Imagine it Forward and Goodr

You're listening to Zero to IPO. And this is the final episode of season two. I'm Joshua Davis, the co founder of Epic Magazine.

And I'm Frederic Kerrest chief operating officer and co founder of Okta. As you know, we're dealing with a global pandemic and we're excited to bring you more episodes of Zero to IPO, but we had to figure out how to record in isolation.

So if it sounds like we're all in different rooms, it's because we are, this episode was recorded in May while we were all sheltering in place for COVID-19. Now we can get on with the show. Welcome to another episode of Zero to IPO. We're absolutely thrilled to have two amazing guests on the show today. I want to first introduce Beth Comstock, who for many years, and in fact, almost three decades was at GE and served as the vice chair person there, is on the board of Nike is also the author of this amazing book called Imagine it Forward, which I am really enjoying and learning a lot from and have a bunch of questions to ask Beth about. But Beth, welcome on the show.

Thanks Josh. Great to see you and great to be here.

And our other guest is Jasmine Crowe, who is the CEO and founder of Goodr, which is a company that I am fascinated by. I think it's one of the more insightful companies that I've come across recently. I also have a lot of questions for you Jasmine, about how the idea came to you, but welcome on the show.

Thanks so much Josh and happy to be here.

And of course, we've got Frederic Kerrest, my co-host at Zero to IPO.

Good morning, Josh. How are you doing?

Good.

Hi, Beth and Jasmine. Nice to see you. Thanks a lot for joining us today. I'm super excited about today.

Yeah, me too. And good to see you.

Well, let's dive right in because we have a lot to talk about. Jasmine, I want to start with you and I want to understand, I want our audience to understand where you were coming from when you started Goodr. There's some kind of basic facts that I want our audience to understand. Domestically, we are wasting 72 billion pounds of food every year, while 42 million people are struggling with food insecurity.

Absolutely.

That's a foundational mess.

And it's even worse now with everything that's happening with coronavirus, we're wasting more food and more people are going hungry. So it is a huge issue.

Yeah. I mean, just to be clear, before this even started, I read somewhere that we were wasting about a quarter trillion dollars a year, on food in the United States that people never ate. Is that right?

Yeah. Right, Frederic. And so just, I guess, to put an even more simpler context, about 2% of GDP is on wasted food. So that's a lot of money spent on food that never gets eaten in this country.

That is crazy. Yeah.

Like many people, I have some passing familiarity with this, I read about it. I don't even know where to start. And it seems like maybe you go out and you try to donate food as best you can. And I think that's maybe where you started and it transformed into something quite extraordinary.

So, yeah. And Josh, I started feeding people that were experiencing hunger and homelessness in 2013 out of my apartment in Atlanta, Georgia. So that's where I got started. I found a parking lot. I drove past it one day and I just saw hundreds of people that were homeless and something kind of just, I guess, pulled on my heartstrings at that moment and I said, "I want to help. What can I do? I didn't have a ton of money and I knew I could cook." And so I just went home I posted on Facebook, "Next Sunday, I'm going to go downtown and I'm going to feed on the streets. If you want to join me." I had about 20 volunteers. I made a spaghetti dinner and people loved it. I brought out my little beats pill at the time, which wasn't that loud outside. I later learned-

You're dating us. We know exactly when you're a story occurred.

This is exactly when it happened. So it really wasn't that loud of a music thing. But I had that and the idea was it would be old school kind of Sunday music like Jackson 5 and Aretha Franklin, James Brown, like this classic kind of music and a good Sunday dinner. And that's how it all got started. And so a video from one of my pop-up restaurants went viral on Facebook and people were saying, "This is so amazing, which restaurants donate the food?" And the reality was nobody. I was couponing on price matching I always say, I'm the reason Walmart doesn't price match anymore. I definitely feel like I gave them a run for their money. And then I was cooking everything, taking it downtown, serving it, coming home, cleaning up. And so it would take me like 40 hours every week I did this and I started researching food waste and was really upset. I can't believe this much food goes to waste. And here I am putting together $5 donations and my own money and trying to make these feedings happen to feed 500 people.

And again Jasmine, at this point this is not a business at all. This is just your personal life.

Not at all. Yeah. And this is just Jasmine doing good.

So then where did it go from there? What's so fascinating to me about what you have built is that you took a kind of a personal mission. And then there was a business insight along the way, such that you have now built up an entire company around it. It's valued as I understand it at nearly $10 million now you have 10 employees. So something transitioned for you between that personal mission to a broader mission.

Exactly. So I think I was really fascinated Josh with the emergence of food delivery apps at the time. And so I was getting those referral codes, if you will, from my friends try DoorDash, try Uber Eats, try Postmates, get $10 off your first meal. And I started thinking like, "Wow, there needs to be something like this for restaurants to get their excess food to people in need." Like if they had an app where they could say, "I have extra XYZ." Now someone goes and picks it up like we would go to Uber's, and like Uber Eats driver would go to a restaurant and pick up food and deliver it to a person. Now we pick up food and deliver it to nonprofits. So that was kind of the first tinkering of the idea. And I found out that one of my friends, someone I went to college with well-educated, worked in the film industry and just was kind of in between jobs was actually struggling with hunger. At the time she was pregnant with her second child and had no food in her refrigerator. And that really to me was I think that that impetus the pivotal point, where I like, "You know what, it doesn't matter if no one else gets it, you see hunger way differently than most people do. And you've got to go out and try and build this happen." I entered into a hackathon, that Google for Startups was putting on. It was held at Georgia Tech. And I went in there as a team of one, I'm in this design thinking session. And I'm drawing out the little screens of what this app would look like, who would be my customers and doing all this customer discovery and everything by myself. And that's really what got the app started.

And I notice now that on the Goodr website, there is a photo of a Goodr car pulling up to a Delta Air Lines airplane.

Yeah.

So you've now evolved to such an extent where you have been able to take on food from very large companies. Can you talk about that? How to Delta happen?

So we got a contract with the Atlanta Airport and so they were doing kind of a call for new innovation a way for new businesses, smaller businesses to actually win contracts with the airport. And so there was a sustainability focus and Delta was a partner. Delta was a sponsor, as well as the airport they were putting it on it was called ATL Thinks. And I just pitched in front of them and said, "Hey, this is the world's busiest airport. You've got over 115 restaurants at the end of every day. They're wasting food. This food could be going to people in the community. And the Atlanta airport sits in College Park, Georgia, all which happens to have about 65% of the children living in poverty." So I really said, there's no reason for any food from this airport to go to waste when there are all these children and families right around your airport that are going hungry. And I think that really made a lot of sense to them. And they were willing to listen to what I had to say and took the idea.

That sounds like a pretty compelling story right there.

I mean that's how it happened.

Yeah.

But Freddie there's one other thing here that is really pivotal to Jasmine's insight, which is that it's a triple win. The people who have food insecurity are getting fed, the food isn't going to waste and the businesses that are donating the food, get the charitable contribution, get the tax write off. So they're making money from it.

Exactly.

I want to bring Beth into the conversation here because I was very excited to have Beth's insight on this particular show because Beth is coming to us with two very distinct perspectives. On the one hand you were at one of the world's largest companies for nearly 30 years. On the other hand at that company, you were widely known as the change agent, the person from the inside who was driving innovation, you oversight GE Lighting, you oversight GE Ventures. So you have the mentality in some ways of a CEO and a kind of a disruptor. But on the other hand, you also have the institutional understanding of how do you get big companies to change? How do you get big companies to ideally to be very blunt, hire Goodr? That's what's I'm going for on this show. I want to figure out how do we get the world's largest companies to hire Goodr.

And not only in those existing units, like you said, Josh, but I think what's also really interesting is Beth, you initiated GE's digital and clean energy transformation programs too. I mean, that's a lot of just instantiation of net new innovation too.

Yeah. Well, if only it were so easy it is, you just could say, "Hey, Goodr's here, buy it." And everybody goes, "Yeah." I mean we [crosstalk 00:10:24].

So much easier.

I know. And my guess is Jasmine that even some of your investors think it's that easy. I found I think calling especially on business clients, especially for companies that haven't had that background, even for companies that have it's really hard. I did in my work at GE and in other places I often oversaw sales teams that had to sell a new product to a new customer or a new product to existing customers. And my rule of thumb was always for big established companies it took a minimum of 12 to 18 months to sell a new suite of software, a new product. And that was even existing customers that we already had. And that usually drives people crazy to think that it takes so long. I would have people come to me and say, "Well, how can I speed that up?" I'm like, "Well, maybe you'll get lucky, but that's just been my experience." And what is Jasmine working against? I mean, one it is even if people recognize the need and I'm sure it sounds like, I mean, kudos to you. You got the Atlanta Airport, what a huge contract. And when I say that's usually the first step is to get you get your first customer and they become your demonstration customer. So other people say, "Hey, the airport's done it. Why can't we do it." That often is your hardest to get that first big demonstration customer. You need to find a champion in that existing company. It takes time. The champion then has to go and work through different systems because there's not really a motivation for people to change how they're doing their business. They're getting incented on how they do things. So you're just working on change on so many different dynamics, but if started your own company Josh you have to, I mean, if Jasmine showed up at your door, wouldn't that be one of the questions you'd be asking her like, "How can you do this?"

Yeah. And it's not just, how can you scale with us? I imagine that in this situation with, I know you work with some of the big convention centers in Georgia, too. I mean, they must think, "Okay, so who am I going to call when something goes wrong? All right, so who else is there besides just Jasmine? All right, Jasmine, who's the rest of your team. Who's going to be there to coordinate the deliveries. What's going to happen with the pickup?" Just all the parts of your program, which are a physical supply chain, must be pretty complicated. Just convincing them that you can actually do it at scale. It's like, "Okay, that's a nice story. I read about you in fast company, you had the popup restaurants. How are you now going to service as you said, one of the biggest airports in the world-

Yeah. The biggest.

The biggest airport in the world on a daily basis, I'm assuming and get all the food out. I mean, how did you get through that?

I mean, it was absolutely hard. It wasn't an easy thing and it was, "Hey, this is what I'm trying to do. And this is my idea. This is all that I have, but this is what I've built. And this is what it's going to take for me to scale it." And so how we first got in with the airport, it was through a pilot. So we did a pilot with them for three months. It was a paid pilot. And I was really clear to say, "I can't do a free pilot. I have to have a paid pilot because I have to have the staff. I needed operations person. I need my logistics people, their supplies." And we agreed upon a 90 day paid pilot.

And Jasmine, I just want to call this out because we've heard this from other people on the show, don't give away your stuff for free. This is something that Freddie has also called-

What Josh knows this is a pet peeve of mine absolutely. So I love it. That you're saying that because you have to show someone, "Hey, there's a lot of value in what I'm doing for you."

Yeah. And if they're not willing to pay for it, they won't be willing to sign a 100,000, $200,000 contract with you.

And I can tell you, having represented big companies in these discussions and been a champion, overseeing a team of champions. It's easy to say, "Let's do it for free." Or it's easy to say, "We'll just keep doing pilots." And the more you ask people to put money to it, the challenge often is with you and your investors to say, "Yeah, but I'm not making a profit on this." And then you have to go back and convince your investors that it's our right to do this at a much less margin, because it's a way to get a proof point. So it's not even once you get the customer, you still have other stakeholders that you have convince this is a good thing to do.

And that's exactly what I had to do. I think at the time when I won the contract with the City of Atlanta, Atlanta Airport, we didn't have any investors. So that was a big win for me. And so having went through the pilot and actually had a contract that was for, I think at the time it was three years guaranteed. It was through 2021. We've recently extended that, but I was able to go to then investors, once I had proved that paid pilot and we had them as a contract, that's how I was able to actually gain investment is having won that contract first.

There's also a lot of value I've found in these types of arrangements. And I'd love to get your perspective Jasmine, on how this has worked out for you, not just financially, but also in things like customer marketing. So have you gotten the Atlanta Airport to agree that you could use their story and they would talk to some press for you and they would maybe do a press release with you or put a quote in your press release, all these other things to help convince the next big airport or whatever it is that, "Yes, this is someone that you should do business with."

Absolutely. I mean, it was a great and is a great partnership with ATL and it was, they did a press release about the winners of that ATL Thinks competition. We've had several, a large scale media stories happen right in that airport. Including NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, we also had Oprah's network OWN, did a Super Soul Sunday featured on Goodr, which we filmed in the airport. We were able to talk to a lot of the concessionaires that we service in the airport who actually produced the food and got their buy in. And I mean their feedback and their testimonials have gone a long way with helping us get into the doors of other airports.

That's great.

You know, Frederic you're putting together... I think you're starting to lay out a really good checklist or a punch list for a startup company, dealing with a big company. One, you do want to get paid for your project for your pilot. Two, as part of that payment ask for promotion, "If this works well, will you help me promote it because it's going to make both of us look good." Too often people are afraid to ask for that or customers don't want to do that. They want to keep you stealth. So I think to put that out right. Three, we've talked about the need to have a champion, a champion is somebody that's going to be able to do the work for you. So, I mean it's interesting. I think as the course of this conversation, we're putting together a really good checklist of what we need. And the thing I would add to that is your first customers are not always your best customers to do some of those things. And this is a bit of a tension I bet Jasmine had to go through. You're just so happy to have someone paying for a pilot. You want to sign up, but you need to make sure that they are willing to go the distance with you, at the same time you're just trying to be lucky and fast and grab it. So I'm sure Jasmine, you went through some of that as you were thinking about at the Atlanta Airport.

I went through so much Beth you're absolutely right. And the thing I went through the most that I think other entrepreneurs just have to be, just very aware of is that, that first big customer, that first marquee customer is everything. So there was a lot of stress and there was a lot of crossing all the T's dotting all the I's making sure that it was perfect. And then we wowed them.

I wonder Beth, how do you think about the role of storytelling and story when it comes to starting and even running a company?

To me story is everything. And Josh you and I have a shared a love of story here. I always say, if you can't tell something, you can't sell something. And I saw this in big companies and small, where founders or leaders get so stuck in the product feature or the gee-whiz of the technology of all that goes into it, that they lose sight of, "Why should I care about your story?" What is a good story when we're talking about launching a business, one, it starts with what problem are you trying to solve? What need is it that exists that I can help bring clarity to? So Jasmine's done that very clearly with her story. The last thing I'll say about story is it's aspirational. It doesn't have to be true yet. And this is where I think people get a little nervous because you're building a vision, you're building the future and you're saying help me. I'm sure part of the way she got the champion at the Atlanta Airport was, "Hey, look at what we can do together. This is helping you, it's solving a problem for you, but we're going to build this story. I need your help." And most good people want to help. And so I think being open and saying where you're going, but what you're not yet that truthfulness. And she said that she said, "I am only two people. I'm not going to try to convince you I'm 200. I am authentic," even though she didn't have to use that word. So anyway, that's how I think about story. And I think Jasmine's just a great example of a really great story brought to life. A watch out for startup founders when you're selling your business to businesses too often, I think people believe they only need to give those facts, the numbers they go in with the productivity and think that's all that their business is going to care about. But business people are people and they have both the logical and the emotional needs. And I love the way you wrap those two together.

Jasmine, Beth talks publicly about the idea of running in two lanes, one that's more innovation focused and the other that's maybe more immediate. And I understand that, that's hard for a small company to do when you're all in on one thing. So my question is, are you already thinking that way? Are you already thinking five years down the line or are you just focused on the now?

Oh, absolutely. I'm definitely thinking five years down the line already, with everything we've been doing in response to a COVID, we are seeing other new lines of business and other things that Goodr could be thinking about. So I'm constantly thinking about evolving, pivoting where I need to and figuring out how can I be the best in class business. So that never leaves my mind. And I think as a solo founder, I carry a lot of the weight on where this company goes on my shoulders on a daily basis. And so I want to be the best.

What has COVID been revealing to you?

Well, one it's revealed to me that there are more people that are hungry in this country now than ever before. And that this is a big issue and that people are in need of food in a major way. And so Goodr is really focused on fulfilling that need and serving it. The other thing that it has showed me is that we have legs. We can get to other locations and we can do it fast. I mean, we were able to activate in Los Angeles, California with the Lakers and UCLA Health, we're going to New Orleans this weekend with the Saints and the Pelicans. We could turn this on, we've created what I would call the playbook. And now we have the ability to go and launch in another market in a matter of weeks. And so that's been exciting. I also, we've gotten a few government contracts over the last two months that I would say would probably have taken us years to get in, but that has shown me that there's more opportunity within the government space to give food to people.

So this is something that I want to ask all of you at a time of rapid growth, which all of you have experienced rapid innovation, huge demand for what you've created there's a risk of just getting, frankly burnt out and running yourself ragged. So I wonder Jasmine, how do you take care of yourself as you're just working massive numbers of hours every day?

I-

Or do you not, maybe you're super human.

I can do better. I could definitely do better. I think, right now I'm working harder than I ever have because of what's taking place with the COVID response. With that being said, I have built a culture within the company where we have things like Feel Goodr Friday, where we'll do yoga classes or meditations, or walk we have a Wine Down Wednesday every Wednesday night. And so we really, I'm trying to build this culture within the company-

Was that wine down?

Wine Down Wednesday with wine to drink. Yeah. So we've created some of these things and when I do have the chance and I'm pretty sure I won't be for a while now, but I'm an avid traveler. So I love to travel. A lot of my travel in the past has been paired with speaking engagements, but now it's just traveling whenever I can. And really I journal, I work out when I can. Goodr's offices off at the BeltLine in Atlanta, which is a really long outdoor trail. So I'll go out there and ride my bike. We have bikes in the office. So I do a lot of things like that, but I can always do better.

Beth, you talk about journaling as an important tool. Can you say more about that?

Yeah. Well, I'm a big believer. As I put my book together and now it's just become part of my practice of, I do morning papers where I just write when in the morning, I just find time, ideally more than 15 minutes, but a minimum 15 minutes just to kind of download what's on my mind. And frankly, I wish I had done more of that when I was in more of the corporate grind. I think I always thought there was one more email that I had to find a way to get out.

So what are the kinds of things, Beth? I'm very curious because I love that and I wish that I could maybe I'll have to get rid of one more email to do that. What are some of the things that you're writing down in those journals in the morning that in particular, for those of us who are still in the corporate grind, we might be able to take advantage of now?

So for some of those kinds of things, I used to do this a lot with emails, even where I didn't send the angry email. I think it's much better to do that in your notebook than to accidentally have it in your email queue, potentially ready to go. So those kinds of things are therapeutic. I find ideas. All of you are startup, thinkers, entrepreneurs, founders, but I love just keeping ideas. I do that right now. I've got pages of ideas of everything from art projects to things I want to write to potential business ideas. So I think at the very least you should have something that you're just putting down some ideas. So just create it to be whatever you want it to be.

Well, on that note, we're going to sign off. I want to say a big thank you to Beth Comstock for joining us and to Jasmine Crowe. Just absolutely inspiring and exciting.

I love it. Thank you guys so much.

Thank you all. Jasmine, good luck to you. It's really what the world needs is you, so thank you.

Thank you guys.

Frederic that was just a really amazing, amazing episode of this podcast. I learned a lot of things. I took a lot of notes. I think I saw you taking notes the whole time.

I did. I thought Beth and Jasmine were both phenomenal, some great insights, obviously some great expertise and the business that Jasmine has put together is absolutely remarkable.

So what were your takeaways?

Yeah, I had a couple takeaways. The first one is about getting commitments from customers and in particular on customer marketing, we talked about this briefly in the episode, but there are three things that I always recommend entrepreneurs get from their early customers in exchange for kind of that partnership. The first one is ensuring that you can put that customer logo on a website that is huge, the customer logo and a quote from whoever it is, the decision maker there. The second one is, can you get a case study? Can you get a multi page PDF glossy with a bunch of comments on the problems trying to solve the opportunity and then how you help them do that. And then finally reference calls, get them to agree that once you make them successful, they will take three reference calls with either prospective customers or the media, just so you can amplify that customer marketing message.

Well, it ties into one of my takeaways which is, if you can't tell it, you can't sell it. So look, if you don't have that ability to weave the magic around the idea, then you have a major problem. So you really got to work on that, which ties in again to my next takeaway, which is the idea of journaling. You don't hear a lot of entrepreneurs talk about journaling, but as you develop your story, as you also as a CEO, as a founder, it can be very lonely. It's nice to have a place to be able to vent and let it out without sending as best said angry emails.

I totally agree. Thanks again for joining us today. I really enjoyed today's episode. This is Frederic Kerrest saying thank you very much. And look forward to speaking with all soon.

And this is Joshua Davis signing off. You can find us on Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your podcasts. And this is the end of season two. We look forward perhaps to season three, depending on your feedback. This is our challenge to you write us, let us know what you're interested in. Let us know what you want to talk about, let us know what problems you're facing and we'll look forward to the conversation. Thank you.