Best of 2022: Bootstrapped to Venture-Backed with Hailey Swartz of Actual Veggies

Built on Passion

Bootstrapping can be great: you get to control every part of your business and choose your lifestyle.

But if you waste precious time on mundane tasks because you don’t have the funding, then bootstrapping becomes a cage.

Today’s guest is Hailey Swartz, co-CEO of Actual Veggies. They started out washing and reusing their competitor’s packaging because they couldn’t afford their own.

But in this episode, you’ll hear how she took on VC funding, and how you can use it to achieve greatness: like filling the shelves of grocery stores nationwide.

In this wide-ranging discussion, you’ll discover how to combine bootstrap philosophy with venture capital - so you can live that free lifestyle you’ve been dreaming of.

Listen now!

Show highlights include:

• Why 10k from Sequoia Capital is better for your business than $1M from some no-name investor (5:07)
• Why raising capital from dozens of VCs gives you a competitive advantage (even if it takes more time to raise the money) (6:07)
• The multi-channel outreach method that almost guarantees your product lands on retail shelves (8:02)
• Why going D2C spells disaster for your profit margins (even though you’re cutting out the middleman) (9:39)
• The “in store activation” method that lets you run profitable advertising campaigns without spending thousands on data analytics (10:28)
• How to turn your next idea into a hit product without insider knowledge or a product development team (13:00)