The $600M Protein Bar Founder is Back Again | Peter Rahal Interview

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
Today, we have the creator of Rxbar on the podcast. This guy started in his mom's basement with $5,000 and built a protein bar that he sold five years later for $600 million. And he tells us the story of Rxbar, his new protein bar and why he's doing it again. And we got to brainstorm with what are four other ideas that he thinks somebody could start today? Trends, opportunities, white spaces in the market, and how he thinks about them, how he even created Rxbar using the same process that he's gonna outline today. So that's this episode with Peter Rahal.
All right, so here's how I want to start this. You created this, this little bar, the Rxbar that you made, I think, in your mom's basement with you and your elementary school buddy. You each kicked in $5,000 and five years later, you sell it for $600 million, which is amazing. Now, you're back and you're doing this bar, the David Bar, which I've been eating pretty religiously. All right, let's talk a little bit about Rxbar and then David. I want to hear this story. I think generally the story is out there, so I don't want to make you rehash too much of it. Can you give us the cliff notes of the story? I want to hear about a couple of things. You said you read one article on Inc and forwarded it to Jared, so I want to latch on to that. But give us first just the cliff notes of RX.

**Peter Rahal** (1:25)
Yeah, so the cliff notes, in Chicago 2010, 11, 12 at the time, there's an emerging tech scene, Groupon was there, and if you were doing some sort of information technology, you're a loser. There was no attention or love to a food brand.

**Sam Parr** (1:41)
It was just no status.

**Peter Rahal** (1:43)
Yeah, it was just like no status. And so we just wanted to do a good job, we wanted an opportunity to be successful. I had a background in food, which was really helpful on the supply chain side. And then Jared's like my total counterpart, like very, very level-headed, reliable, organized. Like I'm more of like the creative type, I'd say. And I always like to trivialize innovation because, you know, as an entrepreneur, it's like, you have all these ideas. And it was basically like, I just write an ink, and I was like, hey, Jared, I just sent it to him. And I was like, 10,000 bucks, we can do a nutrition bar. And it was like some bad article, you know, like nothing, nothing to it.

**Shaan Puri** (2:21)
What was the premise of the article? What did it say?

**Peter Rahal** (2:22)
It was sort of like an inspirational thing of like, you can start a business, like very low cost ways to start a company basically.

**Sam Parr** (2:29)
And it said like Protein Bar.

**Peter Rahal** (2:31)
Yeah, nutrition bar.

**Shaan Puri** (2:32)
It's like a WikiHow article.

**Peter Rahal** (2:34)
Which showed why it's a low status thing to do, right? Like anyone can do it, you know. And I always was into nutrition bars, and so we just started making, you know, we just started taking actions towards making it. And right, like where you start, you just never re-end up. And I was into CrossFit, and so we saw a distribution channel emerge. It was very clear. I was like, I looked at Whole Foods and the traditional food retails, and I had no idea how to get there. And it was hyper competitive. I was like, how are we going to compete? Whereas CrossFit emerged, these gyms are popping up 2012, 13, no competition.
You were not allowed on the shelf if you worked paleo. So that was like the perfect example of an uncompetitive market, a small market that was growing like crazy that we could go build distribution in and we can make the product at home. So we just went for it. And once you burn the boats and just jump off the bridge and figure out a fly.

**Shaan Puri** (3:40)
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