Isaac Medeiros is the Founder of Mini Katana and Kanpai Foods.
Isaac’s content gets over 1 billion views per month. Our conversation gets into content strategy from a high level down to tactical decisions, differences between the TikTok and YouTube algorithms, and how AI will impact content creation.
We also get into Isaac’s origin story building consumer brands, why TikTok made food an interesting category for new products, how to get a product into retail stores, and why you shouldn’t sell into retail.
Isaac also shares how tariff’s impacted his company. They became unprofitable overnight, and he had to move his entire supply chain from the US to Mexico in 60 days.
Thank you to Sean Frank @ Ridge and Kevin Espiritu @ Epic Gardening for their help brainstorming topics for Isaac.
Special thanks to Ramp for supporting this episode. It's the corporate card and expense management platform used by over 40,000 companies, like Shopify, CBRE and Stripe. Time is money. Save both with Ramp. Get $250 for signing-up here.
Timestamps:
(3:46) 165 million views in two days
(5:15) Followers don’t matter, build a binge bank
(11:21) How to monetize an audience
(14:36) Identify outliers for content ideas
(17:13) Should founders make their own content?
(19:34) Starting Mini Katana
(23:39) $10m revenue in two years w/ $0 CAC
(25:56) Difference between TikTok and YouTube algorithms
(29:38) When to experiment with a second platform
(32:20) Starting Kanpai, a freeze-dried candy company
(36:54) Why freeze-dried candy wasn’t popular
(38:22) Why you shouldn’t sell in retail
(41:12) Why you should sell in retail
(47:05) Downsides of selling to large retailers
(49:52) Should CPG brands raise money?
(57:59) Moving manufacturing from US to Mexico in 60 days due to tariffs
(1:04:20) Why you don’t want to be first in a category
(1:08:06) Other CPG creators Isaac follows
(1:09:15) Elon Musk, Charlie Munger, Mark Cuban
(1:11:55) Labubu’s
Referenced
Mini Katana
Kanpai Foods
Previous episode with Kevin Espiritu
Previous episode with Sean Frank
Peachy Babies
The Marshmellow Co
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