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Really relate to this. I shut down my startup in April. On paper, we ran out of money.

Behind the scenes, I finally paid the toll/ burnt out after 1-2 years of constant unexpected, unpredictable shocks. As a solo founder with investors, there was no escape, no one to run things while I took time off, and no way to leave without ending the company. At points, if my phone buzzed with a text message, I would go into a panic attack, expecting another problem.

I’m now reading a book on the impact of trauma on psychology and while my experience was nothing compared to people who went to war, etc - I see a lot of similarities. Eg there are external triggers that shock your body without your control.

One of the frustrating parts was that I knew it was happening as it was happening. I had the language to identify I was burnt out, had a coach, a therapist, tried to leverage a support network, etc. I do wish there were more solutions for this.

At a minimum, it’s good that this issue is getting talked about more and more. An important requirement to take a sabbatical as in the example in the paper is having buy-in from board members, investors, or team mates, so getting more people on board with mental health is key.

Question - curious if anyone has seen any books on burnout recovery. Thus far, 4 months in, it’s quite a long process.

We've pushed over that limit. The regulations really vary depending on what type of food, how big your operation is, etc. We brought in an expert to verify that everything we are doing is up to code. We are pretty rigorous about quality control, cleanliness, and organization behind the scenes. The things that you need to do as a business to be efficient (bring down cost) and maintain high quality are also the same things that lead to a clean and safe working environment - so it all lines up. That's my area of expertise.

You hit the nail on the head and this is what excites me the most about what we're doing! We are trying to carry a brand - and more importantly a set of values, intentions, feelings of positivity - without physical locations. We believe that we can use technology as a platform to do that. This is something that a coffee shop would never do. (Except maybe Starbucks since they have a strong tech focused team.) This (to me) will be our innovation in 2-3 years time.

Cafes, restaurants, and bars all make you FEEL something. If they do it well, you feel included, you feel part of a community, you feel like you belong. The average e-commerce experience doesn't do that at all - and yet we have so much information and data at our disposal to make the experience so much better.

However, we are a startup - that means (a) we aren't there yet, (b) we may not succeed - it's a risk - that's why we do what we do. We need support from the community to help us get there. But your comment captures exactly what we are trying to go out and do.

Regarding the market size - just some rule of thumb numbers - specialty coffee in the US is a $21B market. Instant coffee world-wide is a $30B market. Keurig got bought for $14B. I'm not a "we're taking over the world!" startup guy, but these are big numbers. A lot of people drink coffee in the US and the world. I've looked at a lot of different food segments and this one is big.

Can you elaborate on the earlier point above - what don't you like about the market positioning? (We aren't exactly going for Nespresso to Keurig, but really curious what rubs you the wrong way about that.)

Definitely won't save money compared to buying your own beans. It's the same as cooking - it's cheaper to grill a nice steak than buy one.

As a music festival goer - Sudden at festivals is about taste and speed. It tastes amazing. I usually pour it in a cold water bottle and shake it up (while in the middle of a performance) - really awesome. Definitely tastes better than festival coffee. Furthermore the coffee line at festivals is usually 30 minutes and they charge $5! This is obviously a personal pain point for me :-)

I wouldn't necessarily view it as something that replaces your French press or every coffee in your life. I'll bet that the majority of the time you make coffee at home, but a few times a week you spend $3-4 on coffee at a nice cafe.

Sudden is the same thing. Continue making coffee at home, but 2-3 times a week if you want something that tastes different or that's easier - go for Sudden. At that rate, spending $5-7 a week is much closer to treating yourself at a cafe.

We do have a cancel button as well! Sorry if I was unclear. The UX on our site isn't the greatest - we use a platform to handle subscriptions. However, you definitely DO NOT need to contact support to cancel. Some people just find it easier to hit reply and say 'cancel'. FYI, we also proactively notify customers 3-4 days before a subscription renews. We want to make it as obvious as possible and give you the option to make adjustments. Transparency is critical for it to work.

Yup, I hear you. I've definitely talked to people on both sides of it - there are preferences either way. I think both can work. FYI, before our subscriptions renew - we notify customers a few days before, so they can increase, decrease, or cancel the order. We do want to proactively alert you before it renews rather than hide it from the user. It should be very clear to you what's happening (thats our goal at least). Our platform for subscriptions doesn't let us force you to hit accept before billing - that would be hard to implement.

There definitely is a cancel button too! I just tell people they can email us as well because some people find that easier.

We're just now building an in-house engineering team to make the process easier. If I had my way, you could cancel, pause, adjust timing, etc with a couple clicks. I am stating our plans to do these things :-)

Yeah that could definitely work. We're limited technically at the moment (e.g. can't really extend our platform to do things like that), but hiring a team to enable things like that.

What would be really neat is if we learned exactly how much you need and sent you the right amount at the right time.

It definitely does work well for backpacking and based on your amount of usage - sounds like something that could work well. Definitely have run some campaigns with a travel focus. However, the bursty demand you mentioned is what we hear from travelers and backpackers - that makes it a lot harder to serve (it's hard to get in front of you right around when you'll need it).

A big part of our mission is serving coffee for everyone's need - we have some people who use it camping, we have others who use it on the way to work. There is room for both.

Would love for you to try it - if you go here, you can do a 2-cup mini subscription as well: https://www.suddencoffee.com/?trial=true

We have a lot of customers who go through a similar experience. They use Sudden maybe 1-3 days a week when really busy and then pour over on others days when they have time. The pour over is still pretty enjoyable if you have the time.

Short answer - we're starting to experiment with trial options. This is a link to a 2-cup trial that converts to a sub: https://www.suddencoffee.com/?trial=true

Longer answer - sort of but not that simple in our current state. Even if you absolutely love a product, often times you don't buy again. Many reasons for this - it's a pain to checkout again, you don't have your credit card on you, you forgot about it, you're just too busy with other stuff.

If we had an Uber-like app - one click to order, saves your credit card, sends you push notifications to remind you - it would be a lot more feasible to send you a single cup of coffee and make it really really easy for you to buy again. Unfortunately, it's hard for us to do that right now and we end up losing a lot of people who truly did love the product.

Before LTV or any of that stuff - the big question is if we call up our subscribers, are they happy? We hear again and again "Yes, I love the product, I love that it shows up, it tastes great and saves me time". We would not be building a subscription service if that were not the case.

However, we are absolutely testing different trial options to get at what you're talking about.

Well hopefully through this thread at least we've convinced you we aren't scammers :-)

Seriously though, definitely something we are not about - would love to grab beers with anyone (in SF) who wants to learn more about our company/values text us/me (650) 823-4287.

Co-founder here - I actually want to challenge that...for science. I've gone pretty deep on this.

There are definitely sets of products for which people want to 'set it and forget it'. At a basic level - electricity. I'd love to never think about my electricity bill ever. I do not want to explicitly pay for my electricity bill. Automated payment on electricity is amazing!

There are also many products in my life that I truly love and would use a lot more, but I am too lazy to buy or order them. I love LaCroix sparkling water. I would have no problem if it showed up at my house for $20 a month. However, because I'm lazy I never actually buy any - instead I get Coke at the corner store - worse for me.

Our goal with Sudden Coffee is to make it really really easy to get something you like. We are definitely not trying to pull wool over anyones eyes - we try to be as transparent as possible with this. We will never give you the run around if you need to cancel - that's just not who we are.

Closer to our hearts - a subscription allows us to actually make it an 'experience' instead of just cups of coffee. We can educate you about coffee, send you new recipes, guide you through coffee tastings - over a longer period of time. When we talk to customers at cafes - those extra moments of delight make the experience memorable - not just a cup of coffee.

That said, Kalle is also right. A subscription ultimately means we can spend less money & time on marketing, more money where it counts - on coffee, and give it to you at a lower price. I mentioned this in an earlier thread - for us to deliver the same coffee without subscriptions, we'd have to charge $4-5 per cup. However, I can also tell you that we have many happy subscribers who love that it's a subscription - it's not something that feels forced, but rather something that makes life easier.

Would really love for you to give us a try! Promise you will not be met with resistance if you need to cancel!

The part re: colloids is a trade secret at this point, but definitely a real challenge.

As far as we could find, there is no common solution for industrial scale espresso. If someone has one, please post it here. This was a personal obsession of mine last spring - "How does this not exist?!?"

Kalle is the coffee expert, but as the 'non-coffee guy', I have no idea why this wouldn't exist - I would have thought someone out there would need it?

Great response - appreciate the clarification and all makes sense.

Yeah, those are all the real challenges we face. Marketing for us is a big one - as many people have pointed out about our website :-)

I think it's our job as a business to figure out a way to make it mainstream. It's going to take creativity, hard work, and a great tasting product - but that's the challenge we are signing up for to be honest. We are not here to make a niche product. Everything we are working towards is making this something the majority of people can enjoy. If you talked to my parents in the 70's, the idea of a Starbucks style cafe where you pay $5 for an iced latte was ludicrous, but now it's mainstream (I'm not saying its a ripoff either, its just something we didn't know we'd want).

What we see is a huge gap in the market. If you live in a select few big cities, you have this huge exposure to specialty coffee and it tastes great. If you live anywhere else - it is a whole lot harder to experience coffee that tastes this good. We believe that the average person truly does want to experience great tasting coffee - they just don't have access.

*Caveat that I always add - that doesn't mean there isn't room for other coffee either. McDonalds is a mainstream burger restaurant but there is still a place for 10 other fast food companies, a whole spectrum of high end burgers, etc. We aren't trying to replace every way to drink coffee - just provide a new alternative that tastes awesome.

Really enjoyed your comments - thanks for writing!

So first off, taste is a subjective thing, but generally things that we classify as tasting good internally: - smooth/ juicy taste - naturally sweet without sugar - has a good fragrance

Things that taste bad in coffee might be: - dries out your mouth - watery/ tasteless - really bitter - tastes like wood - smokey/ burnt

FYI, it's hard to pick up on these taste characteristics if you drink coffee with cream and sugar, so if you want to do a taste test, try it black and at a warm (not hot) temperature.

+1 for RussianCow's comment.

Our target customer is the average person who goes to Philz, Blue Bottle, Stumptown as well as Starbucks. These people aren't really buying instant coffee - they spend $2-10 on coffee per day. Some of them buy 2 x $5 latte drinks at a cafe. 100% of these people drink their coffee for the taste (although they have different taste preferences). The average person who goes to Blue Bottle daily actually doesn't know much about the beans, where it's sourced, etc. This is a big misconception that we uncovered last May. These people are Blue Bottle loyalists who love the brand, but they really just want a good cup of coffee that makes them feel good. They don't care what country it came from and they don't really know what light roast vs dark roast is.

This is actually a HUGE market of people. The middle is much larger than the fringes.

Btw, I've said this in other places on the thread - we completely love people who are super into coffee and I still think we make a good product for those really into it, but I just want to highlight the large number of people in the middle who we often forget to talk about.

If you go to this secret link you can get a 2-cup trial that auto-converts to a subscription in 21 days.

https://www.suddencoffee.com/?trial=true

We are experimenting with ways to let people try it first - so more solutions are coming!

Working on it. We do individual servings because they preserve freshness - that's the only reason we do it. It's hard for us to do compostable since we are still very small compared to your average consumer good, but we are 100% committed to doing it when we are big enough. We even have 2 sustainability advisors involved with the company.

We aren't going to beat out the best of the best cafes with trained baristas, but we will definitely beat out the average corner cafe (where people often spend $3-4 on a coffee).

So I'd say look at it like a spectrum. In the cafe world there is - average/ not-so-great drip coffee --> Starbucks --> Speciality/ Third Wave Coffee.

I don't know how VIA makes their product, but if you do a side-by-side taste test with Sudden vs VIA, I 100% guarantee you will notice (and prefer) Sudden. We do in fact use a pretty unique bean selection + brewing process to achieve it.

Re: drying techniques - it really varies brand by brand and when you go to a store shelf in the US, most of the brands you see are spray dried, not freeze dried. In the US, you specifically have to look for brands that say 'freeze dried' and it's usually reserved for the more expensive instant coffees. Spray drying is much cheaper, but yields a lower quality product. Freeze dried coffee is a lot more common outside of the US. Even within freeze drying - we use a smaller batch freeze drying process. I've worked in large scale manufacturing before and with a smaller batch process we are able to achieve much higher quality levels.

Re: beans - most coffee beans bought and sold are bought as a commodity product - think rice, beans, etc. They can literally be years old before being brewed. We have seen lots of these beans and they visibly have mold and insect damage. The beans we use are hand-picked when ripe. Much closer to picking grapes from a vineyard.

Short answer is - we're working on it :-)

We hired an engineer and a head of marketing in the last 2 weeks. We are very aware internally that our site has a lot of errors and a lot of what you're seeing are tests we are running. We have a larger design project going in the background.

We do want to figure out a way for more people to try the product - so expect more there.

The target market is actually interesting...there are a TON of people who are really interested in speciality coffee, but simply don't have access, know-how, or want to put in the time. As an example, someone who visited SF, tried Blue Bottle, but lives in Indiana without a Blue Bottle nearby. There are also folks who love great coffee, but really don't have the time (doctors, nurses, etc). A big surprise for us after working on Sudden for a year was that plenty of people who go to the top coffee shops in a city, every single day, don't know too much about the coffee itself (single-origin or pour over are foreign terms) - they just like the taste. A big mission we have is creating ACCESS. We want to help everyone have easy access and UNDERSTAND what great coffee is about.

So responding to your initial question - we would absolutely love to have you as a customer, and I do think you'd love Sudden, but there are a lot of folks with a much more limited understanding of coffee who still love great tasting coffee (this was very surprising to us) - and we've realized there's a huge opportunity to open a new range of coffee to those people.

Happy to answer whatever questions we can disclose! Thanks for starting the thread.

It's somewhere in the middle to be honest. We did not invent freeze dried coffee - it's been around for over a century. However, it is quite difficult to make it work at-scale in a way that's profitable/sustainable, and that still tastes good.

I have a pretty extensive background in operations, manufacturing, & tech and I had to pull out every trick in the book to get this to work at our current scale & price. It was a lot of work.

It is also inherently more expensive to sell. All of the same things that make regular instant coffee taste bad also make it super cheap. We are trying to make it as affordable as possible, but at the end of the day the higher quality does require a more expensive process.

Co-founder here - love the idea of having trial packets some place that's easier to buy, like Amazon. Will think on that.

We do want to make it a lot easier to try (see my comment above) - figuring out the best ways to do that.

Looking into that. We haven't done it yet because we are worried the coffee will get stale. Individual servings ensure the coffee stays fresh - that's why we do it.

Co-founder of Sudden here. This question comes up a lot. We have tried offering one-time purchases and it didn't work very well/ wasn't sustainable for us. 3 reasons we believe in a subscription model:

1) A big reason we started this company together was our shared belief in making customers feel good through hospitality. It's more than just the coffee itself. We want to build a better experience - if you are a Sudden subscriber, the experience should evolve over time, you'll learn more about coffee, try new things, have fun with it. To us, this wasn't about making something to have once a year on a road trip, but a way that we could connect with customers and create a larger community. A subscription is the best way for us to build a lasting experience at our current size.

2) For a lot of folks out there, it is super easy & convenient and they wouldn't have it any other way. They like that Sudden Coffee just arrives and they don't have to think about it. It's something they can add into their life.

3) Subscriptions mean we can offer the same product at a much cheaper price. We can spend a lot less time & money making ads or sending emails to remind you to buy again. This is the reality of what most CPG companies do - think about how often you see a toothpaste ad for a toothpaste you already own, even if you love it. We pass the savings directly on to customers. We ran the numbers, to offer the same coffee without a subscription, we'd have to charge $4-5/cup.

To clarify 2 things: A) You definitely can still be in the target market for us. Our most popular subscription is 8/cups a month. This is meant to ADD-TO not REPLACE your existing coffee ritual. We find Sudden works best as your 'second-cup' of the day (at least as you try it out). We have plenty of customers who make a daily pour over and then use Sudden in the afternoon.

B) We recognize that giving people a way to TRY before subscribing is a big gap in our service and we are actively experimenting with the best ways to do that. It may come in the form of referrals from other customers or special sales. We just brought on someone last week to think through the experience and were brainstorming about it this morning.

Nothing prevents you from doing this and you are totally welcome to do it! You can email our support email as well and we'll cancel it for you. We'd obviously prefer that you stay on with a subscription, but are just happy to have more people give us a try.

Co-founder here - it's miles better than Via. Sometimes we include a packet of Via in our shipment so you can do a taste comparison (thinking about making this standard). You'll definitely notice the difference side by side.

Thanks for the feedback! Glad you're loving it. I'm Kalle's co-founder/ wrote that blog post, so glad to hear it was helpful.