This interview is part of a Feed Me feature called Guest Lecture. In this series, I introduce you all to an expert who I’m curious about, and give paid readers an opportunity to ask them anything they want. Past guests have included Lina Khan, Andrew Ross Sorkin, and Audrey Hobert. Usually these are written, but sometimes they’re recorded via Substack Live!
Kiki Couchman is the co-founder of Sourmilk, a Greek yogurt brand focused on gut health. Couchman started Sourmilk with her friend Elan Halpern. The two met at Stanford, went on to work in tech and finance, and quit their jobs last year to go all in on dairy. Kiki has become the public face of Sourmilk on social media, and in this conversation we discuss everything from “building in public” to packaging design.
Topics discussed include:
Building in public as leverage: “When you’re small, you need to find as many ways as possible to create leverage for yourself as a brand because otherwise everyone else will exploit you essentially because you’re trying to knock and get in the door.”
On bootstrapping and not taking outside capital early: “We wanted to avoid that for as long as possible. No paid media, no Meta ads, nothing. Some people are like, I see your ads all the time. I’m like, girl, that’s organic.”
On choosing yogurt over tech: “Everyone else we know is in AI and in a very different area, but it’s not rocket science. It’s very hard. You have to be super gritty, but ultimately you just need to make a product, have an efficient supply chain and sell it for more than you make it.”
