How three first-time founders navigated the pandemic

Companies that were around for 100 years didn’t survive the pandemic. So how did first-time founders—barely a year on the job—do it?

We spoke to the cofounders of Jinx, Fohm, and Cloud Paper, and yes, it did take a pivot.

Go fetch: Terri Rockovich, the former VP of acquisition and retention marketing at Casper, left the mattress company for a new dream job: cofounder of DTC dog food brand Jinx.

The startup launched in January 2020 in what would end up being a good year for all things pets. Adoptions skyrocketed, and for the first time, US pet industry sales topped $100 billion. Jinx saw sales explode 17.5x from January to December, Rockovich told Retail Brew.

But by mid-March, things weren’t so certain.

• “Candidly, I was terrified. We had just moved into an office space that was three times the size of where we started, and we had just hired our first employees and spent real dollars on digital advertising.”

Rockovich credited her experience at Casper—where she had a team of more than 50—as a boon to communicate new strategies to her Jinx colleagues. The understanding was: “All plans are flexible.”

Paper trails

Jerry Staub helped start Fohm, a toilet paper spray, in 2019 as a sustainable alternative to “flushable” wipes. “I saw this growing CPG category of flushable wipes, which were kind of gaining popularity and traction,” Staub told Retail Brew.

The pandemic put that into overdrive.

The B2B startup, which quadrupled growth from 2019 to 2020, quickly shifted to a DTC model to capitalize on TP demand. Sure, it was a gamble, but it beat the “risk-averse” approach of the Fortune 500 companies Staub used to work with at mobile ad platform Kiip.

• “They would never dare to roll out a product that was less than perfect,” he said.

Now, with profits in hand, Fohm can “go out and support our own growth,” Staub told us.

To a T: Cloud Paper, which makes sustainably sourced bamboo toilet paper (and paper towels), also dove into DTC. The startup went from a B2B model to selling TP subscriptions in a matter of weeks. Almost immediately, cofounder Ryan Fritsch said, Cloud Paper had signed up thousands of customers: “People were going to buy whatever they could get their hands on.”

People thought it was luck, and that consumers would go back to their regular brands post-pandemic, but Cloud Paper has held on to its subscribers. Fritsch said his past life at Uber taught him to keep rolling along.

• “At Uber, there was a very clear vision in mind,” Fritsch told us. “That's one thing that we try to do here all the time...making sure we do really know what our mission is, where we want to be—not in five years, but in 15 years or longer.”

Read on for more from our Q&A with these first-time cofounders and their insights. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Jerry Staub, cofounder of Fohm

Courtesey of Fohm

Becoming a cofounder: We just lived in this environment of taking risks and putting out a minimally viable product into the world and seeing what the reaction would be. The clients that I would deal with [at Kiip] were multinational, Fortune 500 CPG brands that were so risk-averse that they would never dare to roll out a product that was less than perfect.

We saw this mismatch in terms of the culture of the startups that were getting traction, growing, and bringing new, innovative concepts out, versus the more stagnant, larger players in the space.

Pandemic play: The initial plan was to raise an angel investors’ seed round. We were actually able to continue to bootstrap and just recycle revenue that we were receiving back through our Shopify store, and turn over a lot more inventory a lot more rapidly, a lot more cost effectively than we ever had anticipated. Covid gave us enough profit that we can now go out and support our own growth.

One takeaway: It was terrifying before Covid when I started business; it was terrifying when Covid was first upon us to start a business. It was terrifying during Covid, and it was terrifying after.

There was a palpable level of uncertainty that I think any founder feels at any given time. It likely introduced a lot of non entrepreneurs and non founders to new levels of uncertainty and risk and fear that they haven't felt before.

I won't be afraid to launch something that's half-baked at the very beginning with the goal of getting initial customer feedback and proving whether or not we're onto something.

Terri Rockovich, cofounder of Jinx

Courtesey of Jinx

Becoming a cofounder: It was a hard transition. I had a team of more than 50 people who were just rock stars. A lot of my day was people management, and a lot of my meetings were with the leadership team, collaborating on the plan and then taking that plan to the team for dissemination and action.

The pivot into my own business was not only coming up with the plan and having strategic thought partnerships with my founders and advisors, but then also making the plan come to life. We were all prepared to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty, but when you have to form your company through the brand work, do the marketing work, make product decisions, recruit and hire and design the orientation process, it's entirely overwhelming—yet such an energizing experience resetting like that.

Pandemic play: We launched our business in January 2020 in what ended up being the height of the pandemic. So having crafted this go-to-market playbook that we ended up scrapping was something that we just didn't plan for. Of course there was a pivot and we had to focus on digital-only activations. We had the blessing of the shelters clearing, a lot of families opening up their homes to add a pet for the first time, or grow their pet family as well. So instead of paying to kind of create demand, we certainly ended up being positioned to chase it.

One takeaway: We've kind of pivoted and become a lot more open-minded about working hard to deliver these new access points to customers. We really want to continue to be innovative in the way that we think about partnership activation, technology, and modeling out a subscription business that adds value.

Ryan Fritsch, cofounder of Cloud Paper

Courtesey of Cloud Paper

Becoming a cofounder: The scope of things that you have to do on a daily basis, and how deep you have to go in some of these areas and how quickly you have to shift your thinking and your rhythm—going from reviewing contracts to working with your counsel on very specific documents around how stock options are structured, [is demanding. Then] 30 minutes later, you're writing copy for the new email that's going to go out to your customers. And then the hour after that, you're going into another pitch meeting with an investor. You play it like that hour by hour. It’s a constant back and forth, all day, every day.

Pandemic play: Covid shutdowns hit and we had to move pretty quickly into shifting our product into a direct-to-consumer model. Essentially, because we had all that in our control—we didn't outsource a lot of work—we figured out some of the more difficult logistics problems early. In a very short period of time, we signed up thousands and thousands of households across the US. People were going to buy whatever they could get their hands on.

One takeaway: For us, we spend a lot of time making sure we do really know what our mission is, where we want to be—not in five years, but in 15 years or longer.

Customers see the story in our mission as kind of one of the things you can't unsee. They don't want to go back to cutting down trees for toilet paper, and they stick around and they keep their subscription going. We're still shipping to most of those customers.