CEOInterviews.AISamuel Adams: Jim Koch

N

Narrator0:00

Support for today's episode comes from Square, the easy way for business owners to take payments, book appointments, manage staff, and keep everything running in your business without running yourself into the ground. In my neighborhood, there's a shop that sells incredible locally made food. Fresh breads, prepared meals, sauces, jams, all from producers within an hour's drive. And they use Square. And as a customer, I love the seamless payment, quick checkout, and easy receipts. Square's intuitive software and hardware simplifies everything. You can sell anywhere in store, online, or mobile, while managing inventory and tracking sales in real time. With Square, you get all the tools to run your business with none of the contracts or complexity. And why wait? Right now, you can get up to $200 off Square hardware at square.com/go/built. That's sq.com/go/built. Run your business smarter with Square. Get started today. You may have heard the best voice in show business, Morgan Freeman, talking about a serious and underdiagnosed heart condition that's often missed. ATTR cardiac amyloidosis or ATTRCM. It's a condition that can greatly disrupt your life with symptoms like severe fatigue, shortness of breath, and carpal tunnel. If left untreated, ATTRCM may become serious, leading to a shorter lifespan. At Troub helps adults with ATTRCM live longer and have fewer hospitalizations due to heart issues so you can focus more on living for what you love. Tell your doctor if you're pregnant, plan to become pregnant, or are breastfeeding, and about the medications you take. The most common side effects were mild and included diarrhea and abdominal pain. If you have ATTRCM, talk to your cardiologist about At Troubi and visit atruby.com/mpodcast. That's attrubby.com/mpodcast to learn more. It's time to get busy living. Brought to you by Bridge Bio. Every day, shareholders meet to discuss important matters about the companies you invest in. Now, Vanguard is making it easy to have your voice heard in those decisions. Alexa, take me to Vanguard Investor Choice. Got it. Texting you a link where you can set your proxy voting preference for your Vanguard index funds and be heard by the companies you invest in. Just say, 'Alexa, take me to Vanguard Investor Choice and make your voice heard.' Vanguard Investors own shares of our index funds, which own shares of the companies they invest in, available for Vanguard index funds that participate in Investor Choice, Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor. We're supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. When I'm prepping for an interview, there's always that moment where I'm trying to turn a pile of research into an actual conversation. A founder's timeline, early decisions, big inflection points, old interviews, company background, all of it matters, but the real work is figuring out what connects. And that's where Claude has been super helpful. It helps me work through the material, organize what I already know, and find the thread, the thing that turns research into better questions. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. From research to strategy to the tasks that slow everything down, Claude helps you stay with the work and keep moving. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai/hibt.

G

Guy Raz3:56

Hey, just quick heads up to let you know that there's a little bit of strong language in about the first minute and a half of the show. So, if you've got any kids around, just cover their ears for about a minute and a half and then you're good to go. So, you call up your dad and you're like, 'Dad, guess what? I'm joining the family business. I'm going to make beer.' Was he? I was worse. I went home. And was he excited?

C

C. Koch4:19

Oh, not really. When I told him, I was kind of hoping that he'd put his arm around me because this 150-year-old family tradition was going to be carried on. No. He looked at me. He said, 'Jim, you've done some really stupid things in your life. This is the stupidest.'

N

Narrator4:45

From NPR. It's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

G

Guy Raz4:58

I'm Guy Raz and on today's show, how Jim Cook started brewing an old family beer recipe, called it Samuel Adams, bottled it up, and then helped kickstart the craft beer movement in America. So, at some point last year, the number of breweries in America passed the 4,000 mark. And most of those breweries make craft beers. Things like IPAs, porters, stouts, lagers, you name it. And this is beer that wins awards all over the world. And a lot of it even gets exported to places like Germany and Holland and Belgium where beer brewing is practically a religion. But if somehow you went back in time to like 1980 and someone handed you a cold bottle of American beer, you might not recognize it. Because, and Monty Python fans might remember this, American beer used to be a joke.

M

Monty Python5:55

Is frankly over here, we find your American beer is a little like making love in a canoe. It's [expletive] close to water.

G

Guy Raz6:05

So, that was what it was like when Jim Cook was a young man, but he knew a lot about beer because he happened to come from a family of beer makers.

C

C. Koch6:14

My dad was a brew master, and it's like being the chef in a kitchen. He was responsible for the recipe and the quality of the beer. He wasn't the owner. So he got out of brew master school in 1948 and there were a thousand breweries all over the US. 36 years later when I started Sam Adams that thousand had dwindled down to 50. And my dad had to move from brewery to brewery as the breweries closed.

G

Guy Raz6:47

Did you have any intention like as a kid or as a teen of doing this, doing the same thing your dad did?

C

C. Koch6:52

No. My dad told me that it was a miserable way to make a living and he eventually left the brewing industry entirely. The last thing that he wanted for me to do was to go back into brewing.

G

Guy Raz7:05

And this is a little bit crazy because it wasn't just your dad who was a brewer, like his dad was a brewer too.

C

C. Koch7:11

Yes. Every oldest son for six generations has been a brewer. I believe I'm the only sixth generation brewer in the United States.

G

Guy Raz7:22

So, what did you want to be?

C

C. Koch7:24

Honestly, I really didn't know. I had this wonderful educational opportunity that nobody in my family had ever had. After I graduated from college, I started a JD/MBA program and I could just feel this pressure behind me pushing me towards some career decision. So, I dropped out.

G

Guy Raz7:49

So, what did you do then?

C

C. Koch7:51

Well, at the time I was involved in a lot of outdoor activities, rock climbing, kayaking, backpacking, things like that. And my climbing partner, he got me involved in Outward Bound. I was able to do that during the summers. And then I learned that you don't need that much to live on if you're really enjoying what you're doing.

G

Guy Raz8:19

And so how many years did you do that for?

C

C. Koch8:23

I did it on and off for three and a half years. At the end of that three and a half years, I thought, okay, I think I'm ready to go back and got my MBA and my JD and I started working as a management consultant for a company called Boston Consulting Group. And you know, we flew first class. You consulted with CEOs, everybody treated you really well. It was a great job for a while.

G

Guy Raz8:53

Yeah, sounds pretty good. So, why did you leave it?

C

C. Koch8:56

Well, I had this epiphany, I guess. After 6 years at BCG, I asked myself, do I want to do this the rest of my life? And the answer came back, no. And the next sort of corollary to that was, well, if I don't want to do it for the rest of my life, I probably don't want to do it tomorrow.

G

Guy Raz9:18

So, how did that decision lead to you thinking about beer?

C

C. Koch9:26

That's a good question. I knew I didn't want to work in the corporate world. So, I thought, I'm going to start my own business. I don't know what it's going to be. But my dad had given me a copy of Inc. magazine, and there was an article in there about Anchor Steam, this small brewery in California. It was owned by a great guy named Fritz Maytag. And Fritz had a viable small brewery. It was an outlier. And when I was a consultant, what always fascinated me were the outliers because that's where the real learning was. There was obviously the potential to find a market for a really high quality beer. And I started to think about it and I developed a different business model for what is now called craft brewing.

G

Guy Raz10:22

Yeah. So this is in the mid-80s, right?

C

C. Koch10:25

Yeah. 1984.

G

Guy Raz10:26

So you call up your dad and you're like, 'Dad, guess what? I'm joining the family business. I'm going to make beer.' Was he?

C

C. Koch10:32

I was worse. I went home.

G

Guy Raz10:34

And was he excited?

C

C. Koch10:35

Oh, not really. When I told him, I was kind of hoping that he'd put his arm around me because this 150-year-old family tradition was going to be carried on to yet another generation. No. He looked at me. He said, 'Jim, you've done some really stupid things in your life. This is the stupidest.'

G

Guy Raz11:03

Okay, Jim, I just want to pause for a second and ask you because I can kind of understand your dad's point, right? I mean, you had this great job and then you just left it.

C

C. Koch11:13

Yes. And I left it because staying there was very risky. Leaving it was not risky. And it's the difference in life between things that are scary and things that are dangerous. And there are plenty of things that are scary but aren't dangerous. And there are things that are dangerous but not scary. Yeah. And those are the things that get you. I can give you a climbing analogy from Outward Bound. One of the things we taught people to do was rappel off a cliff and it's a very scary thing to do. But you're also held by a belay rope and that rope will hold a car. So walking off the cliff backwards is scary but not dangerous. Walking across a 35 degree angle snowfield on a beautiful late May afternoon with this bright blue sky is not scary at all, but it's very dangerous because the snow is melting. Eventually, it's going to find a layer of ice. The water will lubricate that and you have an avalanche. That is dangerous but not scary. And in my situation, staying at BCG was dangerous but not scary. And the danger there, the risk of it, was continuing to do something that didn't make me happy and getting to 65 and looking back and going, 'Oh my god, I wasted my life.' That is risk. That is danger.

G

Guy Raz13:02

So, was that what you said to your dad? I mean, did you convince him that this was worth trying? He eventually did come around.

C

C. Koch13:10

I sat down with him and the thing that convinced him, I think, because all the American brewers were basically making the same kind of beer. Very light, very easy to drink. And I said, 'Dad, I'm not going to compete with Bud and Miller and Coors. Everybody in the US who wants good beer is drinking the imports.'

G

Guy Raz13:35

So at that time it was like Heineken,

C

C. Koch13:38

Heineken, Becks, St. Pauli Girl, those were considered the great beers of the world. And what I did know from my brewing background is they were not the great beers of the world. There was the possibility of making beer with a lot of flavor but balanced and there's a particular flavor structure of good beer. When you taste it, you will get that structure and I could give it to people fresh because beer is perishable. Beer has about a four to five month shelf life and the imported beers were almost always stale. They were typically in green and clear bottles and visible light isomerizes a compound in hops. That's why you get skunky beer.

G

Guy Raz14:25

So, how did you come up with a recipe that you thought, okay, this is going to re-educate American beer drinkers. They're going to want to drink this beer instead of what they're used to.

C

C. Koch14:34

That was easy. After about an hour and a half, when my dad was beginning to get it, he was like, 'Oh, you know, you're right. Nobody's making great beer. Yeah, maybe somebody should do that.' Then he took me up into the attic. He had a trunk and there were family recipes and he took out one of the recipes and said, 'This is the recipe.' It was from my great-great-grandfather's brewery. My dad had made a version of this beer at Wooden Shoe Brewery in Minster, Ohio, where he was brew master because the brewery was kind of going down the tubes and he thought maybe we can turn the brewery around by making a big American lager. And the owner tasted it and told my dad, he said, 'Charlie, nobody is going to drink this. People want water with foam on it. So make water with foam on it.'

G

Guy Raz15:32

So you just took this recipe and started to experiment with it.

C

C. Koch15:36

Yeah, I took the recipe. I started making it in my kitchen. It's extremely difficult beer to make. You can't really do this as a home brewer. It requires much more precise control, but I brewed it and I could tell this is going to be a good beer. If I can make this right, this would be a really good beer.

G

Guy Raz15:57

Okay. So, you make a beer, but how did you even know how to begin to start a beer company?

C

C. Koch16:04

Well, the first thing I realized I had to find the best brew master in America to help me. He was a man named Dr. Joseph Owades and he was the first American brew master to combine high-level scientific understanding because he was a PhD in microbiology with decades of practical experience.

G

Guy Raz16:29

How did you even convince him to get involved in your fly-by-night startup?

C

C. Koch16:33

He turned me down at first. He thought this is really crazy and you don't have enough money to pay me.

G

Guy Raz16:41

Yeah.

C

C. Koch16:41

Which was true. And I said, 'Well, Dr. Owades, I'm not some idiot kid just making beer in their kitchen. My dad was a brew master, my grandfather.' And he remembered my dad a little bit. And I said, 'I'll tell you what. I'll give you 2% of the company.' And that piqued his interest. He signed on and he helped me adapt a 19th century recipe to a 20th century brewery.

G

Guy Raz17:11

So, did you have to go out and raise money to build a brewery?

C

C. Koch17:14

Well, I realized there are breweries out there and my dad was the one who gave me this insight. What we did is we rented space. Dr. Owades and I showed up, brewed the beer, and then they packaged it, and I didn't have to have my own brewery for several years. When we started, we didn't have things that you think you need for a business. We didn't have an office. We didn't have a telephone. I just asked myself, am I spending money on things that are going to make the beer better or am I spending money on things just because that's what you're supposed to spend it on?

G

Guy Raz17:54

By the way, how did you come up with the name Sam Adams for the beer?

C

C. Koch17:59

Well, it came from my history teacher when I was a junior in high school when she taught the revolution. She highlighted the role of Samuel Adams. Depending on what books you read, he was a brewer. I wanted a name that was assertively American and that reflected America's history and brewing tradition. So, on the label, there it is, brewer, patriot. And I wanted to do what Sam Adams had done only in my little way. I wanted to create a beer revolution and declare beer independence for the United States.

G

Guy Raz18:44

In just a minute, we'll be back with Jim Cook and he'll explain how he actually convinced people to like his beer. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

N

Narrator19:01

This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Sometimes life's journeys take you on the roads less traveled. That's why Apple created the Titanium Apple Card to use anywhere in the world where Mastercard is accepted. Plus, with Apple Card, you can earn unlimited daily cash back with every purchase every day, whether you're in Paris or Palao. And no matter where you are, with Apple Card, you won't pay annual fees or foreign transaction fees. No fees, period. That's the power of Apple Card. Apply in the wallet app on iPhone and use it right away with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.49% to 27.74% based on creditworthiness. Rates as of July 1st, 2026. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app or at card.apple.com. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com. Success is a journey, especially when it comes to your finances. One of the most common obstacles in our financial journey is dealing with high-interest debt. It can often leave people feeling trapped, but it doesn't have to. If you're dealing with high-interest debt, there is a way forward. A SoFi personal loan could consolidate all your high-interest debt into one low-interest monthly payment, helping you craft a road map to paying down your debt. It even comes with no fees required, getting you a financial win right away. Keep pushing on your journey to financial success. You could even get as soon as the same day funding. View your rate for a SoFi personal loan at sofi.com/guyraz. Loans originated by SoFi bankna. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. NMLS696891. Fast funds terms apply at sofi.com/guyraz. They say that every day your business is late to AI, you fall 2 days behind. But how do you keep up when the competition is only moving faster? With NetSuite Next. NetSuite Next is the next huge leap in how business gets done. Because AI is built into everything you do. It automatically provides custom insights throughout your day while AI agents work alongside you to solve problems and handle routine work. And anytime you have a question about anything, ask. Just like you're having a conversation with a colleague. If I needed to manage HR, commerce, inventory, CRM, financials, I would use NetSuite Next. Whether your company earns millions or even hundreds of millions, it's time for NetSuite Next, where your business meets AI. For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite.ai/built. Built for every industry, ready for every boardroom. netsuite.ai/built.

G

Guy Raz22:14

It's How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So, after experimenting for a few months with a family recipe, Jim Cook finally got it down to exactly the way he wanted it. And at this point, he had to figure out how to sell it.

C

C. Koch22:32

So my dad had told me, you know, you're going to start a business, Jim. It's lonely. It's going to have its ups and downs. See if you can find a partner. So I looked around BCG was full of the best and the brightest from the top business schools. But somehow I couldn't see them being my partner because they had all the same skills I had. Yeah. But then I realized, wait a minute, there is a person here who is energetic, talented, resourceful, great people person, has all the skills that I don't really have. She was my secretary. So it was just me and Rhonda. She was 23 years old, no college degree, bartended at night. We were the perfect complement.

G

Guy Raz23:24

So, how did you guys convince bars and shops to take your beer?

C

C. Koch23:28

Well, I was hoping that I would get a distributor. There were five beer distributors in Boston. I went to each one of them. They all turned me down because to them it looked like a stupid idea. This was a beer that had a lot of color, had a lot of flavor, had a lot of taste. This was in the heyday of light beer. And they'd ask me, 'Okay, so what's your marketing plan?' Well, I don't really have a marketing plan. 'What's your advertising budget?' I don't have any money for advertising. 'Well, tell me about the company.' It's me and my 23-year-old ex-secretary. So, it wasn't very confidence inspiring as a business. And the only way that I could get my beer out there was I would put cold beer in my briefcase every morning. I could fit seven beers. And I had these two blue cool packs and a sleeve of cups. And I went from bar to bar cold calling, just walking, talking to the managers and trying to get to them. And I'd never sold anything in my life.

G

Guy Raz24:34

Was that hard for you?

C

C. Koch24:36

Yes. I remember to this day doing my first sales call and hit the streets in Boston. I remember I was like, 'Okay, I'm just going to call on the first bar that I come to.' And I came to a bar and I didn't know what I was doing and I had my consultant suit on. So I started talking to the guy behind the bar and he was nodding and I thought that's a good sign but he wasn't saying anything. And luckily in the back was the manager because the guy I was talking to was what's called the barback. The barback is the guy who stocks the glasses and this guy didn't speak English. So he was just nodding away. The manager in the back thinking, 'Oh my gosh, there's a guy in a suit here. He's talking to my barback. He's either IRS or he's Immigration and Naturalization Service.' And neither one of those is good. So, he rushed up and I kind of had my 30-second drill. Hi, I'm Jim Cook. I'm starting a small brewery here in Boston to make a new beer. I'm going to call it Sam Adams. And my real end point was to get them to try the beer. So, I built up to this and I said, 'And would you like to try it?' He said, 'Sure, leave me a bottle.' I said, 'Oh, it's cold. And I have some cups here. Let me pour you one.' Before he could say no. And of course, in the bar business, if you pour a beer, you can't just throw it out. You've got to drink it. So we tried it together and he said, 'Kid, I didn't think the beer was going to be this good. I'll take it.' And I was so excited and I went back and actually Rhonda was taking some time off before we started. I called her. I was so excited. 'Rhonda, we got our first customer.' And Rhonda is very practical. She says, 'How many cases did he order?' Oh, I forgot to ask him. So I had to go back the next day and apologize. And I was scared again that he would have changed his mind or anything, but he gave me a 10 case order.

G

Guy Raz26:48

So this is like 1985 and you launch and you start to get some attention and

C

C. Koch26:57

Six weeks after Sam Adams came out.

G

Guy Raz26:59

Yeah.

C

C. Koch27:00

It got picked as the best beer in America.

G

Guy Raz27:02

How did that happen?

C

C. Koch27:04

It happened out in Denver, Colorado. It was at the Great American Beer Festival, which had pretty much beers from every brewer. And they went around over two nights, tasted the beers, everybody got to vote for the best beer. And they did this countdown, 10, 9, 8. And I thought we'd finish in the top 10, but they kept getting lower and lower. And I said, 'Oh man.' And then they announced the second best beer in America is this. And I was like, well, maybe next year. And then the best beer in America is Samuel Adams Boston Lager.

G

Guy Raz27:44

And the whole company was two people, you and Rhonda.

C

C. Koch27:48

Yeah.

G

Guy Raz27:48

So, did that mean you were profitable from the start?

C

C. Koch27:52

Yes, we were profitable from the first full month because going back to what I was talking about earlier, it was the ultimate lean startup. Like I said, we had no office. We didn't even have a telephone. We did all our business from payphones. I knew where all the good payphones in Boston were. The ones that were warm in the winter, the ones where you actually had a little shelf where you could put stuff on. So, I was very clear when I started. There were only two things that we needed to do really well. We needed to make great beer consistently and we needed to work our butts off to sell it.

G

Guy Raz28:38

And at the beginning this was a regional thing, just in Boston and New England.

C

C. Koch28:43

Yeah.

G

Guy Raz28:44

So how did you get it to spread across the country?

C

C. Koch28:46

It happened very slowly. I started in Boston. I sort of grew a little bit out of Boston and went to Worcester. I was doing a lot of the selling myself. So, one bar at a time and a lot of work, a lot of shoe leather, a lot of Motel 6s. I think the first city out of New England was Washington. So, I would go down to Washington Mondays and Tuesdays. I still know a lot of the bar owners here. I was at a bar before I came over here, the Irish Times. One of my first accounts, and I was talking to Brandon, the current owner, but his dad put Sam Adams in there almost 30 years ago. So, it was very hard in the beginning getting places to carry it and probably got 95% rejection. So, I'd make 20 calls to get one account. And then we got picked as the best beer in America. We got a bunch of publicity around that. People magazine did a story which was good and bad because all that publicity boosted the sales and we ran out of beer.

G

Guy Raz30:00

You could not make it fast enough.

C

C. Koch30:02

Well, it takes 6 weeks to make Sam Adams and we weren't expecting it. So, we were out of beer for 3 weeks. We lost a bunch of accounts. Pissed people off. But it was clear that this idea was a bigger idea than I had realized. That this wasn't going to take five years to get to a million dollars. And that was your plan. You thought five years we'll get to a million bucks. That'll be great. I'll be happy. Have a nice life. Yes. Exactly. And I remember how long did it take to hit a million, by the way? 5 months. I remember sitting down at a bar with Rhonda and Rhonda, we had a business plan, but something's telling me this is bigger than we thought it was going to be. That we are climbing a mountain here. And nobody climbs a mountain to get to the middle. We're going to climb this mountain to get to the top. And it may take 30 years. It may take 50 years. And our mountain is I want Sam Adams to be the largest and most respected of the high-end beers in the United States. That's our mountain.

G

Guy Raz31:16

So I remember part of your strategy it seems was attacking those imported beers. Like I remember hearing radio ads that you would do in the '90s where you would say, declare your independence from foreign beer.

C

C. Koch31:30

The radio spots came about because there was a radio station in Boston that won a beer for a party. And so we traded him beer for airtime. They gave us airtime at 2 in the morning thinking, who would want that? To me, I thought that was great because that's when the servers and the bartenders get off their shift. That's when they're listening to the radio. So, they gave me all this airtime. And I at first was going to get radio talent to record it. And then I found out, well, you can hire that, but there's all these union rules and you have to pay residuals. You got to track it. And I was like, I can't do that. I'll do the spots myself. So, my spot was: 'When America asked for Europe's tired and poor, we didn't mean their beer. But the beer they send us is hardly their best. They send us Heineken that's outlawed in Germany because of Germany's strict beer purity law. And the Becks they send us isn't the same Becks they have in Germany. They add forbidden adjuncts to it.' That was about the company.

G

Guy Raz32:42

Were you threatened with litigation?

C

C. Koch32:44

Oh yes. But I knew I was right. Having a brewing background, I knew it. You could also tell it on analysis. So my feeling has always been if you're right about something important, push it.

G

Guy Raz33:00

So after about a decade after you launched, you decide to go public. Tell me what happened. Why did you decide to do that?

C

C. Koch33:10

Well, I thought it was time to do something to reward my investors because at that time I think a dollar invested was probably worth $400. So, I went to a couple investment banks. They describe the IPO process. But when they describe it to you, you realize that there's nothing public at all about it. It's all for their buddies at the big institutions to buy the shares and make a bunch of money. And that bothered me and I thought, I've got to find a way around that. So, I started thinking about it and I came up with this idea. So, we put coupons on the six-packs that allowed you to buy 33 shares of Boston Beer Company at $15 a share. So, it was $495. You just had to send in a check and the investment banks freaked out about it. They told me, 'You can't do it. It'll never work.' They gave me all these reasons not to. But I stood my ground. I was insistent and I knew that the investment banks are going to make money on this. So, they will let me do it if I refuse to compromise. So, I refused to compromise. Eventually they all came around and we got 130,000 people who sent in their checks. We got $65 million and that was the first time something like that had been done and other people have continued to do it, followed up on it.

G

Guy Raz34:40

So earlier you said that you want Sam Adams to be the largest and most respected of the high-end beers in the US. Do you think you've achieved that?

C

C. Koch34:50

This may sound surprising, but I still don't feel like we're there. But I got to give you some perspective. What do you think our market share in the United States is?

G

Guy Raz35:01

I don't know, 10, 15%.

C

C. Koch35:03

Yeah, that's what everybody thinks. A little over 1%.

G

Guy Raz35:07

Wow.

C

C. Koch35:08

So, the big brewers spill more beer than I make all year long. 90% of the US beer market is in the hands of two big global brewing conglomerates.

G

Guy Raz35:20

But you're not a small company. How many employees do you have now?

C

C. Koch35:24

We've got a little over 1,400 people. And that to me is also really gratifying because the average W2 compensation is $70,000. So, they are good jobs at our breweries. Those are manufacturing jobs, good paying manufacturing jobs in communities all across the United States.

G

Guy Raz35:48

So Jim, when you think about how you built the company and Sam Adams, how much of it do you think was your skills and intelligence and talent and how much of it was just luck?

C

C. Koch36:03

Guy, I'll take the luck. So in all humility, a lot of it was luck. I look back and things could have gone wrong. The brew kettle could have exploded or that first guy could have told me, 'This is a really stupid idea. Go back to your job.' A lot of things didn't go wrong that could have.

G

Guy Raz36:26

Did you or could you have ever imagined that craft beer in America would become what it has become?

C

C. Koch36:34

I never imagined the success that we've been able to have and I never imagined that there would be 4,500 other craft brewers. Many of them enjoying their own success. Today American beer has gone from the laughingstock that it was when I started to the best place in the world to be a beer drinker. And when the rest of the world, they're looking at the US going, 'I wish we could do in our country what Americans have done with beer. I wish we had the beer culture that America has.' It makes me feel good every time I have a beer.

G

Guy Raz37:22

That's Jim Cook. He has a new memoir out called Quench Your Own Thirst: Business Lessons Learned Over a Beer or Two. Cheers. Jim, by the way, says he personally tastes every batch of Sam Adams that they brew. He estimates that's 24,000 beers over the past 30 years that he was required to drink as part of his job, which sounds like not such a bad job. Hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or listen to previous episodes, you can go to howibuiltthis.npr.org. You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes. And please do us a favor and write a review. Let us know what you think. You can also write to us at [email protected]. And if you want to send a tweet, it's @howibuiltthis. Our show is produced this week by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Neva Grant, San Meshkin, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

N

Narrator38:27

When I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up, and getting on with my day. And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talked to on this show, because the best ones obsess over things their customers will never see. Tiny details, invisible improvements, relentless iteration, and not because anyone's watching, but because it makes the product better. That's what the Mobil brand does. It engineers fuel the same way founders engineer their products. Mobil Supreme Plus premium gas helps keep engines three times cleaner, which can mean better performance and improved gas mileage. It's for people who care about what's under the hood, even if they never see it. Three times cleaner compared to Mobil regular gas in port fuel injected engines. Actual results may vary. Visit mobilfuels.com for details. Whether you're starting a website from the ground up or thinking about a complete overhaul, Framer is a complete website platform that can help launch and keep on improving your site in one place. Thousands of businesses from early-stage startups to Fortune 500s are choosing to build their websites in Framer, where changes take minutes instead of days. Framer is the pro site builder for creators, teams, businesses, anyone that wants a professional site and cares enough to get every detail right. You can close the gap between AI generated ideas and a ready to launch website with Framer's agents. Agents and humans work together to make your site work. Agents bring speed and scale while you bring taste, judgment, and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built for 30% off. framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply.

G

Guy Raz40:34

Hey, thanks for staying with us because this is the part of the show where you get to tell us about the stuff you're building.

C

Chandra Arthur40:40

Hi, my name is Chandra Arthur. I'm the CEO and founder of Friendish. Friendish is an app that I designed for people who want to make new friends but don't necessarily want to hook up. They don't want like Tinder. They just kind of want to hang out. Sometimes you meet somebody and it's a little bit awkward because you're kind of like, 'So, do you like steak?' You're asking these kinds of weird questions. So, I just thought that there had to be a better way to really connect with people and find friends based on shared interests. So, with this app, you don't swipe left or right on someone's picture. You swipe on things that you're interested in. Everything from sushi to Donald Trump to tennis shoes, whatever it is. The moment there are users that have things in common with you, you'll get a notification that you have friends waiting. Friendish is already up on the app store. It's still in beta mode, so it's got a few bugs, but they're working on them. Chandra and her partner are of course trying to get funding for the app. And by the way, they're doing all of this in Orlando, Florida. So, I know that's not a place most people think, oh, tech hub, but there is actually a tech scene here and it's growing. And it's really important for us to kind of put ourselves on the map in the Southeast that there is tech interest and great ideas and innovation.

G

Guy Raz41:52

If you want to tell us what you're building, go to build.npr.org. That's build with d.npr.org. And thanks.

N

Narrator42:05

Before we go, just a quick tip to let you know about another NPR podcast you should check out. It's called Bullseye with Jesse Thorn. It's your guide to what's good in pop culture. Every week, Jesse interviews people like Cameron Esposito, Rashida Jones, Felicity Huffman, and many others about their work and their lives. You can find your favorite new TV shows, books, movies, and music, and gain new insights into the things you already love. Find Bullseye now on the NPR1 app and at npr.org/mpodcasts.

Samuel Adams: Jim Koch

About C. Koch