To hear Troy Bonde and Winston Alfieri tell it, they never would've become so successful if they'd been smarter. 

That's because the pair — who last year launched Sauz, a jarred pasta sauce popular with Gen Z that now retails nationwide — got their start in business in 2020 by doing the unthinkable: wiring $9,000 to a person in China who they had never met before and only spoken to on WhatsApp. 

USC students at the time, Los Angeles natives Bonde and Alfieri had been sent home after Covid shut down in-person learning. Just 21 and 20, the pair saw a business opportunity amid their stay-at-home boredom. 

"We sat down together and thought 'What problem can we solve?'" Bonde tells CNBC Make It. "And in thinking about going back to a classroom with 200 students where people are using thermometer guns, sanitizing their hands and handing out masks, [we asked ourselves] is there any way we can speed up that process?"

They reached out to a medical manufacturer in China with their idea for a combination device that could dispense sanitizer and take your temperature same time and learned that the manufacturer already had one in production.

They got a sample of the product and cold emailed a local California school district to pitch and demo it to them. Soon, Bonde and Alfieri had a purchase order for nearly $20,000 worth of devices. The college students borrowed $9,000 from their parents to send to their Chinese manufacturer. 

Bonde calls the decision "the beauty of being naïve as an early stage founder," while Alfieri describes it as "the scariest moment of our lives." 

"Today, I would never wire nine grand to a manufacturer in China that I'd never spoken to," Bonde says. "But we did it. And a week and a half later we had two pallets land on my parents' front door." 

The business, which they called NextPace Ventures, "scaled really quickly," eventually landing clients as big as Best Western. 

"Honestly, it was the craziest business in the world," Bonde says. "We had no marketing expenses. We had no employees. We had no accounting department. There was no formality and no budget. It was six months of just huge, huge growth. But after three months of scale we knew revenues weren't going to continue to grow at the rate that they were and they were actually going to significantly fall."

To find their next venture, Bonde and Alfieri looked no further than their pantry. 

A Sauz is born

While working on NextPace Ventures, the pair spent most of their nights sleeping in Alfieri's dad's office. To fuel their long days of cold emailing prospective clients, they'd cook the classic college student meal of pasta with jarred sauce. 

During visits to their local Whole Foods, the duo noticed brands like Olipop and Poppi making waves in the beverage aisle with bright, colorful packaging. That kind of energy, they thought, was missing from the pasta sauce aisle.

"We felt like pasta was the lowest hanging fruit with the largest addressable market and opportunity," Bonde says. "And we enjoyed it. It was something that we knew was going to be a lot of fun to do." 

They decided to take the profit they made from their first venture and use it to start the brand that would become Sauz.

"We probably took $150,000 — everything we made from that business, honestly, bottom line — and put it into Sauz," Bonde says. "We were totally willing to risk everything." 

To stack additional cash, Alfieri sold his Ford truck while Bonde parted with his Mazda Miata. 

At the time, Bonde was interning at an investment bank while Alfieri was an intern at a real estate firm. Their parents, they say, "were thrilled" about their sons getting private school degrees and going into conventional careers. Breaking the news to their families that they wouldn't be following that plan wasn't easy.

"To tell our parents that we were going to sell pasta sauce for a living was the craziest conversation we ever had to break to family," Bonde says.

Even friends weren't supportive at the time, he says: "We knew people were laughing behind our backs."

"One of our buddies, who actually is now an investor in the company, told us 'I thought you guys were so stupid for starting this,'" Alfieri added. 

They spent most of the money hiring a food scientist to develop their sauces and a marketing and design agency to create colorful and vibrant packaging that would help them stand out from the pack.

Choosing flavors was another gamble. The pasta sauce aisle was crammed with basil marinaras, vodkas and creamy alfredos. Alfieri and Bonde wanted to do something different.

They had noted with interest the rise of Mike's Hot Honey and how the spicy and sweet topping had become ubiquitous in pizza shops around the country. Maybe shoppers would enjoy the flavor in their pasta sauce. 

"We wanted to trust our guts," Bonde says. "If I went and surveyed 1,000 pasta sauce shoppers, I don't think any of them would have said hot honey marinara. They'd never seen it. I don't think a consumer knew they wanted it because they'd never had the opportunity to try it or buy it or think of it." 

They decided on Hot Honey Marinara and Summer Lemon Marinara as Sauz's first two flavors, confident that shoppers would be as excited about them as they were. They pitched their product to Erewhon, not expecting to hear back from the boutique LA grocery chain. 

Calling it "the place to see and be seen" for consumer packaged goods brands, Bonde and Alfieri say they were surprised when an Erewhon buyer responded to their pitch and requested samples. Within two weeks, they were authorized for sale in the store.

There was just one problem: they didn't have any product. 

"We had sent samples that had been cooked in our R&D facility. We [weren't even] ready to produce," Bonde says. "It probably took eight months or a year between when we were approved for Erewhon and when we actually launched."

"Securing tomatoes was one of the hardest things," Alfieri explains. "All these other conglomerate brands were contracting these tomatoes for years because of COVID. We were trying to get a little sliver to make 4,000 jars."

The brand officially launched in Erewhon in July 2023. In January 2024, it started expanding to more retailers, eventually landing in Whole Foods this May. In July, it debuted at Target, creating a national footprint for the young brand and its 25- and 24-year-old founders. 

Sauz's flavor lineup now includes Creamy Calabrian Vodka and Wild Rosemary Marinara. The brand, which has worked to acquire customers through fun and irreverent posts on TikTok and Instagram, now brings in nearly $1 million per month selling jars that generally retail between $8 to $10, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

And while they're no longer selling thermometers to school districts, Alfieri and Bonde are grateful for their brief foray into medical device sales.

"Without that last business," Bonde says, "there really is no Sauz." 

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