🌟 Note to all you gremlins that are taking the liberty to read this
If you’re the same kind of psychopath that I am, the first thing you Google when you hear about something horrific is who did it? Who are they? What’s their story? That’s because people care less about things and ideas, and more about the people behind them.
Welcome to Founders You’ve Never Heard Of - where we take a dive into learning about Founders that you probably have never heard of. We talk about what these individuals are building of course, but really, the goal is to get to know the human behind the magic. So stay tuned for the magic.
The Man
Will Nitze - Founder/CEO, IQBAR
There are very few founders I’ve met where I knew/had used their product before I knew who they were.
My mom has been buying IQBAR’s ever since they landed in Costco. First time I tried them I was like, “damn, these actually don’t suck”. And they’ve been a staple of my snack-diet ever since.
There’s a pattern with founders like Will, it’s the willingness to do whatever the fuck it takes to win. For Will, this involved cold-calling the parents of an acquaintance from college, asking if he can sleep in their basement for free while he builds IQBAR. Wild shit.
A few highlights from my convo 👇
Entrepreneur to the core: Built IQBAR from scrappy prototypes into a multi-eight-figure CPG brand.
Location: Boston (by way of many basements and brokered favors).
Fun fact: Convinced his boss to cut his salary in half so he could spend more time building IQBAR - effectively buying back his time to start the company.
Said F*ck VC: Raised smaller, more frequent rounds (e.g., ~$615k → $1M → $2.775M), stair-stepping valuations instead of one mega round.
Channel bet: Went Amazon-first when the consensus was “own your data.” That Amazon momentum later unlocked Walmart and Costco inbound.
Inflection: Hit profitability in 2023. Sleep improved… stakes got bigger.
Philosophy: “Negative emotions are bad long-term fuel, but fantastic short-term accelerants.”
🚀 Will’s Story - Burn Rate to down, Rev up
2016–2018: Prototyping bars, working half-time, and asking his boss to cut salary/hours to buy back time. When he finally jumped, rent was the killer. Solution? Call that tangential friend, ask for mom’s number, pitch the basement plan. Dinner. Questions. A yes. A year of living cheap and shipping product.
From there: a thousand tiny reps. Kickstarter, DTC, Amazon → Omnichannel. Lean team. No theatrics. Just relentless iteration and putting the product where customers already shop.
I also asked him about motivation. Kinda funny cause I brought up a story about my own motivation. I said something like “I just wanna go back to my highschool reunion and be better than everyone else there.”
We both laughed. And he brought up a Hormozi quote that went something like: at the beginning you have a lot more hate than love… so use that to get off the ground. Moral of the story, it doesn’t matter what the hell you use for motivation as long as it gets you going in the right direction.
Negative emotions are super useful for a short period of time.
But they can burn you out super quick.
So use them until you beat your competition, then move on.
🏆 The Golden Nugs
1) Patience > speed.
“Micro-pivots” across product, positioning, pricing. You can’t sprint your way through learning who your customer is. Learn, adjust, then scale.
2) Raise less, more often (if you’re growing).
Stop chasing the VC dream. Ownership is everything. Maintain ownership at all costs. Embrace discomfort for the short term to retain long-term ownership of your baby. I mean your company
3) Channels are means, not religion.
Amazon was contrarian then; it became a public scoreboard that retail buyers watch. Dominate one arena → unlock the next.
4) Calm is a skill.
Year 8 and still “startup within a startup.” Pattern recognition improves; difficulty doesn’t fall. New product line aka ew beginner phase. Always.
5) Profitability is dope, but comes with it’s own set of challenges
You stop fundraising (great). But when you’re producing 10s of millions of units, small cracks become boulders. Success compounds; so do mistakes.
6) Don’t chase “hot.”
Pick problems you’ll still care about when nobody’s clapping. Boring categories come back in style. Winning is about stamina, not trend surfing.
7) Start early. Treat the first 5 years as tuition.
Get a job out of college to see how the game works (and why you don’t want it). Then start. Move somewhere cheaper if you have to. Get reps.
8) The Second Mountain.
After a win, don’t run the same race again. Pick a different mountain: family, craft, new domain. Novelty matters for happiness.
💬 Favorite Lines
“You just can’t be hectic for eight years. It’s not sustainable. You have to learn to calm down at some point”
“Negative emotions are terrible long-term strategies… but fantastic short-term ones.”
“Profitability lets you sleep - until you realize the boulders got bigger.”
🎯 Closing Thought
Will is pretty fucking ruthless. But also one of the calmest people I’ve ever met. Kinda cool to see the dichotomy. Long story short, if you wanna win, sometimes you have to take contrarian bets: going on Amazon when everyone says its a bad idea. Or NOT raising VC even when money is cheap.
Lastly, don’t pick what’s trendy. Pick the hard problem you’ll still care about in year eight. That’s how you earn your second mountain.
Cheersssssss thanks everyone
Jordan Winston
Co-Founder @ Not Your Dad’s Media
Founder of this newsletter you’re reading
🌉 Background: was an AE for a while, hated that, built Pink’s which is an all encompassing home service company, built that, hired a CEO, now building Not Your Dad’s Media
👑 What’s Not Your Dad’s Media and why is the name so awesome? Ah I’m so glad you asked. Not Your Dad’s Media is a content and brand building machine. We build brands for founders that aren’t cringey and act as the arbiters of good views for your company, your voice, and your brand.
🙈 What you didn’t know about me:
I peel my bananas upside down, I apparently love to climb on tables, I love to put my thoughts in as many places on the internet as possible, and choosing a name for companies is my favorite thing ever
Did You Know? We run a founder-led content agency turns your exec team into a lead driving machine? Check out our website here
Till next time,