She Sold Her Car to Start a Pet Business, Then Landed a HUGE Break: Kristyn Rose Berland, Founder of CrateAway

0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the Female Founder World Podcast. It's Jasmine. I am the host of the show and the creator of the Female Founder World universe. It is so great to chat with you. Today, I have one of our OG business besties, Kristen Rose Berland. She is the founder of a business called Craterway. You are now entering Female Founder World with your host, Jasmine Grinsworthy. If you are in the Female Founder World group chat, if you've come to our events, you actually probably met Kristen. But for those of you that haven't, Kristen, welcome. And what are you guys building? Thank you so much.

0:34I'm so happy to be here. Female Founder World has been an amazing resource for us. So I'm extremely happy to be sitting here and chatting with you. It's a very full circle moment. But Crataway is building innovative crate solutions for pet parents, pet parents that are on the go and constantly traveling with their furry best friend. And we're also looking into a lot of different pet health, wellness and different health metrics that you can garner using the most commonly used pet parenting device. And so we are actually we have a baseline crate that is super lightweight, innovative. You can take it everywhere with you.

1:14And then in the background, we're actually working on the first ever smart pet crate that will gather different metrics about your pet's health and it will give you notifications if anything seems off and will hopefully save you a lot of money in the long term instead of going to emergency vet visits. Okay. This is so smart. Also, my dad is a vet. Have I told you this before? No. I can't believe I've lost over this. We've had so many conversations about your business. My dad is a vet. So yes, very interested in this space and very cool. I love it. You've been building in the female founder world community.

1:47I've been watching you since like, I don't know if it was day one, but pretty close to when this came about. How did you have been working full time while you've been building this? I want to understand that step between, okay, this is a cool idea. I want it to, you know, I'm going to put some money into this and like start developing a prototype. What did that look like? Because creating a crate, you weren't just like, oh, I'm going to copy and paste something that already exists. You have innovated it on something that is lightweight. It folds down. It's got all of these like features. It's hard to do.

2:20It's extremely, extremely difficult. And, you know, if I knew how much was going to go into it, I probably wouldn't have ever done it. But, you know, it really, it truly came from a consumer frustration. So at the time, my husband was at Wharton getting his MBA and we were, it was 2020. So COVID year, we were traveling all over with the different students. And we would take our English Bulldog bow with us everywhere we went. And we would carry a wire crate with us wherever we went. And it was just so incredibly frustrating. It was heavy. It was bulky. We would scratch ourselves. It was a nightmare.

3:01And I used to have to use my husband's old ice hockey bag to carry the crate from place to place. And I'll never forget, we were in Arizona in the airport and the bag just completely broke and the crate just fell out. And I was like, I don't know what to do, Matt. This is a disaster. And so, you know, like any other, you know, normal, rational person, I decided to create a business and spend my whole life savings on it. But yeah, no, I really, I just dove in. I was like, this is a problem. And we lived at the time in Philadelphia close to a dog park. So I would just go up and ask people while I would bring Bo to the dog park, I would say, hey, do you use a crate?

3:41What type of crate do you use? Do you find that it's frustrating? Would you take your pet on, you know, do you travel with your pet or does the crate experience hinder you traveling with your pet? And we actually found that a lot of people were experiencing that same issue. And, you know, being the partner of someone who was going to business school was really helpful because I would get all of the resources. I would get all of the decks from all the different entrepreneur classes. I would talk to his classmates. You know, he used to be on the ice hockey team at Wharton, and I would just ask people while we were sitting in the stands, hey, do you have a deck from, you know, whatever professor that week that I had looked up and watched one of his YouTube sessions.

4:26And I just really infiltrated the network there. And it was super helpful. But I would say our journey has not been the most natural because literally started out, sold my car for the seed money to start the business, sold my car for$9 ,000, and then truly use that money to figure out, okay, is this worthwhile? Is this something that I should go after? We spent that initial $9 ,000 on the conceptual engineering, as well as doing some different testing of the market for proof of concept. And then from there, I really realized, okay, this is a viable business. And I have, I picked out two advisors from Wharton that really helped me.

5:13They were just fellow students to my husband and they really helped me push the business forward of looking at, okay, what's the next step? And it was finding that first concept, looking at the pain points that every single pet parent, pet specialist, every breeder that we would talk to, what their frustrations were in the current market and poking through those holes and figuring out, okay, what does the consumer actually want? And we, you know, at the beginning, we were working on a size medium so that it would fit Bo because he was our tester for every single crate that we used. But then towards the end, we actually found out that the most frequently bought crate is the size large, so 36 inches long.

5:59So then we had to change our whole strategy. But it's been a lot of trial and error. And honestly, I think we've done everything a bit backwards of just doing what we had to do to get everything started, of looking at, okay, how much money is this actually going to take. I had no clue that a completely brand new engineered product was going to cost$150 ,000 to$300 ,000 in production molds. And to get those production molds, you have to find viable factories who are willing to take a chance on you and to build these things. And it's been a ton of trial and error. And also when you're in that engineering space, a lot of it is male dominated.

6:47And so I would just go on YouTube and research and find everything that I could possibly find about mold engineering and custom plastic products so that I would have that background so that I wasn't being bullied in these meetings. You know, I would go to into one meeting and they were giving me a quote for$500 ,000 and they wouldn't give me specific metrics about it. And I was like, this just seems a bit off. And then I would poke the holes, ask the questions. And I'm like, OK, so you can go down around$350 ,000. So why did you give me that$500 ,000 quote at first? But it's really – it's trial and error.

7:29And it's also bootstrapping the business from the beginning. So we started out$9 ,000 from selling my car, got the conceptual engineering, figured out, OK, this is a viable product in the market. And then for about two more years, we really tested the product, did way more surveys and understood what the full market viability was. That's looking at the different specialists in the market, such as breeders, such as veterinary clinics, as well as small offices and understanding, OK, what is the most prominent thing for that consumer? And what was it? So the three things that consumers really were focused on was lightweight, affordability, as well as safety.

8:17And so we targeted those three and completely made a custom product. Smart. Okay. I love the idea of doing that market research, being able to drill down onto those three things, and then you know exactly what you're focusing on to be able to deliver that back to them. But I want to stay in those early days. You talked about selling your car. Yeah. What did you what did that nine thousand dollars get you and when did you need more money in the business? Yeah. So I would say the nine thousand dollars, it was five thousand dollars for conceptual engineering. And then after that, it was four thousand dollars for the first prototype.

8:53And so, you know, it went a little bit fast, but building a custom product, it's going to be extremely costly and your overhead is very high. but after that I just I kept working I have a corporate job yep um and so I kept working my corporate job and every penny that I made was put back into the business uh you know except for living costs and stuff like that but it's really it's a lot of sacrifice in the beginning it's hard yeah yep okay um and talk to me about crowdfunding because that's something else that's been helping a lot as well or something else that you've been trying out what's your experience been and yeah How much money has that contributed?

9:33So I thought, you know, Kickstarter, it's an amazing platform. It's super founder friendly. And I actually got really taken advantage of. And it was an awful experience. Oh, shit. That's such a shame. Yeah. You'll find that, you know, if anyone is a part of the female founder world, group chat, Geneva group chat, you will see that I made a full review. You can look at it. But part of that experience, I think that, you know, Kickstarter started out as a great company, you know, really wanted to help founders. But now there's all these other companies that realize, OK, this is a platform full of vulnerable founders where we can try to tell them, make them big promises of big returns if they pay us in the beginning to help run their campaign.

10:21so you'll find that when you scroll down and look at the bottom of kickstarters pay attention to the ribbons that are across it whether it says marketed by x sponsored by x and you'll notice that those campaigns 36 percent of those campaigns the campaign dollars are actually given back to the company and the founder and then you know 64 or less are given to those marketing as well as ad spend. So it's really, really, really interesting. And it's pretty disappointing. So you worked with an agency and it just did. Yeah. So I was starting my Kickstarter. I was like, you know what? I feel like this would be a great fit for it.

11:08And our company is about other pet consumers. And I feel like it's a very consumer friendly company and would be something cool, innovative that could be on that platform. You can like show it in video. People get it really quickly as soon as you see a video of it. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And what I found was at the very beginning, a marketing company called me and said, we can promise you three X returns if you give us X amount of thousands of dollars to run your ad spend, to set you up for success on your Kickstarter, the layout of it. I'm talking when you go to a Kickstarter and you scroll down and you see the layout of those campaigns.

11:48They're building a landing page, basically. Exactly. Exactly. And so what I learned was actually all of the traffic that is being sent to your Kickstarter, that's helping Kickstarter, right? They're getting all that data of those consumers. It's not helping your business that much. And every single dollar that we made on our campaign was through my connections and actually going out there, having meetings with people. And they were like, I want to support you. I will do whatever I can to help you with your Kickstarter. And at that point, you know, I'm a compliance officer. That's been my corporate life.

12:22And so I'm pretty by the book. And I found that that experience was very predatory. And I was getting email after email from all these different companies that were promising me things that would help out the Kickstarter. So I would say if anyone is going to go down that route, be very, very, very careful of who you interact with and who you give money to to help you with that. My suggestion would be to instead put all of that traffic, take all that traffic, put it on your own website, create an email waitlist, create a pre-order, something that you can do on your own website. So then you own that information, you own that data, as well as it softens up your SEO, right?

13:09Yeah. So there's going to be a lot of traffic coming to your website instead of going to an outsourced website where they take 5 % to 10 % of the dollars that are spent on your company. That's really interesting, that story. And I am so sorry that you had that experience. But good on you for continuing and not just having that first experience and being like, oh, you know what? This isn't going to be for me. This isn't going to work. You just kind of like figured out the next thing. Were you able to raise any money through the Kickstarter or was it just a loss? Yeah, we actually – we raised around$15 ,000.

13:41So it was really helpful. But again, it was – I could have just done a safe note for those individuals and then also people who did do pre-orders. I could have done that on my own website. And I also – I cut off the campaign. I stopped, you know, sending it out after I realized that the ethical side of me was like, I really don't like this. And I don't like what this platform stands for. And I don't like who they're letting into it of all these marketers. So I was like, I just don't want to contribute anymore to this. But I would say that that capital definitely did help us. And it was definitely needed at that time.

14:24but moving forward from that I just bootstrapped again completely just taking it out of my own pay. So that's how you were funding the business in the early days. How were you starting to kind of get the message out that you were creating this thing to build that early traction because you have a pretty exciting announcement that we're going to share pretty shortly on the show but I want to understand what you were doing to build momentum before that happened. Yeah I would say trial and error. It was a lot of, so actually I wasn't, since I was working a corporate job, I was very careful about what I was putting out there.

15:05Did you want to not associate yourself with it in the beginning because you were afraid of your work, like finding out or? I, well, so I think that it's also, it's self, uh, uh, what's the correct term for this? Like self-impetence. I was nervous of like, okay, am I actually going to take this leap? Because, you know, I worked really, really, really hard to get into my corporate job. And it was one of those things where it's like, I know that I can do something amazing, but it's taking that big leap of faith. And actually at my company, you had to disclose, you know, if you were doing any work outside of it.

15:45So once I told my boss and my VP, I felt more confident and comfortable going after it because they were like, you know what, we support you 1000%. You know, I was getting overperformed metrics in my corporate job. So, you know, and I'm just a very, very hard worker. So no matter what I'm committed to, I will work hard for it. So between my own company and my corporate job, I was working very hard at both. But I think that, you know, taking that leap of actually sharing to the world what you've been working on is really difficult. And it's like, okay, I know that this makes sense, but I'm really scared that, you know, my friends who, you know, don't really know much about the pet space are going to be like, oh my God, what the hell is she doing?

16:29But I think that it just, you just got to put yourself out there. And one of the main things that we did was a week before we were about to go to our biggest expo, our first time ever being out in public. We started our Instagram page and just started doing content from that event. So we did the LA Pet Health Expo in April of 2023. And that's the first time that the public ever saw what we were doing. And it was super helpful. But then I also created before April of 2023, I created a an Instagram account for Bo and my dad. And it was called Bo and Grandpa. And we I would just Bo is so obsessed with my dad and it's really, really cute.

17:16So I just kind of tested the different layouts that you can use on it. You know, what was working in the pet community, what was not working in the pet community. and it was a lot of fun. So I tested those theories in the beginning and then started Crataway's account. We did this big event, LA Pet Health Expo, that was just incredible. Everyone was lined up at our booth. People were trying to take home our crates. I was like, no, these are prototypes. You cannot take this home. It's got thousands of dollars. Please stop. But it was really in that moment when we were there, I was like, okay, I have something here and I just I need to go after it.

17:56There's this unrelenting feeling when you're in these situations when you're building something. And of course, there's also seeds of doubt. But when your gut is just telling you to keep going, you can feel that. And I think that I can't describe it, but I just knew I was like, I just need to keep going. And it's really tough. There are going to be moments where you're like, I don't know if I can keep doing it. this. I don't know if this is what I'm meant for. What am I doing? But there's that little voice inside that says, just keep going, keep going, keep going. And even if it's something small that you do that day, it's still progress.

18:36So talk me through, let's just like zoom out for a second and get an idea of the timeline. So when did you first have the idea? Because this is early 2023 that you had your first expo. You started kind of being out in the world on Instagram about what you were building. What was that time between having the idea, creating your prototypes? Was it a year more? So I met my now husband in 2020. Yeah. In May of 2020. And then I subsequently met Beau. The joke is like that I fell in love with Beau and not my husband. But so once we started traveling with Beau, I was like, okay, this is an issue. So around 2020, end of 2020, I was like, okay, this is an idea.

19:17This is something that I think could be viable. And then in 2021, I really worked on that test and that theory and that thesis. And that's when I sold my car in 2021 and got that initial money. And then in November of 2021 was when we went through the conceptual engineering and went through the tests that we possibly could using CAD models. So engineering. Which is like a design program. Yeah, exactly. It's where, yeah, it's where you can fully work on the product in a 3D prototype on through this platform called CAD or SolidWorks. And you'll kind of understand what what's going to work, what's not going to work.

20:02We also had. So during this time, instead of going with a firm that was going to at the beginning be like, you know, 50 ,000 plus dollars where they could take you from start to finish, I found through cold calling, cold calling all of these different engineers as well as manufacturers in the U.S., they set me up with this one guy in Wisconsin and his engineering firm was called After Hours Engineering. And it was a bunch of really, really smart biomedical engineers who after hours of their normal jobs, they work on startups at a very discounted rate. So their normal rates for being biomedical engineers is something like$300 to$500 an hour, whereas I got them for$100 an hour.

20:48And then I also met NASA engineers within that network and the founder network, and they were also pet parents. So I had all these really incredible engineers working on the product, understanding that, you know, safety, lightweight, affordability, those three key components. And we received our first. So that was, you know, November of 2021 to June of 2022. We received our first prototype in June of 2022. And then from there, we tested it on Bow. And we just kept taking it with us wherever we went, realizing, you know, at first there was a top opening went on the edge of where the gate was. And instead, we learned that it's actually much better if it goes across the, you know, horizontal part of the crate.

21:41And so there were a bunch of different learning lessons within that first test of the prototype. type. And so then around, I guess, September of 2022 was when I met you. And that was when I moved to LA. We had just gotten married. I moved to LA and just fully, fully, fully committed to Create A Way. And that first week that I moved to LA, I went to the Female Founder World event, met three of my very best friends till this day that are incredible founders.

22:17and seriously like you know sidebar just meet as many female founders as you possibly can because they're the only ones who are going to understand you and understand the challenges that you're going through and you can call them hysterically crying yeah and there's no judgment you need to add some new uh founder friends to your like friendship circle if you're going to be doing this, especially if you're going to be doing it as a solo founder. You need support around you and people who get it. Absolutely. Okay. So this takes me to a very exciting announcement that you have that I have known for a little while.

22:52And I've been kind of like watching your Instagram, waiting till you've kind of mentioned it. What is it and how did it come about? You're famous now. So a very, very, very exciting opportunity. There is a new show called Side Hustlers that is produced by Hello Sunshine. Also, that's Reese with the Spoons production company, everyone. Yes. Yes. Yes. They've done like all of your favorite book adaptations. Yes. series. Like, yeah. Yes. Big deal. Yes. They are incredible. Reese and Sarah Harden. They are. Who's a COO or CEO? CEO. Yes. Wonderful, wonderful people, as well as that whole production company.

23:33I just love them. But anyway, so we have there's this new show called Side Hustlers. It is a five episode docuseries, 60 minute episodes, and it will be airing on Roku channel on March 1st. And it follows the journey of six female founded companies that are vying for mentorship and investment by Emma Greed of Skims, Safely, Good American. Just like one of the most incredible operators, business leaders. She's like the Kardashian CEO. Insane. Yeah. Yeah. And as well as Ashley Graham, the supermodel who is also an investor and an amazing, amazing female founder. Okay. How did that happen? Well, you know, the funniest part of this is that it all ties back to female founder world because that first event that I went to in September of 2022, I met one of my very dear friends, Mary, who's the founder of Sock Candy.

24:37And she was actually on a show called The Big Shot with Bethany Frankel on HBO. And so she's been in that world. So she found out about the show and that the casting production was taking applications. And she sent it to me and I was, she was like, this is amazing for you. It's following female founders who are working full-time jobs and, you know, you get the opportunity for mentorship and investment. And I was like, oh my God, yeah, this does sound amazing. So I had one day left to apply. I applied. And then the next day I got a call from production and they were like, okay, we want to take you through some casting interviews.

25:18It was just so surreal. I was like, you know, you hear about this all the time of people who are just like, yeah, I filled out an application and then, you know what, it actually ended up working out. I mean, someone is winning this stuff, guys. Someone is getting on t-shirts. Someone is getting these big grants. Like, it may as well be you. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. If I, you know, can give any advice, it's just put your hat in the ring. Yeah. It doesn't matter if you think it's never going to happen because you never know what life is going to throw at you and it could be an amazing opportunity.

25:45But It was one of the most amazing opportunities of my life. It was sincerely eye-opening, life-lifting. It was incredible. It was really, really, really hard work, but it was the start of my new life now, which is, you know, goodbye, corporate Kristen. Hello, founder Kristen, full-time founder, Kristen. And I'm just so excited. Also, at the time of recording this, you have not yet quit your job, but your plan is to tell them tomorrow.

26:26Which, like, I absolutely love being, talking to you at this particular inflection point, because that's the question we get all the time. It's like, when do I quit my job? When do I go all in? I love that you are doing it tomorrow. How do you feel about that? Literally every single event that I go to and there's, you know, founders that are sitting there doing the panel. I always ask them, when did you know when to quit your job? That is my number one question to people because I've been at such an inflection point of like, okay, do I do this? Do I do it now? But it is truly – you have to wait until you – you know, I'm a risk manager.

27:06I don't like a lot of risk. and right now I don't know what it is in me but I feel like there's actually a path forward and also you know I've saved a bit now where I feel more comfortable doing so um but it definitely took me a while you know we were talking six months ago and you were like Kristen why haven't you quit your job yet yeah I was like oh it's happening yeah yeah but I think also too it's it's um it's being comfortable with the unknown but also feeling very secure that you've done your homework and you know what's ahead. And also, you know, I'm at a very different point now where I have these incredible, incredible female founder pioneers behind me.