They Started a Side Hustle in Their College Dorm and Bootstrapped Their Way to Millions — And Keep Growing: 'It's Always Been About Being Scrappy'

Entrepreneur Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm partnered with Entrepreneur Media that is dedicated to backing passionate and innovative founders as early as day one. In this series, we are profiling the amazing entrepreneurs Entrepreneur Ventures is working with to share their insights on building and growing a thriving business.

Morgan Lerner, co-founder of Gonanas, spoke to Entrepreneur about the launch and growth of her company, and its innovative approach to allergy-friendly, healthier baking that doesn't skimp on yumminess.

Please give us the elevator pitch of Gonanas.Gonanas is a banana bread mix that is made with better-for-you ingredients, like oat flour instead of enriched wheat flour, and it is free of the top allergens. All you do at home is add bananas and whichever oil you have in your pantry — and that's it. It's easy and it is made with better ingredients, but it is not sugar-free — indulgence is the core of our product. We wanted to make something accessible for everyone to enjoy.

How did you start the business?My business partner, Annie Slabotsky, and I started this company in 2019 when we were in the college dorms at the University of Michigan. We wanted a better-for-you baked good because our only options for baked goods on the way to class were Starbucks pastries. And those are delicious, but they aren't made with the best ingredients and didn't make us feel our best.

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I grew up eating banana bread, and so we used a family recipe with a healthier twist on it. Annie's family lives 45 minutes away from campus, so that's where we baked. I totally burned the first-ever loaf, but we still ate the inside and were like, "Oh, we gotta sell this."

Can you talk about your initial growth? When this became clear it was more than a side hustle?After we'd graduated, the banana bread was blowing up and in 2021, we pivoted to launch it as an at-home mix, and that is all that we do today. Going from a ready-made product with a five-day shelf life to a mix with a two-year shelf life had a huge impact on our scalability potential. We bootstrapped our way to a million dollars — it really just started to take off. And then we entered our first national retailers in 2023. It was Nordstrom Rack, which might seem very random and non-traditional. They were looking for a banana bread mix during COVID, and they found us on social media when we just had a few thousand followers and a website. We went on the news to talk about it and had a record sales day with our mixes. We are now in 5,000 retailers across the country with tons of different flavors. We've made 50 flavors to date.

Credit: Gonanas

Can you share any hard-earned lessons you've learned on this journey?Oh my God, there have been so many bumps in the road. I think fundraising for the first time and learning that whole process was a challenge, but the biggest thing has been learning how to hire right for our company and define our company values. We had to go through a lot of trial and error, having never managed people. We used to focus a lot more on the resumes and matching them to a job description. But you learn that is just a blip in time because we're growing quickly and changing and so do the roles. Now we hire for things like humility and people skills. We want people who are proactive and good with change.

What is your top advice for someone looking to launch their own business? Build a network. We didn't know a lot going in and you can only go so far with your immediate team's knowledge. Building that network of people you trust with a variety of opinions and founders who've done this time and time again has been invaluable. And specific to food companies, look at what's on the market. Make sure you're really filling a white space because it is such a crowded space.

How did you come up with the name?We wanted "Go Bananas," but we couldn't trademark that, so we had to come up with a new name. We ended up just combining them together, which was almost accidental. For our original branding, we paid a hundred bucks to a design club on campus at the University of Michigan. We are just now embarking on a full rebrand, enlisting an actual agency. But it's always been about being scrappy.

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When did you start looking for funding and what was that process like? We emailed every single person we knew. I think each time we've raised, there's been between 50-100 emails at a bare minimum. It's really a volume game. But I think the best part about fundraising has been refining our story, our pitch, our why. When we go into a room, we come with guns blazing and lots of energy.

What's your process for new product creation and how many bananas do you go through in a month?I have no idea how many bananas! All the testing happens in my kitchen, so it's kind of back to the basics when it comes to our innovation. We're just baking at home and when we're happy with a new recipe, we pass it to our manufacturer. We're now in talks for potential licensing with some fun brands to create new flavors for them, so we're very excited about what those deals can bring to the business.

You've had so much success, do you feel like you are still in startup mode? I always feel like we're growing, but just getting started at the same time. In terms of our long-term vision, we want to see GoNanas become a household brand. We want to be the number one baking brand, the modern-day Betty Crocker, changing the way people bake.

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