How To Build A $100 Million Business In Two Years

Two years ago, Meena Mansharamani, 48, began the task of introducing French food company Materne's popular applesauce product to the U.S. market. The healthy, squeezable applesauce brand, known as GoGo squeeZ in North America, had limited distribution and $6 million in annual revenues. Today, it's on shelves at Wal-Mart, Target, Whole Foods, Costco, Kroger and Publix, making $70 million in annual revenues on over $100 million of retail sales.
How did Mansharamani, the former head of product innovation at PepsiCo, with neurobiology degrees from Harvard University and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania, grow GoGo squeeZ by more than 1000% in just two years? She set unreasonably high growth expectations, over-invested ahead of the demand, staffed up quickly, got scrappy with her spending and stayed in constant conversation with her customers.
"We're bringing confidence, acting bigger than we are and, in some cases, getting ahead of ourselves," Mansharamani says. She breaks down her growth strategy for the up-and-coming food brand.
Set Unreasonably High Expectations
Mansharamani knew there would be market appeal for the products. Amid increasing consumer demand for convenient, healthy snacks, GoGo squeeZ is 100% fruit and easy to eat on-the-run. Meanwhile, applesauce in squeezable packaging is now 15% of the applesauce category and driving most of its growth. She decided to think big.
It was in Costco and Whole Foods but not well distributed. Her immediate strategy: To expand it in the accounts they had, get it started in major retailers like Target and Wal-Mart, consider new distribution points (airlines, convenience stores and amusement parks) and help consumers find it. "We needed to plant the right seeds," she says. That would take resources.
In Pictures: Seven Tips To Get More Social Media Followers
Over-Invest Early
"Initially, I was convincing our investors to envision how big it could be," Mansharamani says. "I wanted to build out the team ahead of the demand to get the demand going. It was a leap of faith." When she started in December of 2010, she had two employees, and they shared an office with another company. She hired six sales reps and eight marketing associates over the next year and moved the group to a new office in New York, NY.
It was important to over-invest in the very beginning, but Mansharamani says they continue to invest aggressively now that the brand is gaining momentum. Today she has 30 employees in the sales, marketing, supply chain and finance teams and another 90 people in operations, and she's expanding to an even bigger office.
Hire Wisely
Mansharamani's fast pace of hiring posed a risk of its own. "With a startup, if people haven't done it before, it's hard to train them in this kind of environment," she says. "You have to take the right bets on the right people and then continue to grow them." She needed to move quickly without being impulsive. Hiring everyone herself, she meets with the candidate two to three times, spending six to 10 hours with them, and tries to gauge their passion for the business and how they've demonstrated the necessary skills. "It's extremely time-consuming, but it's the most important thing I have to do."
Stay Scrappy
Although Mansharamani managed to convince investors to invest more ahead of the demand, she stayed disciplined in her spending. "I can't be sloppy. We're very conscientious about how we spend money," she says. "If you're scrappy, you can take the money further." One cost-saver was keeping a tight marketing budget. They leveraged social media, gaining over 115,000 Facebook fans, and launched grassroots and guerrilla marketing campaigns. They also gave consumers a chance to try the product, sampling 100,000 pouches at Disney's Epcot theme park in Orlando, Fla.
Get Out Of The Office
One thing Mansharamani didn't want to do was devise grand plans for the company while holed up in her office. "We have to stay connected to consumers and retailers in a really intimate way," she says. "I don't want to have so many layers that people forget the details." They keep all consumer calls in-house, learning from both praise and complaints. The staff also monitors social media and attends sampling events to hear feedback directly. While research may capture some consumer reaction, it can't reveal how a consumer says something or the way they feel, she says.
Mansharamani also attends all major retailer meetings herself rather than delegating them to the sales team. "It's not just a selling transaction," she says, "but sharing the vision and what our innovation pipeline looks like." That includes personally sampling all the new applesauce flavors with them to get them excited.
Keep Focused
Now Mansharamani's challenge is continuing to fuel growth without getting distracted by new competition in the marketplace or stretching beyond what the brand does well. They've started building relationships with JetBlue Airways and convenience store brands 7Eleven and Wawa. They'll also launch new line GoGo squeeZ Fast Fruit for adults, who are already one-third of consumers. "I'd like to see it be a $300 million to $500 million brand [in annual revenues] in the next two to three years," she says. "We can be much bigger than we are, if we stick to what we're good at."

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How To Build A $100 Million Business In Two Years

Two years ago, Meena Mansharamani, 48, began the task of introducing French food company Materne's popular applesauce product to the U.S. market. The healthy, squeezable applesauce brand, known as GoGo squeeZ in North America, had limited distribution and $6 million in annual revenues. Today, it's on shelves at Wal-Mart, Target, Whole Foods, Costco, Kroger and Publix, making $70 million in annual revenues on over $100 million of retail sales.
How did Mansharamani, the former head of product innovation at PepsiCo, with neurobiology degrees from Harvard University and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania, grow GoGo squeeZ by more than 1000% in just two years? She set unreasonably high growth expectations, over-invested ahead of the demand, staffed up quickly, got scrappy with her spending and stayed in constant conversation with her customers.
"We're bringing confidence, acting bigger than we are and, in some cases, getting ahead of ourselves," Mansharamani says. She breaks down her growth strategy for the up-and-coming food brand.
Set Unreasonably High Expectations
Mansharamani knew there would be market appeal for the products. Amid increasing consumer demand for convenient, healthy snacks, GoGo squeeZ is 100% fruit and easy to eat on-the-run. Meanwhile, applesauce in squeezable packaging is now 15% of the applesauce category and driving most of its growth. She decided to think big.
It was in Costco and Whole Foods but not well distributed. Her immediate strategy: To expand it in the accounts they had, get it started in major retailers like Target and Wal-Mart, consider new distribution points (airlines, convenience stores and amusement parks) and help consumers find it. "We needed to plant the right seeds," she says. That would take resources.
In Pictures: Seven Tips To Get More Social Media Followers
Over-Invest Early
"Initially, I was convincing our investors to envision how big it could be," Mansharamani says. "I wanted to build out the team ahead of the demand to get the demand going. It was a leap of faith." When she started in December of 2010, she had two employees, and they shared an office with another company. She hired six sales reps and eight marketing associates over the next year and moved the group to a new office in New York, NY.
It was important to over-invest in the very beginning, but Mansharamani says they continue to invest aggressively now that the brand is gaining momentum. Today she has 30 employees in the sales, marketing, supply chain and finance teams and another 90 people in operations, and she's expanding to an even bigger office.
Hire Wisely
Mansharamani's fast pace of hiring posed a risk of its own. "With a startup, if people haven't done it before, it's hard to train them in this kind of environment," she says. "You have to take the right bets on the right people and then continue to grow them." She needed to move quickly without being impulsive. Hiring everyone herself, she meets with the candidate two to three times, spending six to 10 hours with them, and tries to gauge their passion for the business and how they've demonstrated the necessary skills. "It's extremely time-consuming, but it's the most important thing I have to do."
Stay Scrappy
Although Mansharamani managed to convince investors to invest more ahead of the demand, she stayed disciplined in her spending. "I can't be sloppy. We're very conscientious about how we spend money," she says. "If you're scrappy, you can take the money further." One cost-saver was keeping a tight marketing budget. They leveraged social media, gaining over 115,000 Facebook fans, and launched grassroots and guerrilla marketing campaigns. They also gave consumers a chance to try the product, sampling 100,000 pouches at Disney's Epcot theme park in Orlando, Fla.
Get Out Of The Office
One thing Mansharamani didn't want to do was devise grand plans for the company while holed up in her office. "We have to stay connected to consumers and retailers in a really intimate way," she says. "I don't want to have so many layers that people forget the details." They keep all consumer calls in-house, learning from both praise and complaints. The staff also monitors social media and attends sampling events to hear feedback directly. While research may capture some consumer reaction, it can't reveal how a consumer says something or the way they feel, she says.
Mansharamani also attends all major retailer meetings herself rather than delegating them to the sales team. "It's not just a selling transaction," she says, "but sharing the vision and what our innovation pipeline looks like." That includes personally sampling all the new applesauce flavors with them to get them excited.
Keep Focused
Now Mansharamani's challenge is continuing to fuel growth without getting distracted by new competition in the marketplace or stretching beyond what the brand does well. They've started building relationships with JetBlue Airways and convenience store brands 7Eleven and Wawa. They'll also launch new line GoGo squeeZ Fast Fruit for adults, who are already one-third of consumers. "I'd like to see it be a $300 million to $500 million brand [in annual revenues] in the next two to three years," she says. "We can be much bigger than we are, if we stick to what we're good at."

N32.8bn Police pension scam: EFCC arrests Dangabar for interfering with forfeited properties

Esai Dangabar, one of the six accused persons being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on a 16 criminal charges bordering on conspiracy and criminal breach of trust for their role in defrauding the Police Pension Office to the tune of N32.8 Billion naira (Thirty Two Billion, Eight Hundred Million Naira), was on Thursday December 13, 2012, arrested for interfering with the properties which the court had ordered forfeited to the federal government.

Among properties belonging to Esai which the court ordered forfeited to the federal government on interim basis pending the determination of the substantive suit are: Block of 3 Bedrooms flats at Gwarinpa (6 units), along EFAB Estate, Life Camp; a Block of Bedrooms flats (6 units) at Mabushi District, beside ministry of works; Estate of 4 Bedroom Duplexes (16 units), behind Wuye Modern Market, Abuja; a mini Estate at No.19, Ukpabi Asika Street, Asokoro, Abuja; 12 Units of 2 bedroom Flats at 1, Waziri Ibrahim Crescent, Gudu District, Abuja; 5 Bedroom Duplexes 1, Waziri Ibrahim Crescent, Gudu District, Abuja; 4 Bedroom Bungalows at 1, Waziri Ibrahim Crescent, Gudu District, Abuja and 2 Bedroom flat at Zone C, Apo Resettlement, layout.

Others are: 5 Blocks of One bedroom flats at Zone C, Apo Resettlement layout, Abuja; Twin duplex of 5 bedroom & 3 rooms, 33, ML Wushishi BQ 1 Crescent, Utako, Abuja; 2 Blocks of 3 Bedroom flats, Area 3, Former NYSC Office, Abuja; 2 Bedroom , Area 2, Abuja, Behind Shopping , Complex , 3 Bedroom flats , 2 Goran village, along Adi Farms Limited, Abuja-Keffi Road; 180,000 Litres Storage Facility on a Land of about 5,000sqm, with Office Building, Workshop and 20 Loading Bay 1 Suleja, Niger State.

Vehicles belonging to Dangabar which have been ordered forfeited to the government pending the determination of the criminal charges against him were seven trucks with registration numbers XH 909 RSH; XH 910 RSH; XH 912 RSH; XH 908 RSH; XH 911; XH 913 RSH and XH 460 KUJ.
Dangabar's bank accounts forfeited to the government were: two Damule Nigeria Limited accounts with FCMB; Damule Nigeria Limited account with Main Street Bank; E. D. Laumara with Access Bank; three account numbers of Essai Dangabar Laumara's with Access Bank; Laumara E. Taure
account with Skye Bank; three of AMD Global Logistics account with Skye Bank. Two accounts of Future Logistics Limited with Skye bank. Three accounts of Marine Logistics & Leisure Integrated in Skye Bank.

Two Damule Nig Ltd accounts in Skye Bank. Companies belonging to Dangabar and five others, forfeited to the EFCC were Halas Investment Limited; At homes; Sy- A Global Services Limited; Jidag Technical Services Limited; Damule Nigeria Limited; Marine Logistics; AMD Global Logistics; Future Logistics Ltd; Jenago Services Limited; H Takano Nigeria Limited; Noni Anthony System
Limited; Saudauna Enterprise limited; Ulover International Resources Limited; Somadok Express; Kechis Water Bottling Company; Kechis Events Managers; Kechis Straw; Kechis Plastic Extrusion company; Geopet Petroleum Services Limited; Aina Farms: Otega Farms, Bannachi Global
Links and Comm. Co. Limited.

But Dangabar approached the Court of Appeal, Abuja division to challenge the order of the High Court to have his properties forfeited. The appeal court, in a unanimous ruling on July 24, 2012,
dismissed his application. In a ruling read by Justice Kolawole Bada, the Appeal Court resolved the three issues raised by Dangabar in favour of the EFCC. Two other justices who held the same view were Justices Bukar Chua and Husseini Mukhtar. The court ruled that the interim forfeiture order pending the hearing of the criminal charge preferred against him is provided for under the EFCC Act. "The court, having been given that power, the exercise of it has not taken away the accused right to fair hearing", the three justices reasoned.

The court further ruled that the provisions of Section 28 and 29 of the EFCC Act is validated by Section 44 (2) of the 1999 Constitution and is therefore constitutional. Additionally, the court ruled that the presumption of innocence cannot be interpreted to allow a suspect to retain the proceed of the alleged crime made against him.

Accordingly, the court ruled that Section 34 of the EFCC Act was substantially complied with by the lower court. He has again proceeded to the Supreme Court challenging the Appeal Court judgement.

Dangabar and his co travellers returned to the high court to challenge jurisdiction and prayed the court to quash the charges against them.

But on November 12, 2012, Justice Mohammed Talba of High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, sitting in Gudu, Abuja dismissed the applications to quash charges as the judge said the applicants failed to supply relevant material before the court to warrant the quashing of the case against them. He also said that so far, based on the proof of evidence before the court, the prosecution has presented his case in such a way that a prima-facie has been established against them.

While the public has been warned to stay away from the aforementioned properties and other properties belonging to other accused being investigated by the EFCC, trial in the substantive case of Dangabar and others who were arraigned on May 28, 2012, comes up on January 28, 2013.

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Why You Can Never Truly Delete Your Email

Think that clicking "delete" will actually delete your email? Think again.

When a user "deletes" an email in the normal fashion, it becomes invisible to that user and is immediately a candidate to be overwritten. But until it is in fact overwritten, it exists. And it may persist longer on company servers. So, even if it is taken off your computer, it may still be available on the host's server.

Given that email-hosting companies are legally obliged to turn over user information to law enforcement and intelligence authorities with warrants—and these days even without them—the impossibility of being certain of a deletion means you must presume that any email you compose will be available remain accessible forever.

"I think the most important thing for people to understand that you can't really ever delete anything," Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Hanni Fakhoury told the Daily Dot.

"And when it comes to email, the provider may have a backup even if you delete it... (T)hat's why EFF is generally opposed to data retention policies, i.e., a government mandate for ISPs to keep digital records for specified periods of time."

You do have some options to make your email harder to access, but doing so also makes it harder to use.

In EFF's guide, "Don't be a Petraeus: A Tutorial on Anonymous Email Accounts," the organization notes: "The current state of anonymous communication tools is not perfect, but there here are some steps that, if followed rigorously, might have protected the Director of the CIA, the Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan, and their friends against such effortless intrusion into their private affairs."

The key words there are "rigorously" and "might."

By combining encryption, an anonymous Web-based email account set up through a Tor browser or Circumventor tool that makes your personal IP address impossible to clock, you may remain out of reach of the increasingly overzealous authorities. It is important to note, however, that whichever email service you use may retain copies of any emails you send. That, combined with contextual information (personal information on your age, profession, location, etc.) might be enough for an investigator to identify you.

EFF points out that Hushmail allows users to set up email accounts while using Tor. Others discourage or forbid it. However, Hushmail, which guarantees that not even Hushmail employees are capable of compromising your anonymity, has forked over user information with alacrity in the past.

Regardless of what kind of email setup you use, you are also encouraged to use "secure deletion" software, such as Eraser, or to take a number of steps that truly delete the file in question.

The problem is that even when an email is actually deleted, and even if no copy of it has been retained on a company server, there are still elements that indicate the prior presence of the email. "[E]ven if a file has been securely deleted," EFF warns, "its name will probably continue to exist for some time on your computer." For instance, in Microsoft Word, the title of a document will persist in the Recent Documents menu, even if the email itself has been deleted.

The logins themselves are typically retained as well.

"Webmail providers like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft retain login records (typically for more than a year) that reveal the particular IP addresses a consumer has logged in from," wrote the American Civil Liberties Union's Chris Soghoian.

Additionally, if there is any contact with that email by a computer whose IP address is visible, such as sharing an account with a recipient, that IP address can be the trail that unravels the whole conversation.

If you "give the account password to someone else who can then log in and view the message, obviously it doesn't matter if you disguised your IP address while visiting the site," Bennett Haselton of Peacefire told the Daily Dot. "The message is still sitting there and you've told someone else how to get it, so whoever they pass that info along to, will be able to access the message as well."

"The thing is, email security in and of itself is a myth," said Ian Lyons in a comment on the New School of Information Security blog. Unless every single best practice is followed to a T—and with large companies with less-than-tech savvy employees, that's nigh impossible—there will be breaches."

That's certainly something to consider the next time you pull up Gmail.


Curled from Mashable.