Aug 15, 2026 · 57 min · 14 segments
Kiki Couchman left private equity to build Sourmilk - a gut-health yogurt brand that sold 8,000 yogurts hand-to-hand before landing on a single retail shelf. We break down how Sourmilk built demand…
Kiki CouchmanGuest
Monish SabnaniHost
And so how do you, because obviously it's a very numbers driven job, you yourself, you're evaluating businesses risk.
How do you evaluate the risk of, you know, what's the stat like nine out of 10 startups fail and you're quitting this like, I mean, obviously like Stanford, incredible school, incredibly expensive education.
You're taking this huge leap of faith, nine out of 10 startups fail, but you did it anyways.
love that obviously like we're in the business of entrepreneurship but why yeah and how did you get
and honestly since we've been doing this i mean you'll be like probably like our 11th or 12th episode the amount of young founders that have hit me up to like talk about their idea or startup like our audience is genuinely first-time founders and so i'm getting at the like how do you justify that risk tolerance i
get it i do like and ask me anything on my socials every monday so i'm doing it today as we speak it's like the number one question i get is how did you get comfortable with this or like i'm thinking about this how did you know it was the right thing and like the answer is like obviously you have no idea it's the right thing people like how do you know you wouldn't fail i'm like guys we haven't even hit the point that we could fail like we're still so early right but like you could fail there's a failure point at every single growth
point in your company so like that's just table stakes there were like a few main criteria i thought about the first was my time is incredibly valuable and i think there's two components to this both how you spend your time so for me it was you know i want to be constantly learning i want to be firing on all cylinders I want to be doing something that I deeply care about and I want to be doing it with people around me that I want to learn from and who I want to become more like.
And it just became clear to me at the end of my tenure at my previous firm that I was not having the impact that I wanted, that I was pretty soon like, yes, I had learned a lot.
And when I looked around and looked up, even though I loved the people I worked with, they were not the people that I wanted to become.
Like, is this the person that I'm trying to become? Am I trying to become a private equity girly for the rest of my life? No.
And so how do you, because obviously it's a very numbers driven job, you yourself, you're evaluating businesses risk.
How do you evaluate the risk of, you know, what's the stat like nine out of 10 startups fail and you're quitting this like, I mean, obviously like Stanford, incredible school, incredibly expensive education.
You're taking this huge leap of faith, nine out of 10 startups fail, but you did it anyways.
love that obviously like we're in the business of entrepreneurship but why yeah and how did you get
and honestly since we've been doing this i mean you'll be like probably like our 11th or 12th episode the amount of young founders that have hit me up to like talk about their idea or startup like our audience is genuinely first-time founders and so i'm getting at the like how do you justify that risk tolerance i
get it i do like and ask me anything on my socials every monday so i'm doing it today as we speak it's like the number one question i get is how did you get comfortable with this or like i'm thinking about this how did you know it was the right thing and like the answer is like obviously you have no idea it's the right thing people like how do you know you wouldn't fail i'm like guys we haven't even hit the point that we could fail like we're still so early right but like you could fail there's a failure point at every single growth
point in your company so like that's just table stakes there were like a few main criteria i thought about the first was my time is incredibly valuable and i think there's two components to this both how you spend your time so for me it was you know i want to be constantly learning i want to be firing on all cylinders I want to be doing something that I deeply care about and I want to be doing it with people around me that I want to learn from and who I want to become more like.
And it just became clear to me at the end of my tenure at my previous firm that I was not having the impact that I wanted, that I was pretty soon like, yes, I had learned a lot.
And when I looked around and looked up, even though I loved the people I worked with, they were not the people that I wanted to become.
Like, is this the person that I'm trying to become? Am I trying to become a private equity girly for the rest of my life? No.
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