$100M founder predicts what will be big in 5 years

**Justin Mares** (0:00)
So, this is actually a company that I've wanted to invest in for so long. If you're doing this, please just email me.

**Sam Parr** (0:14)
All right. So, I wanted to have you on because you are one of my healthiest buddies. Last time you were on, I think you've been on three times already, you didn't get into a lot of the ideas because we were just peppering you with so many questions, and I wanted to be more focused. I think I asked you, what are five or six interesting health companies or health trends that you're interested in investing in? And you hit me back with a very detailed list in a very short amount of time. So clearly, you are already thinking and acting on a lot of these things. Can we go through each of them and you just tell me what they are because I'm crazy fascinated. Because for the listener, you told me in 2014 or 15 that you were quitting tech, like you had a software company and you were going to launch a bone broth company. And I was like, oh, man, like you're like you're decided to throw your life away. That sucks. Like you were you were going to be one of the greats. And then it just came out in Forbes, I think. Or was that was a Forbes? You had this amazing feature about your company Kettle and Fire and how you surpassed 100 million in annual revenue. And it was amazing. And I'm like, you definitely won. And I read the article, by the way, and I texted like five friends and I'm like, Justin does everything the right way.
By the way, did I get that right? You guys, you're at 100 million run rate or revenue?

**Justin Mares** (1:38)
Yeah, north north of that. Yeah.

**Sam Parr** (1:39)
And you said something amazing. I think you said, we're going to, what did you say? We're going to be the best operating e-commerce company in America. Is that right?

**Justin Mares** (1:48)
Yeah. I mean, basically, like there are most of the big public like big food companies were started pre 1900 And so a lot of these companies are very, very bloated. They're large. They've been around. Frankly, I think many of them are poisoning people. And then paying lobbyists and other sort of opposition research groups to make sure that like soda doesn't get removed from food stamps and all these sorts of things. And so I think these are just generally bad actors. And I think that there's a huge opportunity to both out innovate these big CPG companies and also just run a better business. Like I guarantee no one in Battle Creek, Michigan, working at Kellogg's is looking at like, how do we use AI to automate a lot of our workflows and process and things like that? Whereas like that's something we have live work streams going in Kettle and Fire to figure out, like, how do we apply the craziest technology, you know, like leap forward of certainly my lifetime to just running the best possible company that we can. And I think it's working so far. We have like 34 people for our size of business, which is quite good scale.

**Sam Parr** (2:50)
You have only 34 employees?

**Justin Mares** (2:52)
Yeah.

**Sam Parr** (2:53)
Wow. Is it wildly profitable or is it working its way to be wildly profitable?

**Justin Mares** (2:57)
No, we're profitable. I mean, one of the things that I'm very proud of is like, we've raised only $10 million in primary capital since starting the company. And so it's been pretty capital efficient. And we've been focused on building the trend, but also building a good business since we started it like nine years ago.

**Sam Parr** (3:13)
Damn. That's awesome that you have proven me and I'm sure many other people wrong. And you've been early on a bunch of stuff. All right. So let's dive deep. What's the first one you want to talk about?

**Justin Mares** (3:23)
Yeah. So first one I want to talk about is I think that, you know, there are there's this huge, huge macro trend where people are talking about Maha, they're talking about seed oils, talking about all these things.

**Sam Parr** (3:33)
What's Maha? Make America Healthy?

**Justin Mares** (3:35)
Make America Healthy again. Okay. We're talking about all these things about fixing the chronic disease crisis in the US. And I think that health trends, specifically for dogs and other pets, like tend to lag a couple of years behind humans. Like basically a couple of years ago, you know, you saw Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, a bunch of these companies launch. And then a couple of years beyond that, Farmers Dog, a like fresh dog food delivery kind of company launches. And I think there are well over 100 or 200 million in revenue at this point. It's crazy. And I basically think that you can look at the US chronic disease crisis, obesity rates, inflammation, cancer, autoimmune, all these things. The same thing is happening in dogs, like something like one in four dogs are going to get cancer at this point. This is like unique. It's new. Cancer rates among dogs are rising. And again, this is because dogs, like humans, exist in an environment that is actively poisoning them.