ABSTRACT
First Flavor was founded to disrupt the food industry with an edible strip and product taste sampler. In the early days of First Flavor, the founders spent a lot of money creating a logo and developing marketing collateral, but they did not invest enough money in market research to identify their target market. It took them nearly five years and a couple million dollars to figure out that they should have focused on companies that sampled their products and introduced First Flavor as an accurate and innovative way to do that. Back in January 1964, Nike was a young startup known as Blue Ribbon Sports, the brainchild of University of Oregon track athlete Philip Knight and his coach Bill Bowerman. In 2019, Nike was valued at roughly $34.4 billion and their marketing budget was nearly $3.8 billion. A key component of Lean Marketing is getting clear on the startup’s value proposition.
