This is the 20 minute VC, and we are back for another episode of Founders Friday With Me, Harry Stabbings at H Stabbings with two B's on Snapchat. Check it out. See all things behind the scenes from us at the 20 minute BC, but to the show today. And what does Larry Page, Mary Meeker, Ben Horace and Dick Castillo all have in common? Well, they all love all birds shoes, and so I'm thrilled to welcome. Juries will injure to the show's day. Joey is the found at all birds to start up that makes the world's most comfortable shoes. Check this out. Made out of wool, they have funding from the lights of Maverick on Lira,

Hippo and Slow Ventures, just to name a few on an Army of loyal fans That, as I said, includes Larry Page, Ben Horace and Dickie's Stolen Property. Co founding all Butts. Joey enjoyed a range of careers from investment banking with Goldman Sachs to venture capital with industry ventures to working on next generation food and nutrition company terror via. I do also have say he's thank you to Rebecca Kaden, maverick on for the kind interest Juries Day without which this episode would not have been possible. But before we head into today's absolute, Penda helps companies create products that customers love. It was founded when a loony from rally Google, Cisco and Red Hat combined their heads on their hearts to build something they wanted but never had as product managers. A complete platform for product teams With Panda, you can understand product usage and rapidly make data driven decisions. Survey users inapt and PS and feedback deliver contractual help to improve U.

S news on boarding. Promote new features in product to Dr Adoption without requiring any engineering resource is. Pender is a proven choice of innovative product leaders that Salesforce optimized Lee Citrix and many more leading companies. Learn more today at go dot pando dot io slash harry that's go dot pando dot io slash harry. But what if you're starting out in the industry and want to learn to code like I was four years ago, I went to Treehouse the online school way. You can learn how to build websites and APS. Their course library has thousands of hours of content where you can learn all sorts of topics, including Java script IOS Android and Maur with high quality video instructions from riel. Industry experts teaching you well you need to know and quizzes and co challenge is keeping you engaged in on track. Learn on your own schedule and go from beginning to pro to simply had over the team treehouse dot com to start your free trial. But enough of my dulcet Harry Potter like tones. And so I'm delighted to hand over to Joey's will injure found at all birds. You have now arrived at your destination. Joey. It's such a pleasure to have you on the show today.

I'm very, very starstruck. I've been a huge warbirds fan for a long time, but a big thank you to Rebecca at Math Room for the intro. I'm Thank you so much for joining me. Stay

Joey, Thank you for having me. It's a great pleasure

to be here. I'd love to start with a little about you and how an engineer turn to creating one of the coolest fashion and shoe startups with birds. So what's the origin story

yet? It's a bit on. I was an engineer working in biotechs, which is not your your natural transition into becoming a public wind back a little bit. I've been ended there since I was 18 went toe to college and study it and always had my passion for things in the physics and in that room and left. And for just a couple of years trying to learn about business. I really had absolutely no idea what business was when I left college and had no business mentors going up. So it was a quick look into just what business was, And I quickly found that what was my passion in life and what I would want to do with my career was Thio. Use the private sector, which has this great dynamism. You can just make up your own rules than reasonable bounds. Do a lot of very creative thanks. And what I wanted to use that private second floor was positively affect the environment. And for various reading in my upbringing, that was That was kind of what I found my passion for. And so I joined a small venture capital firm at the time in San Francisco called Industry Montrose and started looking at clean tech deals.

As was the parlance of the time for private companies and technology, striving to make a bunch of money off of renewable energy. So I started looking at those businesses and didn't really think that the venture capital model was was exactly right for that space. And so, you know, I went out and topless, I don't know, maybe 30 to 50 companies with the goal of joining one of those companies as an operator, and I ended up picking. One of those companies are trying to be a great ride. Was a company called Souls Are or we engineered micro organisms and made high performance chemicals, cosmetics and food. Actually, I am not believing that the chemicals business unit within Seoul's on. We took the company public in 2011 at a pretty wild ride and what I learned a couple of different things. But one of the things that was most poignant to me was,

when you're trying to sell from a business to business perspective, even if it's a great product, it's a good price. And it has this overwhelmingly positive message around sustainability. The big brands just don't understand how to take that marketed effectively and turning a brand. What I learned when they have an entrance positioning and trying to re engineer some of the products within that the ingredients. It's sort of like turning the Titanic. It just takes. It's just not gonna happen, and it takes absolute decades to do it. So I started thinking about Well, how do we do that ourselves and how we teach the world. You know, howto effectively market highly renewable, really innovative chemicals and other ingredients and materials. And I thought I had to go down straight,

had to build the brand, and particularly this environment where petroleum is really cheap right now, it puts a lot of pressure on a lot of different brands that rely on renewable materials and something that's more expensive. So, really, you have to go downstream thio, connect with the consumer directly and show them what the possibilities are with renewables. And that's what we've done with all birds and so well, it seems completely wild to go from from by detective shoes. Shoes happens to be one of the areas of least leadership in anything sustainable, and because of that, they're presented such a huge opportunity to build the brand that was really aspirational, not in the aspirational way like, you know, the Nikes and Adidas is of the world. Do it with sweaty athletes running on the road to make you feel like you could win the Olympics.

But doing something in a way, and in particular, the casual forward space where people are really excited to be a part of the brain and it helps to create a bit of a movement. And movements are obviously what we're trying to do in the brand building business. And when you captivate the land of the consumer and he create that great movements, you can get something pretty special. I think that's that's what we started tapping

my words so many things for me to unpack there on so much excitement around what you said. I'm branching because you mentioned that changing the direction of the Titanic S O from macro perspective basis. I'd love to discuss the retail space, maybe as a whole, and then kind of dive down L a deeper on. What do you will force in the oft repeated negative headlines on retail? Do you think it's an accurate summary of today's state of says?

I spend a lot of time thinking about this and I think the headlines being retail as we know it is dying and it's absolutely accurate. And there is some huge negative trends. And and there's really a reason why she's the analogy, the Titanic. I think you're well aware what happened to that boat at the end when it didn't manage to turn course. So

one of my favorite

films, Yeah, so the industry is suffering significantly, and this translates down the brand. So I think what I see is happening, and I think a lot of the fax proved this out. You have an environment where the democratization of retail, particularly then dominated by Amazon by the Internet, has created a very unique buy sell relationship for any consumer and with information being cheap and free. I think a lot of consumers at the end of the day, their price shoppers and they want to get the best deals. But they still love having an experience where you go and try things on. So if in the sheep market in the US, as I said $80 billion only 17% of that is purchased online, moves to that 17% is around what had called me planets that purchase. When you already know your brands, you know your size and you just want to get replacing a worn down version that's great for online.

But for the 83% and for any of the discovery almost 100% of the discovery of new brands you really want to go try things on people. People love going and having a tactile experiences and trying on a shoot in particular. But I think this is true for almost any tactile item that people people experience from their daily lapse, rather than what I think is a much less satisfying experience, which is clicking a button on Amazon, waiting for a few days for it to come to your door and then probably returning. And so what's happened that I see is that people, while they love the try on experience they love Thio, have that tactile emotional connection with the brand. They still want the best prices shop on Amazon or whatever other cheaper outlet has the product that they're looking for the lowest price. And so this has created a very, very scary environment for multi product retailers. The J. C. Penney's anything Sears, Nordstrom,

Bloomingdale's you name it Apparel across across many different categories. I think that has created undue pressure on first the retail and the brands themselves. So what you what you see is this environment where Amazon has a lot of products on their virtually all all the products that you would want to buy. Thank you. Just announce that picture. Gonna start to sell on Amazon as well, which I think is quite a bellwether for the industry and a bit of a Do you want to use the other analogy of canary in the coal mine for what is to come? Amazons job is to commoditize products and to give you a flea market kind of a high end tech enable flea market to buy everything that you want at the lowest price. You can get it, which isn't great for the brands that are trying to differentiate it. Really. Commoditize is these brands. So when you then translate to what happens to brands, well, there's tons of cost pressure and tons of discount pressure, and these brands tend to come out of lots of different styles.

They try to move him as quickly as they can through a season and then they discount to get him to clear the shelves and then come back with the new season. And, you know, when we're trying to go out higher product developers or researchers from some of these big companies in the shootout at work, we found that each of these people think that the job is predominantly to cut costs, and I think that is a really interesting consequence of all the pressure that the brands have been feeling. And so it's just a assignment of times where, while old and theoretically competitive, all these shoot Cos air competing on one dimension and have forgotten what the big opportunity is, which is to cut through all the noise and connect very authentically with consumers and do so in a way that people could very much connected just to kind of circle back to the original question. All of those negative trends and the Rachel as we know it does not mean that people are not buying products. People are buying products more than ever, and so I think it's a wonderful time to be in retail, and I think there's huge amounts of innovation to come on. Both the brand sad, but also the technology side.

And also, I think, business model side in terms of how retailers or set up some balls or set up and what not. And so I think there's a very exciting opportunity. I think we're just at the very, very early stages of this on gets. The only reason is taking so long in retail to change because the switching costs are very high in retail. You have long term leases, so this is just the normal gestation process when you have a more capital heavy in mind, like retail, and we're coming out of it now. But we're just about to enter the most exciting day. So I'm absolutely thrilled about where we're at is a company, and I'm thrilled about where the industry's acts. I think it's just exciting time for change and you know, you're you're a big shareholder in one of the multi product retailers, and I'm not that excited for your fortunes. But But I think for everyone else it's it's pretty. It's a pretty cool

time. You continue to give me so much to unpack s. Thank you for that, but But you managed to see that Nike and Amazons partnership. And maybe not being so fortunate about my multi product retailers. Do you think then Amazon, now as a retail channel in the U. S. Is really no negotiable?

Absolutely not. No way. Stay away from them as far as we possibly can

on because of the browned impossibility of building brown through Amazon.

I don't think they've created a great model for brands to be built on the platform, and I think that they're trying to change that, I would suspect. But the whole premise of the Amazon marketplace is to get the lowest cost products to consumers and with the most abundance of supply. And, you know, once we put our product on Internet catalog next to a bunch of other shoes, what that says that the consumers were just a shoot were just just like any of these other shoes. So pick us on price and maybe you have a review and some other Web product features that help create some differentiation that so under sells what we're doing for consumers, and it's so under sells the message that we're creating what we're trying to do in the broader world of consumer products and manufacturing in general. And so for us to go on Amazon is look, I'll never say never, But it's something where we'd be very thoughtful when we make that decision, because we have to know that that product that we put on Amazon is gonna be wrapped up on the shelf with everything else. If you look at how hymns on does, even when you're not selling on their channel, enough people have typed in all birds on amazon dot com such that there is a lot of knockoffs and others. Perhaps you would call it similar looking products that are now sold through Amazon to try to rip off our market, and they are happy to do that and happy to have those brands on their platform. So I don't think that's a positive thing for Alberts. And I don't think it's a positive thing for a lot of brands that are in the early phase of building a brand.

Absolutely. I do agree and kind of talking about the model that you employ, specifically being dark consumer, one that's obviously seeing great success in the past two years with the delights of Casper on a previous guest, George shoot asking from reading. And, he said, before the success in D. C. Is fundamentally about simplicity. I'd love to your thoughts around how you've experienced more consumer behaviors around the DC model and whether you concur that simplicity really is the key to success in a kind of domination. Seema, DC. Market

completely. D'oh! Those two examples you gave a great man and Casper are great examples of this, and we've taken a lot of cues from a lot of the people who came before us and starting DVC businesses. People in Amazon marketplace or any other departments are now. It's so crowded. If you walk into a shoe store on the street, there's probably 250 styles he could choose from, and I'm not sure about you. But when I go shopping, that is a very overwhelming experience for me, and I would much rather have someone come and say Hey for this type of use occasion, this shoes the absolute that she possibly by here it is and a bunch of different styles to your taste. But I think you're gonna love it, so that's what we tried to do is really cut through the noise and offer. I mean when we launched our company. This is only 16 months ago. Marchers of 2016

wasn't 60 means ago. Yeah, hasn't been around for years. I seem to have been cope about you by 1000 different B. C's. I only speak two VC, so this comes up in every conversation. But well, look,

it's been it's been a great early run, and I think a large part of that is because of what we're talking about here. We said no to almost everything in the company building case of this before we launch, we said no to 1000. Different. Then

how do you decide what to say? Yes to How do you prioritize that?

Just one absolutely simple filter, which is make the absolute best experience for the customer. And absolutely everything else can pull that. You say. Do you want to pop up screen on your air? That side that says get 10% off for if you enter your email, you know what that message says. These says you're about to get spammed by my company in exchange for 10% off, Chief of the experience that way, said absolutely noted that we said, Do you want to come out with 12 different products when you launch out of the gate? Or do you want to just do one and one product really, really well and create a focus on the customer to make the best experience? And literally every decision we made was centered around that. And you know, there's that little extra person in our building, which is just our consumer.

We try to stay very close to them metaphorically, that is, but metaphorically, that's the That's the filter reuse. And I think every company needs to do that doesn't really matter what company you're. I can't think of any cos you should be taking that approach. I think when you're launching, everything is accentuated and every decision is gonna be scrutinized. And it's the collection of all those decisions that really allows you to create that my rally, that what you're talking about, where we're a bunch of investors and entrepreneurs and people in fashion and, you know, people in athletics and lots of different communities that we've tapped into tell their friends that they love the product because the message is simple, so I couldn't agree more

that. So would you not disagree then with Reed Hoffman? In terms of, If you're not embarrassed of your first product release, it's too late.

I think there's a difference between consumer Internet and Web products and a physical good can. I think I wouldn't say we're embarrassed by our first product, but we're not embarrassed. But we made probably 30 changes in the 16 18 months to that first release product, and that's one of the benefits we get to listen to consumers. And they tell us every day thousands of people tell us what is going on with our product That's not up to their standard, and we work on that. We fix it and so weak. There's an absolutely constant innovation that that happens with product. I just think it's a little less extreme than with a Web product in the way that that Reed might say, put your minimum buyable product out there, get feedback and build it with a consumer product on the brand, particularly one you know, if you look at the growth that we've had so quickly, we have our product on a lot of people's feet and and you do want that to be a good experience. And it has to be a really good experience if you expect oh, stand the test of time. So we put a huge amount of focus and product development and and we much more heavily on that. Let's get this close as close to perfect as we can out of the gate versus that stripped down minimum buyable product approach and we take out with different aspects of our business. But if we're gonna launch one product, that better be pretty damn gets We did take a little bit of a different

trust. Absolutely. I I completely see the differentiation. I would love to have a dive into a quickfire round there. So I say, Short statement, as you know, 60 seconds per ounce that How does that sound?

Okay, Sure.

Okay, so let's start with your favorite book

and why, Okay. Favorite book is a man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel, and I think it is book. Every single person on the planet should read, and it talks about what I really took from it. Waas really the core to what I think drives happen next in life and his boat was situated within a very terrible time for people that were in the concentration camps and Nazi dominated Europe and in the thirties and forties. But if you keep hope and you look out long distance on the horizon of what you have to record, too, I mean, there's so much like you have to offer my mother how dire your circumstances are and having that fundamental underpinning. I think of court about entrepreneurship, just happiness in life in general. So by the book, give it the lots of my friends and I think people could take it.

But I do. I do want to Awesome what core pillars have you taken in terms of culture, from the lights of Mars, Simmons and that face that have really been kind of fundamental?

We think that culture kind of create what you see at the output of a company almost exclusively is the thing that will make a break for the success of our show. So we did something early on, where we took something called the Mars Project, which is which is the work of a Stanford professor. It's about giving colonize Mars with a group of the small group of people And that's how you want The new plan to be established for the court tends to take root. Who would those people be and what would What would the values be that they stood for? So we did a company. We ran that exercise. It took a long time and we came out with Chris, but of Mission and values, which are the guidepost for how we always see to get that, that kind of never able to reach type of end goal. And we can't win a set of values which are, for us, very unique to us and what we think will make us successful, which is to live curiously after intentionally. I'm simplifying naturally.

And then what is the actual vision and how we actually get there? And so we actually took this kind of process from a Jewish deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan calls environment. We took the visioning exercise, and we had the same Mars group of people large team come together and wrote down put themselves 10 years in the future. We did this in the summer of 16. So in 2026 looking back and writing about what happened with our company and we would find that over the better part of a year. What we came out with is, Ah, three and 1/2 4 page document, which is a crisp articulation of every aspect of the company, what we're doing and how we leave the world from our strategic and unique lens. And we give this to people sometimes late in the interview process. And it's incredibly grounding helps people understand exactly how their role in the company is seeking Thio do something for the broader company's success and eventually what? We're standing for our mission

towards me. Your favorite. Brogan. You sat at one of the month street,

see when they come in. So I didn't keep up, Keep up on deal flow. I liked it here. What's happening in the industry? So I re damn prime AC stuff for the Daily Deal Sheets. Do you read the first round capital block pretty religiously as well, and I continue a really phenomenal job, and then I actually do a lot less reading these days because once I get to work, I'm generally focused on working with teams and having 1 to 1 dialogues, so I actually do most of my learning in podcasts. That's usually I might commute. So I I listened to about 10 different podcasts at a time on Dhe consistently have the subscribing and rolling, and that's where I take a lot of my learning these days from the daily basis.

Which one's your favorite

Jerry favorite favorite podcast. Besides, a little besides the 20 minute D. C, of course, honestly, is radio lab still? So there's a ton out there, though, and I think he's gonna find stuff that helps you unwind a little bit and and focuses your attention and keeps you thinking about how to be better.

Would you most like sea change in BC

and starts ups? You know, it's such a great time to be an entrepreneur. There's a lot of money out there, and fundraising is never easy. But it's a great time to be raising money and trying to do something with a big idea. You know, I think that the VC that I tend to like to work with are very very people are into theirs. They're certain boxes that feces have to check the markets gotta be big. The great has to be excited. The product has to be differentiated, and the teams have to be uniquely qualified to do something special. But I don't think enough B. C's actually focused on that. And in my experience, with many dozens of investors and number rounds of financing, the best ones that stood out for me are the people who focus very myopically on my tea and me as an individual.

And it's truly down to the individual level. Not, you know, what have you done in business? It's about who you are as a person and how how you build relationships with your investors with your employees, with your customers and everything focused on that, I think. I think if more veces took that approach, we being a really interesting and slightly different place, and the ones that do you take that approach to me stand out head and shoulders above the rest of the rest of the crew

was the next five years for you Jouberts. Let's finish on. That was the route map ahead.

The Alberts and me are inextricably linked, so for me quickly, I would love to grow this brand to something that is very big, very global. I think that's gonna help us achieve what we're really setting out here to do, which is toe take a leadership role in an industry that lacks any of it around sustainable manufacturing and hopefully creating a real new paradigm for how people produce consumer products. So how do we do that? How do we get to that big scale? I think for us we are extending the product line well beyond Wolf. We're developing a suite of material innovations that create uniquely differentiated experiences for customers that are just phenomenal. She used to slip your feet into number, doing that on the backs of highly renewable and highly sustainable materials innovations. So we view ourselves much more like an innovator than we do a shoe company or a fashion company where we don't think Wessels is really is a fashion company at all. And so it's about broadening the portfolio of products that we have. I'm doing so on a platform basis that's really around natural materials.

No, I have to say it's been such a pleasure having you on. I'm so excited for the future ahead with all birds. I really am. As I said, I've been wanting Thio have a barefoot for many, many years or months, even. But I cannot wait to see the future ahead. And I can't thank you enough for

what you've done. Appreciate it. Thank you very much for having me

and a huge thanks the jury for giving up his time state to reveal the incredible road map ahead for all birds. And if you don't have a pair of all birds, what can I say? You have to get your hands on them. I think they only sell them in the U. S. And New Zealand. They hadn't. So I had to get my especially ships. And I absolutely love mine on if you'd like to see more from us than you can follow me on Snapchat at eight stabbings with two B's Ciel things behind the scenes on the 20 minute BC, likewise would like, say, a huge thank you against your back Aidan ATM Avalon for the entrance state to Joey, without which this show would not have been possible. But before we leave each day, Penda helps companies create products that customers love. It was founded when a loony from rally Google,

Cisco and Red Hat combined their heads on their hearts to build something they wanted but never had as product managers. A complete platform for product teams With Panda, you can understand product usage and rapidly make data driven decisions. Survey users inapt and PS and feedback deliver contextual help to improve you. Axl News on Boarding promote new features in product to Dr Adoption without requiring any engineering resource is Panda is a proven choice of innovative product leaders that Salesforce optimized Lee Citrix and many more leading companies. Learn more today at go dot pando dot io slash harry that's go dot pando dot io slash harry. But what if you're starting out in the industry and want to learn to code like I was four years ago? I went to Treehouse the online school way. You can learn how to build websites and APS. Their course library has thousands of hours of content where you can learn all sorts of topics, including Java script, IOS, Android and Maur, with high quality video instructions from riel industry experts teaching you all you need to know and quizzes and co challenge is keeping you engaged in on track, learn on your own schedule and go from beginning to pro to simply had over the team treehouse dot com to start your free trial. As always, we so appreciate your sport and cannot wait to bring you next week's episodes.