I slept on the factory floor for the first 5 years
I slept on the factory floor for the first 5 years
By Sherin Shibu | Published: 2025-10-29 14:49:00 | Source: Entrepreneur
Key takeaways
- Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya said he slept in the company’s factory for the first five years after the company was founded in 2005.
- Ulukaya explained that this commitment was essential to ensure the success of the fast-growing company.
- He also stated that when a new factory was built in Idaho, he stayed there for six to seven months without leaving.
Chobani’s CEO says he spent years sleeping on the factory floor while trying to get the Greek yogurt company off the ground.
Hamdi Ulukaya, 53-year-old founder and CEO of Chobani, said:Rapid responsepodcast on Tuesday that he started the company in 2005 in a remote location in New Berlin, New York, a small rural town about 200 miles from New York City. There were no bars, hotels or restaurants nearby — so he slept in the factory.
“For the first five years of my life, I never left the factory,” Ulukaya told the podcast.
Related to: “More than 1,000 good-paying jobs”: Chobani is building the largest dairy plant in the United States
He repeated the process when he built a factory in Idaho, and never left the facility for six or seven months after that open in December 2012. Ulukaya stressed that such dedication is necessary in high-growth environments to prevent business failure.
“You have to make these kind of commitments,” Ulukaya said on the podcast. “Unless you make those kinds of commitments, especially in a high-growth environment, things are going to go downhill very quickly.”
It appears that Ulukaya’s efforts have paid off. Chobani expects so Generating $3.8 billion In net sales this year, an increase of 28% over the previous year. Earlier this month, the Greek yogurt company announced a new product 650 million dollars Fundraising round, raising its total value To 20 billion dollars.
Two decades after founding Chobani, Ulukaya says he is still “either in the factory or in the field” working to grow the company.
Ulukaya is not the only CEO who has been known to sleep on the factory floor to show his commitment to the company. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, 54 years old He said at a conference In November 2022, he once lived at Tesla’s Fremont, Nevada factories for three years as his “primary residences.”
He said he was sleeping on the floor, which was “uncomfortable” and smelled “like dust”, but the goal was to show his staff he wasn’t relaxing on a beach somewhere – he wanted to show he was in it and motivated everyone to work just as hard.
Following Musk’s example, Tesla employees have since reported back Sleeping on the factory floor After 12-hour shifts, six or seven days a week, according to the August 2023 report.
Related to: Elon Musk warns Tesla workers that they will sleep on the production line to build its new mass-market electric car
Musk told Nikolai Tangen, CEO of the $1.6 trillion Norges Bank, in one of the conversations. April episode From the “In Good Company” podcast he did “extremely long 100-hour stretches a week, sleeping nearly six hours a day.” He put in 100-hour weeks during the early days of his startup, when he slept under his desk and worked “every waking hour.” He said he can maintain this workflow for a few years at a time.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Musk told Tangen. “This is for emergencies.”
Tesla’s market capitalization is… $1.44 trillion At the time of writing. Its stock is up 14% since the beginning of the year.
Other founders took a more balanced approach. Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook and co-founder of project management software company Asana, started Asana with the goal of encouraging a healthy work-life balance — something he says was missing in Facebook’s early years.
“We’ve worked hard to build a culture at Asana where people don’t work also Moskowitz wrote in A 2015 blog post. “We should encourage a healthy work-life balance while actively pursuing profit. We are increasing our speed and happiness at the same time.”
Key takeaways
- Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya said he slept in the company’s factory for the first five years after the company was founded in 2005.
- Ulukaya explained that this commitment was essential to ensure the success of the fast-growing company.
- He also stated that when a new factory was built in Idaho, he stayed there for six to seven months without leaving.
Chobani’s CEO says he spent years sleeping on the factory floor while trying to get the Greek yogurt company off the ground.
Hamdi Ulukaya, 53-year-old founder and CEO of Chobani, said:Rapid responsepodcast on Tuesday that he started the company in 2005 in a remote location in New Berlin, New York, a small rural town about 200 miles from New York City. There were no bars, hotels or restaurants nearby, so he slept in the factory.
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(Tags for translation)Chopani
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