Jared Paul is the co-host of Pickleballers and the founder of The Kitchen Pickleball — the largest and most engaged pickleball community and media company in the world, with more than 2 million cumulative members, followers and email subscribers across platforms.

In this episode, co-host Roscoe Bellamy flips the script and puts Jared in the guest seat for the first time, joined by Dane Illif, Jared’s longtime co-founder and right-hand man at The Kitchen. Together, they trace the full origin story — from a broke music startup in Oakland to building the brand that helped define modern pickleball culture.

The Kitchen Pickleball Discounts.

Jared opens up about the winding road that led him to Austin: Surviving 9/11 in New York, playing in a funk band called Frontline Theory, running a nonprofit in San Francisco, and finally landing at a digital agency where he realized he was unemployable and couldn’t work on someone else’s dream. The Kitchen didn’t start as a business plan — it started as a Facebook group for Austin pickleball players during COVID, born out of a failed music company and a chance invite to play at a bar called Bolden Acres.

Jared and Dane also get into the behind-the-scenes of how The Kitchen actually became a business — from a $1,000/month deal with an Amazon paddle brand, to producing an $8,000 Electrum commercial in Vegas, to landing an early partnership with Connor Pardoe and the PPA Tour before anyone else believed in them. They break down why they never bought a single follower, what made the kitchen impossible to replicate, and why Jared believes singles pickleball is the format that takes the sport to TV.

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