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IH Isabella Hoag On The Startup CPG Podcast

“People want energy drinks. They love their energy drink. They like something that's sweet, but the products on the market are too sweet. So let's dial that down, let's use actual clean ingredients. And people are saying they don't want caffeine, so let's give them no caffeine.”

The Startup CPG Podcast · Alternative Proteins · October 2026

“People want energy drinks. They love their energy drink. They like something that's sweet, but the products on the market are too sweet. So let's dial that down, let's use actual clean ingredients. And people are saying they don't want caffeine, so let's give them no caffeine.” — Isabella Hoag, The Startup CPG Podcast

Context

The founder sums up what buyer and customer feedback taught her before she moved from four "mood" drinks to a single caffeine-free energy drink.

Transcript

The Startup CPG Podcast Around 18:16 into the episode
Isabella Hoag

Yes, 100%. And so I know I'm getting a little off the question, but

Caitlin Bricker

please, we love that here.

Isabella Hoag

It was really just over time, even from like VVV1, like the events, I was getting feedback. And so then I was changing it. And I was like always trying to figure out like, how can we make it better? How can we make it better? And as we actually had like the physical product pitching, like I'm walking into these stores, like these liquor stores, and they're like, who's this girl? I'm like, hey, guys, you want my product? And did they? Yeah, yes. And so I'm like, okay, cool. Now what? You know, like I really was like figuring everything out from scratch. So first it was the pricing, like we need to get the pricing down. So I'm like, okay. And I figured out, you know, let's get the pricing down. And then it wasn't like sweet enough. Like it was too sparkling water in a sense. Like it didn't have enough juice in it. And so we were like, okay, like let's keep that in mind. And then we had like a manufacturing malfunction and on like one of our batches, we were like trying to sell that a little bit. Just like a little bit more sage than we wanted. And some people…

Caitlin Bricker

the aesthetic of monster doesn't really fit everyone.

Isabella Hoag

It doesn't. And honestly, OC is not going to fit everyone either. But like, there's so many people out there that they like, and aesthetics are huge. Like, whether we want to admit it or not, we want something that resonates with us that we can feel really good holding and drinking and sharing with…

Caitlin Bricker

Totally. It's something's popping into my head right now. There is a creator out there. She touts herself as being consumer obsessed. Her name is Morgan. Her Instagram handle is the consumer comp her or comper. Apologies, Morgan, if I'm pronouncing your last name wrong, but it's C-O-M-P-H-E-R. What…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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