We recently connected with John Steinberg and have shared our conversation below.

John, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Liina was founded after discovering the amazing potential that spirulina has to transform our world. It is simultaneously one of the most nutritionally dense and sustainable food sources on the planet. In a world where resources are declining and population is rising, we need solutions with low input and high output and algae based consumption is this future!

John, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Liina started in the summer of 2019. As founders, Cam and John were both working corporate jobs and felt they were at a dead end. The inspiration for liina came after reading a book called Finding Ultra by Rich Roll. In the book he talked about using spirulina regularly to help his performance as a tri-athlete. At the time, Cam was actively participating in ironmans and John was an ex-college basketball player so they shared a bond over nutrition and wellness. After learning about the health benefits of spirulina, they went on the hunt to find products that were available to consume it and that is when they stumbled across the problem: there were none. The only available way to consume it was the raw powder which tasted and smelled horrible. The gears started to turn on a business idea: if it is possible to make this taste and smell better the health benefits are something that everybody could benefit from. On top of that, spirulina is one of the most sustainable food sources available (it is 400x more efficient at removing CO2 from the air than a tree is!). So greater consumption would lead to healthier people and a healthier world around us.

This all sounded good on paper, but neither Cam nor John came from a CPG background so they had no idea the mountain they were about to climb. It took just about 3 years to get a product off the ground, but as of May 2022 liina opened for sales! Liina offers a great tasting spirulina powder that also has healthy ingredients like chickpea protein and MCT Oil that makes for a delicious smoothie, bowl and more :)

We are still in the early days of the company but we envision a world where algae based consumption washes over our society in many different ways. We are working on getting this one product right but the pipeline of ideas is massive and we are so excited to be at the forefront of delivering this much needed change to human consumption.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Yes, absolutely. We pivoted our entire product line almost two years into development! Initially we developed a spirulina based drink prior to the powder we have for sale now. This is why it took us almost three years to open for sales! It definitely was a challenging moment to pivot but I think the sign of a quality business owner is somebody who is not wed to their decisions when the market is telling them something different. The biggest takeaways we had from that experience are that although the drink never made it to shelves, we learned a ton and that learning experience has made us much smarter business owners.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I think the biggest lesson we have learned is that there is no “right” way to do it. There are businesses that raise a ton of money from venture capital right out of the gates and then there are businesses who boot strap it for a long time before trying to raise any money.

Our story was more of the later – Cam and I put our own money into the business for 2 years before we tried to raise money. We raised money by just chasing down every lead possible. We took a lot of beatings to our ego to get the money — lots of no’s or even worse, non responses. The biggest piece of advice I give to founders is that don’t be too proud to take small amounts of money from lots of different people. It adds up quick.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.liveliina.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liveliina/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liveliina/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/liina-inc/?viewAsMember=true
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/LiveLiina
• Other: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@liveliina