EP #273 - Luca Michas: Yamo’s Successful Growth Story

Luca Michas is the co-founder and CMO at Yamo, a B2C company revolutionizing the kid's food market with nutritious and organic options for kids of all ages. Luca holds an MA in Media & Communication / Marketing from the UZH and previously worked for companies like SodaStream International and the Campari Group.

In 2015, while working at the Campari Group with his future co-founder, Tobias Gunzenhauser, Luca watched a documentary about veganism and decided to go vegan for a month, and Tobias joined him in this adventure. They soon discovered that healthy, plant-based products were very hard to come by in a Swiss supermarket, and – as a joke – decided to check out the baby food aisle, only to find out the baby food available on the market was tasteless and of dubious nutritional value.

This was because the traditional process for creating shelf-stable baby food was heat-based sterilization, which, considering many vitamins are heat-sensitive, necessitated later re-adding the vitamins which the process destroyed. But friend and food scientist José Amado-Blanco soon clued them into a better way of making baby food: High-pressure pasteurization, which combines homemade flavor with proper nutrition, and lasts several weeks in a refrigerated environment. This was how Yamo was able to combine nutritional quality with convenience, and win the trust of Swiss parents all around.

So as not to have their customers age out of Yamo products, the team has now also begun making kids’ food, like joghurts and snack bars. With their office in Zug, they currently sell in the DACH region, Belgium, Spain and Portugal. A Series B round is also underway.

Memorable Quotes:

"Branding makes a huge difference in whether your product succeeds or not. It’s not just pricing, it’s not just availability. You need to tell a story."

"Nowadays sustainability is no longer something that sets your brand apart, but on the other hand, if you’re not sustainable, your brand is gonna have a problem."

"Contrary to popular belief, we were not drunk when we came up with the Yamo product names."

Resources Mentioned:

Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight

Asana

Slack

If you wanna listen to our conversations with yamo co-founder Tobias Gunzenhauser, check out episodes 159 and 174.

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