David Habib, 31

David Habib wasn’t feeling his best. He was working his first job out of school at Deloitte in the Washington, D.C., area and was far from the home cooking he’d grown up with, choosing to eat out or eat store bought over the fresher route he was used to. 

It was during this phase of his life he conceived of the idea of Yo Mama’s Foods, a packaged goods company focused on pasta sauces, salad dressings and condiments created only using “ingredients that mom has in her pantry.” When he returned to Clearwater to set out as an entrepreneur in January 2017, he was on the path to being the head of an eight-figure business with 20 employees.

Photo by Mark Wemple

Much like the business itself, his inspiration starts at home. He cites both parents as his main mentors. 

“They came to this country in the '80s and ultimately lived the American dream and taught me all about hard work and persistence and really gave me the foundation and the building blocks to be able to succeed,” Habib says. “My parents taught me how to smart small, think big and scale quickly. As an entrepreneur who grew up in this country, I think it's important that you can dream anything and you can accomplish anything as long as you ultimately work.”

Those core tenets are woven throughout the company as Habib encourages his employees to stay nimble and "fail quickly." Yo Mama’s foods has never taken outside funding, and although the process of growing quickly without the support of private equity has been challenging, it has ultimately been rewarding.

“What excites me most about the future is continued growth,” Habib says, “We have such an amazing team today. We're able to innovate quickly, we're able to be nimble and to really continue to grow our business to be a household brand name. Today we ship to 25,000 stores and we export to 11 countries. And I tell our team here that we're just getting started.”