tips on pitching for funding and how and when to successfully pivot. Not to mention it will whet your appetite for cold drip coffee!
Read on for a transcript of that interview, or go here to listen to the original interview, on-demand.
Doris Nagel 0:42
Good morning all you entrepreneurs and small business people. You’re listening to the savvy Entrepreneur Show.
I’m Doris Nagel, your host for the next hour.
The Savvy Entrepreneur Show has two goals. First, to share helpful information resources. If I can help just one of you entrepreneurs out there not make some of the many mistakes that I’ve made myself, or that I’ve seen my clients or friends make that I’ve been successful.
The second goal is show is to inspire. I found being an entrepreneur, confusing, often lonely. Sometimes you have no idea if you’re on the right track or not, or where to turn for good advice.
So every week on the show, I have guests who are willing to share their stories and their advice.
This week’s guest is Olivia vonNieda. She is the founder and owner of Kavnia Coffee Company. And she joins me this week to share her journey as an entrepreneur.
Olivia, thanks so much for being with me today. Welcome to The Savvy Entrepreneur Show!
Olivia vonNieda 1:51
Thanks. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Doris Nagel
Tell listeners a little bit about yourself: who you are, as a person, your background? What makes you tick? What you’re passionate about?
Olivia vonNieda 2:05
Sure. I’ll start pretty far back. My parents like to joke that I came that I was born asking questions. And throughout my career and my personal life, that’s been a big theme.
I have a degree in engineering, which to me was a really natural outgrowth of my passions growing up: asking how the world worked, why there weren’t purple m&ms, you know, whatever it was. I was always asking a bunch of questions.
And my parents were always encouraging these questions. So that led really naturally into me going to school to become an engineer. And while I was there, I was always creative. I liked working with my hands, but I was really passionate about how the numbers can match up and really diving into the details.
After school, I got a sales and marketing job in the pharmaceutical industry, but decided that I wanted to be a little bit more well rounded. So I ended up going to business school in 2018. The purpose for me was to learn the rest of the business side. I was really good at the analytics, but I wanted to figure out marketing, and how funding works — all of that stuff, — as well as to have fun, because business school was pretty fun.
As far as my personal interests go, like I said, I’ve always been a curious person. I like to build things. I like to bring things into the world. But I also have been really passionate about gender equity. I was a woman in engineering, and now I’m a woman and entrepreneurship and even a woman in business. That is not the norm if you go by the numbers, so it’s not
Doris Nagel
I never cease to be amazed. The amount of venture capital that goes to women entrepreneurs is still shockingly low 2022. We are here today, and it’s less way less than 3%. And actually, I’ve seen the numbers dropping, which is a bummer, right?
Olivia vonNieda 4:12
I completely agree with that. And I’ve experienced that problem, through reading about it, but also personally. So a goal that’s important to me in my personal and professional lif is to promote gender equity for women, as well as people of other marginalized genders.
Doris Nagel
Tell me what you do for fun.
Olivia vonNieda
I do a lot of things for fun. I love baking pies.
Doris Nagel
That’s a first! I don’t know that anyone on the show so far that has said that they love making pies. That’s great!
Olivia vonNieda 4:54
My favorite kind is, in the middle of summer, you can go and pick some fruit like delicious peaches and then come back and make a peach pie. I also like making crafts, and customizing it for whatever holiday is nearby.
Doris Nagel
Talk about your business, the Kavnia Coffee Company. What is it that you make and do, and what’s unique about it?
Olivia vonNieda 5:35
Kavnia Coffee makes a sustainable cold drip coffee that’s powered by women.
Doris Nagel
Break that down a bit. I go to Starbucks, and I buy cold brew, but I’m not sure I really know what it is.
Olivia vonNieda 5:53
Cold brew at its very core is coffee that’s brewed cold or at room temperature. Hot coffee, because of the heat of the water, brews within two to three minutes, where cold coffee is brewed on a timescale of hours. The difference in water temperature means it’s usually smoother and less acidic. Those are the traditional things that people love about cold brew.
Cold drip is a further subset of cold brew. So, I like to explain it like traditional cold brew. So like you said, Starbucks, the menu, the menu item at Starbucks. That’s like a bat for your coffee grounds. Even whether you’re making it home in your kitchen in a mason jar, or Starbucks that’s making it in like a giant bucket. It’s still coffee grounds and water for multiple hours. It’s kind of stewing and sitting there. It becomes increasingly coffee-like water.
Cold drip is like a really slow shower for the coffee grounds. So water is sprayed over the top of the coffee grounds. And then gravity, our secret ingredient if you will, pulls the water through. And so every time there’s a fresh drop of water on the bottom. This process — without going into the detail of the coffee science — gets the best flavors from the coffee beans. So you get tasting notes like you would with a good one.
Doris Nagel
I’m envisioning going to the grocery store in the produce section when they have the sprayer turned on to kind of gently wash the produce. It’s something kind of like that?
Olivia vonNieda
Exactly.
Doris Nagel
How did you get the idea for cold drip? Are there other people doing this or is this something you invented? Or how did you find out about it?
Olivia vonNieda 7:54
It is not something I invented although I like to think that I’ve innovated part of the cognitive process.
The cold drip brewing style is also called slow drip, or Kyoto style coffee. It was originally developed in Kyoto, Japan about 400 years ago. If you’ve ever been to a like bougie hipster coffee shop, they sometimes have this three foot tall multi tiered glass brewing device. That is a cold drip brewing device.
And they’re quite beautiful. They look like a work of art of art married a chemistry set, and they’re gorgeous. But they’re quite impractical for the average person’s kitchen, although they make this delicious, delicious coffee.
Doris Nagel
In fact I was just thinking that I don’t know where I would put one of those. So I’m not sure where that leaves me if I want cold drip coffee.
Olivia vonNieda 8:50
it leaves you either getting it at a Bougie hipster coffee shop, or getting iced coffee.
You asked me how I started this. I was first exposed to this coffee three years ago on a trip to New Orleans in 2019. A buddy of mine had walked two miles to a coffee shop on a Sunday morning and he orders this coffee. And he texts me, in all caps: YOU’VE GOT TO GET HERE! THIS IS THE BEST COLD DRIP I’VE EVER TASTED!”
Sadly, I did not make it to that coffee shop. But that started this passion project between my buddy and I to replicate this coffee at home.
He actually ended up buying that three foot tall glass device.
Doris Nagel
Now, that’s love of coffee! I’m sure those things are not. And I bet they’re not that easy to install in your house properly, either?
Olivia vonNieda 9:52
It gets even better. So you’re right — they’re not cheap. He spent about 500 bucks on it.
Then it shows up at his house, and his wife — who was pregnant at the time – says, “Hey, we have a baby on the way. We live in a one bedroom apartment. There’s no way we can have this here!”
So, exactly the problem that you outlined in getting this premium cold brew. So you’re getting these tasting notes that you don’t get with other cold brews is so impractical.
At this point, I say, I really want to try this coffee. And I love to build things. I have a degree in engineering, I think I can figure out how to slowly drip water over the coffee grounds.
And so began a year of the two of us tinkering around. Originally the goal was to have me build this brewing device — one for me, and one for him and his wife. So we could just have delicious coffee every morning.
But we’re in business school at the time. So every time there they have projects in class, they ask how to evaluate the sales model? So we think that this would be a great class project class project– to come up with a business idea and develop a business plan for it. Okay, so here we go!
So my buddy Jackson is a user researcher. So he goes out. And he’s talking to all of our friends and doing like a very rigorous process of identifying the needs.
And all of us kind of coming together as I think there’s a huge need for this product. We had done some research on the industry and like cold brew is growing at 40% year over year. Cold Brew is the style of choice for Gen Z and millennials.
And it’s kind of a pain in the butt to get good cold brew, because making it at home is really messy. And like you have to otherwise if you leave your house and go to a coffee shop, right? Right, or you can or you can go to the grocery store and pay quite a nice sum of money for a little container of Starbucks or other coffee brand cold brew, and bring it home.
But that’s only a few cups, at a pretty steep price. And then you gotta go back, get more,
And to boot, we’re also looking at the sustainability aspect. And so in either the coffee shop situation or the grocery store with those ready to drink cans or bottles, you’re using a single use container.
So the first iteration of our business was selling this was developing and ultimately hoping to sell a premium Keurig Cold Brew maker. So instead of a three foot tall machine made of glass, it would be beautiful about the dimensions of the Keurig and make this super high quality cold brew for your home.
Doris Nagel
Were you successful? Did you figure out how to do that?
Olivia vonNieda 12:53
We came up with that idea in January of 2020. And I say that so you can see where the world is heading in February and March of 2020.
Doris Nagel
Oh, yes. How could I forget? I guess I blanked it out conveniently.
Olivia vonNieda 13:10
Yes. So we hit some roadblocks, because we’re making a physical product and all of the physical prototyping thesis at this point. So I was prototyping at the Harvard maker space, and they shut down access to it.
So we hit a few roadblocks in terms of developing the physical product.
They had getting hands on users.
So at that point, mid pandemic, I had just graduated. I moved back in with my parents in rural Pennsylvania for a few months. Which is also not exactly the hub of hardware products development.
And then I moved to Chicago and I joined mHub, which is absolutely fantastic, especially for hardware development.
Doris Nagel
I do remember Melissa Lederer from mHub, who was on the show recently, telling me that mHub was able to get permission from the state or met some special conditions, and managed to stay open most of the pandemic, right?
Olivia vonNieda 14:34
Yeah, I was coming in in December of 2020. And so by that time, like, there was social distancing, there was all the proper safety measures, but you could physically go into the space, which was huge for us..
So at this point, we had also gotten a small grant. And we had been using that money, as well as a little bit of self-funding to do the product development. Around the same time, my buddy Jackson, who was in this with me from the beginning, had their baby. And he decided he needed to step away to have some more financial stability for his growing family.
So at this point, I’m solo developing it in Chicago. And in early 2021, I was doing some fundraising, or fundraising for our like next step in the prototyping process. So we were going to get a manufacturing partner, probably in East Asia, and like, really kick it into high gear.
You mentioned fundraising earlier, and that a really small percentage going to women. And I, as I was fundraising, I was having trouble getting traction.
Ultimately, I decided to pivot the business away from this cold brew coffee device, which was also patent pending for the brewing mechanism.
I decided instead to take this countertop Keurig-style device and scale it up to a commercial style device. And instead sell that cold drip coffee concentrate as the product instead of the coffee maker.
Doris Nagel
Talk about the pitching process. Looking back, what advice would you give to other people, especially other women, who are pitching for funding?
Olivia vonNieda 16:42
I’ll start with my personal experience, and kind of where I think I missed the mark a little bit, and then I’ll share some advice.
The big piece of friction that we were running up against was that our investors wanting to see recurring revenue. So they wanted us to sell the device and then sell like a pod or a K cup to go with it.
Doris Nagel
You mean they wanted a razor/razor blade model?
Olivia vonNieda
Exactly. And for us, we couldn’t figure out how to add the additional piece of revenue, one stayed true to our values, and that would still fulfill the market need. The two really easy loptions are to sell whole coffee beans or to sell ground coffee beans in pre production package.
Now, for this brewing style, and it’s ultra premium, you need freshly ground beans. There’s just this process of oxidation that happens as soon as you grind them. So we weren’t able to maintain the quality through to our customer if we pre ground and pre packaged it.
The other option was selling whole beans, but that wasn’t a problem for our customers. If you were going to spend $200 on a fancy cold brew device, you would already have a place where you get your beans — it’s probably the local coffee shop around the corner, or one of the many online subscription services.
Doris Nagel
I wondered about that, because I’m sure the quality of the coffee itself is a pretty big factor, right?
Olivia vonNieda 18:25
100%. We use specialty grade coffee, and there’s a lot of rigorous work from the coffee community about defining what that is. Needless to say, it is coffee that is meticulously cared for from the time it’s planted in the ground as a seed until it reaches your cup.
And that process obviously takes a lot of expertise, a lot of care. And so it is much more expensive than the Folgers coffee that you get at the grocery store.
Doris Nagel
That is interesting, and I’d like to circle back to that.
But I don’t want to derail your discussion about pitching and finding funding.
Because if I hear one question from listeners, it’s “How do I get funding? What should I think about? How do I pitch? How do I decide who the right people to pitch to are?”
So let’s circle back to that piece of the discussion, because I think it will be pretty interesting for a lot of listeners.
Olivia vonNieda 19:30
For me, the biggest piece of advice I have is expect to get a lot of “Nos.”
I am a person who likes to see the glass as half full. But it was really tough to just get “No” after “No” after “No” after “No.”
So as I think about the process of fundraising, my biggest piece of advice is to really set up the support system that you need. Because I think on average, you get aoubt 50 “Nos” for every “Yes”.
So set yourself up with a support system that’s going to keep you motivated through those 50 “Nos,” That’s my number one piece of advice.
I’m also thinking about how I assembled the people who I asked for money and how I assembled my pitch process. Going back to my passion for engineering in order, it was a very orderly process.
I had done a lot of internet research. And I talked to other entrepreneurs in my space, as well as friends and family, to figure out my a lift might be lift. And to get used to pitching, I practiced on people who I didn’t think I was their ideal investment, but would still take a meeting with me.
And then by the end of it, when I was getting to my A list of people that I thought were a great fit for me, that were exactly the type of company who might want to invest in me, I was very confident and [my pitch was] well-oiled.
Doris Nagel
One of their common themes of frustration I’ve heard from venture capitalists is that so many companies that pitch to them that clearly haven’t done their homework about what that VC is looking for. From their perspective, it’s frustrating to try to weed through people who clearly haven’t even looked at fund’s website or even thought about whether they’d be a good fit or not.
So there’s a lot of work involved, I think, in really making sure you’re pitching to the right firms, right?
Olivia vonNieda 21:37
Definitely. And for me when I was pulling that list together to pitch to, I was looking for companies that invested in hardware, or companies that invested in food and beverage, and ideally, companies that invested in hardware for food and beverage.
And so I had the version of my pitch that dived into the hardware side, and then version of my pitch that dived into the food and beverage side. And so I would customize it slightly based on my research, either from their website or talking to other companies that that firm had invested in. figuring out kind of which, like, the food and bad side or the hardware side, or both. I was gonna lean into
Doris Nagel
How did you have to decide what kind of funding to pitch to?
I know some people struggle with whether to find angel investors, or whether they’re better off pitching to family offices. Or whether their product or service would be interesting to venture capitalists.
I know the venture capital perspective is that way too many companies just assume that they are a good fit for venture capital, when in fact, it might not really be good for the business.
How did you tackle that piece of the process?
Olivia vonNieda 22:59
I completely agree with that.
And the first step for me was thinking about what my business plan looked like, before I talked to any investor. I had a plan for how I was going to develop my product, and I did a lot of research on how much is required to make of the hardware device, and how much is required to sell and market a hardware device.
So I built a bottom-up model of my costs over time, and from that, I had a pretty good idea of the amount of money I needed. And then I pray deleted that from like companies like mine, and how much money did they raise?
In terms of like, how I got to my app?
And then for the is my company venture capital? I was fortunate enough to take a class on this in business school about like the economics of financing entrepreneurial ventures.
So my takeaway is that venture capitalists need to see you as a homerun company in order for economics to work out for them. So they bet on a lot of players. And then a lot of them fail. And a few of them get big, and that’s how they make their money.
But you need to be able to show that you can be one of the companies that makes it big. I did believe and do believe that my product applies to that in terms of like, how we are going to scale and like where the market is heading. Like I mentioned earlier, 40% year over year growth and cold brew and the beverage of choice for younger folks. This is a lifetime daily habit. 40% of Americans drink coffee every day. 40% year over year.
Starbucks said 70% of their beverages were cold beverages at their stores.
Doris Nagel
That’s a big change!
Olivia vonNieda 24:47
Yes. And the global coffee market is about $100 billion.
Obviously, that is a global market, and not all of that is cold brew, right? And it’s still growing. And cold brew is massively growing in that market.
I believe that the coffee market is heading the same way at the tea market. Did you know hot hot tea was the thing for centuries. And now people there they iced tea and hot tea occasion in people’s lives. And there were two separate categories. I think coffee is heading the same way. Although right now they’re usually groups similarly in customers and consumers mind.
Doris Nagel
Although our listeners are probably thinking about the US market, but as connected as the world is today, if that’s what’s hot in the US market and appealing to that demographic, it’s probably going to do really well in the UK and in Germany and a lot of other countries too.
Olivia vonNieda 25:44
It is. That’s a really astute observation. And I agree with you.
The US right now is about 75% of the cold brew market. Globally, it’s consumed in the US, because in the rest of the world that was colonized by the British Empire has this big thing for tea. They’re coming along in their demand for coffee, but they’re just a few decades behind the US in terms of love of cold brew.
Doris Nagel
How did you end up finding funding?
Olivia vonNieda 26:20
We had lots of the exact same conversations with investors about the need for recurring revenue. We were making it to the last stage, and they would say, “We really need to see this recurring revenue.”
And I thought, “Well, that’s not happening.” I was also thinking about my life, personally. I think that is also a topic that is not discussed enough in entrepreneurship communities. And if I was really real with myself, I didn’t love being a hardware CEO. I loved applying the engineering mindset, but doing engineering every day wasn’t bringing me joy.
So because of a combination of those two [things], I took a step back. And I asked myself, “What assets does my business have? Where does my passion lie? And where do I think I can get funding for this?”
I went back to the drawing board, and I ultimately decided that I think selling packaged goods is quite different than selling a hardware device, obviously. But I thought that with the assets, information, secret sauce that we have, we can be competitive in that space. And selling a U.S. CPG, or consumer packaged good, is just like recurring revenue.
Doris Nagel
I get a lot of questions from listeners about pivoting: “How do I know when I should pivot, versus just keep pushing ahead? Because just maybe the next person will say yes.”
And what’s the process around when it’s right to pivot? And how would you recommend going about the process of pivoting?
Olivia vonNieda 28:20
That is a great question. I suspect that it’s something that is probably a little different for everyone. But I’ll talk through my personal journey and hope that that can impact someone else’s decision.
For me, it ultimately came down to the fact that I was miserable. I did not look forward to going to work every day, and I couldn’t see it getting better. I couldn’t see it, from a personal perspective, from a business perspective.
I know myself pretty well. I spent a lot of time reflecting on what makes me happy, and what gives me purpose and what I wanted. And so I knew I wasn’t headed in the right direction.
And I think another theme in this conversation is that I love running the numbers. So from a business perspective, seeing where I was headed.
And then from a personal perspective, that kind gives me the signal that something needed to change. And when I went back to the drawing board, something I knew to be true was that in this whole drip or slow drip coffee market, there was a need for a premium, high quality coffee, cold brew coffee. And consumers wanted that.
So then it was about: how can I fulfill that market? That huge white space in the market, with what I currently have?
Doris Nagel
So, instead of becoming a hardware company that was selling these coffee devices that people will use in their home, you changed to become the producer of the coffee that people would buy.
How did you go about doing that? I mean, that’s a whole different segment. Now all of a sudden, you’re talking about how do I get into grocery stores, and partnering with coffee companies. Because as we touched on earlier in this show, the quality of the coffee bean is really important. And I’m sure that as a hardware company that that probably wasn’t your primary focus, right?
Olivia vonNieda 30:52
Correct.
The short answer to that is I talked to a lot of people. I was out at a lot of farmers markets, to uncover some of the things that I felt I needed to answer before I knew that this was the right move.
So one challenge was building up that supply chain. Like you mentioned, I now needed to source these coffee beans.
The second was figuring out who my target customer was. Did it change from the previous iteration, and if so, what they are looking for? And then the third was really operational:, how do I do that? I have a coffee device that I made that makes half a liter of coffee concentrate. How do I now produce dozens and hundreds of liters of coffee?
The third challenge was a fun project for me: how do I scale this up? I’m doing this part at mHub, and they were fantastic and supportive.
So I kind of spent a couple weeks and figuring out what I needed to do to make it bigger, and was able to successfully work my way through prototype.
Doris Nagel
Don’t tell me you’re back to the huge, tall glass coffee thing again? [laughing]
Olivia vonNieda 32:07
No, I am not. I brought in some technology. Those big tall glass coffee devices are completely manual. And having electronic to regulate the flow of the dripping water is a huge key piece and making it faster and also making it more reliable.
Doris Nagel
So it sounds like there were still a lot of engineering challenges involved.
Olivia vonNieda 32:34
Yes. And then at this point, I also tapped into another fabulous entrepreneurial resource in the Chicago community, which is The Hatchery.
The Hatchery is a food and beverage incubator, so I was making my device at mHub, and then brewing the coffee at The Hatchery, which has a top of the line commercial kitchen base that you can rent. So I’m producing it in a sanitary environment that fulfills all of those health and safety regulations. And they also have a great set of programming that helps food and beverage entrepreneurs get off the ground.
So at this point, mid-summer of 2021, I’m pretty comfortable with the operational piece.
The next piece was: Do customers like and want to buy the coffee that I’m brewing? What are they looking for? Was demand for this?
Doris Nagel
And at what price point, right?
Olivia vonNieda 33:28
Exactly.
The brewing process naturally makes a concentrate, and you can change the concentrate, but my device was brewing about a two to 3x coffee concentrate. So what that means is that like, you could have a, you know, a shot of this coffee concentrate, it’ll taste similar to espresso. It’s really powerful.
And concentrated, or most people add one part is one part water and one part coffee concentrate. So 15 seconds, and your kitchen and your own glass, and you have a traditional cold brew, but with all of these tasting notes and premium flavors.
So the first decision point was do I dilute it down and sell it ready to drink to my customers? Or do I sell the concentrate. And so that’s what I tested out at farmer’s markets, which were a fantastic way of getting customer feedback.
They take a lot of my time, because I have to go there every Saturday and Sunday. But they’re a really great way to be able to have a lot of face to face conversations with customers, as well as test some different propositions.
Doris Nagel
So what did you find that people really liked?
Olivia vonNieda 34:42
One, people really did like the coffee concentrate. They like ready to drink cold brew when they’re walking around.
But I can sell you a 16 ounce bottle of coffee concentrate, which is going to make size medium coffees. And the difference between a 16 ounce bottle of coffee concentrate and a bigger bottle of ready to drink coffee is just water.
People have water at their home. So they’re looking for a smaller packaging size. And then they’ll open it up and make a coffee with whatever size, right? So if you had a really late night and need an XL coffee, it’s really easy to make that with a coffee concentrate. Whereas, you’re limited if you’re buying a 12 ounce can of pre-made coffee at the grocery store.
A key is flexibility. So you can also make it into a latte instead of a regular cold brew ,or you can add it to a smoothie. There’s a lot of flexibility there that the customers loved.
The second thing that I learned at the farmers market that people loved was this dedication to gender equity.
Sustainability is also important for a lot of coffee companies, you know, whether they are selling the packaged coffee or at a coffee shop, most are pretty dedicated to sustainability. So organic coffee, as well as composting their grounds, are all things I kind of think are table stakes in the specialty coffee world.
But this aspect of really pursuing gender equity was something that was unique with our customers, and that they valued.
So for us, step one was having a fully female powered supply chain from producing the coffee to roasting the coffee and brewing the coffee. And just to dive down a level deeper, because I think it is a really worthwhile thing to note. A lot of coffee is produced by women – in fact 80% of the people that are picking the coffee are women – but men own the farms and they’re the ones getting the paycheck.
So we’re partnering with and buying beans from producing places farm states that are owned by women, and that has been huge for us.
Doris Nagel
I’m sure it was difficult, especially in some of the places where I mean some of the best coffee I’m guessing comes from places that he and maybe you might find it in Costa Rica more likely but you know, some of the other places where coffee is grown, it’s probably harder to find women owned businesses.
Olivia vonNieda 37:28
Yeah, it is difficult to find women owned production companies or coffee production companies. The world over, coffee is a little bit of a diva in terms of upland is like requires elevation and rocky soil and partial shade.
It takes us really sophisticated skill set and like an infrastructure that’s built over many years to produce and process coffee at the origin and so finding women with the economic capital and know how to do that is a huge focus of the coffee industry right now.
And fortunately they’re making a lot of strides but you’re correct so if we had to we the work to find the our current set of suppliers
Doris Nagel
Did you end up traveling to some of these places to see their facilities and talk to them?
Olivia vonNieda 38:20
Unfortunately, I have not had that opportunity yet. Over the summer I was quite busy with talking to the customer, and of course, COVID threw a monkey wrench and a lot of people’s businesses business travel plans.
So we’re finding coffee producers are still a work in progress, but there still aren’t a lot of women owned businesses that roast the coffee, so we ended up bringing our coffee roasting for some of our roasts in house.
I have a fantastic head of coffee. She actually lives in New England and is an expert in the coffee space – I mean she’s done almost every role in the coffee industry. And I like to call her my personal coffee Google. Her name is Bella. And she has a zero emission roaster. So she does our roasting for us.
Doris Nagel
Amazing. How did you decide to market it? I’m guessing there’s a few different outlets I mean, you could open up your own store. Across from the Starbucks you could try to market to grocery stores, like Whole Foods stores, or farmers markets. How did you sort through those challenges?
Olivia vonNieda 39:59
We are still in the process of figuring out exactly what our like winning scalable strategy is. It’s going to be some combination of online in retail and through partnerships.
And so as we gear up for this warm weather season in Chicago, our main focus is figuring out one, what customers go where. what messages do they respond to? And what is our operations apparatus for our different sales channels?
To keep it short, we’ve tested almost everything and are in the process of, you know, getting a big enough sample size to make a data driven decision across all those channels.
Doris Nagel
What’s next for the company? What do you think the company will look like in two years?
Olivia vonNieda 40:52
I would love for the company in two years to have settled on our sales strategy and be a nationally available brand, whether that’s at retail through partnerships, or online.
And I think that we are really headed in that direction as we figure out what our what our scalability looks like. And that’s like, our number one goal this summer, is to reach a lot of customers in Chicagoland and figure out exactly how to reach them and to find where our synergy is between what customers want, where they want it. And what we need. What are the words that we have to say, what are our primary like marketing pitch?
Doris Nagel
Have you continued to pitch the business as you’ve pivoted, or have you decided on a different strategy for funding?
Olivia vonNieda 41:43
We did raise venture capital money last fall through a firm called Long Jump, which they have been fantastic. They’re a new Chicago based venture capital fund. Have you heard of them?
Doris Nagel
I have heard of them, and would love to know more. Tell us about that.
Olivia vonNieda 42:05
I highly recommend them to any early stage Midwest based entrepreneur who was looking to go the venture capital route. They are extremely supportive. All of their GPs are current entrepreneurs, so they know firsthand what it’s like to go through what you’re going through.
And their thesis is that there’s not enough early venture capital money in the Midwest. So they are providing it. And they have been great from a resource perspective, as well as from a capital perspective.
We took money from them in the fall of last year as part of their first cohort and they have quarterly cohorts.
So for now, we are headed into the summer, which is a big push for us. As I said, we’re testing and all these sales channels that right now we’re financing through sales from operations.
And then what remains to be seen what our next step from a capital perspective is going to be.
Doris Nagel
Good for you. Congratulations. And that’s great news about Long Jump being out there to fill the need, because that is a challenge for startup businesses based in the Midwest. Historically there just hasn’t been the same ecosystem, especially for venture capital, and even angel fund money in in the Midwest, and I’m glad to see that slowly changing.
What’s been the best part about having your own business? You seem totally comfortable with the risks and pivoting when you need to.
What what’s been the driver for you all along, and made you comfortable with taking these kinds of risks?
Olivia vonNieda 44:01
There’s a lot of things that play into that. I will say the first thing is I have an immense amount of privilege. My romantic partner and my savings have been able to give me financial stability during these early years of my company, and I definitely would not be here talking to you today without that.
And that is it. I something that as I grow and like, when I am looking to give back to entrepreneurial communities, helping on early entrepreneurs get that financial stability and support system has been, it’s something that is like will continue to be a passion area of mine, because I have a lot of privilege that that that was possible from a financial perspective.
I also work side hustles at night and on the weekends to bring in some extra cash. I have loans from business school and need to make payments on those, which has been a challenge. And I’m hoping that in the future, sorry, I’m going to restate that, can you do a clap again.
So I have this huge dimension of privilege that has allowed me to be able to do this entrepreneurial venture, but it is a big passion area of mine, to be able to give back and empower other early stage entrepreneurs, whether that’s financially or through mentorship, to be able to make that happen.
Some of the other things that I love about being entrepreneur is the flexibility to set the direction and make the decisions is great for me.
Gender equity is a huge area of passion in my personal life, and really having full control over how that comes to bear in my company, without having to talk to the HR department to figure out how we can get equal parental leave across all genders.
I can just make the decision. I am the final decision maker, and that is a fabulous part of bringing my value to life, as well as managing my daily schedule. I am not a morning person. So meetings at Kavnia do not happen before 9am.
Doris Nagel
I started working in big corporations because that’s what my dad did and he always told me that’s what I should focus on. But all the while I did that, I thought I was gonna lose my mind.
One of my reports once described it as “herding cats,” and another one called it “ding-donging” — the endless process of trying to build elusive consensus in an organization with multi layers and politics.
And the amount of time that you spend trying to do that is just staggering. And so, I just I was very frustrated in that environment. I’m not sure I was bad at it.
But every day, I was finding it so unrewarding to try to spend all that time “wasted,” when, from my standpoint, I wanted to get on with doing stuff . But I came to realize that, in big organizations, that IS a big part of the doing stuff. And if you’re not wired up that way, it can be pretty frustrating.
Olivia vonNieda
Definitely. I agree with that wholeheartedly.
Doris Nagel
Where do you find inspiration when you hit the rough patches?
Olivia vonNieda 47:14
For me, it comes from my support network. And I have very, very intentionally built my personal and professional support system. From the biggest place that I find solace and comfort is from other female entrepreneurs, they tend to just get it when I am talking about the frustrations of raising capital as a woman or just being an entrepreneur.
I have a robust network of friends from business school, and that I’ve met through mHub and the Hatchery and the Chicago entrepreneurial network. Those are my go to folks on the professional side.
And then on the personal side, you know, those friends that you have that like, really make you like, find your true self and laugh until you cry. So I have, I know that I need to keep my battery’s charged. And for me, that’s talking to my my good friends and my romantic partner.
As keeping me personally happy and motivated. It’s so easy for my company for companies to like, take all of my energy.
Starting a business is a marathon, not a sprint. And so it took me a while to learn the things I need to do to stay happy so that I can continue to work to build this business.
Doris Nagel
Looking back on your journey so far, what advice would you give to other entrepreneurs, and maybe to women entrepreneurs specifically?
Olivia vonNieda 48:40
The advice I give to all entrepreneurs is build your support system, whether that is your professional support system, like advisors, and your board, or your personal support system, your friends, your family, your partner, whoever it is.
You need to have a really robust, a robust people to turn to when your business isn’t going well, or your business is going so well that you can’t keep products in stock. Or you just need a shoulder to cry on.
Having that network of people there is so important, because entrepreneurship is hard. It’s never going to be an easy path. So have those people that can build you up and say your name in a crowded room full of opportunities, is the advice I give all entrepreneurs.
The part that I tack on for women entrepreneurs — I hate that it’s this way, and I am working actively to make it so that this is not the way the world is. But the path is harder for female entrepreneurs, particularly solo female entrepreneurs. And so stick with it and find the right set of partners, whether that’s other entrepreneurs or sponsors or mentors, to help you navigate these additional hurdles that are thrown your way because of your gender.
Doris Nagel
Great advice.
How should people reach you or your company if they’re interested in buying your products or maybe just want to brainstorm?
Olivia vonNieda
If you want to reach me with a question, the best way to reach out is through Instagram DMS. So our Instagram is kavnia.coffee.
If you to buy products, you can look on our website www.kavniacoffeecompany.com. We’re also in a growing number of retailer, as well as at farmer’s markets and festivals around Chicago. And you can find a full list of those on our website.
Doris Nagel
Thanks so much for being with me today. Olivia, it was it was a delight hearing about such an interesting product and I can’t wait to see it out there. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for it and will be sure to buy some when I see it.
Olivia vonNieda
Thank you, Doris. It’s been an absolute pleasure chatting with you.
Doris Nagel
It’s been a delight, Olivia.
A big thanks as well to all my listeners. You’re the reason I do this.
You can find more helpful information and resources on my consulting website globalocityservices.com as well as my new dedicated radio show website, thesavvyentrepreneur.org. You’ll find there increasingly at thesavvyentrepreneur.org as I start to transfer content over lots of free blogs, tools, podcasts and other free resources for entrepreneurs.
My door is always open. I’d love to hear from you. You can reach out to me with comments, questions, suggestions just to shoot the breeze at dnagel@thesavvyentrepreneur.org.
Be sure to join me again next Saturday at 11am Central noon Eastern.
But until then, I’m Doris Nagel, wishing you happy entrepreneuring!
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