Tony Horner: Fermented Felon Kombucha

I sat down with Tony Horner, the founder of Fermented Felon Kombucha, for an interview. The original idea was to record the interview on camera. 

Then the project changed just like my home renovation projects – it got bigger. A video interview turned into a three camera quasi experimental episode of a “to be named” later podcast after I roped in seasoned podcast veteran and fellow Mug.News contributor Maria Corpuz into the mix. We rented a studio from the fantastic folks at Webberized, Margi and Richard. And then – we just talked for about an hour. No scripts, no real idea of what the end product should look like except I knew it wasn’t going to be a dance video. The Harlem shake was discussed at one point. The takeaways – Tony’s path to entrepreneurship like so many other founders is uniquely his own experience. 

We found common entrepreneur threads throughout. For example, Tony found a great mentor through the Rise program. He also describes the product development process from labor of love mixology to the current in-store product being sold at Hy-Vee. We learned about gut biomes. What they are and how Kombucha helps to improve them. We also revealed the secret behind the Mug.news name while simultaneously throwing Tom under the bus. 

If you would like to help with this project, be a sponsor (still needs a name), be a guest, or simply hang out and chat with Maria and I on camera you can find me here.