Barrel Backers is a company bootstrapped by veterans revolutionizing the way you buy craft brews.
Adam Rivette is a US Army veteran who used his GI Bill to get an MBA while studying internationally. He went into high level consulting but soon found that he wanted to build his own businesses.
Today, he's one of the founders of Barrel Backers, a company
looking to disrupt the way you buy beer. In this interview we talk about using the GI Bill, consulting careers for veterans, entrepreneurship, and of course, how to order beer through his
site.
Insights From The Interview
- How to use the GI Bill for international schools.
- Why you need financial savings to fall back on, even with the GI bill, because you might not see the money immediately.
- “If you’re going to succeed on a massive scale, your’e going to have to abide by some of the rules but also go around them or rewrite them.”
- The skills that go into consulting, and why veterans are well suited for it.
- How consulting works — you’re the problem solver and the scapegoat.
- Pros and cons of consulting as a line of work.
- Why Adam held back on launching his first business.
- Use your career path to educate yourself.
- The problems you need to solve a to start a beer startup. It's not the technology!
- “What socialist country are we in?” -- On why it’s hard to ship beer throughout the country.
- The sacrifices his brother and him have made to build their business.
- “Life is long. Don’t be in a rush.”
Resources
- Barrel Backers - find a beer and order it!
- Product Hunt - Adam uses this to get product and business ideas.
Books to check out:
- The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries
- Traction, by Gino Wickman
- Zero To One, by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel
- Art of the Start, by Guy Kawasaki