Guest: Kat Cole, COO of Athletic Greens

You can’t make smart decisions if you don’t know the truth — the “true truth,” as Athletic Greens COO Kat Cole puts it. “As you get bigger and you have success, innovator’s dilemma, you end up talking to yourself instead of really being rooted in what’s going on.” That’s why she has embraced the anxiety of the unknown, channeling what she doesn’t know about the market into productive questions for her team and her customers. Anxiety can be harmful, she concedes, but “there’s a healthy version of believing you never really know what’s going on, and you never really know the true truth, because things change so quickly.”

In this episode, Kat and Joubin discuss Huberman Lab, ultra-endurance athletes, Chris Ashenden, founder-owned businesses, “fancy jobs,” international trips, unplanned succession, private equity, the Atkins diet, inheriting a bad situation, omni-channel marketing, working with franchisees, fully remote companies, “if not for...,” and why Athletic Greens has only one SKU.

Chapters:

(01:04) - Podcast superfans
(06:54) - AG1 and Kat’s professional journey
(11:14) - Her “Jerry Springer childhood”
(14:31) - Learning, moving, thriving
(16:18) - The Hooters business school
(24:05) - Leaving Hooters and joining Rourke Capital
(28:46) - Cinnabon’s dark years
(35:55) - The three questions
(41:11) - MiniBons
(45:37) - Anxiety and uncertainty
(48:40) - The wad of paper story
(50:26) - Favorite interview questions
(54:49) - The temptation to do more

Links:

Connect with Kat
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
Connect with Joubin
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

#187 President & COO of AG1, Kat Cole: Wings to Supplements

Grit