How I Built and Sold SALT & STONE

March 27, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Nima Jalali recounts building Salt & Stone, a clean skincare brand focused on deodorant and sunscreen, from launch in 2017 to $165 million in annual revenue, culminating in a partial exit to Advent via Humble Growth. Drawing from a decade as a pro freestyle snowboarder, he emphasizes relentless execution, product perfection, and competing against incumbents rather than peers.

Snowboarding Lessons in Relentless Iteration

Jalali's pro snowboarding career, centered on producing high-stakes video parts under seasonal deadlines, shaped his founder mindset. He snowboarded five days a week, chasing conditions across Tahoe, Mammoth, Utah, Big Bear, and Mount Hood's glacier, while skating in summers. Success required failing repeatedly—landing one perfect trick after 20 hard falls, akin to entrepreneurs iterating through failures for breakthroughs. Snowboarding taught individual competition within teams, racing mother nature, and distilling grueling effort into seamless output, principles he applied to business without partners to go "all in."

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Founder Introduction** - Nima Jalali introduces himself as founder/CEO of Salt & Stone.
2 (00:26) **Pro Snowboarding Career** - Details 10-year pro freestyle snowboarding path focused on movies and magazines.
3 (05:42) **Transition to Entrepreneurship** - Shifts from surf/skate/snow ventures to solo founding Salt & Stone in 2017.
4 (07:12) **First Products and Launch** - Sunscreen launches first, profitable Day 1 with 40-50 indie stores; deodorant follows.
5 (09:31) **Product Development Ethos** - Builds for personal use: sophisticated scents, clean efficacy, premium experience.
6 (11:21) **Always Profitable Journey** - No near-death moments; steady up-and-to-right growth to $165M revenue.
7 (13:43) **Funding Approach** - Bootstrapped primarily; secondary raises to take chips off table, never burned cash.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

This is our full interview with Nima Jilali, recorded live on TBPN.

We discuss how he went from pro snowboarder to building one of the fastest-growing personal care brands in the market, unpack why relentless product obsession, profitability from day one, and brand building over playbook thinking helped the company scale to $165 million in revenue, and debate what aspiring consumer founders can learn from his unconventional path on everything from product development and retail expansion to focus, funding, and building a legacy brand that can last for generations.

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