Andrew Blake grew up on Blake Farms, a third generation apple orchard outside Detroit. He came back from college with one good idea after a few bad ones and built a business plan around hard cider.

The family business ran on a brutal cycle. Eighty percent of the revenue came in two months. They'd balloon up to 500 seasonal employees and then spend the rest of the year bleeding cash. It made every decision feel like a gamble.

He pitched his dad and uncle on hard cider right out of college. That bet became Blake's Beverage Co, now the second largest hard cider company in America, with plants in New York, Michigan, and Oregon.

Along the way he learned what it costs to scale on cheap debt, what it takes to bring outside executives into a business your family has always run, and how to know when you're the founder and not the operator.

→ Turning a college recipe into a national cider company
→ Bringing outside executives into a three-generation family business
→ Why he calls himself a founder, not an operator
→ Lessons from scaling on cheap capital and three new plants
→ Building an AI underwriting startup from scratch
→ Staying aligned with his wife while running multiple businesses

He's founded or co-founded six companies and he still says the hardest part was figuring out what he's actually good at, then getting out of the way and letting other people do the rest.

Thanks to Andrew for making the time to sit down and be this honest about it.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:48 Growing up on Blake Farms
2:36 The bad ideas before the good one
5:23 Fixing an 80% seasonal business
7:53 Making memories is always in season
9:41 Fifteen years of professionalizing the family business
16:07 Founder vs. operator, and staying grounded
22:15 Marriage, kids, and staying aligned
25:14 Building Alloan, the AI underwriting startup
31:05 Cheap capital, three plants, and what it actually takes

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