Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Your One Big Break with Clevr Blends’ Hannah Mendoza
Tue, 06 May 2025
On today’s episode, Meghan dives in deep with Hannah Mendoza, founder of Clevr Blends, and discovers how she turned a daily ritual into a multimillion-dollar business. In this inspiring conversation, the pair share insights into what it means to go from startup to scale, and divulge their most important learns along the way. Follow Meghan @Meghan and Hannah @hannah__mendoza on Instagram. Stay up to date with us @LemonadaMedia on X, Facebook, and Instagram. For a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and every other Lemonada show, go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors. Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our shows and get bonus content. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Main Theme: “Crabbuckit” words and music by Kevin Deron Brereton (c) Universal Songs of Polygram Int., Inc. on behalf of Universal Music Publishing Canada (BMI) / 100% interest for the Territory.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Who is Meghan and what is her connection to female entrepreneurship?
I'm Megan. This is Confessions of a Female Founder, a show where I chat with female entrepreneurs and friends about the sleepless nights, the lessons learned, and the laser focus that got them to where they are today. Business doesn't work unless people believe in you. Your team, your investors, your customers.
So much of entrepreneurship is convincing people that your vision is worth their time and their money. And when I think about big milestones for my own business with As Ever, I mean, Netflix coming on as my business partner, huge.
Just having a global powerhouse that believed in me and the site selling out in the first 45 minutes of launch, everything, every single piece that we had been working on, that told me that customers, people believed in me and this vision. That's all you really want as a founder. That becomes your proof point that those late nights and the midnight musings are worth it.
And that's how I felt when I met today's guest, Hannah Mendoza. I saw her vision and I fully believed in it. And more importantly...
I saw through the fact that I came to our first meeting practically barefoot and still believed that I could run a successful company.
Hannah Mendoza started on her founder journey young and ambitious and knowing exactly who she was. She co-founded the instant latte business Clever Blends with Roger Coppola when she was just 28 years old. And shortly after that, well, that's when I met her and I asked if I could invest in her company. In fact, Hannah was the first person I ever invested in, and I was her very first investor.
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Chapter 2: How did Hannah Mendoza start her journey with Clevr Blends?
I am so excited for you to hear how our stories intertwine and what we've learned from each other along the way. Let's get into it. Hi. Hello. So as opposed to starting with just where it all began for you, I want to start with where we first met. Do you remember?
Of course. Of course I remember. I mean, it was probably the biggest thing I'd done at that point, coming to a house and meeting with you. I remember being... Kind of in a disbelief at the situation I was in. It felt like only yesterday that I was working on our website during the day and working at a pizza restaurant in Oakland at nighttime and doing events on the weekend.
Honestly, we were still actually very much in that very early phase when we met. And I'm really grateful that you were actually able to... you know, see the potential in something that, frankly, at the time was, it was still very much in its infancy.
The funniest thing about it is I had never invested in something before. So I had received a gift basket from my friend Drew. Had I just had my baby or I was pregnant? I think you were still pregnant. I don't think you'd had Lily yet. Yes. So it would have been at the beginning of that year. And then months later is when I, yeah.
So you saw me when I was very pregnant and my friend sent over this gift basket filled with an assortment of products that he thought I would like. No skin in the game. He just said, you know, I know that you are attuned to and like Ayurvedic things. I know that, oh yeah, that would make sense. I know that you're pregnant and these things might be helpful during this stage of pregnancy.
And one of the things within this big basket was this product. And I said, a turmeric latte? You just add water? Okay. And I tried it, and I looked at the back. I said, who is this person? And then I started trying to dig into, like, what is this company? But it's so bizarre because I had never – I didn't have a portfolio at the time. I didn't have a roster of female founders that I invested in.
It was the first and truly organic – all puns intended –
experience of looking at something and saying I want to support this and I didn't even know you were a female founder at the time I didn't know who was behind it and I remember when you came to the house we were sitting outside and I just remember you kept shifting your feet in and out of your Birkenstocks and I thought oh my gosh is this my first investment and
And you weren't really pitching me. I didn't know how to pitch. No, but also I wasn't asking for a pitch. I came to you. Do you remember I said to you, I was like, I was watching a lot of Shark Tank at the time. And I said, this is not Shark Tank. Think of this as Dolphin Tank. Yes. These are very friendly. These are very friendly waters.
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Chapter 3: What was Meghan's first impression of Hannah and her product?
you're looking at it, I imagine through the lens of, but this is my baby that I've created. And do I want to give any of it away? And do I need this? And what do I actually want? So let's start at where it began, right?
Of you making these super lattes, what went into a super latte, why they were so super, but the why behind it, and even where you were selling them so people can understand where it started and where you are now.
I mean, all this really started with me moving to California, which was the biggest and most transformative decision of my life. From? I grew up just outside of London. I never really found my people there. I had a bit of a rough time in high school. I was a strange child.
Wait, what do you mean by strange child? Do you think you were strange or you were called strange?
Chapter 4: Why did Hannah Mendoza move to California and how did it influence her?
Um... I wasn't very good at picking up on societal norms and conforming to them in a way that made it easier to fit in. It was very, very quirky. And I think it's hard when you're a teenager, when you're a young child, to have that before people value those traits in people.
I was so close to fitting in and I would just say something really bizarre or do something strange and then you kind of go back to the bottom of the social ladder.
So you're having this experience in school. You're feeling like maybe you don't necessarily fit in. But at the same time, as I learned, you were entrepreneurial then. Yes. Even at seven or eight, what were you doing at that time?
Oh my gosh. I had so many schemes. The first one, which couldn't be further from what I'm doing now is I would buy cookies from Costco and I would buy whipped cream and I would, this was all for charity, but I would set up a table at lunchtime and resell these cookies from Costco with whipped cream on top of them for a, you know, for a bit of a margin.
18.
Why California?
Well, I'd never actually really been here before. I had no friends, no family here, but I had watched, I think, maybe one or two episodes of The O.C. at the time. And that was absolutely enough to take me over the edge. Oh, my gosh. It was honestly completely on a whim.
It was that kind of, you know, 18-year-old decision that I'm actually very grateful, you know, brain hemispheres aren't completely fused yet at that age. If I tell you, when my plane touched down in LAX, I listened to Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus in my headphones.
Oh my gosh. And see, when my plane would touch down at LAX and I was going back and forth when I was filming in Toronto for a long time, I didn't have that soundtrack in my head. I would always hear Joni Mitchell.
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Chapter 5: How did Hannah transition from a non-commercial lifestyle to entrepreneurship?
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But so then how do you come from an environment that feels so, dare I say, hippy-dippy, relaxed, super non-entrepreneurial? Yes. Non-commercially minded, just about being together, community healing of the earth into translating that and somehow combining it to that same impulse that has always been that spark inside of you to turn it into something that's more business-minded.
How does that happen?
Well, I was still very ambitious, loaded word as we know, but I always have been. And even through the more kind of earthy phase, I started my first kind of proper job while I was still in college. It was at a regenerative agriculture-based superfood company. So again, could it be any more stereotypical, but it was hard work. I was their first employee. And the role was, hey, grow the company.
I also started drinking coffee when I was there. I've always had a more anxious disposition and I actually think it can be a superpower when used correctly. But I started drinking coffee to kind of deal with the additional load of having a proper job and it made me feel awful.
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Chapter 6: How did Clevr Blends gain significant traction?
I mean, what we did with that was we designed this crazy coffee shop menu where we would take these traditional coffee shop drinks, but we would infuse them with all these different beneficial ingredients. And sell them where? Well, at the time, you know, we didn't have a budget to open a coffee shop. Yeah. So we hand welded this bar, put it in the back of a van and drove all around the country.
We even drove down to Guatemala as we went to different countries. And... just popped up and would serve these crazy drinks to people who, like you said, asked us, why are you putting mushrooms in my coffee? And people fell in love with the way the drinks made them feel. And they wanted to make them at home.
which was basically impossible unless you had an Erewhon-style pantry and, you know, an hour of free time each morning, which, who has that? And that was when we realized, okay, people really want this, and this is a completely unrealistic ritual. So Rod challenged me, if you can make the drinks we're serving in this bar that people are loving,
into a powder format, an instant drink, which is the least sexy product, most antiquated product of all time, with the same quality as a bar. Let's put this out there in the world. Let's build something.
It was so, as you say, infancy stage. It was so new. And yet somehow it had gotten into my hands. And I said, I think there's something here. And I think as just people in general, and certainly as women, sometimes you don't get the opportunity to trust your gut.
but when you do i just kept i kept thinking about it all and i said i just really think she's on to something that i believe in and then from there i'll be honest with you i went okay well now i have a big responsibility oh my gosh i want this to succeed but i also want to in the same way that you authentically showed up i want to authentically share it so fortunate that some of the people that i wanted to share it with are ones that also have um
Reach. Reach. Reach. And I remember calling you and saying, look, I just want to share with my neighbor, my wonderful neighbor, Ms. Oprah Winfrey. And it was a turmeric latte that I loved the most at the moment, the golden latte. And it was around the winter holidays. So it was cold outside and you just wanted to feel warm and cozy. And this drink, it felt that way. And I remember sending it to...
several friends and neighbors into her. And then I don't remember the video that she ended up making. I remember the video. I can describe it to you.
Tell me. She was in her kitchen.
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