Three and a half years ago, the smallest kernel of an idea led our founders down the path to find a way to mainstream one the world's most ancient superfoods: spirulina.  Below is our story, hopefully it provides some reality to some, some clarity to others, and some inspiration to all! :)

Before the beginning of this journey, we were working in the corporate world.  Wake up, plug in, plug out, and repeat.  The founding of liina and all that it has become today was not a lightning bolt moment at all.  One of the founders, Cam, was reading a book by Rich Roll called Finding Ultra.  We then bought spirulina for the first time to try it for ourselves after learning about the benefits but soon realized that the taste was horrific.  From that moment, the smallest of an idea was born.  If we could find a way to make this incredible superfood taste good, it would make much more accessible to the broader population.  This is clearly an idea that somebody who doesn't know anything about the food industry would have (haha!).

Although we had the idea, we had absolutely no idea what to do or how to get started.  We spent about 5 months googling, researching, and just getting a grasp of a completely foreign industry to our past experiences.  We made the decision to try and create a ready to drink beverage that would make spirulina taste good (no we don't sell these!).  That entire process took us almost two years.  Yes, we spent two years (and lots of money) on a product that does not even exist now!  But that is the reality of what it means to chase your goals.  Even though the drink does not exist today, the knowledge and experience we got made us much more efficient in decision making, confident in our abilities and excited about the opportunity for what our business has become.  And that is the secret sauce here.  To anybody looking to build something from scratch in an industry you have no experience in, you need to find the most efficient and cheapest way to be wrong quickly.  Being wrong will lead to incredibly valuable knowledge that will make your next phase of development that much more put together.

We hope this brief history on liina gives a reality check to what it means to start a company.  We still have a long way to go but we always enjoy paying it forward!

Thank you for reading!