The Teen Whizkid Running A Food Company Like a Tech Startup
By: Ash Jurberg
Tags: Business, Technology, Food, Startup, Entrepreneurship

The Teen Whizkid Running A Food Company Like a Tech Startup

What were you doing when you were fifteen? Playing video games? Maybe working at McDonald's. Or perhaps dreaming of one day becoming an entrepreneur?

Ben Pasternak wasn’t dreaming of becoming an entrepreneur. He was becoming one. One year earlier, aged just fourteen, he created two iOs games that went viral and topped the app store charts. At age fifteen, he dropped out of school in Sydney, Australia, and moved to New York City to pitch VCs.

Since then, he has launched and sold several startups, become the youngest tech entrepreneur in history to receive VC funding in Silicon Valley, been wooed by Facebook, Google, and Apple, and is now running what he describes as the ‘Tesla of Chicken.’

It is an inspiring story and one worth looking at.

The 15-Year-Old impresses Silicon Valley

“Everyone I tell has the attitude that there are a million-plus apps out there, [they say] ‘what are the chances of your app working out? You’re just a 15-year-old kid’.” Ben age 15

Ben was always into technology and innovation. At 14, he was the first customer in the world to buy the iPad Air and spent his time in class developing apps. In late 2014, he launched his first app, “Impossible Rush,” a brain teaser that instantly became a success beating out the Tinder and Twitter apps on the Apple store.

After his app went viral, Ben was invited to visit the US offices of Google and Facebook, who offered him internships. He also received a scholarship to Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

On the trip, he also met filmmaker Chris Smith, who had connections in the tech industry and had followed Ben’s achievements in the press. Despite only being fifteen and living on the other side of the world, Chris convinced Ben to drop out of school and move to the USA permanently. He now needed to convince his parents.

Flogging himself and creating history

Ben’s parents, Anna and Mark, had always supported his extracurricular achievements but wanted him to finish high school — and then, preferably, go to university — before pursuing a risky business idea. Eventually, Ben convinced them to let him drop out on one condition — he needed to raise money for his new app idea independently.

The new idea was to take on eBay with his networking app called Flogg, a social networking app for young people to buy and sell things. The idea arose from seeing his friends buy and sell items on Facebook rather than using eBay. “Facebook wasn’t really doing anything to look after their user experience, which was kinda bad,” he said. This offered a great opportunity to create an app targeting the younger Facebook demographic. Ben took up his parents challenge to raise VC funding.

I guess they said that thinking that investors probably wouldn’t give money to a 15-year-old.” Ben Pasternak

To his parent's surprise, Ben managed to raise significant funds for Flogg from venture capital firms, including Binary Capital, Greylock, John Maloney (the former president of Tumblr, and Paul Bricault (an angel investor). This enabled him to move to New York. His father, Mark, wasn’t overly happy, saying in an interview at the time, “Ben Pasternak is now a high school dropout, which is not what I signed up for.”

It appeared age was no barrier — except Ben had the same challenges that many 15-year-olds did. “I left my debit card in a cab the other day, and Chase won’t give me another one without my parents’ approval,” he said in an interview with Teen Vogue. And yes, I realize Teen Vogue isn’t usually quoted in business articles, but it serves to highlight how young Ben was.

He was standing on his own two feet in attracting capital. Even though he was sixteen, he didn’t receive any financial assistance from his parents. “He did ask us once if he could have $30,000 to promote the app, and I said no. He managed to get it from somebody else, another kid. I was like: ‘Oh my god. Does this kid’s father know he’s given you $30,000?’ said Mark Pasternak.

Flogg was a huge success, and in 2016, as Ben turned 16, he was named in TIME’s 30 most influential teens, alongside others such as Kylie Jenner, Sasha and Malia Obama, and Jaden Smith.

Taking the leap from tech to food

“I was surrounded by VCs who told me the best way to have an impact on the world was to connect people. Nowadays, you can tell that that’s a really toxic thing. It’s like brain hacking.” Ben Pasternak

Ben didn't stop at Flogg; in November 2016, he created another app, Monkey, which raised $US2 million in venture capital. Described as the Chatroulette of video calls, it had 3 million users who made over 1 billion calls before it was purchased by rival app HOLLA.

It was time for a move, from tech and social media to food.

Plant-based substitutes for meat and dairy have shown explosive growth over the past few years. According to Nielsen research, U.S. sales of plant-based meats rose increased by more than 40% between March 2016 and March 2019, and the segment is predicted to become a billion-dollar market.

Recognizing this, Ben wanted to bring his tech nous to this growing industry. He secured $7 million in capital from an impressive range of investors, including MTV founder and iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman, Casper founder and COO Neil Parikh, and former Tumblr president John Maloney. Importantly he also secured investment from McCain foods which brought the food production expertise to the business. And so NUGGS was born.

Unlike other plant-based or vegan brands, NUGGS aimed to make the product ‘cool.’ They wanted to avoid using the words vegan or plant-based, which Ben believed put potential customers off. Instead, he focuses on the terms ‘clean meat.’

The “Tesla of Chicken”

“I think of us as a nutrition company that operates with a software framework. This leads to two outcomes 1) we are always iterating; 2) we optimize for scalability, which is important because we need billions of people to consume our product for it to have a meaningful impact.” Ben Pasternak

Ben is nothing if not innovative, and so he is taking his tech knowledge and applying it to a new industry. He launched NUGGS as if it was a software company. In the same way the apps are updated with bug fixes, NUGGS takes consumer feedback and tweaks product offerings. Similar to software updates, each version of NUGGS comes with release notes. He even calls their customers “NUGGS users.”

“I think when we’re on version 9.6, people will flex that they had, you know, 1.3. Weird flex, but okay.”

They really push the UX and tech synergies at every customer contact point. Even the packaging for the product brings to mind tech. On one side of the packaging, it reads — Welcome to the Simulation. On the reverse, it says Download Complete- To complete your installation, put your NUGGS in the freezer.

In 2020, NUGGS raised an additional $4.1 million from investors such as Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, former Whole Foods chief executive Walter Robb and model Jasmine Tookes. The company rebranded as Simulate to aid expansion as it looked to move beyond chicken nuggets and into other products in the ultra-competitive category.