I was talking to my friend Justin the other day about trying to learn from each other's mistakes -- before we make those same mistakes ourselves!

In that spirit, I was wondering if any food and beverage founders would be willing to share the biggest mistakes they've made over the years. Or at least the biggest mistakes they're willing to admit to publicly ;)

To get the ball rolling, here's mine: The biggest mistake I ever made in growing the Kiva U.S. team was making a bad hire. Looking back, there were a couple of red flags in the interview process, which I should have paid more attention to. Because other aspects of this candidate looked super strong, and we were under time pressure, we went ahead and hired them. But the lesson I learned was that, especially for important positions, ANY red flags should be a showstopper. It ALL comes down to people. I would also recommend trying desperately to find a reference that wasn't given to you by the candidate. This could have also helped prevent this situation ahead of time.