Online Fishmonger with Wild Alaskan Company Founder Arron Kallenberg - TAS #10
Description
I sit down with Arron Kallenberg, founder of Wild Alaskan Company, to discuss how building a tech platform around the family business of fishing Bristol Bay sockeye is reviving the dying profession of personal fishmonger in the internet age. We talk family history in Alaska, why so many fishermen are intellectuals, the inception of Wild Alaskan Company, the challenges of marketing and moving frozen fish online, and how the book "Antifragile" helped his company prepare for disruption.
Links
WildAlaskanCompany.com
TheAKShow.com
Interview Notes
Arron is the founder of Wild Alaskan Company, a tech-enabled marketing and logistics company that sells wild-caught Alaskan seafood. Their customers are all over the United States and they are looking to establish some international fulfillment centers in the future.
Arron’s grandfather was born in Manhattan, grew up in New Jersey, and came to Alaska in 1926. Arron’s son was born in Manhattan 6 months ago, so his family is oscillating between Alaska and eastern seaboard. His grandfather was very academic and a city kid but was very interested in farming and the outdoors. He also had asthma. He looked around the lower 48 and decided to go to Alaska originally, as the story goes, to herd reindeer.
He moved out to the DIllingham area at 23 in the 1920s. There was no road out there. Instead of herding reindeer he fell in love with the salmon fishery. He started fishing on one of the original wooden sailboats.
At some point he wanted to get married so he went down to Florida on a fishing charter and met Arron’s grandmother, who was also from New Jersey. They got married after only knowing each other 2 or 3 months and packed up and moved to Alaska and had 5 children, one of which was Arron’s father.
His grandfather went back and got his master’s degree at Cornell at one point. His master’s thesis was a study of the red salmon at Bristol Bay with a focus on conservation. He went on to serve temporarily on the territory board of fisheries and was pretty active in conservation efforts early.
That was the ethos of the Kallenberg family. Fishermen, focused on sustainability, and very academic. That’s a big part of his family’s history and is inseparable from the genesis of Wild Alaskan Company.
Often fishermen are very academic and accomplished. Why is that? Arron has observed that phenomenon as well. He’s woken up on the boat to hear a conversation on trigonometry on the radio in Bristol Bay. His dad used to say there’s no good reason to be a fisherman if you don’t love it - there are easier ways to make money. His dad told him if they wanted to make money they’d be in stocks or real estate. It attracts people who might be quirky or idiosyncratic who prioritize certain things. Alaska and fishing self-selects for a certain type of person.
The only thing harder in e-commerce than selling frozen fish on the internet is probably ice cream.
If you’re a Kallenberg born in NYC you go to Alaska. If you’re a Kallenberg born in Alaska you need another challenge.
Arron’s grandfather was back and forth but they always had a home in Alaska. They moved from Dillingham when his dad was in high school to Chugiak and lived the rest of their lives there. His grandmother passed away in Chugiak and his grandfather passed in Anchorage a few years later. Arron’s father and his siblings carried on the tradition of nerdy fishermen. His dad has a degree in aerospace, astronautics and aeronautics. He was working in the aerospace industry for Boeing and then came back to Alaska to fish in the bay. He was involved in the design of refrigeration systems at fish processing plants as well as being a fisherman.
Arron’s mom tells everyone he caught his first fish with her, but when he got old enough to fish in the Bay he went out with his dad. They were always working with the fish plants. All his uncles fished as well. Arron was just born into that culture - it wasn’t an option.
Arron had a major interest in computers when he was young. Growing up in Alaska was pretty humbling. He had no running water or outhouse. But he was interested in how the internet could connect him to the outside world. It was a huge outlet for him as a kid to sit in the middle of Homer, Alaska but be connected to the entire world. He got his first internet connection at XYZ.net. Even when Arron was out in Bristol Bay in the 90s he rigged up a boat phone to a modem and was learning to code in between picking fish.
Even back then they were talking about building a website and selling fish online. As he got older and into the tech industry it became less of a pipe dream to something that was just a little crazy and then to going for it. There was 15 years of him leaving Alaska, going to college, working, then getting the gumption together to start this company.
When was the moment he’d decided to start the business? In 2010 Arron wrote an email to someone and asked his dad to crunch the numbers on the economics and the shipping. You start with the raw commodity, then you need someone to process it, and you get shipping and back into the price per lb you have to sell it at. Then you look at the market on, say, the east coast and see if they’re paying that much, and they were.
Arron was working in tech at that time and asked investors if they were interested and heard radio silence.
Fast forward 7 years he was working in tech on the east coast and he met his wife. He was positive he would marry her on their first date. THey connected on wanting to have a family. On the third date she moved in with Arron and within a year he proposed to her and within two years of meeting they got married.
What happened was Arron was living in NYC and his wife was visiting from Colombia. SHe was born in Colombia and raised in Miami. She was supposed to go home and decided to stay with Arron instead. Eventually she had to go to Florida and he missed her so much he flew down there. He had to go to a conference in Ireland and he convinced her to go to Europe with him. They had a romantic start to the trip and Arron got the worst food poisoning ever in Paris and she took care of him and Arron knew he had to marry her. It was easy to talk her into coming back to New York because she spent 30 years of her life in NYC.
They got married in Colombia. If you want to see a culture clash bring a bunch of Alaskan fishermen to Colombia for a Latin-Jewish wedding. She got pregnant on their honeymoon and they lost the baby. Arron’s wife is six years older than him and they decided to try IVF. They had another baby and lost it again. It was heartbreaking. They did 12 rounds of IVF. Now they have a son, who you can hear in the background. It was the result of some stubborn people.
About halfway through that journey which took 3 ½ years Arron was working for a private equity and venture capital group doing technical due diligence on companies and meeting with amazing founders. As an entrepreneur at heart it was torturous to see these amazing companies and founders and not being able to be one.
At round 6 of IVF the doctors told his wife she had to take a break for a summer. It was her dream of going to Japan so they decided to take a trip. Arron told his firm that he was going to leave, and they told him he couldn’t go. When the firm wouldn’t co-sign the trip he gave them his resignation letter and they had an amazing trip.
The first thing they did was go to the fish market the year before it burned down. They saw all the seafood and traveled everywhere. It was another romantic trip. When Arron got back to NYC he didn’t know what he’d do - but he always had this idea for the seafood company. A lot of his friends talked him into doing it. He thought what did he have to lose? The only thing he really wanted was a family and he didn’t have that so why not? He didn’t know how it would work.
Fast forward to today they have five distribution centers across the country under contract, they’re moving a large amount of seafood each week. Arron was going to be happy with like 40 monthly seafood subscribers or “members.” That would be enough to pay him to keep the business going. They definitely blew past that number.
How long was it from the moment he decided to start the business to the first sale? Arron wrote the business plan in 2016 and pulled the trigger in 2017. He’d had the plan fleshed out and had a bunch of people he trusted read it. He wanted economic security and didn’t want to rock the boat around IVF. He spent most of 2017 getting the fulfillment network in place. That was the most difficult part. It’s cheaper to move fish via freight to a local distribution center and have them take it the last mile versus shipping direct from Alaska. I