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“Commit. Forget about making a 'perfect' product. Create, fail, create better. Listen, learn, and push forward. Our first iteration tasted terrible compared to what we have now, but we continued to listen to our customers and improve constantly.”
Kent Yoshimura and Ryan Chen are obsessed with trying to optimize their mental and physical performance.
When the two friends first met in Los Angeles, they were both working demanding careers and performing as high-level athletes. Kent was a muralist for the city of LA who trained with the Japanese Olympic Judo Team, and Ryan was a data analyst for Hulu who trained with the US Paralympic Wheelchair Racing Team.
This constant need to be at peak performance left the pair mentally and physically drained for the other tasks in their life. For Ryan, this was made worse by his body's adaptation to being paraplegic, which was the result of an injury a few years prior.
They tinkered with different supplements, tricks and methods to get the most out of every day: crazy sleep patterns, meditation, crazy diets, and any emerging science that might help them get a little edge. But, mostly, they were reliant on energy drinks and coffee.
Feeling this wasn't the optimal way to get energy on-the-go, Kent began experiments with different supplements in his makeshift bedroom laboratory. He happened upon something called nootropics. These supplements, often referred to as "smart drugs," are scientifically shown to improve cognitive function and memory without causing a crash later in the day.
Kent would experiment with different blends of these nootropic supplements and turn them into pills, which he and Ryan would take before sporting events or big days at work. And, after a few tests, they started to see good results. They had the idea to turn these bedroom-concocted products into a viable business venture. Why not share them with the world? But, there was just one problem standing in their way.
Making, taking and sharing pills didn't exactly look great. If your boss or coach or partner walked in on you popping little white pills, it might look like you're aiming for high performance instead of peak performance. They needed a way to make the supplement look and feel ... a little less illegal. If it was going to work, it would need to be accessible, shareable, FDA-approved, and free of social stigmas.
After chewing over a couple of ideas, they came to the conclusion they should turn it into chewing gum. The supplement could still be taken orally, and it was far more acceptable to take and share pieces of gum at work or before sports.
To help them turn this idea into a reality, Kent and Ryan set aside $20,000 each to invest into the venture, which they were now calling NeuroGum. This was money they'd saved from their day jobs and were willing to lose if the idea didn't work out the way they planned. The largest portion of their investment went into research and development to ensure they had a great product people would talk about.
This R&D was spent mostly on two areas of the business: finding manufacturers to create their product with, and sharing the product with people to get their feedback.
To make their product Kent and Ryan started by using ThomasNet.com, a large international database of manufacturers, to find US-based companies to make their first production run. But they quickly found many of these companies were owned by Wrigley's Gum, who would be a direct competitor and leave them in an awkward position if they ever hit the big-time. They began to look at smaller competition and eventually came across a small private manufacturer they now consider to be part of the NeuroGum family.
The official launch of NeuroGum came through an IndieGoGo campaign. They set this up to make the backend of the business simple and easy to manage, especially for two people who had never started a business before. They then shared the campaign in a nootropics subreddit where Kent had been particularly active. To their surprise, they started to instantly receive emails of people backing their product.
Within just a few days, NeuroGum had hit over $20,000 in pledges, which allowed them to pay for their first run of orders and more than validated their idea.
At this point, the product was still in beta. One of the key pieces of feedback they received was that this NeuroGum tasted awful. Customers loved the effect the nootropic blend had on their mental state, but it wasn't exactly an enjoyable experience to get the results. So, Kent and Ryan devoted a large portion of their profits to tinkering with the flavor until they felt they got it right.
Here's a key business point: NeuroGum packages sell in bundles, and you can't buy an individual package online. This made the business model much more feasible for Kent and Ryan and the time spent packaging, creating and delivering much more effective. For such small products, it takes the same amount of time to package and deliver one pack of gum as it does six!
And, while you can buy those six-packs or twelve-packs as a one-time purchase, NeuroGum focuses on a subscription model. People are much more likely to create a monthly subscription which they can set and forget, than return to the site every time they need new gum. Subscriptions cost between $19 and $35 a month, depending on whether you buy six or twelve packs a month.
Going forward, Kent and Ryan want to focus more on wholesale selling of their product and get on the shelves of big chain drug and supplement stores. In fact, as we were emailing about this podcast, Kent told me they had just landed shelf space in 3,000 CVS stores, so it looks like they're well on their way! Perhaps it's something to chew on as you think about your own idea.
