Hitched to Someone Else's Dream

Meg Cadoux Hirshberg

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Or perhaps the worst moment occurred the following spring. A large dairy had agreed to partner with us and retire our debt -- Gary had worked with the company for months on a detailed agreement. I was excited and relieved on that day in April when he and Samuel drove to Vermont to sign the deal; in our recently completed fiscal year, we had burned through $10,000 in cash each week and lost $500,000 on sales of about $2.3 million.

The meeting did not go as planned. The dairy executives and their lawyers knew we were strapped and in trouble, and had changed the terms of the deal. They basically offered to run off with our company for a song. Defeated but unwilling to sign on the dotted line, Gary and Samuel got back into their car for the long, dreary trip home -- during a freak spring blizzard, no less. But as they drove, the two men quickly emerged from their funk. Turning on the car's dome light, they came up with a bold plan to raise money to build a bona fide manufacturing plant.

When they arrived back in New Hampshire late that night, I excitedly greeted Gary at the door, eager to get confirmation of the newly minted deal. "Oh, no, that didn't work out," he said, "but for just over half a million, we can build our own plant!"

I wept that night, pressing the damp pillowcase against my nose and mouth to filter out the stench from the yogurt waste still souring in our backyard.

The Two People I Love Most Are Nuts

Gary was driven, in equal measure, by lofty vision, desperate hope, and abject fear. He dreamed of each little cup of yogurt serving as a billboard to educate consumers about the benefits of organic agriculture and the power of voting with our food dollar for a saner world. Starting with Gary's mother, Louise, many friends and family members bought into that dream. They invested in our young business, and Gary toiled around the clock to make sure their money wasn't lost -- a possibility that I found deeply chilling.

We joke about it now, but it's true: On several occasions, he tiptoed into another room on a Wednesday night, before Thursday payroll, to call my mother, Doris (an early and major investor), to beg for just one more loan, one more investment -- while I, wise to his midnight mission, dialed her on another line and implored her to say no. In my view, this was money she could ill afford to lose. I was also haunted by the specter of possible changes, profound and subtle, that might occur in my relationship with my mother and my three brothers should Stonyfield fail: How would my mother's financial loss affect her retirement? Would my brothers blame me for jeopardizing her future? Would they blame Gary?

It's good money after bad, I'd say to my mother. The more yogurt we make, the more money we lose, I'd add, sensibly. "Meggie," she would reply, "I'm a big girl, and it's gonna work." They're both insane, I'd think. The two people I love the most are nuts.

I shared Gary's vision, but not his method or his madness. I admired -- and still do -- his passion and determination. I wanted to believe that we could expand this business and make a difference in the world, but over time my confidence faded. The level of risk that Gary and I (along with our partners) had assumed was way beyond my comfort level. We had come perilously close to losing the business dozens of times. Frankly, there were many times I wanted to lose the business -- anything to be put out of our misery.

Gary and I were bound by love and, eventually, three children. We worked all the time, had few friends locally, and were jealous of the saner lives that our old college friends seemed to enjoy. At times it seemed Gary was working as hard as he possibly could in order to lose as much money as he possibly could. We had no savings and lived paycheck to paycheck, but our personal overhead was low; in our remote neck of the woods, there wasn't much to do or buy. Each night, I'd hate to ask Gary about his day, which was always dreadful, and yet my life and those of our children depended on the success of his unlikely dream.

I was no stranger to hard work. At my old job in New Jersey, I had regularly shoveled manure. I didn't expect the white picket fence. But I had to wonder: Wasn't there a less harrowing way to save the world?

Stumbling Toward Breakeven

From 1983 to 1991, Gary raised more than $5 million for the business, all from individual investors, none from venture capitalists. He raised $1 million in 1989 alone to build the plant that he and Samuel had cost out on that car trip the previous spring. We eventually had 297 shareholders, even though we had never closed a quarter with a profit. We didn't see our first profits until 1992, when Stonyfield's revenue reached $10.2 million. You can do the math -- it took us nine years to break even. Gary and Samuel's gamble on the promised efficiency of the new facility, located in Londonderry, New Hampshire, was, in fact, the turning point.

Frankly, I was amazed that Gary was able to persuade so many investors to write a check, given the bleak history of our little company. I'm certainly grateful that none of them ever asked me about my own confidence level in our enterprise. My sense is that they were investing in Gary -- his smarts, his persistence, his commitment, and his confidence. They were also persuaded by the quality of our product (though my mother, Doris, the third-largest shareholder at the time, didn't even eat the stuff).

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