It started with a mess.

Not a metaphorical one — an actual, sticky, protein-powder-all-over-the-counter mess. The kind almost anyone who’s ever scooped supplements into a shaker bottle knows too well: the wrist flip, the missed pour, the cloud of powder settling onto the counter instead of into the water.

For Lucas Patton, that everyday annoyance became the seed of a company.

A Professor Who Wouldn’t Let Him Off the Hook

The idea for Powder Pal — a combination scoop and funnel designed to move supplement powder from jar to bottle without spilling a grain — didn’t begin in a lab or a pitch competition. It began in a classroom, when a professor asked a simple question: Who has an idea?

“I was like, ah, do I have one? I think I have an idea,” Patton recalls. He stood up and admitted what felt, at the time, like a ridiculous problem to bring to the front of the room: he kept making a mess with his supplement scoop.

His professor didn’t laugh it off. “He’s like, yeah, well, what’s the problem? … He’s like, all right, well, there’s something there. This is a big problem. I have this problem every day.”

That validation changed the trajectory of the conversation. Patton’s first instinct was to design an elaborate countertop dispensing machine. His professor talked him out of it. “The problem is the scoop. Let’s just make a better scoop.”

That single piece of advice — simplify, don’t overbuild — became the founding principle of the company.

From a 3D Printer to a Factory in Vietnam

The first prototype was, in Patton’s own words, rough. “It literally looked like something — horrendous,” he says, laughing about early renders that resembled little more than a plastic brick. A friend, Wyatt Brown, helped design a second version that finally looked like a real product, and Patton began selling it — first as a 3D-printed item, one unit at a time.

That approach worked, right up until it didn’t. Demand outpaced what a handful of 3D printers could produce.

“I had eight 3D printers running 24/7. I was sleeping at the office,” Patton says. “I sold over 20,000 hand-assembled units. This is not viable. A lot of my effort going into making these things — I’ve got to outsource.”

The solution required a leap most first-time founders never take: a $35,000 investment in an injection mold, manufactured in Vietnam. Patton flew there himself — his first trip outside the country — to see it through.

“It was crazy. I literally went to Vietnam,” he says. “Totally different culture.”

The result is a product that looks nothing like its 3D-printed ancestor: food-safe, dishwasher- safe, BPA-free, FDA-approved, with a built-in measurement line and a design that now comes apart for easy cleaning — a feature added directly in response to customer feedback.

Listening as a Business Strategy

If there’s a throughline in Patton’s approach, it’s that almost every meaningful change to the product came from listening to the people using it.

“Our customers, when we were selling our 3D-printed one, they were saying, ‘I wish I could take it apart to clean it. I wish I could measure. I wish the handle was a little longer,'” he says. “So we listened to literally everything our customer said.”

That same instinct shaped how he validated the idea in the first place. Before building a company around a scoop, Patton went looking for proof that the problem was bigger than himself.

“If I have this problem, who else has this problem?” he remembers thinking. “I go to the gym every day. If I have the problem, other people who go to the gym definitely have this problem.”

His advice to other aspiring founders follows the same logic almost word for word: talk to twenty people, describe the problem, describe your solution, and actually listen to the answer. “If half the people say yes, it’s probably a decent business. If more than half say yes — absolutely, go for it.”

Turning a Product Into a Following

Powder Pal’s early growth didn’t come from an ad campaign — it came from Patton himself, on TikTok Live, talking directly to strangers about a plastic scoop.

“I started going on TikTok Live and talking about my product, and people were hating. They still hate — everyone hates it,” he says. He kept posting anyway. Eventually, one video caught fire: 14 million views, and with it, a business.

What sets Powder Pal apart from a typical product launch, Patton argues, is that he built the brand around himself rather than hiding behind it. “A lot of people buy the product because it’s from me,” he says. “I see this kid on TikTok every day. I see this kid working hard… I want to support him.” He’s since onboarded hundreds of affiliate creators and become, in his words, “the scoop guy” at industry events — recognized and photographed like a minor celebrity at a TikTok Shop convention in Tennessee.

The Parts Nobody Posts About

For all the traction, Patton is candid that entrepreneurship has come with real lows. He describes the last five months as among the hardest of the business’s life so far, watching monthly revenue drop from the tens of thousands to a fraction of that.

“Are people just not wanting the product anymore? Is it a bad product? Am I doing something wrong?” he says. “You just gotta work through that, man. That’s just how business is.”

The deeper fear, he says, isn’t operational — it’s personal. “The most difficult part for me was believing in myself,” he explains. “Is my idea worth it? Is it worth my time? I graduated college, didn’t have a job — I have a 3D printer. Are we gonna sell a plastic scoop and make money off of this? It’s terrifying.”

He credits his faith with helping him carry that uncertainty. “No matter what happens, I know he’s gonna provide, and I know that things are gonna work out how they’re supposed to,” Patton says. “I don’t understand how entrepreneurs that aren’t Christ followers do it — it just might eat them up.”

Where Powder Pal Goes From Here

Patton doesn’t see the scoop as the finish line — he sees it as the first product in what he hopes becomes a broader lifestyle brand, in the mold of companies like Gymshark or 1st Phorm. Wrist straps and other gym accessories have already followed. Getting Powder Pal onto shelves at retailers like GNC or Vitamin Shoppe — a notoriously difficult, broker-driven process — is next on the list.

But ask him what success looks like in five years, and the answer isn’t about revenue.

“I want to be a company that cares about its community, cares about its employees,” he says. “You’re stewarding what you’ve been given — your business, and the people who help you, and ultimately make you successful. Companies that do that are so successful, because they treat their customers well, they treat their employees well.”

His Advice to the Next Founder

Asked what a young person with an idea — but no roadmap — should actually do, Patton doesn’t overthink it.

“Start today, start yesterday,” he says. “If you never start, you’re never going to start.” Find someone who’s done it before, he suggests, whether that’s a mentor, a professor, or a YouTube video. And then go test the idea in the real world, not just in your head.

“Entrepreneurship is not like a football game — it has an end. It’s not like a soccer game,” he says. “Entrepreneurship is forever, as long as you continue to choose to keep going.”

For Patton, that choice started with a mess on a countertop and a professor willing to say: there’s something there.