“Not nailing the unit economics on day one probably hurt us more than any single other thing that we did or didn't do.”
Grocery Pulse Podcast by Innovar Marketing Agency | Insights for Retailers · Food & Beverage · November 2026
Context
Asked what he would change if he restarted Yellowbird, Milton picks one thing: figuring out unit economics immediately. Neither he nor his co-founder had a finance background, so they had to learn it later.
Transcript
zones. All the blue zones eat beans, man.
…helped. But does anything come to mind on like building Yellowbird that would have been like, hey, like, kind of wish I would have, I don't know, did more collaborations with hot sauce and sports. I don't know, just like random stuff or anything like that that comes to mind when you think about it.
The big, the biggest, if I was going to pick one thing, the biggest thing that I would pick is that I'd get like I would figure out unit economics day one. And that wasn't, I would say that that wasn't my, that wasn't my background. So I think that like, you know, neither Aaron nor I had a background in finance and business management. So like these are, these are skills that I went back and did continuing education for, and then ultimately like brought on partners and stuff like that for. But I will say that like there's there's probably a lot of founders out there who are like there's there's a couple of different types of founders and there are a lot of founders who like don't know the numbers and those people are probably more likely to be founders because if they understood the risk reward of being an entrepreneur or founder, they probably wouldn't do it. They're founding something because they're…
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Well, just knowing the whole, like the whole, all of the unit economics, right? Like, because there were things, there's a bunch of different categories like in your unit, right? You've got your materials, you've got your labor, and then you've got your, you know, you've got all of the like…
Yeah, I think they're, I think that's one thing as like I'm learning as well. Like I'm doing, you know, I'm doing pop-ups and I'm like doing demos and I'm like, well, I'm saving myself $300 because I don't have to pay someone to do the demo. I'm selling the product in the store. I'm, I push myself…
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