18-year-old raises $3M for natural food company

At 18 years old, Daniel Katz is already the CEO of his own natural foods company, D’s Naturals. It’s not even his first company.

When Katz was 12, his father helped him start his first business buying items off Craigslist and selling them on Ebay. In high school, he bought and sold cars and houses.

After graduating from Sycamore High School at 16, Katz attended Indiana University for three months, but decided it wasn’t for him because he never planned to go to college in the first place.

So, he moved to Los Angeles to perform market research by starting a beverage company. Moving to L.A. helped him to be closer to consultants who were helping him manufacture his product, as well as test his skills in the country’s top market for healthy products.

The beverage company was his segue into D’s Naturals and now Katz is back in Cincinnati to start his all-natural plant-based protein bar line No Cow Bar.

He recently finished a more than $3 million financing round from independent angel investors throughout the country. The company was launched just three months ago with Katz’s father financing the first production round.

Katz’s No Cow Bar is 100 percent natural, 100 percent vegan and contains no artificial sweeteners.

“I’m very, very into health and fitness,” said Katz, who wakes up at 2:30 every morning to work out.

Katz created the nutritional and ingredient profiles he wanted for his product and partnered with a formulation team. He said he broke down each nutrition fact and determined the exact amount he wanted in the bar.

Each bar has 20-21 grams of plant-based protein.

The No Cow Bar is dairy-,soy- and gluten-free, low in carbohydrates and extremely high in protein and fiber. There are only one to two grams of naturally occurring sugar in each bar.

Katz said he considers similar bars on the market to just be candy bars in disguise.

“I basically decided to create the world’s healthiest protein bar and that’s what I did,” Katz said.

He is planning to expand his product as well as add about 15 to 20 employees to his current one-man operation during the next six months. The added workers would perform production management, marketing and social media work, sales and management of accounts.

The bar can be bought on both Amazon or on the D’s Naturals site, dnaturals.com. Sixty-four people have reviewed the bars on Amazon.com, giving it 4.6 out of 5 stars.

Katz just signed a deal with Charlotte, North Carolina-based wholesaler Europa Sports Products, which will distribute his product out to 15,000 more accounts throughout the country.

Flavors include blueberry cobbler, mint chocolate chip and the highest-selling peanut butter cookie dough. He said more flavors are coming in the future.

The bars cost $29.99 online for a 12-pack and $2.79 retail for an individual bar.

In May, Katz said he will launch a new product that will create a new category in the natural foods market. He didn’t provide details.

Katz has a 10,000 square foot warehouse in Blue Ash and contracts with manufacturing facilities in the West and Midwest.

He lives in his Blue Ash office, sleeps on an air mattress and showers at the gym after his 3 a.m. workout. He said he will usually work until as late as midnight and says hehas adapted his body to function on small amounts of sleep.

“I know it sounds crazy, but that’s just my life right now,” Katz said. “I’m always looking for something to challenge myself both mentally and physically.”