Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and host of The Scaling Executive Podcast, talks with Kendall Dabaghi, co-founder and CEO of Kingdom, about the difference between a science experiment and a business, why founders must scale themselves along with their companies, and how a team of 18 uses AI to outpace much larger competitors.
I sat down with Kendall Dabaghi, co-founder and CEO of Kingdom, a biotechnology company that builds natural, clinically validated post-biotic ingredients for the pet health industry. Kendall told me the most important lesson from his two prior startup exits: if customers will not pay you to solve their problem, you do not have a business. You have what some people told him is a science experiment.
That lesson shaped everything Kingdom built next. Before writing a single line of research into a commercial ingredient, Kendall and his team talked to hundreds of CPG companies to find out which problems were worth solving. That discipline, more than the underlying science, is what turned Kingdom from a research project at Columbia into a company on track to power products on dozens of pet brand shelves by the end of 2026.
This episode is for CEOs and founders running deep tech or R&D-heavy companies who need to confirm real market demand before they commit resources to building at scale.
Key Takeaways
- Kendall Dabaghi and his team interviewed hundreds of CPG companies before committing to a product category, a validation step he says separates a real business from a science experiment.
- Kingdom chose functional health ingredients over flavor and texture products because health outcomes have an objective success marker, while taste is judged subjectively and is harder to sell against.
- Dabaghi’s shift from treating his own instincts as sufficient to actively soliciting feedback from his team helped Kingdom scale past the operating habits of its earliest, founder-only stage.
- Kingdom’s team of 18 ships one new ingredient a year that outperforms offerings from larger, better-resourced ingredient companies, a gap Dabaghi credits partly to speed and early AI adoption.
- Dabaghi treats AI as an enabler across Kingdom’s full value chain, from identifying unmet market needs to clinical validation and sales outreach, not as a replacement for the team’s own judgment.
CEOs Validate Product-Market Fit by Confirming Customers Will Pay to Solve Their Problem
Kendall’s first two companies were in consumer tech, built and sold alongside his co-founder Evan Beard. When he started Kingdom, he brought a hard-won rule from those exits: a compelling technology is not the same thing as a business.
“If you’re not really solving a problem and people aren’t willing to pay you to solve that problem, you don’t have a business,” Kendall told me. He follows that claim with a phrase I have not stopped thinking about since our conversation: “You still have what some people told me is a science experiment.”
Kingdom had built a genuinely novel toolkit: high-throughput systems, developed at Columbia, that could isolate and catalog the microbes living in a stool sample, then apply the same process to microbes found throughout the food system. The instinct many founders would follow is to bring that toolkit to market and let customers figure out what to do with it. Kendall and his co-founder Ravi did the opposite. They went out and talked with hundreds of CPG companies, asking which problems a natural microbe platform could actually solve for them.
That process surfaced multiple viable directions: cultures for plant-based dairy that could taste more like the real thing, more predictable cacao fermentation for chocolate, alcohol-free and sugar-free kombucha. Kingdom explored several of them before settling on functional health ingredients as its core category. The deciding factor was not excitement or technical elegance. It was that health outcomes carry an objective marker of success, while taste and flavor are judged subjectively, which makes them a harder market to win on evidence alone.
Founders Scale Themselves While They Scale Their Companies
I ask most CEOs I coach about the hardest part of moving from founder-operator to leader of a growing organization. Kendall’s answer was direct: the company is not the only thing that has to change.
“When you’re a founder and you’re scaling a company, you’re not just scaling a company, you’re scaling yourself too,” he said. Looking back at Kingdom’s early years, he pointed to decisions he made as what he called a young, naive founder that he now recognizes were the wrong way to operate.
The fix he settled on was to treat feedback as a two-way discipline. Kingdom already relied on direct customer conversations to shape its product roadmap. Kendall applied that same openness internally. “You want to have a receptive ear, both for the market as well as for your team,” he told me. In practice, that means the same rigor Kingdom applies to understanding what CPG companies need, it also applies to understanding what its own people need in order to keep the organization growing without breaking.
Small Teams Use AI as a Force Multiplier to Outpace Larger, Slower Competitors
Kingdom competes against ingredient companies with far more headcount, capital, and years in the market. Kendall’s team is 18 people. His answer to that gap is AI, deployed with a specific philosophy rather than as a blanket replacement for human work.
“We don’t want to outsource our thinking to AI,” Kendall said. “We want it to be an enabler and a force multiplier.” He described applying that principle across Kingdom’s entire value chain: identifying an unmet market need, designing how to develop an ingredient, clinically validating it, then building outreach lists and sales materials to bring it to market. AI supports each stage without replacing the judgment calls Kingdom’s team makes at every step.
The result, according to Kendall, is a company that ships one new ingredient a year that outperforms offerings from ingredient companies with significantly more resources and a longer track record. He is candid that the advantage is not guaranteed. It depends on whether Kingdom’s team keeps adopting these tools and getting better at using them, a bet he is personally making by building his own AI tools during nights and weekends, the same way he once taught himself microbiology after his last startup exit.
What CEOs Can Take From Kendall Dabaghi’s Approach
| Principle | What it means in practice | Named evidence from this interview |
| Solve a problem customers will pay for, not a technology showcase | Confirm real demand through direct customer conversations before committing resources to build at scale | Kingdom’s hundreds of CPG interviews narrowed its options to functional health ingredients, the category now on track to reach dozens of pet brand shelves by the end of 2026 |
| Scale yourself alongside the company | Stay open to feedback from the market and from your own team as the organization grows, rather than relying on instincts that worked at an earlier stage | Dabaghi ties correcting his early, founder-only decision-making directly to Kingdom’s ability to keep growing past the mistakes of its earliest stage |
| Treat AI as an enabler, not a replacement for thinking | Apply AI across every stage of the value chain while keeping human judgment central to the decisions that matter | Kingdom’s 18-person team ships one outperforming ingredient a year, a pace Dabaghi ties directly to AI-accelerated research, development, and outreach against larger, slower-moving competitors |
Quotes from This Episode
- “You’re not just building a technology, you’re building a business, and those are two very different things.” — Kendall Dabaghi, Co-Founder and CEO, Kingdom
- “We went and talked to hundreds of CPG companies before we ever committed to a category.” — Kendall Dabaghi, Co-Founder and CEO, Kingdom
- “Taste is subjective. Health outcomes are not. That’s a much easier thing to sell against.” — Kendall Dabaghi, Co-Founder and CEO, Kingdom
- “I was a young, naive founder making decisions I’d never make today.” — Kendall Dabaghi, Co-Founder and CEO, Kingdom
- “I’m building my own AI tools on nights and weekends, the same way I taught myself microbiology.” — Kendall Dabaghi, Co-Founder and CEO, Kingdom
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if my startup has a real product-market fit or just an interesting technology?
Talk directly to the customers you expect to pay for your product before you build at scale. Kendall Dabaghi and his team at Kingdom interviewed hundreds of CPG companies to identify which problems were worth solving with their microbe platform, rather than assuming their technical toolkit alone would create demand. If customers are not willing to pay to solve the problem, Dabaghi says you have a science experiment, not a business.
How should a founder change their leadership approach as the company scales?
A founder scaling a company must scale themselves at the same pace as the organization. Kendall Dabaghi describes this as staying open to feedback from both the market and the internal team, rather than relying on the instincts that worked in the company’s earliest stage. He points to specific early decisions he made as a less experienced founder that he later recognized needed to change as Kingdom grew.
How can a small team use AI to compete against larger, better-resourced competitors?
Apply AI across every stage of your value chain, from identifying market needs through development, validation, and sales outreach, while keeping human judgment central to the work. Kendall Dabaghi’s 18-person team at Kingdom ships one new ingredient a year that outperforms offerings from much larger ingredient companies, a pace he attributes in part to treating AI as a force multiplier rather than a replacement for the team’s own thinking.
CEOs Work with Glenn Gow to Scale Their Companies and Careers
Glenn Gow is The Scaling Executive Coach. He coaches ambitious executives into the CEO seat and CEOs into successful exits. With 25 years as a CEO and 5 years in venture capital, Glenn helps leaders scale their companies by scaling themselves first. If this conversation was useful, you can apply for executive coaching with Glenn Gow or apply to be a guest on The Scaling Executive Podcast.
