whenever you're in that situation, I want something. I've got money, but there's too much friction. Flip it around and that's an entrepreneurial, possibly entrepreneurial opportunity. You could make that stuff easy. It was we talked about it in that framing.

It was exciting. Hey, it's Adam Schoenfeld. Welcome back to the built in Seattle podcast, where Seattle's top entrepreneurs, investors and leaders share their stories and their lessons from behind the scenes. If you like this show, then you'll love my short weekly email The Pike Street Journal. Subscribe at P s j dot email Each week I send some bonus nuggets from these interviews, stuff I get when the recorder's off and Cem or insider takes on Seattle people and companies. That's P s J dot email. On this episode, I met with Joe Heights Berg. He's the CEO and co founder at crowd. Cow Crowd has been in the news a ton for helping people discover high quality meat online. As you can imagine, they've really accelerate with the pandemic.

Joe talked about the early days of crowd cow, how he validated the business, how he got PR without actually doing PR and is a serial entrepreneur what he's doing different this time around. I hope you enjoy the conversation. I'm here with the one the only Joe Heights. Berg. Hey, Joe, Welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for

having me on. I'm excited. Thio dig in with you today because I know crowd Cow has been in the news a bunch. And now it almost seems like an obvious thing that needs to exist today. But I'm curious to start by asking you how contrary in was this idea five years ago when you started,

it was very contrary. And I guess if that's the right word, it really hurt because we did have some people, like, literally laugh at us. What do you guys doing? What's that thing? And we'd explain and they laugh like you're You're kidding me. And then that kind of hurt. But but most people actually said No, seriously, what are you really working on? It was like, Oh, God, there were very few people who actually said that's a great idea or two were in the investor community. Or I would say,

my tech friends, community. But the thing that we were hearing from like our customers was this kicks us Oh my God, Thank you. And then many of those people who laughed at us also would turn around and place orders and then tell their friends. And so we just kept going, knowing that it was resonating.

What was the earliest elevator pitch that people laughed at?

That was definitely what if there was a website where you virtually could meet the farmer and there's maybe a video, and there's like a little diagram of a cow and you each buy a piece of the cow. And when all the pieces were sold, the cow tips and you become a stakeholder and then we ship it out. That shows at your door, and people would laugh and go, Oh my God! And then that's awesome, because that's I want that better beef. I want that connection to a farmer That's Portlandia in a iPhone app. Give it to me. We had a a very strong positive reaction to that. That's how we in fact, tested the whole company. We actually we first tested on friends with that exact elevator pitch just to be like, Hey, we're thinking about this idea.

What do you think? And people were like. That's awesome. Then we went to a Starbucks, the one done from a Jonas office done in downtown. I just went up to strangers, and it was like, Excuse me, sir, May I talk to you? Do you eat beef? What? We're working on the product idea. What do you think about this? And we give the pitch and a lot of people actually said, Oh,

that's really cool. They like you have What's the hell? I want to write this down. You actually rarely get that kind of great positive feedback on an idea. Usually get questions and concerns or feigned interest. But it was real interest. And so we thought, Let's give it a shot. So

you literally just went downstairs to a Starbucks and started asking people if this was an interesting idea, if they would buy it, How early was that in the process? And what were the questions that you were trying toe validator? Answer.

At that point, that would have been around March or April of 2015, and we shipped the first cow by. It was just the weekend of July 4th, but we talked to maybe 10, 15 strangers, and it was like that reaction. Almost everyone was like that or they were like, I'll never do that. I'm a vegetarian or that kind of a reaction. So we just felt like there's something there, and and if you get people talking, okay, you're interested? Well, why? What makes you feel that way?

Why? You excited? Whatever. People would laugh and smile the concept of buying a cow online or whatever, but then they would immediately gravitate towards the Yeah, I know I've heard that people do that, but you're making it easier. I know that beef is better. I want to try it. Or I think it's important. I've heard all screwed the industry is and I want to fix it. And they went to these higher level concepts or I want a healthier products. I'm on this kind of diet, and I have trouble finding me That's not with hormones or whatever, and I want that assurance. And so it immediately went from,

like, smile. So I want that to like this is gonna be meaningful in my life in a deeper way. And when you have elevator pitches that resonate that strongly with people, you're you're on to something So

you said that there were people laughing at were those mostly like other tech people and people in the V C community who was

laughing. I was doing Madrona Venture Labs and it done. I think it was like a year and a half $2 million entity to prototype companies and and Madonna venture Labs itself. When we were negotiating coming into that first fund, I was like, I want to do something So even and I had already gotten together and started a list startup ideas, we were systematically testing all these ideas on different criteria, as one does your spreadsheet. And But when we When we were in that process, of course we were talking to our friends about lots of different ideas. And as you dio and I think when we got till, I don't know, I kind of like this one the best and I'm getting I think I'm getting the best. Signaling is we researched the market opportunity, especially we thought, Yeah, I think we're gonna do this.

So when we circle back to those friends with entrepreneur friends that we all have and said, I think we're gonna do that like, really you know, really? What are you gonna dio? I knew that one of the things you were drinking around with, but that can't be the winner. There are five other better ideas on that list of reaction.

I heard the story that it was, ah, coworker that had purchased a cow and came into the office and was really excited about it. And that kind of wasn't on your initial spreadsheet. So I'm curious about the spreadsheet process versus the spontaneity of arriving at at the idea for a crowd cow. How far were you into the spreadsheet and the hey, we need toe that lots of different ideas. Like, how long has that been landed on?

It depends how you measure it. We did a Kickstarter project. I don't know if you remember that or know about that, but we had We'd gone pretty deep down one path, which was even a year before Madrona Venture Labs we were working together on the idea of like hardware itself is becoming was becoming with Kickstarter to fund things and hardware companies in China becoming almost like as a service thing you could tap into and online. You can get talent and design, and you can do marketing and sales with e commerce platforms was like, Wow, you could build hardware products cloud connected and the cheap. The hardware is so cheap you could pick up a an android tablet in China. This was six years ago for $40. So if you follow that curve out, you're like, Wow, hardware is gonna be free and it's all gonna be about cloud software. That's an enormous opportunity. That's a huge trend.

Let's go. We were looking also to do something that we hadn't done before. A new domain where you have to learn have an adventure. That was one of the criteria. And so we were down that path deep. But then we had decided no hardware's hard words for companies like Samsung and Apple. Let's not do are for various reasons. So we come back to this list and to answer your question, we were pretty deep on it. We had a We had another complete idea, like a tool prototype running customers using it private beta style for a little while that we killed when we when the side conversation of crowd cow came up and we started testing it and it took over.

You said that one of the criteria was that you want toe, learn something new and have an adventure. What were the other columns in the spreadsheet?

They weren't the right ones because one of the reasons why we chose crowd cow became added once we dug in. For me, it was like some of the columns were things like, Do we Are we the right founders for the idea? Or I always have? Are you in the money flow? I think there a lot of great startups, and some of them become very successful. But they've got to innovate the business model or the business models. Not not really test. It's You have to test it. I like things where business models not tested at all like you're providing a service where money is already changing hands like crazy. And you're just coming in to take some of it in. And your disruption is from the tech or something else. I like those. So that was one of them. Another one was,

Gosh, could we do it? Are we interested in it? There was. Can we validated? What have we learned during the validation step into a kind of rank things towards the top. But we added things like for me, one of the the big ones was we both had kids, Ethan kids and my son was like, five years old at the time, and his were just like six and eight or something. So with young Children, do you really want to be doing Blockchain validated SAS Millennial credit card thing is, you know, do you want to do like a platform or do you want to do something that your kid can relate to? And for me,

it was like five years old. I don't know if you have kids, but five years old is where they really start toe Figure out how the world fits together not just Oh, I touch this. It's hot. Ouch! That hurts, but like in deeper ways. And I felt, Gosh, if we're gonna be diving into a start up again, it's gonna be really hard work all consuming and a zai thought about That's a you feel this tension of you wanna be the best father in the world. But you want to be the best entrepreneur in the world too. And so was I reconciled that it was like if I could do something that he can relate Thio directly and be part of, So it's clicked. Wow,

He could visit the farms with me and get a appreciation for its food comes from. I'll be the kick ass dad of the world because he'll probably the only kid at school that's been to a slaughter or or literally delivered orders to our neighbors together. The commerce orders that in the early days, or he could go help pack orders. He could up taste test ranches. He could. He could participate in almost all of the company, and that was really important to me. Demonstrate a work ethic, show entrepreneurship in action at a young age and inspire him, and that he could relate to it in a meaningful way. And I had that same upbringing. My mom was a software engineer, and she had her own software company running out of our basement. I realized that as much as I probably wouldn't want of it want, want to have admitted it earlier in life that totally influenced everything I did.

I I found myself racing through the school work to go work on my own little project in my basement kind of attitude. And so I want him to have that same inspiration. I wanna work hard. I want to be successful, not at his expense but to his benefit.

Does Ethan have a similar mindset around that? Was that something you guys were aligned on at the start?

Definitely. One of the reasons to start the company was Ethan's wife is actually vegetarian. So one of the funny the conversation was like, yeah, from the friend. It was buying like a whole cow from a farm. And I had a huge meat freezer. I was like, Yeah, I want that meat. But I don't wanna buy meat Freezer And Ethan was like, Yeah, I'm never gonna do that. Nicole's a vegetarian, So it was like, Wait a minute. Whenever you want something really bad and you have money you're willing to pay,

but to get it you've got to drive a truck somewhere and it's confusing, and you've got to buy a meat for you. There's so much friction it whenever you're in that situation, I want something. I've got money, but there's too much friction. Flip it around and that's an entrepreneurial, possibly entrepreneurial opportunity. You could make that stuff easy. That was we talked about it in that framing. It was exciting. And as we looked at the market, and then when we did our first real scary moment of the company after vetting, the idea was really were like, Okay, now we're gonna take the next step,

gonna build a website and make it look as real as possible without actually being really takes money to answer your earlier question, your friends will tell you it's a great idea. We got to really get their money to prove it. So put the payment page up in the minimal stuff on bake. It looks really good. And then launch it. We really got a farm. We had to do the real work. So before we do all that work, if we are not successful, what's our downside? And our downside was I guess we're gonna buy a cow and you and I will have a lot of meat. Not a bad downside. We'll call it quits. Let's do it. So it made it easy. Uh huh.

Is that something you were looking for? Our cognitive set up like that asymmetrical profile, limited downside experiments that have, you know, potentially huge upside. Was that something you were intentionally thinking about?

Yeah, at Madrona Venture Labs. We had to be very intentional about those types of processes. Because, let's face it, you've got a small group of people, and you're gonna come up with some start up idea, and then you wanna hand it off to someone else to run on. You want to keep equity, and you won't do that quickly. That's the business model, right? So as you think through the dynamics of that, like you're a founder. Hey, I've got this thing I've been working out for three months. You wanna take it and I'll keep a good chunk of the equity?

Doesn't sound like a great deal. So we had to work really hard on being intentional about what we were going to choose to dio and how we were going to generate proof around these things. So that on entrepreneur would say, Yeah, I'll take it, you know, and that included, like, here's 10 other ideas we threw away in the last year, and this is one that we're not, or this has tangible proof signed up customers, real revenue, whatever. So I think that's all that we were very intentional about crowd cod In that same way, I think we borrowed that same learning. So how can we validate this without building anything that was phase one?

Because that's quickest. Who do we talk to? How do we pretend? And then if we build something, start with the demand side, not the supply side. Maybe do a little research like how many's farms are there? And how big is the market? Just directionally. But then let's test the demand validated cause you got nothing if you can't get some sales immediately. So what's the minimal thing? We build on the landing page and stuff to get money, and then if we achieve success there, we have a good problem to have, because we're going to spend the next month actually getting product shipped and figuring out that stuff. So we priced enoughto like we thought we would make some money and and cover some of the costs, but we didn't know what most of those costs even we're at that point.

No, I love that. How you just incrementally went through those questions to validate it. Do you think that other founders should be thinking more like a labs or an accelerator in those early stage? Was that, you know, helpful for you guys to

take that approach? Yeah, I think it's it's advice I always give. That's my one of my biggest learnings from labs because our product was cos we had to think about it, the process of making companies efficiently and proving them out decisively. But you can apply those same lessons to your own startup ideas. I think I was a software major. It's a computer science major and, ah, programmer. So my lens on the world early on in my entrepreneurial, you know, career was Go build stuff prototype, right? You got the idea of a good prototype, and that's not always the fastest route toe validating whether it's a good idea.

Yeah, so I want to talk about how the validation looked and felt. I read or listen to somewhere else that you got to a million dollars of sales and your initial attraction very quickly. So I'm curious just how strong and fast did the market poll for crowd cow after you have done some of this initial validation after you've got to actually shipping riel product, people could pay for How, How did the poll from the market look at that point?

It was pretty fast. It was in the first from that June till the end of that year. That's 15. I think it was $60,000 in revenue. We were shipping. Maybe at first it was like we did one. And then a month later we did another cow. And by the way, I just have to, because people confuse us, thanks to the name. But today we don't do that model. We sell beef, pork, chicken, seafood, one e commerce basket.

We literally were selling one cow out of time in the beginning kind of crowd fund style. So it was like one cow. Then a month later, another one and then we will remember. It was like we were gonna Our next goal is a week once a week, because that's a forcing function. What is it going to take to do once a week? All the logistics on operation of the website, every the marketing machine that was our first and then it was once a day, and I remember once a day came after the six months in market, and I remember thinking, Wow, once a day, that's gonna be really hard. I don't know how we do that. Remember,

like, impossibly hard. Oh my, I don't know if we'll ever make it. But then, at some point after that first six months, it just took on a life of its own. And I remember we were getting press like major press. Turns out people people used to ask, How do you get all this press? Who'd you? Who's your agents, agency or your PR person? Or like what? How did you do it? Like it's It's easy Sell cows on the Internet.

E think there is a lesson in that. The product of presses a good, entertaining story. So we had a great entertaining story that was also very relevant. Teoh a lot of big trends in terms of sustainability and food systems and so forth. So we started getting press and of course, we have the viral dynamic of customers telling their friends to rally the cow to tip the cow to become a stakeholder, and it just grew and grew up to where it the demand took a life of its own. And then we entered a phase for ah, all the way through our seed round for where we were just supply constrained in terms of execution. We were totally bootstrapped, I think even and I had put in, like, $50,000 each or something just to pay bills or whatever, not paying ourselves a salary. Now we're employing people,

but all contract and try to make it work. And very frustratingly, we would launch an event and email 10 10% of our email list because if we emailed more than that, the whole thing would sell out in in one hour, and it was just pissed off For a while there, it was like that, and we knew it was We knew we were onto something, and we just had to be silent and execute really hard. And we got a seat run done and start to build

from there. Had you ever felt poll like that to that extreme before where you actually had to limit the people you're emailing and the press was coming in organically

to that extent. No, to be honest, I've always felt I think you know, I've done two sided market place stuff and I've done viral social stuff. But actually, no, I did in my snap find my first out of business school company. We had viral like viral coefficient above one crazy first board meeting. We're launching our product Second board meeting. We have over a million users. I was like, That's that. I felt it then to those are the two times in my entire career where I felt like Whoa, the rest of the the whole experiences of it always feels a little bit like you're pushing. I think your we're all familiar

with that. Yeah, what were the conversations like between you and Ethan? Then when you felt the pole mounting and you were so supply constrained,

we were talking. It was like having a live chat open all day long, all night long, every day. Maybe it was like because we had It's like atoms and molecules, or it's like really product, physical, perishable and farmers and shipments. And it's not just digital anymore, which is what was exciting and challenging and fun, and you re rewarding. People are feeling and check tasting your product and your service, and but it also met in their early days, we were set up within a butcher part. We commenced a butcher toe, let us have part of his freezer for free so that we could train him to pack orders and enable an online business. And so we have to drive out there once a week,

take a ferry to his location. It was a pain in the ass hauling stuff in the back of the car, all the boxes and whatever that we have to order and pick up. Then we'd sit there and we'd pack orders with one of their staff members with at a stack of like, print outs of the orders printed on paper with all the order to take a black marker in line through the items as we pack them. And then, after that exhausting thing, we would go home and build this software to tryto make a digital process for that. That was foolproof. And we just did that while also keeping up with demand and the marketing for so long. And then finally, we moved into our own sublet freezer and a bigger facility, and we had staff, and I wasn't the one packing their orders with Ethan, but it was other people. But if something breaks or somebody quits on you,

how hard is it? Let me tell you how hard it is to hire somebody to just work two days a week and being dependable. So these their scale break points that you have tow push through this so hard. It's like we're at a scale where I can hire two people for two days a week. That Slim Pickens on who wants that job. And so if they don't choke for work, you're packing. Or if the server bug that you coated up a new feature and you didn't debug it all the way and it broke, I was waking up every Monday at five in the morning to look at the server and see if anything broke as they were packing. Something would break. I try to fix it, and if I couldn't break it, I'd have toe drive down there because it might be on the local computer or router or the print server that was in the facility have to go down there and debug it. Plugged into the network. A freezer it's freezing cold is the first two years of the company were what I described there.

It's so interesting operating that dimension of the physical things. And it's something that you can see it smell and taste and like it really flowed through everything. It sounds

like extremely rewarding and challenging a same time. Okay,

I looked on the site just this morning, and now obviously, it's totally different you've got. I don't know if it's dozens or hundreds of different items, you can get seafood and chicken and everything. Did you know then that this is where it was heading? And it was just a matter of powering through those scale break points or was it more organic? And what was the thinking about the future Back

then? I think we had some I'm a big believer of, like have a vision and a North Star and but then have hypotheses and test and get there as you go and you gotta be willing to tweak and turn as you go. He's seeking missile style. So of course, we considered like, where could this be? How big could it go? It could be all the categories, and but let's test our way in and when is the right time to do it is a distraction to launch the next protein. When you're earlier just beef. Is it a distraction to try to do pork? And if we're still crowdfunding cows, do we do three little piggies? Sorry, a joke up there is a distraction. Or is it gonna increase our share of wallet?

Because people do want more than just beef. And I think we ultimately concluded it's gonna increase retention and repeat and ltv if we have the full meat. So vision was actually very early on. We wanna be the one place that people buy all their meats and we've got a stair stepper way to get there. As a small scale company competing with super scale, very cheap incumbents that are broken in many ways, we gotta carve out our niche and get their over time. But over time, we've kept that North star to the point where if we could be the one place where you buy all your meats, then we should be able to be a better meat but not a financial burden on those we work through that we can, you know, have our assortment is incredible. All the way to the A five wagyu, but also have stuff that's like price competitive with what you'd otherwise beginning at grocery and overall in assortment. That's way better, you said. Do we have dozens or hundreds? Many hundreds of products are assortment is absolutely the best of any online meat thing out there for sure.

It's incredible in such a short time to have gone from crowd source of a single cow to that. But it makes sense in context of the North Star. Where are you with the business? What can you share in terms of the scale of the business? However you like to talk about it? How much money have you raised? What's the kind of current stage state?

Yeah, so we've were 500 years old, about 90 people. Now we've raised 20 just 25 million, which is pretty lean. I won't share the revenue, but it's lean for the revenue and the growth. Hundreds of suppliers independent farms beef, pork, chicken, seafood, sustainable wild cut, copper river salmon, first run Alaska but also a S C. Certified at the highest level, sustainable farm raised salmon from middle nowhere Norway and then the first ever fair trade certified blue shrimp down in Mexico. And,

of course, we are actually the largest single salt retailer of beef from Japan of the A five wagyu in the country. So we've got this incredible assortment, but most of it is United States of America. Small farms, heritage pork, pasture raised chicken and a grass fed and grain finished beef from independent producers.

Mary, call Joe. You've done this before, as has Ethan. What is it that you guys wanted to do differently this time around? Especially now, as you're entering the kind of company building scaling stage. What do you wanna have be different this time in terms of building the business in the culture?

I think what's different for me? I was always, I guess I'll put it this way. Taking the long view, we what feels different about this one versus. So this is something that's happening and we've got a little angle. Let's just illiterate build and iterate, which is a very typical like start up the thing to do. It's great and it's fun. And with this one we had that. But we also have this eyes on, like this big old industry that controls the thing and it's worth $200 billion. That's a huge market. And when I go to the store and hit the meat counter, it's super boring and lame. There's no marketing, you know,

branding and no excitement and no storytelling, and you don't know where it comes from and you flip on Netflix and they're telling you that it's destroying the planet. So it felt like maybe if we take the long view, there's a play we can chip away at this and actually make a positive impact on a big category. It's big enough. Doesn't seem like anybody's doing it. Let's go for it. I felt that was the different things. So I was like, Yeah, we can start with this funny like crowd fund thing and iterate we do all the stuff. We know how to do really well, but if we just keep the long view and be patient built a great company because the mission is so powerful on, I've, you know, never had a company that has such a powerful mission.

That's a difference, too. But we've got this big giant opportunity at the other side, too, so that's really exciting. I think after so many startups and I've had some small winds along the way, but like it does afford you toe take the long view a little bit more and you learn from your successes and mistakes. So I was looking for something we could do. We were looking for something we could do for a little longer and keep it for the long run and not not just always be looking for the next go to the next shiny object.

How has being able to take that long view and have this powerful mission changed the way you work or the decisions you make day to day?

I don't know. I've never had a company get this far. So in that sense, I'm still learning and learning every day. I think one of the biggest changes for me, I've done a lot of early stage, obviously with Madrona Venture Labs, or I had a boot strap company that I sold after two years. But now it becomes much more about my definition of success is an entrepreneur. Ultimately, you can remember the napkin moment, but you build towards something that doesn't need you involved, that its impact and it's ability toe we live on outlives you. That's high level definition of success for me that I have for startups versus do we want to do the next thing. So I always keep that in mind. It's gonna hire great people. I enable them,

and I wanna fortify the business so that it's not. But as you also probably know, every startup in its first five years always feels like a you just fighting toe justify your existence all the time. But we're starting to reach that point where I no longer as we as founders, we don't look at each other. And okay, what are the likely scenarios where we sit right now? First ones, Obviously we just die. Here's another one. Here's another one. Now it's like that. We're just gonna die is not one of the scenarios. So I feel like we've accomplished something in five years. So now it's like that affords us to look even bigger

in doing that. What values in the culture, how you work. Have you been most intentional about in in building into the company? At this point?

Ownership mentality is a big one that's you've gotto by the you've gotta hire by your values, obviously and lives by the values. And but I emphasize them all the time. But for US ownership mentality, it's a big one. It's This is complicated because you've got logistics, you've got marketing, you've got vendors, you've got small farms, you've got freight. Got a model, the numbers we're getting to a scale where all this matters. And so if if you if everyone in every seat doesn't take like ownership mentality, things will could fall through in a way that would break the machine or not work ultimately and and having a strong mission makes a makes a big difference in that wind is a team we don't. We all work hard, and we're all playing to win. But we win together so we don't We don't end up with a hero culture or politics because of that one.

I think we have ah, succeed through partners value, which is really important, is you. It's like we don't exist to help small farms. We do help small some small farms, but we don't exist for that. We're together in partnership with small farms, doing something that's really valuable for the industry and for consumers And so we have to be really selective about making sure that we're working really hard and the partners working really hard to like joint success. So that's like a That's a really important one to just to name a few that I think helped us

when you started this. Did you have any idea of the inner workings of a small farm or what their business is like or what the opportunity was to serve them?

No. I still learn every day. When I was like I said I was, I spent the last this last weekend in Arkansas with a chicken farm, and it was awesome, and I learned a lot. Every time I spend a lot of time with farms, I learned something. It's really it's really amazing

anything surprising or cool that you learned out in Arkansas, the chicken farm.

I learned a lot about chicken breeds on that one, but 99% or more of the chicken in America has has is this Cornish cross hen. This breed that's been you heard about it like in the nineties or eighties. It was like the industry. It became industrialized. And so he just through selective breeding. They created chickens that grew three times faster than when they started. So these little chickens in five or six weeks put on so much fat and muscle. So it's more economical, right? The problem is that convey rly walk at the end of that. So for many people, that's inherently inhumane, like we've gone too far. We, the industrial chicken guys, we as a society.

Why did we let this happen? Why did we want chicken so bad that we allowed us to breed it in an industrial way to where the chicken suffer? Because they just get too big too fast. So these guys were working with have gone back to the heritage breeds and created a new breeding program, which they've been running for 12 years to create a chicken that grows slow and you could feed it different things, not just soy and corn. And because of that, these chickens or vibrant they run around. They flap, they bathe in the dust, they're happy and you could see it. They're they're happy. They can run literally wherever they want. They like to stay together so they let them out and they spend all day outside There's no fences they could run. It's a huge farm and they just run wherever they want. Then go into the brush and down in the gully to the streams.

And it's incredible from what I understand, like a mature Cornish cross chicken that you find everywhere in every store. They won't even do that. I won't go outside because it can't walk. That's one thing that's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah, and it tastes better going for you.

I'm picturing the Seattle Tech guy with a software and engineering background going out to all these farms and I'm I've gotta ask, like, how did you build trust or get thes folks Thio open up to you and become a true partner to the business along

the way. It was hard at first. I think we were interesting to them. I don't think they get too many tech people. We were credible enough that they wouldn't talk to us on. They probably don't get that many people in their daily life who come out want to sit and spend a day and talk about their business and ours and our vision, and but it was hard at first actually even get some that wanted toe even work with us. To be honest, because we were, some of these rarely small farms were like I could see where this plays out. I start selling you cattle. You're doing well for a while and then you change or you pivot or you go out of business. And then I'm stuck with, like, how do I sell those seven cows per month? I gotta go back toe how I was doing it before and I've lost customers. And so we had it was that was very difficult.

But I think at some point, once you're written up all over in the press and you can show them your traction and build trust by earning it that way it becomes easier. And then it becomes the economics, get better for everybody, and it becomes just obvious. And there's a spectrum. You got to know that a farm thio try to do e commerce is like a nonstarter. You've got a full time job raising animals. Now you've gotto by dry ice and hire people to pack your orders and the economics don't work. And only one day a week and all the problems that we already had in the beginning we outgrew and bye bye. Driehaus drives for 15 cents a pound. If you were doing once a week, a few orders, you'd be paying a buck a pound, these kinds of things. And so we have real value to bring in an aggregating all the demand.

And oh, by the way, people don't wanna buy Ah, half a freezer of meat. They want to buy the seasonal seafood item and a couple steaks and some hamburger and ah, gift box for their friend. That convenience that we offer by aggregating it all together in one platform is huge, too. So they have a I and we have a I. They have official insemination, and we have artificial intelligence. They respect that their world is that complicated and awesome, and we want to shine the light on them, tell their story consumer. We love that, and we've got a bunch of stuff, that secret sauce that's, you know, it's a win win partner.

What's the mistake that you've made in scaling? That's changed the way you think or how you work. You mentioned that you've done a number of startups, but this one's kind of scaled past. Where you've been recently, I'm curious what changed your mind set or the way you operate.

I think one of the biggest challenges, and it's probably not just us, but for really any company. And you've been through this, too, I'm sure, because you simply measured was. I think when I visited your office, you were over 100 people and you grew Really. You've grown really fast. There's exactly there's a point where, like when you're like five or six or seven or even like 12 people, you want total athletes willing to do anything. You have thio and talented across many different domains and work really hard and learn fast and scrappy and many of those qualities you want and everybody always. But there's a point where you hop over toe like No, I need vertical experts. We've seen a person to nail this one.

We figured out this is this one thing is important. So we've seen somebody's been there, done that on that thing and canned scale beyond it and so forth. But you know, I mean, that's a really hard one, and we had such an operation, intense business and frankly, even and I had not much experience, and we're learning on the job that we I think, hiring like somebody from the cold chain, logistics or procurement sourcing you name it fulfillment. Amazon stuff earlier would have been very helpful versus us trying to learn another one would be on the merchandizing and sourcing. And how do you like? It's one thing to knock on farmers doors and do a deal, but it's a different thing.

Toe forecast out a few months, and we're going a larger calendar and to create like a pricing thing that works in the map demand toe. How much inventory do we wanna hold on? How do we That's a whole different skill set, as well as the front and website. Merchandizing experimentation, a B testing. There's it's called merchants. There are a lot of them. Just go hire some, and I think at some point in the company, we realized we had a team of people that weren't merchants. They were like us. They were jack of all trades, learning on the job, and they're doing a great job. But we benefit by bringing in some professional talent in certain areas, and I think it's a hard one because you can't hire those people too early either. That could be a mistake. How do you time it?

What's the balance that you found now? On that? As you're growing the team to the next

level, still finding it to constant juggling act, I think in part because as we scale, you breach different break points and you have to step back from the business and go Okay. Wow, this is fundamentally different. Now we have this other set of opportunities.

Mm. So it's more about asking that question at those points to figure out how to shift the balance. Or

should the challenge what's changes? I'm spending a lot more time outside the company talking to people at the stage or two ahead of us toe, learn and talk about. Here's what we're thinking. Maybe it's gonna go here or there. What would you do? And they point me in the right direction and introduce me to people and who can help us either learn or help us recruit people in different areas to help us

got it, and probably those activities you didn't have to do a lot of in the early stage, having been through a drone Eventually, labs. And like, the 0 to 1 stage was you had a lot of reps and sets there.

Yeah. So we brought in. We brought in Laurie, who was the chief merchant of Zulily as an advisor to help us on the merchant of And then she helped us hire a chief merchant. And then we were ableto sell, divide that team and have an and improve the bench there. And then it's that sort of activity. How can we find advisors? Maybe that could help us recruit help guide us. And so we could be more proactive versus you. Start to feel like something could be better or something's broken. And if you wait too long, your your reactive Whenever I feel like I'm reactive, I get really self critical. How could have been more proactive? What should I have done differently?

Mhm. Yeah. I love that lesson. Joe. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I want to wrap up with the supersonic six. This is a rapid fire round number one. How much coffee do you

drink? So much coffee, like lose count really is probably five or six cups a day and I drink at 5 p.m.

Number two. What's one other Seattle company that you're following or studying right now?

I love skill, Jar. I like like mystery. I don't know if you know those guys on. I think they're really scrappy and they've had, like, their cove in challenges have been different than mine. But I love seeing how companies were Acto big changes, and I'm really inspired by how they've done that. Algorithm. E is really great company, too. Awesome people, great products, very different areas. But I love this

great ones. Thank you. Number three. Whose one Seattle person that you're following or learning from right now

I've been Ben Gilbert. I used to work with Vagina Venture Labs. Give a shout out to Ben. I love Ben, but I love what he's doing with the podcast. Ben is so talented, he's very positive and injecting creative and brilliant. And and so I missed Ben. I miss working with Ben. I missed talking to Ben, something following his podcast and what they're up to over there. PSL.

It's number four. What's the one thing that Seattle needs to improve as a startup hub?

People need to quit their big companies and go start companies. And they need to realize that those companies, the big companies, they will hire you back, and you'll probably be hired back into a bigger role. So just get out of there, Put yourself out there, really Get out of your comfort zone. Get scared. Do something, really throw yourself in, and even if you fail, you're gonna be better off. So please

Number five. What's one piece of advice you'd give your 20 year old self?

I would say for me it was I was an engineer. I was. I was introvert. I was engineering in school is a software engineer, a computer science major. You've got all the prerequisites and all the classes. You just end up not well rounded and in. My skill was like dive deep learned solve figure out and those air strengths don't get me wrong. But I would say, Hey, Joe, go spend some time figuring out how to leverage other people. Figure out how toe get yourself in some team teamwork situations or team sports, even or those sorts of things to develop the soft skills earlier and and get in to learn that the art of of winning through others. One plus one equals three. That's what I would tell myself.

Number six. What can this community do to help you? Or is there anything you want them to take a look at? Anything you want them to check out?

Let's see. I would say, I don't wanna sound like a plug, but crowd co dot com slash gift or gifts Really for helping us connected to HR teams or sales organizations and things like this. Things where we're all at home now, your employees, your professional contacts. And we're all looking for ways to engage. So I think we're a really good way to do that.

That's awesome. So you can actually gift a customer some product or something right from

the site? That's right. We've got some great great gift bungles Give some people at home some media perks.

What could be better than that? Joe, Thank you so much for being here. And thanks for the conversation. Wonderful to be here. Thank you. Hey, it's Adam again. Quick note before you go. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you're enjoying the show as much as I am enjoying making it. If you do like it. Please leave a rating or review. I would help other people find it in apple podcasts or wherever you listen. And if you have any feedback, send me an email. Adam Seattle podcast at gmail dot com. No underscores no periods.