Kettle Chips

Cameron Healy wasn't born an entrepreneur—he was forced into it. In the 1970s, he was building a natural foods business in Salem, Oregon as a turban-wearing Sikh entrepreneur. Then he was abruptly fired with four kids and no severance. The setback could have broken him, but instead it became his launch pad. The inspiration came from an unexpected place: a trip to Hawaii where he sampled extra thick, crunchy potato chips. That single taste sparked an obsession. He didn't have years of frying experience or culinary training. He had curiosity and desperation.

With a $10,000 bank loan (sweetened by the offer of ski passes), Cameron started from absolute zero. He taught himself how to fry sliced potatoes through pure trial-and-error, working backward from the Hawaii chips he'd tasted. There was no playbook. He was hand-feeding potatoes into vats of oil, obsessing over cooking-oil quality control—the hidden details that separate mediocre chips from exceptional ones. The original name was "Pot Chips" until friends told him how bad that was. Even the early wins came with brutal lessons: Safeway placed an order, but rancid oil and poor quality control led to rejection, and the demand evaporated overnight.

Cameron's path defied conventional wisdom. Most founders expand local → regional → national → international. He skipped the national part entirely. While Kettle was still a regional upstart, he made what seemed like a reckless bet: launching in the United Kingdom—one of the most competitive "crisps" markets on earth—before conquering America. It worked. Word-of-mouth in the UK "switched on," with an extra boost from Princess Diana's endorsement.

Buoyed by its UK success, Kettle Chips eventually spread across the US, becoming the top-selling natural chip in the country. Cameron's willingness to bet unconventionally—launching overseas first, obsessing over the smallest manufacturing details, refusing to quit after disasters—turned a desperate $10K loan into an iconic brand. Later, he applied that same philosophy to Kona Brewing, a craft beer venture that initially hemorrhaged $20K a month before he made the strategic decision that turned it profitable.