Elizabeth Holmes Ate This Jerky on Film. Sales Jumped 345%.

A 345% sales spike in two weeks is what an unscripted movie cameo did for Think Jerky, a four-person, bootstrapped meat snack startup from Austin founder Ricky Hirsch. The catalyst: Elizabeth Holmes eating the brand's honey sriracha jerky in the A24 documentary You Can See Everything.

Hirsch calls the moment so unusual it's "not even once in a lifetime," he told Entrepreneur. Within two weeks of the film's release, sales of the honey sriracha flavor rose 345% on the company's website and 92% on Amazon. Someone posted on X that the Texas supermarket chain H-E-B had sold out of "the Elizabeth Holmes jerky."

The brand landed the exposure on October 16, when a Think Jerky bag appeared on screen in You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's meta-documentary following Theranos founder Holmes before her federal prison sentence. Holmes was convicted in 2022 of one conspiracy count and three wire fraud charges tied to more than $140 million in investor losses.

Hirsch was watching poker on television at home in Austin when an employee texted him. She had just attended a New York screening and was "freaking out" over the cameo. "I was familiar with Elizabeth Holmes," Hirsch says. "I'm in the business world, so that always intrigued me. And I saw the Hulu series. I was not familiar with Nathan Fielder at all."

What exactly appears in the film?

In the documentary, Holmes requests turkey jerky from a prison vending machine. The scene is reenacted with Amanda Seyfried, who played Holmes in Hulu's The Dropout. At one point, the camera pans to the vending machine — "it's like product placement, the best, most beautiful shot," Hirsch says. The film ends with Holmes and her husband Billy Evans eating Think Jerky.

Hirsch went to see the movie himself the next day, bringing jerky along. "And when it came on screen, I was overwhelmed. I was like, This is wild," he says. He walked out of the Austin theater with roughly 30 bags and started handing them to strangers, who "were freaking out."

The virality compounded fast. Reddit forums dissected what Think Jerky might symbolize — "They think it symbolizes manipulation or control. There's all these theories," Hirsch says. Fans dressed as the Think Jerky bag for Halloween ("You have to make that costume"). YouTube videos discussed it, restaurants proposed collaborations, and people hawked fake merchandise.

"If somebody wanted to pay for this publicity, it's in the millions of dollars," Hirsch says.

How does a bootstrapped brand ride the wave?

Hirsch founded Think Jerky in 2015, drawing on a finance background to build a "cool" jerky brand with minimalist design and chef-crafted flavors. The sriracha honey recipe came from Gale Gand, a Michelin-starred, two-time James Beard Award-winning chef.

Now Hirsch is pushing to stretch the moment as far as it will go — with limited resources. "People are stepping up, our significant others are stepping up and all that, but we are not a big business," he says. "We do not have a big team. We never raised money, which is very unique in my industry."

He concedes consumers may not recall the logo in five years, but they might remember the shot of the bag. So he's working to make it a meme and keep the conversation alive. The playbook includes:

• A San Diego Food & Wine festival appearance where Gand will make an egg dish — another nod to the film — topped with the jerky
• Lookalike contests with jerky handouts and a Holmes cutout
• A website revamp finishing in about a month, framing a "soft rebrand" around the chef-crafted positioning
• New products, including a Thanksgiving turkey stick developed with four-time James Beard Award-winner Andrew Zimmern

Sales remain strong, and Hirsch expects to sell out. Think Jerky holds about 60 days of finished inventory in reserve to meet demand.

For the first time, Hirsch sounds open to outside capital — with one investor in mind. "If Daniel Lubetzky wants to talk to me, I would love to talk to Daniel Lubetzky," the founder says of the Kind bars billionaire.

The momentum has outlasted his own expectations. "I thought it was going fade maybe, after the third weekend, but it's growing," Hirsch says. "People are reaching out, people want to collaborate. I want to introduce my creative marketing and hopefully bring our company to a new level."