Two years ago, I met the well-known Provost of Research at Tufts, Simin Meydani, and she had a question. 

Not about her 10 years of ground-breaking nutrition research on healthier living, reducing cancer risk by 25%, increasing life span by 50% and reducing weight gain, but a technical question on company formation.

As a result of that discussion and hundreds of others, we launched FulLife Nutrition  with two other co-founders who are deep into the science of nutrition, FDA regulations, the early-stage engineering of food, and, of course...marketing.  We then extended our unpaid team to startup food and beverage experts from the many people in the Tufts food and beverage community.

Over the first 6 months, we figured out: 

• Product-Market-Fit moving from a powder to a beverage to a smoothie. 

• Countless kitchen-designed and prototype manufactured formulations
• Secondary market research, which largely said "way too much competition"
• Financials which initially showed low margins due to distribution
• A management team, since it would not be any of the 4 of us.
• The difficulties of raising pre-revenue funding for a CPG beverage.  

Over the 2nd 6 months:  

• Students developed a marketing plan with personas, promotions, pricing and tactics
• Simin and students won 2nd place at Tufts $100K New Venture Competition 
• Tufts provided additional capital through a grant
• We battled the financials to the penny to reach the stringent margins
• We raised some, but not enough money, but enough for 1,000 bottles 

And finally we launched this week at the Tufts commons

-3 flavors-This is Apple Ginger
-Interns, samples, products for sale 
-Surveys, questions, & recommendations
-Bottom line: "How do you like the taste?"
-4 more launch dates coming up this week.

All to prove out the basic fundamental of all new business and product launches whether it's a new smoothie from the student-driven startup FulLife, or it's the introduction of the much-cheaper Tesla announced this week..."you gotta get into the market and sell some stuff!" 

Just a bit more challenging with "yet another" new healthy beverage, which will always come down to the taste and to pinpoint persona marketing which for us is GenZ and Millennials!   We'll let you know as this unfolds and as we gear up for funding and bringing on the experienced management team we've already identified.   

Have a great weekend!  Superb and warm weather tomorrow.  Enjoy!

NOW'S THE PERFECT TIME TO LAUNCH YOUR 2024 SALES PLAN! 

Click Here:  "WRITING THE WINNING SALES PLAN IN 2024"

You can click here for this brand new  "Writing the Winning Sales Plan in 2024", for a few ideas on structure, sales models, process, a number of productivity tools and how to hire.  

Have a great weekend.  I'm a Tufts today taking the Delta Upsilon brothers where I'm faculty advisor through a two hour workshop on the best marketing and sales tactics to use in searching for that perfect, high paying job. 

BTW, I always have tens of the best associate-level juniors and seniors available for an internship this summer or a full time job in June.  Through our 28 instructors at the Center, we can provide highly personal recommendations for jobs in Finance, Marketing, Sales, Product, and Computer Science.  Give me a call,  

Connect with me with any questions or your own sales planning for 2024. 
Always love talking to salespeople!   

www.derbymanagement.com  
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts.