How This Addictive Cheese Brand Turned Startup Mistakes Into a $20M Empire | Entrepreneurship | How We Profit | E1

Starting a business from scratch is hard enough, but Rebel Cheese co-founder Kirsten Maitland did it by borrowing against her home, only for COVID to hit three months later. With no outside investors and everything at risk, she pivoted from a physical restaurant to an online business, learning e-commerce, logistics, and marketing on the fly. Years of relentless work eventually led to a Shark Tank deal with Mark Cuban that fueled massive business growth. In this episode of How We Profit, Kirsten breaks down how she scaled Rebel Cheese into a $20M+ business with over 60% profit margins while retaining 90% ownership. In this episode, Hala and Kirsten will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (03:34) Inside Rebel Cheese's Business Model (07:26) Revenue Streams and Shipping Challenges (14:52) Kirsten's Path to Entrepreneurship (23:10) How Shark Tank Fueled Business Growth (27:30) Rebel Cheese’s Branding and Marketing Strategies (33:26) Making Sales and Doubling Revenue in CPG (49:24) Using AI in Business to Scale Operations (1:00:28) Founder Pay, Equity, and Ownership (1:07:20) Entrepreneurship Lessons for Startup Founders Kirsten Maitland is the co-founder and CEO of Rebel Cheese, an artisanal plant-based cheese brand based in Austin, Texas. She bootstrapped the business from scratch, landed a $750K deal with Mark Cuban on Shark Tank in 2023, and has since scaled to a $40 million valuation, now on pace to generate $21 million in revenue this year. Kirsten is also a passionate advocate for AI-powered business tools, having built her own shipping audit tool that recovered $400,000 in overcharges.