BetaBlox veteran Nathan Corn flexes ‘bootstrapped’ label with $12M in annual revenue

Nathan Corn began with hustle and an $8,000 nest egg, determined to make it as an entrepreneur who tapped Kansas City resources but wasn’t limited by geography, he said. 

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What is FlexPro?

Nathan Corn’s elevator pitch: “Imagine you owned a restaurant where anybody in the country could come in and order anytime, day or night. And not only that, these customers are coming in to order 15 times a week, Monday through Friday, breakfast, lunch and dinner, week after week after week.”

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“[I said,] ‘If I can take the next 10 years of my life and just give everything to growing a company, then that’s it. I’m going to make it happen,’” said Corn, founder of Kansas City-built FlexPro, a health-focused meal delivery service with national reach. 

Eight years later, FlexPro tallies $12 million in annual sales, having grown 400 percent in the past year, the founder told a crowd gathered Monday for BetaBlox’s 2020 Kansas City demo day. Corn was featured during a “Where are they now?” segment that highlighted the BetaBlox incubator alum’s company origins and journey.

Entrepreneurship is a sport, he explained, encouraging early stage founders to sharpen their minds and bodies to crush their competition and goals.

“You’ve got to start building yourself from the ground up. It’s called bootstrapping and it’s a real thing,” Corn said, noting many founders look around for resources and, if they can find them, sideline themselves rather than pushing forward. “[Those people] never even play the game. They never even try. To me, bootstrapping instead is a mindset. It’s a matter of perspective. It’s not ‘Can I do this?’ It’s ‘I already know I’m going to.’”

Nathan Corn, FlexPro; Beta Blox 2020 Demo Day

Hunger for national reach

Kansas City is a great place for Corn to build his company, he said, but it isn’t necessarily his target audience.

“I think you could make an argument that compared to other cities, [health isn’t] defined very well in Kansas City. But that’s the beauty of our business. We’re a nationwide company,” Corn said in support of the startup’s ability to cut through barriers and provide healthier alternatives to customers no matter their location.

“We now serve tens of thousands of meals every single week,” he added. “We brought dozens of jobs and opportunity to the Kansas City community alone.”

Getting the company to such a point wasn’t easy, Corn said. He spent plenty of time hustling, delivering meals in between his 9-to-5 job and drilling down on goals to take the company national, he recalled. 

“I couldn’t support myself. [But] we always shipped nationwide, because at the end of the day that was the whole concept of our business,” Corn said. “Customers come into [what’s like] our restaurant for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every single day. If you had a customer like that at a restaurant … that’s a pretty good customer.” 

Corn’s ambitious reverse approach to scaling might be viewed as risky by other entrepreneurs, he noted. 

“A lot of my competitors that are local, they would always say, their plan is to start local, dominate the local market and then expand … If I would have done it their way, then I would still be fighting the local market,” he said, adding the payoff has been well worth the risk for FlexPro, which now includes a team of 55 employees. 

Nathan Corn, FlexPro; Beta Blox 2020 Demo Day

Pivoting to a flexible lifestyle strategy

But offering healthy meals to a national customer base isn’t what built brand loyalty for FlexPro, Corn explained. It was in the power of pivoting the company’s position within the health market that scored them such a strong following. 

“I don’t need to preach to people how to lose 20 pounds. There’s thousands of other people that are blowing that up out there.They don’t really need my help,” he said of Flexpro’s overall strategy. 

“I’m making that assumption [they want to lose weight]. I just need to make sure my food fits with their lifestyle, which means No. 1, it’s got to be affordable,” Corn added. “If you’re going to order from me every week, I can’t be charging $20 a meal.”

Meeting customers where there are — and in a way that doesn’t strain their wallet — allows them to stay with a plan longer than they might if it was more expensive and in turn boosts success rates, he said. 

As new meal delivery services continue to emerge, the FlexPro line of thinking allows the company to avoid panic. In Corn’s mind, there are no competitors. 

“I know they’re probably spending marketing dollars, that yes, does promote their company. But it also brings awareness to the industry and how new it is. If a customer doesn’t work out there, but they’re sold on the concept of meal delivery, they’re going to be looking for other people. And that’s where I come in. That’s where I try to show up,” he said.

“If you look at the big picture of the industry, we’ve barely scratched the surface,” Corn added. “Our market is so big. Our business is so scalable. But what’s 5,000 customers in a market of millions? It’s peanuts. It’s nothing. Which means I still have work to do.”

Check out photos below from BetaBlox’s 2020 demo day Monday evening at the GRID Collaborative Workspace.

Weston Bergmann, BetaBlox; Beta Blox 2020 Demo Day

Monday’s event showcased a dozen BetaBlox class members, including: 

• Flexy, Kansas City (Mallory Jansen and Aja James) — Fitness staffing agency;
• LockedUp, Kansas City (Eric Ulleberg) — Breathalyzer that literally locks up your car keys;
• FlipperForce, Kansas City (Dave Robertson) — House flipping and project management software;
• Fantastic55, Kansas City (Ann O’Meara) — Media company for empowering an aging community;
• Cherry Marketing, Kansas City (Jenni Kulzer) — Marketing agency;
• Baby D’s Sting, Tulsa (Dillon Hargrave) — Hot sauce manufacturing and distribution;
• Tulsa Birth Center, Tulsa (Sarah Foster) — Modern network of midwives;
• Add Multiply Sports, Tulsa (Corey Else) — Sports performance technology;
• Everwild, Kansas City (Sarah Yaeger) — On-demand and subscription-based floral company;
• KC Hemp Co, Kansas City (Kyle and Heather Steppe) — Organic CBD manufacturing;
• River Watch Beef, Kansas City (Chris Kovac) — Grass-fed subscription-based beef; and
• Mindsport, Kansas City (Ryan Stock) — Athlete meditation app.

What is BetaBlox?

BetaBlox is an exclusive school for startups. Every year, its team picks a core group of companies and then puts them through a rigorous curriculum of classes, one-on-one consultation, and mentorship designed to give them a higher likelihood of survival.

“’What’s the catch? This sounds a little too good to be true,'” said Weston Bergmann, founder and lead investor at BetaBlox. “We’re not free. ‘Gasp! How dare an economic developer say something like that?’”

“Our retort to that is that good startup advice is similar to the free legal advice,” he continued.

BetaBlox takes 5 percent equity in every company it serves, Bergmann explained, noting BetaBlox’s top 10 alumni companies alone are expected to do more than $100 million in revenue in 2020.