This Mom’s Side Hustle Solved a ‘Severe’ Problem for Her Son — And Made $400K in Month 1: ‘We’re Seeing Insane Growth.’

Jessica Davidoff, 43, developed a tasty product that everyone “fell in love with.”

When Jessica Davidoff's son started losing his hair, his nails, and his ability to keep food down, she did what any determined mother would do: she ignored the 32 doctors who dismissed her and figured it out herself.

What she discovered — a severe corn allergy affecting everything from obvious foods to the 1,800+ hidden corn derivatives lurking in processed products — changed her family's life overnight. And it accidentally launched a business.

The Snack That Started It All

As a self-described popcorn addict, going corn-free felt like a real loss. So Davidoff did what entrepreneurs do: she experimented. She ordered ancient grains she'd never heard of, popped them one by one, and suffered through what she describes as "bad rice cake" after bad rice cake — until she found sorghum.

Sorghum pops just like corn, packs a serious nutritional punch, and apparently, it's delicious enough that friends started begging for it. That's when the lightbulb went off.

Building a Business, Not Just a Recipe

Davidoff wasn't a first-time founder stumbling into entrepreneurship. She'd spent two decades as a turnaround CEO for consumer and celebrity-led brands. So before she invested a dollar, she asked the hard question: Can this actually make money at scale?

After validating the unit economics with copackers, she put $150,000 of her own money into a beta test — farmers markets and specialty retailers in the Hamptons during summer and fall 2024. That test gave her something more valuable than early sales: real data on flavors, pricing, bag sizes, and which marketing messages actually landed.

That data became her pitch deck. She brought on Novak Djokovic as cofounder and raised a $5 million seed round.

Nothing Goes Smoothly — And That's Okay

If the origin story sounds charmed, the operational reality was anything but. Her first co-founder got acquired right before their first production run. The second had higher minimums, ran multiple trials, completed a full large-scale production run, and used the wrong oil for the entire batch. All of it went in the trash.

Her response? Keep moving. "I've learned that you just have to fervently believe that no problem is unsolvable," she says.

$400,000 in Month One

Cob launched for preorders on November 1, 2025, started shipping in mid-December, and hit nearly $400,000 in revenue through their website alone in their first full month of sales. Their Valentine's Day gift box sold out twice in February.

Davidoff is the first to admit that kind of growth creates its own chaos — "when you 10x month over month, everything breaks" — but it's the kind of problem she's happy to solve.

Her Advice to Aspiring Founders

Before you build anything, define what success actually means to you. A lifestyle business that lets you be present for your family looks nothing like a billion-dollar exit, and your plan should reflect your version — not someone else's.

Validate the idea. Then, validate the business. Then build your team, raise your funds, and move. And as the founder, remember: you set the pace. Don't exhaust yourself trying to keep up with someone else's timeline.

"Make sure to breathe, smile, and have fun."