From Private Equity to Yogurt Startup Founder Story

How Kiki and Elan did it: From Private Equity to Yogurt Startup Founder Story

Sourmilk started from a personal health journey. Elan was having a whole host of gut health issues — bloating after eating, inflammation, brain fog — and the moment she knew she had to take it seriously was when a hormone panel came back showing all her hormones at an all-time low. Learning that one of the best ways to heal your gut is through probiotics from food rather than a pill, and being a Stanford Division one rowing athlete who already ate Greek yogurt after every morning practice, she went looking at conventional yogurt on the shelf. What she learned: most of it isn't actually probiotic. Many yogurts pasteurize after they ferment, which kills off all the bacteria, and the strains that make yogurt taste good aren't necessarily the ones that are good for your gut. So she started fermenting bacteria designed for the microbiome into yogurt she was already eating every day.

A couple of years later, both founders — best friends since Stanford, where they graduated in 2020 as Covid graduates — had been in their jobs for four years and were thinking about what was next. It became clear: scale the thing Elan had already built and healed herself with, and bring it to a much broader population. They knew that going into business with friends isn't always the best idea, but they felt this was a clear partnership — they know how each other thinks, they respect each other a ton, and there are synergies where one is better than the other and vice versa.

The hard part is the product itself. Sourmilk is a perishable, dairy-based product that has to be on cold chain at every point in the supply chain. That inverts the usual CPG playbook: instead of making a ton of product and then finding buyers, they have to create distribution, marketing and demand before they go into production, and produce to meet demand rather than overproduce. Most food CPG brands have almost no digital footprint and spend their marketing dollars getting into Walmart, Target and Whole Foods. Sourmilk can't rely on that given a much shorter shelf life — so they build in public to create a virtual line out the door, so that when they hit the grocery store shelves, people already know the brand and the yogurt can fly off shelves.

That public-building strategy is mostly Kiki's. Her series "I quit my job in private equity to start" a yogurt company with her best friend blew up, and she grew her Instagram following to ten K. She intentionally builds on her personal Instagram, not the company's — because people root for somebody, not something. Instagram used to be personal; now it's a channel, a demand-gen thing, and she's had to shift her mindset so every view and follow she didn't get stops feeling personal. The payoff showed up at a co-manufacturer in Pennsylvania: two young women who run the social accounts of competing yogurt brands recognized Elan from Kiki's social media and told the factory owner they needed to support Sourmilk — a reminder that a rising tide lifts all boats.

What's next is demand. Priority one is saturating New York City outside of grocery stores — pop-ups, demos, a Pilates studio, a coffee shop, the hottest bagel place — so customers are activated and ready before Sourmilk ever hits a shelf. The bet underneath it all: yogurt has 92% household penetration, the industry has trained consumers to ask "how much protein?", and the next iteration of yogurt will have to include both protein and bacteria.

What you'll hear

• The hormone panel that started a company — how Elan's gut health issues and an all-time-low hormone panel led her to ferment her own probiotic yogurt
• Why most yogurt isn't probiotic — pasteurizing after fermentation kills the bacteria, and yogurt strains are picked for taste, not your gut
• Quitting corporate to sell yogurt — two best friends, four years into their jobs, deciding to scale what Elan had already healed herself with
• Building the brand in public — why a perishable dairy product forces you to create demand before production, unlike shelf-stable CPG
• Personal Instagram over the company account — Kiki's "quit my job in private equity" series and why people root for somebody, not something
• A rising tide lifts all boats — the Pennsylvania factory moment when competitors' social media runners championed Sourmilk
• The protein-to-probiotics shift — the bet that consumers still care about protein but now care a lot more about gut health

Key claims from this episode

Chapters

Quotes from this episode

Themes Kiki returns to

• Passion as the fuel — the advice they kept hearing was that starting a business is really, really hard, so make sure it comes from a passion and a broader purpose; for them it came from Elan's personal health journey
• Build in public to build demand — for a perishable dairy product you have to create distribution, marketing and demand before production, not after
• Root for somebody, not something — authentic personal storytelling converts followers in a way a company account selling product never could
• A rising tide lifts all boats — growing the whole yogurt category, even helping competitors, because they want more people eating yogurt
• Protein to probiotics — the industry trained consumers to care about protein; the next iteration of yogurt has to include bacteria too
• Friendship as a superpower — setting ground rules early on the friendship and on conflict resolution, because co-founder issues sink startups