Turning Customers Into Investors: A Popcorn Brand's Crowdfunding Playbook

0:00Hannah Dittman:What if your next investor meeting is already waiting for you? Applications are now open for Startup CPG's Founders and Funders 2026, our flagship event built to connect the most promising emerging CPG brands with investors ready to write them checks. Sick of cold emails, cancelled meetings, and pounding LinkedIn pavement? Well, consider Startup CPG your ultimate warm intro. Join us December 10th, 2026 in New York City for the fundraising event of the year. This year, we're back and bringing together 200 of the top emerging CPG founders and more than 100 investors for nearly 1 ,000 one-on-one pitch meetings, plus a full day of networking, educational panels, and countless conversations that turn into real fundraising relationships.

0:51Hannah Dittman:Brand applications are open now, and you can find the event at events.startupcpg.com. If you're planning to raise capital in the next 12 to 18 months, this is where you want to be. If you're an investor or partner who wants to be included in this epic event, please email funders at startupcpg.com. Again, brand applications are open now at events.startupcpg.com. Don't wait. Acceptances will be on a rolling basis. Apply today, and we can't wait to see you in New York. Good luck.

1:44We experienced a lot of pain because we were undercapitalized. So if you're going out to market, be very, very careful and have a real understanding of what your budget is, where your expenditures are, and expect them to go over. And make sure that you're well capitalized because it is not fun to chase money when you need it. So you really want to be able to accept money when you don't need it or you're less of a needy position. To be in a needy position where you have to raise more money for the sake of survival is a really, really unpleasant place. So I would suggest people to kind of like stagger their approach when it comes to spending money, because you run out of money, you run out of a business.

2:24Hannah Dittman:Hey, everybody. I'm Hannah Dittman, operations and finance host of the Startup CPG podcast. And today I'm joined by Tal Moore, founder and CEO of Popsmith for another founder fundraising journey episode. Popsmith is bringing movie night nostalgia into the modern home with beautifully designed popcorn poppers and popcorn kernels that deliver incredible popcorn in just minutes. Combining timeless functionality with elevated design, Popsmith has transformed a simple kitchen appliance into a countertop-worthy centerpiece. Paired with premium kernels grown on American family farms and thoughtfully crafted ingredients, the brand has built an experience that's as memorable as the popcorn itself, earning industry awards, Oprah's stamp of approval, and devoted customer following.

3:08Hannah Dittman:In this Founder Fundraising Journey episode, we dive into Tal's entrepreneurial journey as a serial e-commerce founder who has built, scaled, and successfully exited multiple businesses before launching Popsmith. Tal also takes us inside the world of equity crowdfunding, breaking down how it works, when it makes sense for consumer brands, and the key ingredients that separate successful campaigns from the rest. Along the way, he shares practical and candid advice on managing cash, building capital-efficient businesses, and leveraging an engaged customer community to fuel long-term growth. Whether you're considering fundraising, curious about equity crowdfunding, or simply looking to build a stronger consumer brand, this episode is packed with practical insights from a founder who successfully built companies and continues to find innovative ways to grow.

3:56Hannah Dittman:Go grab a bowl of Popsmith popcorn and enjoy!

4:03Hannah Dittman:Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG Podcast. This is Hannah, and today we're back for an awesome founder fundraising journey episode with Tal Moore of Popsmith. Paul, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. We're super happy you're here. I'd love to kick us straight into a brief background of your career journey and the path that led you to Popsmith. Yeah, well, I'll take you way back to when I was 12 years old, and I was selling gumballs and baggies of popcorn in like sandwich bag is full of popcorn and gumballs and lollipops in elementary school. So packed up candy.

4:39I was like did all drug dealer style with like bags inside my coat and built up a little clientele of 10 year olds and 12 year olds and was making eight to ten dollars a day. So that was my first experience in like entrepreneurship. And that led to a bubble gum machine vending route. When I was 16 years old, I bought those big five foot spiral gumball machines. And I set up a vending route and putting those gumball machines in high schools and arcades and restaurants throughout Western Washington. And I ran that for a few years. And then in the year 2000, I bought the domain gumballs.com and I developed a bubblegum machine store, a virtual store online selling gumball machines and candy machines and cream machines.

5:23And so that was my first foray into e-commerce. That was 2000, 2001, eBay, and then my e-commerce store. And then from there, I branched out into other niches. So I started chocolate.com, wicker.com, selling chocolate and wicker furniture. I had BarberPoles Direct, which is selling BarberPoles. I had World Globes Direct, selling World Globes. But one of my other earliest stores was a popcorn store called popcornmachinesdirect.com, where I was selling the big movie theater kind of cabinet poppers and the antique push carts. And yes, I've been in e-com for 25 years. I'm like a relative dinosaur in the space.

6:03And then I've been in popcorn for 23 years. And I've ran a variety of e-com business along the way. But in 2020, I decided to divest myself, all of my brands, sold off everything, including a Thrasio, which is an Amazon aggregator, sold everything all off so I can go all in on popcorn. And that's why I started working on Popsmith alongside my business partner, Dave.

6:24Hannah Dittman:Wow, you have had a colorful and fun journey with a lot of categories that belong in a movie theater along the way. And$8 to$10 a day as a kid is no joke. That is some serious dough back then. You acquired a taste for the good life early on. And how fun to be in such an exciting business that is so nostalgic and that everyone has a lot of affinity for. and very enterprising, clearly, that you were on that early e-com wave. I'm sure you've seen and learned a lot that you can now apply into this next chapter of popcorn. I'd love to dive in and also learn a little bit more about Popsmith, what your mission is, what you guys are all about, and what the real pull and passion was for diving into this new business.

7:07You know, I've been in popcorn a long time, and I always had a real affinity for popcorn. It really goes back to my childhood, where we would have movie nights at home, and mom would make stovetop popcorn or Jiffy Pop popcorn. And it wasn't just about like making delicious popcorn at home. It was about the nostalgic kind of like part of eating and making and consuming popcorn alongside loved ones. And there's just like a real, there's a real nostalgic component to popcorn. And we realized that, you know, when you look at the popcorn landscape, like there was no brand that was really speaking to that.

7:40You know, not just like delicious popcorn, but actually making it in this experience, experiential, joyous, nostalgic way with friends and loved ones. And so we wanted to become that brand. We wanted to launch with a novel way of making popcorn, what we believe is a superior way to make popcorn. Like if you look at the popcorn landscape, you've got microwave popcorn, which already agrees is kind of mid. And then you've got bagged popcorn, which isn't very fresh, but convenient. And then you have stovetop, like kettle popped popcorn. And that's what, you know, you enjoy at the movie theater, which I think everybody agrees like movie theater popcorn is the very best popcorn out there.

8:17Well, why? It's because it's cooked the way that popcorn ought to be cooked before microwaves existed, which is in a kettle and frying the kernels with the salt and the seasonings and really good quality oil. And so we wanted to replicate that and give people the opportunity to make popcorn the Popsmith way at home. And stovetop, we didn't invent stovetop popping. There were other stovetop poppers out there, but they weren't like built very well. We wanted something that looked nostalgic, that was really built and made like an heirloom quality cookware. Something you would find at a Williams-Sonoma shelf and nothing like that existed.

8:52And so that's what we set out to create, to invent. And so we hired Branch Creative out of San Francisco, this really high-end industrial designer and an engineering firm also in Palo Alto. And we tasked them with creating like an heirloom quality, beautiful, functional stovetop popper that would not only make delicious, consistent popcorn, but it's so beautiful that you want to actually leave out, you know, and like show off. And it becomes this like show when you have people coming over and are gathering around in the kitchen, like watching you in anticipation of making this like delicious popcorn.

9:26And so that's what we set out to create. And that was in 2020. And then we launched in 2023.

9:31Hannah Dittman:So exciting. It makes a ton of sense. I think the products you've made are so beautiful. And I love the branding you have going on elsewhere in the company as well. It's so true. It's such a nostalgic, just joy-bringing activity to kind of gather around and have that fresh, warm popcorn. And it does taste totally different. I feel like everyone can devour like a giant bucket of popcorn at the movie theaters for a reason. What was the kind of startup experience like for you pivoting from your old businesses to this new one? Obviously, you got the design built with a firm. What was kind of the journey?

10:06Hannah Dittman:Was it just you working on this? What was the funding position at the time? And how did you go about going from day zero to where you are today? Yeah, it was a long and arduous process. I mean, startup life is not for the Swemish. I think we like sorely underestimated like how difficult and how expensive it would be. When you're bringing a new brand and a new product to market, it takes a lot longer than you might anticipate. And it's a lot, it's far costlier than you might anticipate. And so in our case, it was Dave, my partner, Dave Stickland, who's been with me for 13 years. We started together the earlier iteration of another popcorn brand that we've since sold.

10:44And we decided to go at it together. And so we needed seed capital because we were engineering and industrial design, very, very expensive, especially when you want to, you know, we really had the aspiration to come out of the gate looking and feeling like a hundred million dollar brand, even though we were a startup. And so that meant a lot of intentionality into the branding, the design of the website, the logo. We really wanted to do extensive market research before we launched so that we can, and that market research is what helped guide the decision-making process when it came to, before we went to pen to paper and started like fleshing out the branding.

11:23We really wanted to have a good understanding of who our target market is, what they're looking for, and how to speak to them. And so that we did six months of market research. We did test groups and then started the industrial design process. And it was very expensive. So I personally, I put in initially$1.2 million and another million dollars in my own personal money. And then we ended up doing a friends and family raise, which was$1.6 million when we launched, when it was just nothing more than a PDF. and we ended up spending all that and more taking the product to market. Not only was it very expensive to develop it, but then marketing a new brand, a new concept when nobody's ever heard of it before is just very, very expensive when you're like the market maker.

12:07So yeah, it was definitely not, it was very costly, not without its challenges early on.

12:12Hannah Dittman:Yeah, I feel like there's so much that goes into product design, especially something that's a little bit more durable with expensive materials and that needs to like be interacting with heat and all of these things. Like there's so much thought and care that goes into every decision you make in business. I have a lot of respect and admiration for founders that are so passionate about their vision and their product and being a real product first mentality is the way to win consumers hearts because it is about at the end of the day is making sure that the North Star is delivering an amazing product to the people that are interested in your brand.

12:46Hannah Dittman:And it seems like you guys have put a ton of thought and work and capital and energy and resources behind all of this. So no surprise that you've come up with something as beautiful and as awesome as you have. When you went through that early days, what were the milestones that you were looking to reach or thinking about and the milestone paths as you've moved through the business that you anchored on? Yeah, I think the most significant milestones that we were looking at was revenue, MER, and ultimately profit. there was a lot of learning on the finance side, you know, that we were very green.

13:19You know, when you have a fast growing business and you have an ever increasing need in inventory, that becomes a capital that gobbles up capital. And if you don't get your inventory right, for instance, when we launched, we were ended up, you know, what we thought we were purchasing three months worth of inventory. We ended up sitting on over a year's worth of inventory that nearly like sunk our business because we had so much money tied up in inventory. And so getting inventory right early on is like very, very difficult before you like understand like demand. I mean, it almost sunk our business.

13:51By the next year in 2024, we got an Oprah's Favorite Things, which like totally saved the business. We were at that point sitting on seven months worth of inventory. And then we made Oprah's Favorite Things and we wiped out of everything that holiday season within three weeks. Like just like everything just saved our company. So we're a lot smarter about our metrics when it comes to cash conversion cycle. We have a very, very now accurate understanding of what our true cost of goods are. You know, that's something that's also very easy to screw up for kind of more green founders, where you look at cost of product, but you're not necessarily taking into consideration like all the costs along the way.

14:29You have import fees, you have tariffs, perhaps, you have shipping, you have logistics, you have a returns allowance. And so there are a number of factors that go into cost of goods so that you can truly understand like where your profitability lines are. So a lot of learning on the finance side. But right now we have our MER tightened up, how much we're spending on advertising as a portion of our revenue, our revenue projections. We've gotten very, very good at our demand planning to really understand what our growth curve looks like. And we're definitely outpacing our expectations for 2026. And that's leading right up into another raise that we're about to launch.

15:10We've done two raises so far. We did our friends and family round when we first launched. and then we did an equity crowdfunding raise on StartEngine, which went a lot better than we expected. That was last year on StartEngine. And we were looking at both StartEngine and WeFunder. We ended up deciding to go with StartEngine just because they're more selective with the projects that they take on. And we ended up raising a little over a million dollars that round and we were oversubscribed. And so we've now waited a year and we're about to launch our next StartEngine round, which will be our last StartEngine.

15:42And that will be our last fundraising round, which will get us to profitability and beyond. And the reason for the raise is because we're growing. We're now on pace to do over 150 ,000, 150%. We're on pace to do 150 % year-over-year growth. And so it's staggering growth. And we just were raising capital in order to fund inventory going into our busiest time of year and holiday, and then to fund the marketing efforts. We figured out what's working. And now we really want to pour the nitro fuel onto the marketing efforts to really fast track growth.

16:14Hannah Dittman:My gosh, huge kudos and congrats for navigating those waves and waters and just the resilience and the emotional regulation it takes to get through some of that stuff. I mean, you're talking big numbers and a lot of stress, I'm sure, at the time to be sitting on seven months of inventory, then to, boom, have your opportunity happen and then be getting through it in three weeks. That's huge. I mean, I can't even imagine what the emotional roller coaster of some of this stuff has been like and how exciting where you're at right now and the journey you're on now is. I'd love to learn a little bit more about crowdfunding and your approach to that and what made you think that the business you were building would be a good fit for that avenue and versus maybe a more traditional institutional path of fundraising and any kind of nuance or color you could shed light on for founders out there that might be interested in exploring crowdfunding or what that entails.

17:07Yeah, it's something that actually when I speak to, I mean, I'm very involved in like e-commerce communities and not a lot of people have crowdfunding on their radar and they ought to. I think it's a very interesting and compelling option, right? Like if you're if you need money for your business, you have only a handful of options. You could do a friends and family round if you have a good network of people that know you and trust you like that's a good option. You could do debt, right? You could borrow from a bank and put up your own personal assets, the business assets to secure that debt.

17:38Hannah Dittman:You could do the venture private equity round. But that's typically challenging early on because not a lot of private equity companies are willing to invest in true startups. They want to see companies are at a certain level before they invest. And that's typically north of$10 million in revenue and perhaps seeing some EBITDA. And then there's the crowdfunding option. And I think that the crowdfunding option is really interesting. So it came about during the Obama administration. Up until then, investment opportunities like this were limited to what's known as accredited investors, basically people that are at a certain level of wealth that's defined by the U.S.

18:19government that, you know, gives companies the opportunity to market to people that are accredited investors.

18:24Hannah Dittman:Well, with equity crowdfunding, when that came about, this Reg CF is what it's called, it now gives every Joe and John, you know, and Sally the opportunity to invest in startup companies that they would previously know not have access to. And so it was very interesting. And it's still relatively new and relatively unknown. But there's actually a very large and active community of investors. The check size is smaller. It might average like$500 to$1 ,000, but there's a huge community of prospective investors that are following these opportunities and investing alongside these larger brands. And there's a lot of marketplaces that do equity crowdfunding.

19:07I would say the two largest are WeFunder and StartEngine. And I looked at both of them and that took me really down a journey. I didn't know if that was the right fit for us because we were kind of in that in-between stage. You know, we were sub 10 million in revenue. We had already done a friends and family round. So we'd done that before we launched. We launched, we're showing traction, but we're still a little too small to go the venture path. Maybe we could have, but I think we probably would have gotten really beaten up on valuation. And so equity crowdfunding seemed to be like a viable option.

19:36So I really dug into it and learned quite a bit about it before I jumped into it. And I looked at the two platforms. I ended up going with StartEngine over WeFunder because they have just as many people that are following their campaigns, but they're also more selective. You have fewer deals that go in front of more people on StartEngine so you get more exposure. And so I started that process and I had pretty low expectations of what we might yield in terms of results on StartEngine. And to my surprise, the interest was just a lot higher and a lot more aggressive on our first round. When we launched it, I mean, very, very quickly, we oversubscribed and ended up raising a little, almost$1.2 million in the first round, which just kind of like blew our minds.

20:18Like there was just so much demand. And so now that I've gone through it and then we're now starting another StartEngine round, I think my lessons, you know, when I think back to like, why were we successful? I think it comes down to a handful of things. And I think that any brand that matches most, if not all of what I'm about to say, I think could stand a pretty good chance of being successful in StartEngine. Number one, don't be a startup. Have some sort of revenue, have some sort of attraction. I think somewhere between$2 to$10 million is probably the sweet spot. Number two, have an email list.

20:49The people that are following you, that have your product, that like you, your tribe, right? Because you're going to be marketing to those people. These are people that have already been exposed to your brand. They've already tried your product of service. They presumably like your product or service. They're coming back and buying more. And now you can market to them and say, look, you've tried the product. You love the brand. Now you can own a piece of it for as little as$300 or$500. You set the minimum. We're doing a minimum of$500 in order to make it inclusive. So anybody that might be interested that owns a Popsmith, they can now become an equity holder, right?

21:23And then what happens is you have a large enough email list, then that creates a swell of interest when you first launch. And then when you reach certain raised thresholds in, you know, within StartEngine, then they start promoting within their campaign to people that follow StartEngine campaigns have never necessarily heard of your brand. And then it just becomes kind of symbiotic. And so I think that that's very important. I think that consumer brands like us, where you don't really have to do a lot of explaining, like people understand popcorn and popcorn popping. So have a brand that you can really explain rather simply.

21:59And then have, you know, you want to be able to sell the future. You know, you want to be able to talk about like where you're at and where you're headed. In our case, what's really exciting about this new campaign is that we've grown 150 % year over year. We launched a bunch of new consumables. Our average order value is up by 30%. We have subscription revenue that's growing by 20%. That's just the subscribe and save and people are subscribing and spending and buying consumables every single month. We've launched a handful of new popcorn popper colors. And so we're finding that previous popcorn Popsmith buyers are coming back and buying more colorways because they're just interested in more colors.

22:37And then we also are launching Williams-Sonoma nationwide this year and all Williams-Sonoma stores nationwide. So we have just tremendous tailwind going into this raise. And it's very exciting. I think it's going to lend itself to yet another very successful raise.