Unit Economics

The Unit Economics Podcast
  • 5.0 (2)
  • BUSINESS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

The real mechanics behind your favorite brands. Conversations with founders on how products are designed, manufactured, priced, and distributed — with a focus on the decisions, economics, and tradeoffs behind the scenes. Hosted by Josh Stabinsky. 🎧 New episodes every week. 🌐 More at uepod.com Want to get in touch? hello@uepod.com

  1. [Lottie's Meats] Chelsey & Cassie Maschhoff

    3D AGO

    [Lottie's Meats] Chelsey & Cassie Maschhoff

    On today’s episode, I sit down with Chelsey & Cassie Maschhoff, the co-founders of Lottie’s Meats, a company built around a simple idea: making sausage feel like a product worth rethinking. In our conversation, we talk about what they saw when they looked at the category early on, why so much of the sausage aisle felt visually dated and operationally stagnant, and how they set out to build something more modern around whole-muscle cuts, a cleaner ingredient list, and a clearer point of view on quality. We get into the early product development process, what it looked like to take recipes that worked in a kitchen and translate them into real production runs, and why the path to market ended up being more complicated than just making a better product. We also spend a lot of time on the actual mechanics of the business: the realities of working with multiple USDA facilities, why meat production creates constraints that a lot of other CPG brands never have to think about, what they learned very quickly about the economics of frozen DTC, and how retail, food service, farmers markets, and pop-ups each served a different purpose in helping them get the company off the ground. This is a conversation about category positioning, supply chain complexity, and what it really takes to build a premium product in a part of the store where consumers are used to thinking mostly about price. I learned so much from my conversation with Chelsey and Cassie, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

    48 min
  2. [Byte'm] Jack Davis & Jacob Tubis

    5D AGO

    [Byte'm] Jack Davis & Jacob Tubis

    On today’s episode, I sit down with Jack Davis and Jacob Tubis, co-founders of Byte'm, a company built around a simple idea: bringing a true bakery-quality brownie to the grocery store in a bite-sized form factor. Jack and Jacob met as freshmen at American University and bonded over a shared interest in food and business. The idea for Byte'm started with Jack’s mom’s brownie recipe and an observation that, despite how beloved brownies are, the versions you find in most grocery stores rarely resemble the homemade ones people actually love. In this conversation, we talk about how they translated a home recipe into a product that could be manufactured at scale, what it was like to source early feedback from the market, and what it looked like to go from baking small batches in a kitchen to working with food scientists and co-packers. We also discuss the technical challenges of producing a brownie with a crispy edge and chewy center in a commercial production environment, how ingredient choices impact manufacturing costs and unit economics, the critical role packaging plays in communicating quality on a crowded shelf, and what it takes to start building retail distribution from scratch. I learned so much during my conversation with Jack and Jacob and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

    47 min
  3. [Armada] Seamus Meniahane

    MAR 12

    [Armada] Seamus Meniahane

    On today’s episode, I sit down with Seamus Menihane, Co-Founder and CEO of Armada, an entertainment merchandise company that works with artists and brands to design, manufacture, and distribute merchandise across e-commerce and live touring. Seamus started his career as a touring musician, playing drums in bands for years before becoming interested in the business mechanics behind the scenes, particularly the role merchandise plays in how working artists actually make money. In 2017 he launched Downright Merchandise, originally as a scrappy operation helping bands run their own online stores and sell tour inventory directly to fans. Last year, the company merged with Overcast Merchandise to form Armada. In this conversation, we talk about how the modern band merch ecosystem actually works, from product design and sourcing blank garments to screen printing, fulfillment, and the logistics of getting inventory onto a tour with almost no margin for error. We also explore Armada’s evolution as a company, including lessons from attempting to vertically integrate manufacturing, how the company thinks about financing larger artist deals, and why Seamus believes customer data will become increasingly important for artists over time. I learned so much from my conversation with Seamus and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

    39 min
  4. Lil Tuffy

    MAR 10

    Lil Tuffy

    On today's episode, I sit down with Lil Tuffy, a San Francisco-based poster artist who’s spent more than two decades designing and hand-printing concert posters. Tuffy's path into poster design started almost accidentally. After leaving the tech world and getting involved in the San Francisco music scene, he began making posters for shows around the city. What started as creating unsolicited posters for small venues gradually evolved into a full-time practice, eventually leading to work with legendary artists like Neil Young, Willie Nelson, and many others. In this conversation, we talk about how the economics of concert posters actually work — from setting print runs to how revenue from poster sales is split between artists, bands, and venues. We also get into the logistics of screen printing, the timeline from design to finished poster, and how the role of concert posters has evolved from promotional material to collectible merchandise. We also talk about his work with the Poster Institute, a nonprofit organization that supports poster artists around the world through events, exhibitions, and community building within the gig poster scene. I've been collecting concert posters for over 15 years, and Tuffy is genuinely one of my favorite artists. I learned so much during our conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

    36 min
  5. [Muttville] Sherri Franklin

    MAR 5

    [Muttville] Sherri Franklin

    On today’s episode, I sit down with Sherri Franklin, founder of Muttville, a senior dog rescue based in San Francisco that has helped find homes for more than 14,000 older dogs. Sherri didn’t start her career in animal welfare. She was a hairstylist who had previously owned several salons in San Francisco when she began volunteering at a local shelter in the 90s. After watching a dog she loved get euthanized simply because she was older and overlooked by adopters, Sherri decided she was going to build something that didn’t really exist at the time: a rescue focused entirely on senior dogs. What started with Sherri fostering dogs in her own home and placing them with her hair clients eventually grew into a nonprofit with a full foster network, a dedicated adoption center, and a model that now rescues more than a thousand dogs every year. In this conversation, we talk about what those earliest days actually looked like operationally, from paying vet bills out of pocket to learning how to structure a nonprofit and recruit a board. We also get into the mechanics of running a large scale rescue today, including how foster networks function as the engine of the organization, how they think about adoption versus sanctuary care, and what it takes to consistently place senior dogs that most shelters have historically struggled to move. This was a deeply personal conversation for me, as Muttville is truly my favorite nonprofit in the world. The rate at which they’re placing dogs is absolutely amazing, and I’m just so honored to be able to share the work they’re doing, and help get the word out in any way that I can. I learned so much from Sherri during our conversation and I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.

    43 min
  6. Kelly Bennett

    MAR 3

    Kelly Bennett

    On today’s episode, I sit down with Kelly Bennett, brand strategist and host of the Emerging Brands Podcast. Kelly has spent the last 16 years working alongside founders in the food and beverage space, helping them turn early product ideas into shelf-ready brands. Her focus is pre-launch brand strategy, which means she’s often involved before a founder has finalized a name, filed a trademark, or chosen a manufacturer. Her job is to build the underlying framework that everything else sits on top of. In this conversation, we talk about what brand strategy actually is beyond logos and packaging, how to think about retail positioning and sales channels before you ever approach a buyer, and why clarity around target customer and use case should really come before design. We also get into pre-launch demand creation, building in public without looking too DIY, and the specific signals she watches once a product hits the market to evaluate the efficacy of the strategies she’s helping implement. We also explore the value the media arm of her business is driving, how her podcast functions as both a network engine and a client acquisition funnel, and how she’s thinking about evolving from just advising to investing in emerging CPG brands as well. I learned so much during my conversation with Kelly and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

    46 min
  7. [Pickle] Brian McMahon

    FEB 26

    [Pickle] Brian McMahon

    On today’s episode, I sit down with Brian McMahon, co-founder and CEO of Pickle, a peer-to-peer rental marketplace built around the idea that the things sitting in our closets can function as income-generating assets. Brian started his career in finance before teaching himself how to code and launching what was originally a social polling app designed to help people make purchase decisions. But after noticing that users were constantly recommending items they already owned, he and his co-founder (Julia) pivoted toward a marketplace model focused on renting, lending, and reselling personal items. In this conversation, we talk about what that pivot looked like in practice, the scrappy early days of photographing inventory in friends’ apartments, personally completing thousands of deliveries across New York, and how an asset-light model shapes everything from supply dynamics to operational complexity. We also break down how Pickle generated its first network effects, lessons from fundraising, and how Pickle is thinking about expanding into new categories as it works toward unlocking underutilized consumer assets at scale. I learned so much from Brian and I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

    43 min
  8. [Hiya] Adam Gillman

    FEB 24

    [Hiya] Adam Gillman

    On today’s episode, I sit down with Adam Gillman, Co-Founder of Hiya, a direct-to-consumer children’s vitamin and wellness company built around trust, transparency, and customer education as core operating principles. We talk through how Hiya approached product development without prior experience in the health and wellness space, including how they thought about formulation tradeoffs, manufacturing partners, and palatability versus nutrition. Adam walks through why the company committed to a 100% subscription model from day one, how retention and customer feedback shaped product iteration over time, and how pricing was set to signal quality while remaining broadly accessible. We also get into the operational realities of scaling a subscription business: managing cash flow while offering upfront discounts, navigating rising costs during COVID, financing growth while bootstrapped, and deciding when it made sense to expand the product line. Finally, Adam shares how scaling constraints and operational gaps ultimately led Hiya to pursue an acquisition, and what they looked for in a partner. I can’t believe how much I learned in just 35 minutes with Adam, and as always, I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

    37 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

The real mechanics behind your favorite brands. Conversations with founders on how products are designed, manufactured, priced, and distributed — with a focus on the decisions, economics, and tradeoffs behind the scenes. Hosted by Josh Stabinsky. 🎧 New episodes every week. 🌐 More at uepod.com Want to get in touch? hello@uepod.com

Information

  • Creator
    The Unit Economics Podcast
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    29
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © The Unit Economics Podcast
  • Show Website
    Unit Economics

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