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.

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.