The Mini Katana story

Isaac Medeiros is a rare breed of founder. He has the special ability to take a constraint that would kill most other companies and turn it into his greatest asset.

When he founded his last company, Mini Katana LLC, in 2021 he faced a massive roadblock: Isaac wasn’t allowed to advertise the product on Facebook or Instagram.

This substantially limited his ability to reach new customers. So, he took a completely different approach: Organic marketing via short-form viral videos.

Over the course of only a few years, Isaac and his team racked up 16M+ subscribers and over 10B+ views on YouTube. And, by the end of this year, their main Youtube channel is projected to reach more than 20M subscribers!

Mini Katana became a runaway success.

But, what makes Isaac a truly great founder is this: Once he had dominated one market, he had the foresight to analyze his own growth playbook and apply it to an entirely new, much larger market.

Like he explains in this Tweet, he found another, much larger market that:

1. Has content-marketing fit
2. Has an enormous TAM
3. Is a personal passion of Isaac’s
4. Has a heavy manufacturing moat
5. Product has heavy tailwinds

I was so impressed by Isaac’s success in his last company that I wrote one of the first checks into his next company, Kanpai Foods — which is building the next great candy brand using—you guessed it—organic content to drive viral distribution and sales.

Will lightning strike twice?

I‘m betting a lot of money that the answer is “Yes.”