Speaker: Co-Founders
Bent Paddle Beer

On Tuesday, February 16, 2016, two of the co-founders of Bent Paddle Beer Company came and talked to the students and faculty of CSS. In May of 2013, 4 co-founders opened up the company. It took them over a year to finalize a business plan, but they are currently at year 10 of what they planned would be year 3. The four co-founders all came from a wide variety of backgrounds and education, so they had various knowledge from all different kinds of spectrums. This helped greatly with the entrepreneurship of the business. They knew that Duluth would be a good place to start a business like this because of the giant fresh water source of Lake Superior and the good community that Duluth had to offer. Because of their solid business plan, it was not hard for them to find interested investors who were willing to help them get started. Currently, Bend Paddle Beer has 110 breweries in MN. Since the company started they have been able to give back over $200,000 to local communities. They also were able to donate $9,000 to promote tourism in Duluth. Like any small business, Bend Paddle Beer went through several challenges throughout the course of starting out. One challenge that they faced was having to work long, strenuous hours, day after day. They only had 5 employees when they started so it got to be very tiring and difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel. However, now they have much more team members and they are able to even out some of the work load. The company also grew much faster than expected which actually became a problem at first because they weren’t ready for it. They didn’t have enough space to spread out their business and react to the demand of the product. Another challenge that they faced was with their trademark. They had a dispute because of a design on their can that some people thought was being trademarked. From this presentation I learned that entrepreneurship can be a very rewarding path to take if you have the right ideas and state of mind.