Krishna Kaliannan grew up in Orange County, the son of an immigrant veterinarian and a nurse. He graduated from Penn, worked briefly at a hedge fund, spent years trying to build tech startups that went nowhere, and in 2017 started making breakfast cereal in his New York apartment because he had Type 1 diabetes and epilepsy and was desperately bored of eating eggs every morning.
Every expert he talked to told him his product couldn’t be made at scale. He moved to Indianapolis, slept on a cot in a warehouse, and used a washing machine as a mixing drum.
Catalina Crunch now does over $100 million a year. Here’s what stayed with me.
Krishna didn’t set out to build a food company. He built a cereal he could actually eat without spiking his blood sugar, because the grocery store aisle hadn’t changed in thirty years and nothing on it worked for him.
The business started when a friend in Central Park tried the cereal, then Venmoed him $7.99 without being asked, at what looked exactly like a grocery store price. That was the moment Krishna realized you can make something in your kitchen and sell it to people.
The founders who build the most durable products tend to be solving a problem they live with every day.
At Texas A&M’s cereal-making course, the instructors told Krishna his product couldn’t be manufactured at scale. The ingredients were too unconventional. The equipment wouldn’t handle it.
He listened, then ignored them. His reasoning was simple: experts know what’s been done, not what’s possible. The ingredients he was using were new. Nobody had tried them yet.
His rule was that if someone couldn’t give him a first-principles reason why something was impossible, he walked away believing it was possible and got back to work.
Krishna built Catalina Crunch for diabetics who needed low-sugar options. But when he started talking to customers, he found they were buying it for protein, for keto diets, for weight management, as a snack rather than a breakfast cereal.
The Whole Foods buyer asked him to put “Keto Friendly” on the front of the bag instead of “Low Sugar,” and sales took off. The product hadn’t changed. The framing had. Whatever you make, spend time understanding why people actually buy it.
The answer is usually not what you think.
After his packaging partner dropped him because his volume was too small, Krishna couldn’t find anyone else willing to take on the work. So he rented 3,000 square feet in Indianapolis, bought a cot, moved in, and started coating and packaging the cereal himself.
His first mixing drum was a washing machine he ran on spin cycle. It sounds desperate, but it was also clarifying: he learned the process completely, controlled the quality, and built the muscle that would eventually become a 125,000 square foot facility.
The willingness to do the work nobody else will do is one of the few advantages a small company always has over a large one.
Krishna chose Indianapolis for reasons that had nothing to do with lifestyle and everything to do with logistics. From the center of the country, he could ship to both coasts within a week.
His raw ingredients came from the heartland, which cut inbound shipping costs dramatically. And when he was based in New York, he’d been paying a premium to move everything in both directions.
The decision to relocate wasn’t glamorous, but it changed the unit economics of the entire business. Most founders think obsessively about the product.
The ones who scale tend to think just as hard about the supply chain.
Krishna tried more than twenty different apps, websites, and services before landing on a cereal he made to manage his own health. None of the tech ideas worked. The one that did work was the one he built because he had no other choice. He needed something to eat for breakfast that wasn’t eggs. The rest followed from there.
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Krishna Kaliannan really wanted to build a tech company. He tried again and again, but none of them took off.
The thing that finally worked came from a much more personal place.
As a teenager, Krishna was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, which meant cutting sugar and carbs from his diet long before keto was cool. For years, he ate the same thing every morning: eggs. Then more eggs.
Until he couldn’t stand it anymore.
So he started experimenting in his apartment kitchen, trying to recreate the one thing he missed most: a simple bowl of cereal. But could he build a version with no sugar and none of the carbs?
The early batches were, in his words, “hard rocks that tasted like soil.”
But he kept tweaking. And eventually, he made something people actually wanted… so much so that a friend insisted on paying him for a bag.
That was the moment it clicked: this could be a business.
So how did a guy who kept failing at tech end up building a $100 million cereal brand? And what did it take to build it all from scratch?
Hear his entire, incredible, story on the latest How I Built This!
This week on the Advice Line, I’m joined by Jeni Britton, founder of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams. Jeni built a national brand out of Columbus, Ohio, on the strength of her product and branding. Today, she’s ready to give advice to founders that are just starting out:
First up, Jesse: Who should I target my marketing toward?
Jesse’s Jesse & Ben’s makes frozen fries with real ingredients and is already into seven figures revenue. He’s torn between courting health-conscious early adopters and educating everyday fry lovers. We reframed the whole question: the person he really needs to win over isn’t the shopper at all.
Next, Casey: Do I have to raise a ton of capital to grow?
Casey’s Jaju Pierogi makes high-quality Polish dumplings from her grandfather’s recipes. She’s feeling industry pressure to raise money, but doesn’t want to give up control. Our take: the methodical path Casey’s already on might be the smartest way to build… and there are less obvious funding routes worth exploring first.
Finally, Callie: Is a PR firm the right way to reach new customers?
Callie’s Ubae.co makes organic purple sweet potato treats for pets with sensitive stomachs. She’s considering hiring a PR firm so she can focus on product. But Jeni actually offered a word of caution, and pointed to something she already has that’s more powerful than any pitch.
Jeni leaves us with this: Start small and just keep building. The strongest brands aren’t the ones that raise the most – they’re the ones that create real value for customers until the founder has the leverage to grow on their own terms.
If you would like to be featured on an upcoming episode, call and leave a 1-minute message at 1-800-433-1298 or send a voice memo to hibt@id.wondery.com
Did you know that fish actually SLEEP? and sometimes in ways surprisingly similar to how YOU do?!
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute used a special self-tracking microscope to follow zebrafish around the clock and discovered these little swimmers experience FOUR different stages of sleep!!
Complete with changing eye movements and shifting brain activity (bonkers!)
We also learn how see-through baby zebrafish let scientists peek right inside their sleeping brains, why fish snooze with their eyes wide open, and how dolphins sleep with only HALF their brain at a time!
Tune in to discover why a good night’s sleep might just be one of nature’s greatest superpowers, whether you live on land or deep under the sea!
Jeni Britton Bauer always knew she’d start a business someday… she just never imagined it would turn out to be so sweet.
She asked a simple question: why did most ice cream taste so bland and one-dimensional? She saw an opportunity to elevate ice cream – layering unexpected ingredients into something extraordinary.
This was the inception of an idea that would become Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams.
But the road was anything but sweet.
Jeni spent years hustling, experimenting with wild flavor combinations and selling scoops at a Columbus farmers market, learning the craft one batch at a time. Her approach was radically different from the industry norm: real, whole ingredients and bold, artistic flavors that most people had never tasted in a scoop.
That relentless experimentation paid off. Signature creations like Brambleberry Crisp and Lemon Buttermilk turned Jeni’s into a beloved national brand with close to 100 stores nationwide.
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