Blue Bottle Coffee

Episode 46 covers Nestle's acquisition of Blue Bottle — not really a tech company, but one the tech audience cares deeply about ("shockwaves have gone through Silicon Valley"; the joking question of where VCs and entrepreneurs will congregate now — Phil's, the "fourth wave of coffee"). This is the show's second coffee episode after Starbucks, fitting for a Seattle-dominant podcast. The waves framework from the Starbucks episode: First Wave Folgers/Maxwell House brew-at-home; Second Wave Starbucks — an experience, a destination; Third Wave — the reaction, all about the quality of the coffee, "the origin of hipsterdom" ("Starbucks sucks. It's super corporate. We're going to focus on the artisanal quality") and the burnt, dark, factory-standard product. Third Wave players: Counter Culture (Durham), Stumptown (Portland, now owned by Peet's — as is Intelligentsia, interestingly), Caffé Vita in Seattle — and arguably nobody focused more on the drink itself than Blue Bottle.

Founder James Freeman — "there are no normal people that start enormous companies." Unlike most founders covered, not an engineer, not connected to tech except for living in the Bay Area: a freelance classical clarinetist into his mid-30s, until he realized he'd never be the best clarinetist — and he had a side hobby of roasting coffee beans in his home oven (much smoke; his then-wife was not a fan). Friends loved the beans; "maybe I'll turn to coffee for my life." Early 2000s: quits music, starts Blue Bottle in Oakland, originally delivering fresh-roasted beans to people's houses — "kind of sounds like an on-demand startup" (and hilariously, the company later acquired Tonx to get back into coffee delivery). Like Starbucks, both started beans-only, then discovered the retail coffee experience; and like Howard Schultz at Starbucks, Freeman stumbled into retail rather than planning it.