Ethan: Hey everybody and welcome to the Startup Savant podcast. I’m your host Ethan, and this show is about the stories, challenges, and triumphs of fast-scaling startups and the founders who run them.
This week we are joined by Katina Mountanos, founder of Kosterina. A wellness startup offering food and beauty products rooted in top tier olive oil.
Katina and I chatted about why she chose to move into this industry after the sale of her previous company Manicube, how she got her products into Whole Foods, and why she advocates for ‘launching what you know.’
One quick reminder - Hit that Subscribe button! Whichever platform you’re listening on, they’ve got a button, so go press it! We don’t want you to miss out on any of the knowledge that these founders bring.
And now I’m going to stop talking about all this knowledge and just let you listen to some. Let’s get into this conversation with Katina of Kosterina.
Katina Mountanos: I'm doing great, Ethan. Thank you so much for having me. And that's quite the podcast voice you have there. It's a good one.
Ethan: I've been training for years. Even before we started this podcast, I did all the voices for our YouTube videos. And so it was in the booth for several hours a day, day after day, after day recording many, many things. So thank you very much. All right, so let's start off simple. Your startup is Kosterina. Can you tell us what is Kosterina?
Katina Mountanos: Yes, absolutely. So my startup, that's right, is called Kosterina. It's centered around very high antioxidant, extra virgin olive oil from Greece, but more broadly focused on the Mediterranean lifestyle. So our hero products are a range of premium extra virgin olive oils, but we also make products across a number of different categories like balsamic vinegars, fruit vinegars, we make dark chocolate bars with olive oil and also skincare with olive oil.
Ethan: All right. You're already given me places to come up with follow-up questions. What is a hero item or how do you define what a hero item is?
Katina Mountanos: Oh, well, it's, our extra virgin olive oils are a large portion of our sales and also the centerpiece of the brand. And so when we think about Kosterina and the entire product line, extra virgin olive oil is at the center. And if you think of a hub and spokes model, we always bring our customers into the brand through the extra virgin olive oil, and that's very intentional. And from there we begin to introduce them to other product lines like our chocolate line or our skincare line, or even our vinegars.
Ethan: Awesome. We are already learning today. So, I don't claim to know a whole lot about olive oil and this really isn't a health podcast, but can you tell us a little bit about the problem that you are solving in those markets?
Katina Mountanos: Yes. So my family actually comes from a small town in southern Greece, and this is just a little bit of context, but that small town is called Koroni, and the most popular varietal of extra virgin olive oil that grows throughout all of Greece is called Koroneiki, which literally just means from Koroni.
And so I grew up in olive country. I grew up between New York and Greece in this small town and knew what good olive oil tasted like. And so the company really came to be, because as I started a family and started cooking more at home, I realized that the Greek extra virgin or Italian extra virgin in the supermarket tasted absolutely nothing like what my family made and enjoyed in southern Greece.
And so it really started from a taste standpoint and I became obsessed with finding good olive oil here in the US and it was actually very hard to find. And when I did find it, it was quite expensive. And so I became interested in that and ended up taking what's called an olive oil sommelier course.
And in the sommelier course I learned, I think I always knew olive oil was healthy, but I learned just how healthy it could be. So I'll give you the very quick olive oil health lesson. There's a big difference between olive oil and extra virgin olive oil.
Extra virgin just means that it's the first press of the olive, and it's sort of the purest form, but there's an even bigger difference between extra virgin olive oil and what I now know to be early harvest extra virgin olive oil. And so when harvested early and milled properly, you can actually preserve the natural antioxidants that occur in the olive.
Those antioxidants have been proven by hundreds of studies, I would say it's undisputed to reduce the risk of many chronic diseases, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, heart disease. And there have been a number of different studies including one that came out this year that really show that these antioxidants, even in small amounts, so like two teaspoons of this kind of extra virgin olive oil per day, can reduce your risk pretty significantly, like 30% or more of getting some of these chronic diseases.
Ethan: Wow.
Katina Mountanos: I like to say if this stuff was in a pill, people would be paying thousands of dollars for it. And so this type of olive oil also ends up tasting amazing because of those antioxidants. And so it's really a win-win. And that's kind of how Kosterina came to be.
Ethan: So I've heard something before from chefs or whomever I was speaking to, that a lot of the olive oil that we buy today on the shelves in the States is already spoiled. Is that something that is an accurate statement?
Katina Mountanos: It is, unfortunately. And so the most recent study is actually now fairly old. It's from 2010. It was done by the UC Davis in California and it identified that 69% of olive oils on the shelf that were labeled extra virgin did not actually meet the definition of extra virgin.
Many of them because they were old, very much past the time that you should be selling olive oil on the shelf and a long time away from their initial harvest, and they become rancid over time. A lot of olive oils are also packaged in either plastic bottles, which is a huge no-no, olive oil can actually suck microplastics into the olive oil from a plastic bottle.
And then the second thing that brands have done wrong historically in the US is package in translucent bottles. So light is actually the enemy to good olive oil as well.
Ethan: I've heard that as well. So this is clearly something that you have grown up with. This is something that's been in your life for all your life. Do you think that launching a company that is so personal to you has been a strength? Or do you think that there's anything about it that has held you back?
Katina Mountanos: I definitely think it's been a strength. There's literally nothing I'm more passionate about at this point in time. I always joke that someone could say like, hey, do you want to be the CEO of Apple? And I'd be like, no, thanks, I'm good. I'm going to build this olive oil brand.
It's literally the culmination of all the things I love in my life, it's combining Greece and the food industry and the beauty industry all into one. And it just feels so personal and I feel so connected to it that I'm just extremely passionate about it. And it's centered around this Greek lifestyle, which I do see an incredible benefit of.
When I compare friends and family here in the US who are constantly struggling with health or weight or they're intermittent fasting or they're on keto or they're working out for 90 minutes a day and not getting the results they want, and then I see friends and family in Greece who are staying out late, drinking good wine, eating good food, and just enjoying life in a different way than I think many of us do here.
And so bringing that all together into this brand has been incredibly special to me. And I think it has definitely landed as a strength. And I always talk to aspiring entrepreneurs who are kind of like, I want to start something. I don't know what it is. And my advice is always… comes back to something I learned in a writing course, which was write what you know.
I like to say, launch what you know as well. Because I think that if you are passionate about it, knowledgeable about it, you'll end up with something much stronger at the end of the day and more authentic.
Ethan: So launch what you know, everyone out there, take what you know and launch it, make it your business. So I feel like there's more to this launch what you know. Could you maybe tell us a little bit more about that?
Katina Mountanos: Yes. Coming from an advisor in the investor world, I feel that investors are always asking if there's a founder brand fit. And you sometimes wonder if a founder is the right person to launch a specific type of business.
And when you do have that authentic connection and it is something that you're incredibly passionate about or know a lot about, then you naturally have that fit and can continue to grow the business from there with that at the core and that ethos.
Ethan: Awesome, thank you very much for that. All right, so before you started Kosterina, there was another company that you founded with a co-founder, Manicube. And three years, only three years after you started that company, it was sold to Elizabeth Arden. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with Manicube?
Katina Mountanos: Yes, the Manicube experience was an incredible one. I had an amazing co-founder, her name is Liz Whitman, and we were true partners in building this business. For me, it was my first startup, it was my first time as a co-founder and I learned so much. It was the first time that I was managing a PR agency. It was the first time that I was hiring a marketing ads agency. It was the first time that I was doing accounting. I had studied accounting, but it was the first time really touching a number of different functions.
We were 33 people at our max and hiring that many people, managing the culture of a team that size, it was all first for me. And so I learned an incredible amount and could not have done it without my co-founder at that time.
Ethan: So Kosterina is an incredibly different company than Manicube was. Manicube when I read about it, it was health services. And this is, you're still kind of touching health but in a much different way. What was it that pushed you to start this second company that was so wildly different than the first company?
Katina Mountanos: I think what was difficult about Manicube was that it was of course all services. It was actually health and beauty services and you relied a lot on people. So we had to get the right people to the right place at the right time with the right things. And that was an operational challenge and it became very difficult at the end and it was harder to scale. And so I always kind of thought, my next company is going to be in product. It just seems more simple. And I really kind of landed on Kosterina just through my personal interest. And I had started Kosterina as a passion project. I had just one SKU, it was our white original extra virgin olive oil.
And I launched it to two or 300 family and friends through an email on a Squarespace site that I put up. And it really, I think those first couple of years I knew every single email address of the person placing orders. And then I started to see names that I didn't recognize and it began to grow organically on its own.
And that was pretty exciting to see. And so it really was just, I landed there. It wasn't super intentional. I didn't scout out a white space in the market. It was really out of passion and people began to love the brand and love the product. And I realized that people did want this high quality olive oil here in the US and they were concerned about their health and they did want a culinary ... something that tasted delicious in food and it was and-and, it was healthy and delicious. And it really just kind of came from there.
Ethan: So when you first started this, I mean, did you imagine that this was going to become a company or was this just something that you thought, hey, I have access to this awesome thing and these 200 people that I know, they're willing to buy it and they want it and I can do this thing? I mean, was this meant to be something that was sustaining you or did it become that over time?
Katina Mountanos: I think I always hoped that it would be a company and that it would warrant my full-time attention at some point, even from the very beginning. But I definitely wasn't ready to take the plunge. I was in a really interesting job, actually. I had come to Walmart through the acquisition of Jet.com. So, I was an early employee at Jet.com. We were purchased by Walmart. And in my Walmart days I ran our internal incubator, which launched direct to consumer, consumer products businesses that also sold in Walmart stores.
So essentially starting startup brands that were owned by Walmart, which was really exciting, lots of fun, and I learned a ton. And so I really did love that job. And Kosterina was a side project. As it began to grow, I realized that it could warrant my full-time attention and decided to take the plunge. I think entrepreneurs sometimes will quit their job because they have this idea and they want to pursue it, but that puts a ton of pressure on yourself.
I believe in this rapid prototyping model, put out something into the world even though it's not perfect. And when I look at our first bottle, it was definitely not perfect. I didn't like how it looked. Even our olive oil quality improved significantly over time. And so it's good to get the product out there, get some feedback, don't put too much pressure on yourself both financially and also emotionally to make something a success because it does not always happen overnight for most people.
Ethan: Was there anything you tried before this super high quality olive oil that kind of flopped or that didn't work? Or was this just kind of like a lightning in a bottle that you had right off the bat?
Katina Mountanos: I mean, it didn't happen super fast. I had the brand as a passion project for almost three years before I started focusing on it full-time. I launched it in 2017 and then left my full-time role, January of 2020. And so it really was three years. I think it took us that amount of time to refine the exact profile of the olive oil we wanted, to refine the bottle and there's only one harvest every year, so you don't get that many chances to continue to improve the product.
Ethan: So you learned these skills from working with jet.com, which was acquired by Walmart as you said, which kind of gave you the ability to create this brand and import but well, you had some brand creation experience before this, but the sourcing, the, I guess bottling, whatever other processes there are to go from an olive to a bottle of olive oil that is ready to be sold, that was all stuff that was learned from Jet. Is that accurate?
Katina Mountanos: Maybe not, actually. You really just learn so much by starting to do it. I think I definitely learned a little bit about product development. I worked at L'Oreal before I started Manicube. So I learned about beauty product development there. In the Walmart days, I definitely learned more about ... I built a few brands. One was actually mattresses and bedding, the other was beauty supplements.
And so, definitely learned what it's like to source and create a product from scratch. But it's totally different every time. And there's a ton you learn just by literally Googling, talking to people, taking introductions, meeting with potential suppliers, hitting the road. And so for aspiring entrepreneurs who are thinking about an idea and want it get started, the first thing I would say to do is just start talking about it. Like, hey, I have this idea for a product. And then talking to someone, someone might say like, oh, I know this person who does that. Maybe you should talk to them and see what they know and learn.
And people are very willing and very generous with their time when you do have this idea that you're chasing or a product that you're trying to develop. And so I think just starting to talk about it, starting to ask people for advice and guidance is really the best way to go about it.
Ethan: So you started to see some people on these orders, emails that you didn't recognize. Was that kind of the catalyst that pushed you to say, okay, this can be a full-time thing, I'm going to go do this full-time, or was it something else? Was there some sort of feeling that you got that you just knew that this is going to work and I'm going to go do it full-time?
Katina Mountanos: It's a great question. There were actually two things that happened that made me decide to take the plunge. So the first was I sent out what's called an NPS survey to our existing Kosterina customers. I think we had about a hundred customers at the time.
NPS stands for net promoter score, and it's a score of how likely your customers are to recommend your product to family and friends. And when I was at Walmart, we were running NPS on all our different brands and we'd be super excited if our NPS came back in the 50s.
60s was very strong, and 70s was amazing on. In that early NPS survey, our score came back at 100.
Ethan: Wow.
Katina Mountanos: And I was like, wow, I think there's really something here. The people who are using this olive oil are really, really loving it and are willing to share it with family and friends. And I began to see that happening organically.
The second thing that happened was that Whole Foods actually found us, a buyer at Whole Foods based in Austin, found us on Instagram and reached out. And I couldn't even take the meeting because I was still in another full-time role. And so that interest showed me like, hey, maybe there's something here. And imagine we could be in Whole Foods nationally, which we are today, was super exciting at the prospect of that.
Ethan: Of course, of course. I'm glad that if something is not right that you're willing to say it. All right. So you mentioned this partnership with Whole Foods, and I know now that you sell in Whole Foods, Food 52, Creighton Barrel, but the way that this partnership came with Whole Foods, I know that there might be something a bit special about that. So can you tell us about the way that that partnership started?
Katina Mountanos: Yes, we were incredibly lucky to be discovered by the buyer at Whole Foods. I know I have a lot of founder friends who are trying to get into Whole Foods and are pitching buyers for season after season, after season and still having difficulty. So I will just note that we were incredibly lucky that Whole Foods was looking for a Greek olive oil at the time.
They did think our bottle was beautiful and that would fit in their assortment and would elevate their assortment. So when I took that first meeting, I went down for the line review, what's called a line review in Austin. And Whole Foods will send you a presentation that you have to fill out in order to have that first conversation.
And I remember the very first slide of that deck was, please list all the people on your team who will be attending this meeting with you. And it was literally just me. And I laugh at that because it was just so early. We had no business talking to Whole Foods at that time.
They loved the product, they loved the olive oil and the bottle, and they wanted to launch it nationally. And I did not have the supply chain set up for that. I did not have the team set up for that. And I was just totally honest with them. I was like, "It's just too early. I don't think I can support that, but I think I can do X number of stores."
And so we ended up launching our original extra virgin olive oil in three of Whole Foods' 10 regions in the US. And that was a test case. We built the brand in those three regions first. And now this year we were able to launch nationally. We now have six SKUs that are national at Whole Foods, and we're incredibly lucky. And Whole Foods has the most amazing standards and incredible standards for what they actually will put in the store in terms of what ingredients are allowed, in terms of what practices from a farming standpoint are required. And so I have incredible respect for the buyers at that store.
Ethan: I mean, this isn't how it normally happens. Usually it's that the brand goes out and says, hey, whole Foods, I want to be in your store. And then Whole Foods comes back if they come back, and they say, okay, well you need to do X, Y, and Z and hit all of these certain numbers and everything.
And this is just so different. I mean, looking back, do you think that there was something that you were doing just so right in your initial marketing strategy that created this, let's call it, manufactured serendipity?
Katina Mountanos: I think it was the product design, honestly. Without a very different bottle ... if you look at the supermarket shelf, there's a sea of sameness. And that was, when we developed that white bottle that was painted opaque, both for functional reasons to protect the olive oil from light, but also for aesthetic reasons, that really helps the bottle stand out at shelf.
And we currently have our white and blue bottle. If you look at the supermarket shelf, our bottle truly does stand out. And I think that that's really important. It's really important to make sure that your brand comes through in your packaging and that you are storytelling with the color choice, the shape, the silhouette, the words on the package. And so I think what we did right early on was really focus on that design aspect and make sure we were different and also telling our brand story through those visual cues.
Ethan: So there's a lot of ‘we.’ And then you mentioned at the very beginning it was just you. Were you working with external designers or are you a secret designer expert that just builds brands? Do you just do everything or is there somebody that was helping you with this branding, this design?
Katina Mountanos: I had tons of help along the way. Actually, at the time, I was working with a designer who had worked on our team at Manicube. And so I had worked with her before. Her name is Katherine Clark. She's an incredible creative mind, and she designed our early bottle.
We then went on to work with our current creative director, a woman named Nicole Corbett, who is insanely talented and has really taken the brand to where it is today from a design perspective. And so it begins with my brief and vision and now my team's brief and vision. But it really is finding the right creative director who understands your ethos, who can bring that to life for you.
Ethan: And it sounds like you've really done that, if design was the onus to this huge opportunity. I mean, that's massive. So good on you for figuring that out and being able to work with the right people to get you there. Do you have any recommendations for folks out there who want to increase the way that their brand works with what they're trying to do or their design? I mean, do you have a specific method that you follow or is it literally just finding the right person?
Katina Mountanos: Yeah, it's tough. So there's really, in my mind, two different options or two different paths you could take from a design perspective. One is a freelance designer and the other is an agency.
Agencies can be incredibly expensive. Actually, when I first started working with our initial agency, we did compensate them through equity and a smaller cash compensation. So when you don't have a lot of cash before, let's say you haven't raised any money yet or you're bootstrapping, that is one way to get an amazing agency on board if you can do that.
But I would ask for recommendations for someone looking to start something or design something new, I would ask for recommendations for both freelancers and agencies, interview tons of different people, look at the work that they've done in the past and see if you can find the right fit that way.
Ethan: Sweet. So I want to talk just a little bit more about this partnership with Whole Foods because there's one part of it that I find to be very interesting and that is at the beginning, Whole Foods was your exclusive retailer. What made you choose to go exclusive with Whole Foods?
Katina Mountanos: I mean, there's really no retailer that's more perfect for us. They have very high quality health standards. They have a consumer that's very focused on health and clean ingredients. And so it was very much aligned. They're also national and do have a pretty significant presence across the country. And so it really was like, before I had even thought about going into retail, if there was one retailer I could pick, it would be them.
Ethan: So then exclusivity didn't last. Well, not that it didn't last, but you're not still exclusive with Whole Foods. When did you know that that no longer made sense to have them as your only retailer?
Katina Mountanos: So we actually are pretty exclusive in terms of grocery stores. We're not in many other grocery stores today. We are in Crate & Barrel, which of course is home goods and a very elevated design and decor retailer. And then Food 52 is of course online.
And it's not like your grocery, it's not your stop and shop or your King Kullin. And so from a grocery store perspective, we are still pretty exclusive with Whole Foods. We do plan to expand to additional stores in the coming year or two, but Whole Foods is really going to be or will always be our core partner from a grocery standpoint.
Ethan: That makes total sense to me. So let's talk a little bit about the products that you sell. You mentioned earlier, obviously olive oil. When I looked on the site, there was also chocolate products and recently you've even added skincare products.
And this kind of feels to me like three kinds of separate things that don't necessarily touch, but I have this feeling that this is kind of a part of your master plan. So can you let us in on your thinking of how these products all fit together?
Katina Mountanos: Yes. When I was debating whether I was going to focus on Kosterina, I don't think I would've left to start just an olive oil brand. What I really wanted to create was a true lifestyle brand centered around the Mediterranean diet and lifestyle. And so for extra virgin olive oil really can improve the products across a number of different categories.
So if you're not familiar, canola oil or vegetable oils can be quite toxic. And in the US we actually use them way too much. They're in so many different products because they're cheap and tasteless. And I even in my Walmart days was seeing the data around and health stats around children with diabetes and diabetes stats growing.
And it really does come back to what's in our grocery stores and what people are eating on a day-to-day basis. We're not making their choices easy for them, we're not making it easy for them to make healthy choices. And so that's really at the core of our why at Kosterina. And we did feel like there was a lot of chocolate with some of these harmful oils from a skincare perspective. In the Mediterranean, people have been using olive oil on skin and hair for literally thousands of years. In Greek culture, we actually baptize our babies in extra virgin olive oil.
It's deemed the safest and most efficacious moisturizer. And so it felt very natural to extend the line for a brand that's built around health and beauty from the inside and outside, it made complete sense to create a very clean line of basic skincare with extra virgin olive oil as the hero core ingredient.
Ethan: So it's still all about olive oil. All right.
Katina Mountanos: Exactly.
Ethan: All right. Let's talk a little bit about the funding behind Kosterina. I guess let's start with the basics. How is Kosterina funded?
Katina Mountanos: We are venture backed. We have raised a pre-seed, a seed round, and now a series A round of funding.
Ethan: Wow. What's the total on those raises, if you're willing to share?
Katina Mountanos: Yeah, I think to date we've raised just about $10 million.
Ethan: So the brand, the type of company that you run, I don't see them out every day going for venture, especially at the levels that you're working with. What made you choose venture and what is that $10 million going towards?
Katina Mountanos: So what made me choose venture was probably running a venture backed business in the past and knowing that to build a true household brand name, it was going to take a lot of capital, especially because we sit across so many different categories, which was very intentional.
Many investors will say, just stick with one category, make that one SKU of olive oil as success, and then you can go into others. Our strategy here has been very different in building a lifestyle brand from the start.
Although skincare did come a bit later, it wasn't much later. We really did launch with multiple categories at the same time. So, I think I just knew that it was going to be capital intensive and that in order to grow a household name brand, we would need a significant amount of capital.
Ethan: That makes sense to me. So you also raised for Manicube, which was clearly a much different type of business, as we've mentioned before. Was there a big difference in the experience of raising for Kosterina versus raising for Manicube?
Katina Mountanos: I think that it was actually a bit easier in the Manicube days because I launched Kosterina in the middle of the pandemic. It was 2020. And so there was a lot of uncertainty in the financial markets, a lot of uncertainty in the venture markets.
Our pre-seed round came in 2019 for Kosterina, and so that was a bit easier. It was more post pandemic that it was harder to secure capital. But fortunately, we did have great growth. We did have some successes under our belt that allowed us to find the right investor group.
Ethan: Awesome. So I know we're coming up on time here and I want to make sure that we can get you back to your busy day. So first, if you could tell us, what is next for Kosterina?
Katina Mountanos: Sure. Well, from a product standpoint, we will be continuing to expand the line very thoughtfully, all centered around Mediterranean diet and lifestyle. And then from a distribution standpoint, we will be looking to expand to a very select group of grocery stores that we feel are the right brand fit for us.
We do want people to be able to find Kosterina wherever they are shopping for food. We do have a pretty significant direct to consumer E-commerce business, but we know that people are most of the time buying their olive oil when they're buying their tomatoes and salad produce. And so we do want to be in more grocery stores. And so that'll be a key next goal for us.
Ethan: I also hear there's something about a podcast. Is there something you could tell us about that?
Katina Mountanos: Yes, that's right. We launched our own podcast called The Inquisitive Olive. We just recorded our third episode. It's all centered around health and high performance, and we're interviewing experts across a number of different fields of wellness.
Our first interview was with a good friend of mine who is a former entrepreneur who started Bonobos. His name is Andy Dunn. He wrote an incredible book about mental health in the workplace. We've interviewed a nutritionist, that episode is launching soon.
And then another entrepreneur in the food and gluten free baking space, a woman named Laurel Gallucci who started Sweet Laurel based in LA. So definitely have a really exciting roster of interviews coming up for the Inquisitive Olive podcast.
Ethan: That's awesome. I'm going to check out the Inquisitive Olive and so should everyone else. So we're going to move on to the question that we ask everybody that comes onto the show. What is your number one piece of advice for early stage entrepreneurs?
Katina Mountanos: I think it comes back to what I was mentioning before around rapid prototyping, which to me just means don't wait until your product is perfect. Create something, put it out into the market in some way. Get that customer feedback and make that feedback loop start working for you so that you know what people want and you can work towards in an iterative way, that perfect product.
Ethan: All right, sweet and simple. Last question. Where can people connect with you online, and how can our listeners support Kosterina?
Katina Mountanos: Amazing. Well, all our products are available on costareina.com and you can read our brand story there. You can find us on Instagram at Costa Arena and on TikTok @KosterinaEvoo, E-V-O-O. You can find me @KatinaMountanos on Instagram and @ExtraVirginMama on TikTok.
Ethan: All right, cool. Well, thank you so much, Katina, for coming on the show. We're going to put everything that everyone heard today in the show notes at startupsavant.com. But that is going to be it for today's episode of the Startup Savant podcast. Thanks for coming and hanging out with us today. This has been a lot of fun.
