#wegotgoals

"When we saw the initial purchase orders come in, they were larger than the revenue from our previous year," Chomps CEO and co-founder Pete Maldonado said of getting the bootstrapped businesses' goods into Trader Joes. "We had to survive on the cash we had in the bank and we absolutely did not have the cash for this kind of production run." So, he and co-founder and COO Rashid Ali put in the work to raise just over $1m from eight separate lenders from Friday to Monday - without giving up any equity. If you've ever bootstrapped a company or borrowed money from friends who know you well enough to write a check for a six-digit figure, you absolutely know that the story of launching nationally with Trader Joe's was exciting - but was also an incredibly stressful time. "We were going from producing 10,000-20,000 pounds a month to 300,000 pounds," Ali shared. "It put pressure on everything." And after a few months, it was a huge relief to pay off their friends and family. "We actually started sleeping after that,"