Will Nitze (IQ Bar) - How He Leveraged Harvard and Growth Hacked Indie Gogo, Why He Entered Conventional Grocery Over the Natural Channel, and Brain Food Explained

The Consumer VC: Venture Capital I B2C Startups I Commerce | Early-Stage Investing I Brands

Mar 30 2023 • 54 mins

Thank you Caroline McMorrow for the intro to our guest today Will Nitze, Founder & CEO of IQ Bar. IQ Bar is a plant-based protein bar company for your brain and body! We discuss how Will got turned on to brain food and the origin story of IQ Bar, how he growth hacked his Indie Gogo campaign which I had never heard of anything like he did before, getting into retail, why they went conventional first, which is unusual and why they aren’t in Whole Foods currently. Without further ado, here’s Will.


Some of the questions I ask Will:

  1. What were you doing before IQ Bar?
  2. What was the genesis behind the brand?
  3. What is brain food?
  4. Why a bar? What was still left to be conquered in bars?
  5. How did you get into retail?
  6. How did you approach formulation?
  7. How do you think about your branding a copy and being accessible but also very serious about nutrition?
  8. Did you first do DTC?
  9. Why did you do a Kickstarter campaign?


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