I Hired The Wrong People!

JUST cofounder Josh Tetrick wanted to build a disruptive company, so he hired disruptive employees. Then he got disrupted himself.

- Jason Feifer

Josh Tetrick had never run a food company, and he considered that an asset. His goal was to disrupt the food industry, so he wasn’t interested in old ways of doing things. “If you had told me when I started the company that one of the keys to success would be hiring people who are experts at going out to the Midwest to visit different warehousing partners, I would have been like, ‘Shut the fuck up,’ ” he says. Instead, as he built his startup JUST (originally called Hampton Creek), he hired outsiders like himself. It seemed to work. His first product, an egg-free mayonnaise, debuted in 2014 at Northern California Whole Foods stores and shortly thereafter was carried by thousands of Safeways and Walmarts. Demand was high.

Then lids started popping off. Labels fell off, too. The packaging was defective, and the product went from a success to a money-loser. As Tetrick scrambled, he came to a hard realization: An entrepreneur can be too disruptive for his own good.