Seth Goldman is the Co-founder of Honest Tea, a company he started in 1998 and has grown to over $200 million in revenue.  Today, Honest Tea is the nation’s top selling ready-to-drink organic bottled tea. The Honest Tea brands are available in over 130,000 outlets across the United States.  The company was acquired by Coca Cola in 2011.

 

Some interesting insights from this episode:

• Learn how he reinvented the entire bottled tea industry.

• Being a relentless optimist helped get him through the tough times.

• The company wasn’t just about a better tasting drink but about an expression of his personal values (health, the environment, working conditions in developing countries).

• To successfully launch a startup, start with a very strong vision of the brand and then everything else will fall into place.

• The best way to learn is simply by doing. Market research will only get you so far and doing too much of it could become a hindrance.

• Excellence is having a vision and being able to execute on that vision without compromise.