People kept asking how SharkNinja really works, so the company talked its CEO into explaining it, unscripted.
For years we’ve gotten the same question from candidates, partners, investors, and even our own team: how does the SharkNinja actually work? Today, we’re launching Unvarnished, a video podcast in which CEO Mark Barrocas answers it all in his own words.
Getting him there took some convincing. The first episode opens with Barrocas asking, “I guess the first question is, what are we doing here exactly?”
Host Jason Schlossberg, Chief Communications Officer, made the case on air. “I realized we’re being selfish,” he tells Barrocas. “We’re holding this all in, and I wanted to share it with the rest of the world.”
Episode 01, “I Have No Business Being CEO,” starts at Euro-Pro, a one-brand company whose goal in 2008 was to stay in business until 2009. It ends with today’s SharkNinja, which competes in 41 categories. Along the way, Barrocas talks about being 27 with a child on the way and no income, flying to China 10 or 12 times a year to learn manufacturing, and ignoring a consultant who told him he couldn’t have cost, speed, performance, and quality all at once.
“I don’t think people know what’s possible,” he says. “If you only accomplish what you thought was possible, you wouldn’t be extraordinary.”
By the end of the episode he’s on board. “Same time, same place, two weeks from now?”
New 20- to 25-minute episodes arrive every other Wednesday. Future episodes go inside product review Thursdays, look at why “reasonable” is a ceiling pretending to be a floor, and ask how a company decides to go faster when it’s already growing.
Episode 02 premieres November 11.
Unvarnished with Mark Barrocas is available now on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.