How COVID-19 Killed Sudden Coffee: An Interview with Founder Josh Zloof

Breakfast Leadership Show - A podcast by Michael D. Levitt - Mondays

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COVID-19 has the potential of permanently closing 30% of small businesses.  One business where that happened is Sudden Coffee. This powerful and vulnerable interview with Josh Zloof, founder of Sudden Coffee will shed light on the challenges that many small businesses face. Per Josh:Unfortunately, the COVID outbreak hit us pretty bad and we're permanently closing Sudden :-/ I'm in the midst of it as we speak.For a little more context - we actually had our best revenue months on record in Jan & Feb, we were getting strong traction/ product market fit. However, we needed additional funding and feedback from the VC world was that they did not want to fund food manufacturing because it was a physical goods business. Amidst all of this of course, the outbreak happened.I'm planning on writing a retrospective on it once the dust settles - its a strange case to have 'product market fit' but are forced to shut down because its difficult to capitalize.  Framework for Determining What Career Opportunities to Pursue - Josh tried out 10+ different business ideas over 1.5 years. It wasn't until he identified his values (Purpose, Community, Growth, and Excitement) and matched them to his ideas that he shut down all of the companies that didn't align and launched Sudden Coffee.https://www.suddencoffee.com/pages/products