Keeping It Honest, from Kitchen to Coca-Cola

Seth Goldman, cofounder and TeaEO of Honest Tea, America’s leading organic bottled tea maker (favored by President Barack Obama) analyzes his decision to make a game-changing deal with Coca-Cola. Can a fast-growing, organic start-up connect with a corporate giant and retain its own soul? Here’s what you can learn from his experience. In the world of start-ups, there are two kinds of entrepreneurs. One founds a business in order to sell it early and get richer quicker. The other establishes a brand and nurtures it. I am the nurturing type. My goal has always been to make the Honest Tea brand stand for authentic, healthy, organic products; a brand that customers trust and love. My partner, Barry Nalebuff, and I knew that we wanted to build a company with staying power, and that to do so, we’d have to keep control of the enterprise. Then, once we were ready to take it to the next level, we did our best to structure an arrangement where we could keep Honest Tea, well, honest. In essence, that’s our story. But as with any good story, there have been many twists and turns along the way.