‘Stay hungry for new skills’: Zane Lenz, gelato startup co-founder

Flexing your entrepreneurship/innovation muscles

I have participated in many pitch competitions around the Ames and Des Moines area, met with experts to learn about the viability of my ideas, and participated in entrepreneurship clubs to collaborate with my peers. I have even taken a few business classes.

Do you have a startup or business?

I have a business in operation right now called Frozen Gains, along with co-founder Grant Veenstra. Frozen Gains makes a delicious, high-protein, high-calorie gelato designed to help athletes gain muscle mass. We sell 16 ounce pints of gelato in Ames and Des Moines. Our flavors are: vanilla bean, chocolate, cookie, and salted caramel. Currently, we do direct-to-consumer sales through our website frozengains.com, and we are hoping to expand into retail stores in the near future.

Value of Iowa State’s innovation/entrepreneurial resources

The resources at Iowa State have been great. Thanks to the various pitch competitions throughout the year and the CYstarters program through the Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship, I had both the time and funding to start my own business. In addition to that, the amount of connections I have made has shown me that knowing the right people can get you really far with any idea. Thanks to those I have met, I was able to take a concept I had no experience with and turn it into a real product.

Taking this mindset into your career

I plan to stay hungry for new skills and connections. There is always more to learn about starting/running a business, and you never know who around you could be an asset to get the ball rolling or solve a problem you have. I think my entrepreneurial experience makes me stand out since I have more experience than most fresh graduates when it comes to product research, development, and sales.

How do you hope to change the world?

I’d like to provide goods and services that give customers more time to live happy and healthy lives. I’d also like to fight back against the subscription model that it seems every company is moving toward. I might make more money doing that, but I would much rather pay a large amount for a good/service I own forever instead of repeatedly paying for a service that can be taken from me if I don’t pay up every month.

When you first saw yourself as an innovator/entrepreneur

I think my mindset switched after getting accepted into the CYstarters program. Once I got involved with that, I started to look at everything around me more deeply and tried to see what value it held. I also try to find niches I could fill with my own products and solutions.