The Exchanges

Q Well, not as excited as I am after reading some of your pieces, but I want to get started today by discussing a little bit about you. Now, when you were a little girl, did you always come to dream of reinventing the packaging supply chain industry? And how did Lumi come about?

A It's a fantastic question, because I actually ask everyone who I interview that same question when we're looking at them as candidates, because I go, like, very few five-year-olds I've met have listed this as their dream job, so how did this happen to you? How do you happen to be interviewing with me right now for this job? So I think that it's, uh, usually it's a meandering story of learning about how things in the world are manufactured and slowly getting fascinated by it that ends up people in supply chain. Lumi is my second business, actually with my same co-founder, Stefan. And the first company that we started was a product that we launched on Kickstarter while we were still in school studying industrial design. So back in 2009, when Kickstarter was just months old instead of years old, we posted a project that got funded for a whopping 13,000 dollars. And that kind of kicked my first business into gear. And it was a physical product company. And over the course of running that business for four years, there's so many fascinating things that were happening back then. So many products that I don't have to educate you on, like Stripe and Square and MailChimp, Shopify. We were using all those products within like, you know, months or the first year of them launching. We learned how easy it was to launch certain aspects of an e-commerce business back then, and then other aspe…

AI assessment note: “in that first company that we Landon on this, this idea of perfecting”

Q think the super interesting element of that company and the success that you enjoyed with that company was the bootstrapped element, bootstrapping to seven figures in revenue and that considerable success. But we've chatted before, and you mentioned to me that the VC community maybe largely finds this slightly irrelevant. So posing a somewhat contrarian question, does this make you a first time founder today with Lumi, do you think?

A I think it's a fascinating question. I feel like it doesn't, but I feel like I've been running companies. I actually started my first company when I was 16. I've never had a job. I'm 30 now, so that puts me 14 years into my entrepreneurial adventure in some ways, and so to say that, like, I actually just started entrepreneuring three years ago when I founded Lumi.com feels a bit absurd to me, given my trajectory, but I understand what they mean, and I think that the VC community kind of understandably has a love-hate relationship with Bootstrapping. On the one hand, I think they respect it tremendously, and there's, you know, these incredible successes, uh, like Tuft & Needle, and things that they talk about. But on the other hand, the love-hate piece must be, right, that they weren't involved, right? So the concept that someone can build an incredible business and they don't need to be involved is a bit bizarre of a notion. They feel their industry is very necessary, and in fact, it is for most and many business models. So I think that from that perspective, they would look at me and go, Like, I've never heard of this founder before she started this thing, so I guess this is her first company.

AI assessment note: “I feel like it doesn't, but I feel like I've been running companies.”

Q Well, not as excited as I am after reading some of your pieces, but I want to get started today by discussing a little bit about you. Now, when you were a little girl, did you always come to dream of reinventing the packaging supply chain industry? And how did Lumi come about?

A It's a fantastic question, because I actually ask everyone who I interview that same question when we're looking at them as candidates, because I go, like, very few five-year-olds I've met have listed this as their dream job, so how did this happen to you? How do you happen to be interviewing with me right now for this job? So I think that it's, uh, usually it's a meandering story of learning about how things in the world are manufactured and slowly getting fascinated by it that ends up people in supply chain. Lumi is my second business, actually with my same co-founder, Stefan. And the first company that we started was a product that we launched on Kickstarter while we were still in school studying industrial design. So back in 2009, when Kickstarter was just months old instead of years old, we posted a project that got funded for a whopping 13,000 dollars. And that kind of kicked my first business into gear. And it was a physical product company. And over the course of running that business for four years, there's so many fascinating things that were happening back then. So many products that I don't have to educate you on, like Stripe and Square and MailChimp, Shopify. We were using all those products within like, you know, months or the first year of them launching. We learned how easy it was to launch certain aspects of an e-commerce business back then, and then other aspe…

AI assessment note: “it was really in that first company that we Landon on this, this idea”

Q No, absolutely. I agree with you kind of within all facets of companies. I am intrigued, though, because a lot of the churn that I see is due to lack of conversion and kind of this impatience around the content. What was your ramp time for kind of achieving some form of meaningful scale and seeing those returns really start to come in from the content?

A It was a matter of months for us. I mean, we, you know, my personal project, the Shipping Things YouTube show, started last March, and by early summer, like June, we could point to specific customers who discovered us via that content, had onboarded, and were buying from us, and for us in this B to B space, every customer is quite a meaningful chunk of revenue, so essentially it paid for itself the first time we got a customer from it, but that's That's the smaller aspect, actually, that that's the thing you can draw a straight line in your CRM of, like, this customer says they heard about us here, and now here's how much they're spending. You can draw a straight line that makes the ROI clear, but I would argue that that is a smaller element to our success and content. The larger element is that when you're entering a space that doesn't have a crystal clear voice, so you're not probably, like, spending all your time reading packaging news, but even if you were, if I were to ask you, like, who is the voice of packaging? Like, who is the voice of this industry? Like, I don't know. I mean, there's just a bunch of random trade publications. There's really no one stands out. So I think that our opportunity to, as this tiny company surrounded by really large companies, to actually be the louder, more authoritative voice is fascinating. That's a fascinating opportunity that I plan to …

AI assessment note: “It was a matter of months for us. I mean, we, you know, my personal project”

Q No, absolutely. The multiplier effect. I'm with you completely. What motto or quote do you frequently revert back to?

A There's a quote that I love that's up on our office wall. The best way to predict the future is to invent it. I like the quote, not just because it is a great quote, And it really reminds you to wake up every day and, like, create the future that you'd like to see, but I also like the quote because no one couldn't agree on who to attribute it to, and so I love humanity in the sense it is attributed to everyone from Alan Kay, the computer scientist, to Abraham Lincoln, to Peter Drucker, to many others, and I love not only the quote itself, but I love the fact that no one couldn't agree who said it first or best, so for all those reasons.

AI assessment note: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Q I'm completely in the same field as you, but I do have to ask, given that experience bootstrapping and maybe that kind of more thrifty mindset, how has that impacted your philosophy today running Lumi?

A Yeah, I think that back to what VCs think, I think that there's a concern about a bootstrapped entrepreneur about whether they think Too small. They're going to be too overly concerned with profitability and things of that nature because your goal, if you understand the dynamics, of course, of a venture-backed business is to grow something very, very large and impactful, and that's really the model, and I think that I knew that going in, so I approached this business fundamentally different, but I feel like the positive parts that stick with me are thinking about the unit economics, thinking about the actual fundamentals of the business very, very early, realizing that you can't really It's very hard to change this over time, so I think when you hear about founders falling into the trap of being like, well, we were growing so quickly, and everyone was patting me on the back, but then three years later, I realized that on every transaction, I lose money or something like that. It's really impossible for me to imagine ever saying that, because I just think that, um, I think for better or worse, that might be a founder that has not run a food shop business, because you dig into the fundamentals on a food shop company very, very early, because you have to, because you have to survive.

AI assessment note: “the positive parts that stick with me are thinking about the unit economics”

Q about a very different type of person you're hiring there. I spoke to Jonathan at Ludlow, as I said before the show, and he mentioned that you have more energy than a nuclear reactor. Quite literally, this was a copy and paste. So his question to you was, how do you manage the expectations of your employees, seeing that no one could do one-tenth of the output that you do?

A I think it is a fascinating question as a founder, because you, you know, I mean, it is also my personality. I'm like, I'm in the office, like, six-thirty, I'm here till late, and running around, and so enthusiastic about everything, and I think that what is really, really important to think through as a CEO and a founder is, how do you take whatever your personality attributes are, and turn them, To be empowering and inspirational for the people around you, but not a measuring stick, right? Like it would be very demoralizing if an employee starts in there, like have incredible work ethic, incredible output, but they come in at 8:30, like it is not my goal as a leader to make anyone feel what they are doing is less than, especially when they're an incredible asset to the company. So it's more that I want them to feel more bought into Lumi and our mission because they can look at me and go, wow, the person at the helm really cares about this and is really out there Kind of beating our drum and working really hard on this. I hope that it is that. I hope that it is always that. It is always framed as inspirational and not framed as demoralizing in any way, shape, or form. And I think that that's about cultivating threat energy around it and how you treat people.

AI assessment note: “empowering and inspirational for the people around you, but not a measuring stick”

Q think the super interesting element of that company and the success that you enjoyed with that company was the bootstrapped element, bootstrapping to seven figures in revenue and that considerable success. But we've chatted before, and you mentioned to me that the VC community maybe largely finds this slightly irrelevant. So posing a somewhat contrarian question, does this make you a first time founder today with Lumi, do you think?

A I think it's a fascinating question. I feel like it doesn't, but I feel like I've been running companies. I actually started my first company when I was 16. I've never had a job. I'm 30 now, so that puts me 14 years into my entrepreneurial adventure in some ways, and so to say that, like, I actually just started entrepreneuring three years ago when I founded Lumi.com feels a bit absurd to me, given my trajectory, but I understand what they mean, and I think that the VC community kind of understandably has a love-hate relationship with Bootstrapping. On the one hand, I think they respect it tremendously, and there's, you know, these incredible successes, uh, like Tuft & Needle, and things that they talk about. But on the other hand, the love-hate piece must be, right, that they weren't involved, right? So the concept that someone can build an incredible business and they don't need to be involved is a bit bizarre of a notion. They feel their industry is very necessary, and in fact, it is for most and many business models. So I think that from that perspective, they would look at me and go, Like, I've never heard of this founder before she started this thing, so I guess this is her first company.

AI assessment note: “I feel like it doesn't, but I feel like I've been running companies.”

Q I've had most of them on the show, do not worry. But I wanted to discuss a commonality that many of them suggested, which was your amazing content creation strategy. So before we dive into the tactics themselves, I think kind of the meta question first for a lot of founders is like, what types of companies and founders does an active content strategy make sense for, do you think?

A Yeah. I think that I'm of the mindset that content is super powerful. In 2018, we live in a world that is just saturated by content, but also it's how most of us relate to a lot of the brands that we're using. And so I believe it's important essentially for most or all businesses. It's hard for me to think of a model. If I had to think of a model that it wouldn't be useful for, it would tend towards my model, like, you know, B to B businesses, um, businesses that primarily are in a space that very few people understand. So if we can make it work and be useful for our company, then most everyone I can think of really can. And I think it's a misguided impression that it's like only consumer facing businesses or businesses with a very visual product that can benefit. So I think that's actually my philosophy, to be honest.

AI assessment note: “I believe it's important essentially for most or all businesses.”

Q Okay, so your love and passion being kind of central to the success, you've also, though, seen many startups around you, as have I, really try and engage with content in a meaningful way, but fail. I'm intrigued. Where do you think many founders and companies go wrong with their strategy?

A Well, I think that there's this very big danger in trying to guess at what People want to see. And, and also in hiring the creativity out. So I unfortunately think there's like endless amounts of agencies and firms and creative people that you can work with to create content. And there, a lot of them are remarkably talented. And I, I've referred people out to agencies and video production companies and stuff that I love. But unfortunately for brands, you have to be very careful. Like you can hire out video production, but you can't hire out brand building. So if you don't have the building blocks Of the creativity that you'd like to see out in the world. There's no such agency that can just like copy and paste the soul onto your company, and so that sounds a little harsh, potentially, but I, when I see bad content, that's how it feels to me. I feel like someone was like, our company should have a soul. I wonder if I can pay an agency a hundred grand for that, and the answer, unfortunately, is no, um, no matter how much you paid, and actually, if you don't supply your own soul, it probably costs 200 K, and it's probably worse, so I think that's a little bit of what I See when I see people out there doing that, unfortunately, but the good news actually is that the creativity comes cheaper than people think, and it's usually when I kind of pull out the things that founders love ab…

AI assessment note: “there's this very big danger in trying to guess... And also in hiring the creativity out.”

Q me of an interview I did with Leo Avidar Lobb, and he said that he really advocates for the sustainable growth mindset, and one whereby kind of profitability is always kind of six months away, so although VC-reliant, there is that independence a touching distance away. Would you say this is something you agree with on both the kind of sustainable growth mindset and that kind of quasi VC-reliant status?

A Yeah, I think that I would be very aligned with that. I also think that something that I fundamentally believe in when it comes to all business advice, it is all so situational, right? Like if I'm building a frontier tech company and I need to burn money for five years before I have something to show, then that's what I have to do in that model. And so I think that there's some hubris as well in trying to shove any business into a certain direction, but it is all about the founder having a true, true, true understanding of how much money it will take to get them from point A to point B and being able to communicate that. So I believe that that is my mindset, but I'm also willing to admit that it truly depends on your business model, and I think where founders fall into traps is if you have a business that could fall into that sustainable growth mindset, but you convince everyone that it couldn't, like, I actually do need fifty million dollars into burn cash for two more years to try to make money, but that isn't true, then you're fooling yourself a bit.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I think that I would be very aligned with that.”

Q No, absolutely. I agree with you kind of within all facets of companies. I am intrigued, though, because a lot of the churn that I see is due to lack of conversion and kind of this impatience around the content. What was your ramp time for kind of achieving some form of meaningful scale and seeing those returns really start to come in from the content?

A It was a matter of months for us. I mean, we, you know, my personal project, the Shipping Things YouTube show, started last March, and by early summer, like June, we could point to specific customers who discovered us via that content, had onboarded, and were buying from us, and for us in this B to B space, every customer is quite a meaningful chunk of revenue, so essentially it paid for itself the first time we got a customer from it, but that's That's the smaller aspect, actually, that that's the thing you can draw a straight line in your CRM of, like, this customer says they heard about us here, and now here's how much they're spending. You can draw a straight line that makes the ROI clear, but I would argue that that is a smaller element to our success and content. The larger element is that when you're entering a space that doesn't have a crystal clear voice, so you're not probably, like, spending all your time reading packaging news, but even if you were, if I were to ask you, like, who is the voice of packaging? Like, who is the voice of this industry? Like, I don't know. I mean, there's just a bunch of random trade publications. There's really no one stands out. So I think that our opportunity to, as this tiny company surrounded by really large companies, to actually be the louder, more authoritative voice is fascinating. That's a fascinating opportunity that I plan to …

AI assessment note: “It was a matter of months for us.”

Q Despite not spending a lot of time talking about that, that, you raised incredibly successfully, and obviously, the funding allows for team expansion, but the Lumi team is still modest at just 30 today. I'm interested. How do you think about this, given the behemoths in the space that you're up against, maybe with 10,000 plus in their ranks, how does that factor into your thinking?

A Well, I think that it makes you act very, very differently. Think about your hiring very differently when you realize that, yeah, your competitors could copy-paste a bunch of humans or teams of people onto different challenges and different things that you're thinking through. You have to think about how to, how to be very smart about what you're building, and I think that's something that really expands Excites me. It's the types of people we're attracting. Every single person in, at Lumi, like, even just a month before they were hired, would not have guessed that they would end up working in a packaging company. These are incredible technologists and incredible people at the top of their field, whether that be engineering or operations, and I just think that they would not have guessed that they would end up, like, at a packaging company, and I think that what's fascinating about that is that means that all 30 people that I have working at Lumi would not be people who would be within the Scope of hiring or the candidate pipeline of any of my competitors, and so I'm attracting a completely different type of person, and I like to think that the 30 people I have, even though it doesn't rival 10,000 in number, the 30 people I have are 30 incredible future-thinking people that my competitors do not have and might not have had access to, and that puts me in a great spot.

AI assessment note: “it makes you act very, very differently. Think about your hiring very differently”

Q me of an interview I did with Leo Avidar Lobb, and he said that he really advocates for the sustainable growth mindset, and one whereby kind of profitability is always kind of six months away, so although VC-reliant, there is that independence a touching distance away. Would you say this is something you agree with on both the kind of sustainable growth mindset and that kind of quasi VC-reliant status?

A Yeah, I think that I would be very aligned with that. I also think that something that I fundamentally believe in when it comes to all business advice, it is all so situational, right? Like if I'm building a frontier tech company and I need to burn money for five years before I have something to show, then that's what I have to do in that model. And so I think that there's some hubris as well in trying to shove any business into a certain direction, but it is all about the founder having a true, true, true understanding of how much money it will take to get them from point A to point B and being able to communicate that. So I believe that that is my mindset, but I'm also willing to admit that it truly depends on your business model, and I think where founders fall into traps is if you have a business that could fall into that sustainable growth mindset, but you convince everyone that it couldn't, like, I actually do need fifty million dollars into burn cash for two more years to try to make money, but that isn't true, then you're fooling yourself a bit.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I think that I would be very aligned with that.”

Q No, I absolutely agree, but you mentioned the word trap there. I'm intrigued. When you made the transition, were there any kind of traps or dangers that you perceived With making the transition that you've really had to watch out for now with that VC backing?

A I think that there's a bunch. I mean, I think that everyone is colored by their experiences, whether that experience is working at Google for 10 years, or that experience is running a bootstrapped company. It is simultaneously your strength and your kryptonite. Like, it is the background that you have, but then it colors your perception. So I think as a bootstrapped founder, that there's things that we wouldn't do in that first company, like work with recruiters, or the way that you spend money to Save time. Like working with a creator is a great example of spending money to save time. The concept that if you get that hire in two months instead of eight months, you've fundamentally shifted your roadmap forward. That is a type of thinking that is not very common in a bootstrap company where you feel like I control my destiny, I control my timeline, and conserving capital is part of my job. So you really do have to change your mindset and focus on prioritizing what you can do in a certain piece of time more as a venture-backed founder, I think.

AI assessment note: “things that we wouldn't do in that first company, like work with recruiters”

Q Okay, so your love and passion being kind of central to the success, you've also, though, seen many startups around you, as have I, really try and engage with content in a meaningful way, but fail. I'm intrigued. Where do you think many founders and companies go wrong with their strategy?

A Well, I think that there's this very big danger in trying to guess at what People want to see. And, and also in hiring the creativity out. So I unfortunately think there's like endless amounts of agencies and firms and creative people that you can work with to create content. And there, a lot of them are remarkably talented. And I, I've referred people out to agencies and video production companies and stuff that I love. But unfortunately for brands, you have to be very careful. Like you can hire out video production, but you can't hire out brand building. So if you don't have the building blocks Of the creativity that you'd like to see out in the world. There's no such agency that can just like copy and paste the soul onto your company, and so that sounds a little harsh, potentially, but I, when I see bad content, that's how it feels to me. I feel like someone was like, our company should have a soul. I wonder if I can pay an agency a hundred grand for that, and the answer, unfortunately, is no, um, no matter how much you paid, and actually, if you don't supply your own soul, it probably costs 200 K, and it's probably worse, so I think that's a little bit of what I See when I see people out there doing that, unfortunately, but the good news actually is that the creativity comes cheaper than people think, and it's usually when I kind of pull out the things that founders love ab…

AI assessment note: “danger in trying to guess at what People want to see. And, and also in hiring the creativity out.”

Q being one of my favorites, I have to admit, But with the scaling of Lumi and breaking it down into both funds raised and then the team built, we discussed earlier that the weather first time or not at the rodeo being the bootstrap versus VC. How was the fundraising experience for you, given that I'm not sure how to be not rude, but the non-so-sexy nature of Lumi's offering?

A Yeah, I think that there's a bunch of angles to look at our fundraising. I mean, there's like raising money as a five foot tall female CEO. I'm literally five feet tall. There's raising money for packing tape in boxes in Silicon Valley. I think all of it was kind of fascinating, and talking to venture capitalists who sit down and take meetings about everything from future of AI to, like, frontier tech projects, and then talking to them about packaging, it's interesting to watch how I actually found it to be incredibly clarifying, because I could tell if I was boring someone to death, and if I was in the first few minutes of a meeting, I mean, it was clear to me that this is not a fit, like, this This person sitting across the table from me will never be sitting around a boardroom table, like, fascinated about these challenges, but then I would say that was the minority where I felt like I was truly.

AI assessment note: “There's raising money for packing tape in boxes in Silicon Valley.”

Q What were the signs that you were losing?

A Well, I'm pretty sure someone actually slept through a meeting I took with them, so that, that was a pretty strong signal, but I, they looked very, very tired, and they had, like, kind of shiny glasses on. I couldn't really see whether their eyes were open, but I think that was a clear signal. I think that other signs that was boring them would be, like, There was one meeting I took where someone kept asking whether I was truly talking about boxes. Like, I would be like, and then this is happening in the industry, and here's how the corrugated equipment works. And they'd be like, we're talking, like, you mean actual boxes, right? Like, like, they kept making sure that I wasn't just, like, talking about some, like, new AI technology they hadn't heard of. It was just called boxes, you know?

AI assessment note: “someone actually slept through a meeting I took with them, so that, that was a pretty strong signal”

Q about a very different type of person you're hiring there. I spoke to Jonathan at Ludlow, as I said before the show, and he mentioned that you have more energy than a nuclear reactor. Quite literally, this was a copy and paste. So his question to you was, how do you manage the expectations of your employees, seeing that no one could do one-tenth of the output that you do?

A I think it is a fascinating question as a founder, because you, you know, I mean, it is also my personality. I'm like, I'm in the office, like, six-thirty, I'm here till late, and running around, and so enthusiastic about everything, and I think that what is really, really important to think through as a CEO and a founder is, how do you take whatever your personality attributes are, and turn them, To be empowering and inspirational for the people around you, but not a measuring stick, right? Like it would be very demoralizing if an employee starts in there, like have incredible work ethic, incredible output, but they come in at 8:30, like it is not my goal as a leader to make anyone feel what they are doing is less than, especially when they're an incredible asset to the company. So it's more that I want them to feel more bought into Lumi and our mission because they can look at me and go, wow, the person at the helm really cares about this and is really out there Kind of beating our drum and working really hard on this. I hope that it is that. I hope that it is always that. It is always framed as inspirational and not framed as demoralizing in any way, shape, or form. And I think that that's about cultivating threat energy around it and how you treat people.

AI assessment note: “empowering and inspirational for the people around you, but not a measuring stick”

Q I've had most of them on the show, do not worry. But I wanted to discuss a commonality that many of them suggested, which was your amazing content creation strategy. So before we dive into the tactics themselves, I think kind of the meta question first for a lot of founders is like, what types of companies and founders does an active content strategy make sense for, do you think?

A Yeah. I think that I'm of the mindset that content is super powerful. In 2018, we live in a world that is just saturated by content, but also it's how most of us relate to a lot of the brands that we're using. And so I believe it's important essentially for most or all businesses. It's hard for me to think of a model. If I had to think of a model that it wouldn't be useful for, it would tend towards my model, like, you know, B to B businesses, um, businesses that primarily are in a space that very few people understand. So if we can make it work and be useful for our company, then most everyone I can think of really can. And I think it's a misguided impression that it's like only consumer facing businesses or businesses with a very visual product that can benefit. So I think that's actually my philosophy, to be honest.

AI assessment note: “I believe it's important essentially for most or all businesses.”

Q I'm intrigued, though, with the benefit of hindsight, and having gone through a few rounds now of fundraising, if you were to maybe self-analyze, what do you think you first did well, and then what would you maybe iterate and change upon for the subsequent rounds?

A I think that's something that we've always done well is communicate our passion for the challenge, and I think that that is really, really critical. So that is something I think we've done well. I think that even when a VC walks out of a room with us and goes like, I have no idea why those people are working on that thing. I don't understand. Like they at least walk out going, but they definitely care a lot about it. Whatever they're up to. I don't know. I don't know, but they definitely care a lot about it. So that is something I think we've done really well. And I really coach founders as well. I'm pulling out of themselves, like not being shy. I mean, if people don't understand why you are working on this as an individual, why would they trust that you're going to work on it for nearly a decade? And take it full term. So that I think is super critical, and we do a good job at that. Um, something that I think I would keep refining is helping them understand why this company is going to impact a lot of other companies. I think that it can be easy when you're fundraising. You're supposed to talk about your company. You're supposed to talk about the future of what you're building, so you do. But I think that's something I haven't talked enough about in the fundraiser Process or publicly is the effect on the world. I think that this company will have, like, the change that we can…

AI assessment note: “communicate our passion for the challenge... something that I think I would keep refining”

Q What were the signs that you were losing?

A Well, I'm pretty sure someone actually slept through a meeting I took with them, so that, that was a pretty strong signal, but I, they looked very, very tired, and they had, like, kind of shiny glasses on. I couldn't really see whether their eyes were open, but I think that was a clear signal. I think that other signs that was boring them would be, like, There was one meeting I took where someone kept asking whether I was truly talking about boxes. Like, I would be like, and then this is happening in the industry, and here's how the corrugated equipment works. And they'd be like, we're talking, like, you mean actual boxes, right? Like, like, they kept making sure that I wasn't just, like, talking about some, like, new AI technology they hadn't heard of. It was just called boxes, you know?

AI assessment note: “someone actually slept through a meeting I took with them, so that, that was”

Q No, and you've made great success of the content strategy itself. So I mean, I have to ask the subsequent question is from that time kind of building out the strategy, what have been the core pillars to your success with content, do you think?

A I think that we are approaching things from a little bit of an interesting angle where this is like very true. We actually create our content because we really enjoy doing that. And I know that may sound strange or I guess no founder would come on and admit they don't enjoy creating their content, but I run this YouTube show that is like really kind of cheeky and fun about shipping and packaging logistics. My co-founder runs a podcast where we invite on just incredible luminaries from e-commerce and design space. I think that for my co-founder and I, This is a conversation we have actually had with each other where we think about the things that we enjoy doing as human beings that don't necessarily just fit into being like a CEO of a packaging company or the head of product at a packaging company, and how can we fold those into the business? And our answer has actually been this content. Like, I really love creating videos, but as a CEO of a packaging company, like, it's not part of my job description. Like, if I didn't do this, none of the VCs involved would be like, where are those videos, Jessie? Like, so I think that finding ways to smashing Into our, like, little entity things that we truly enjoy doing is kind of a secret power of our content strategy.

AI assessment note: “things that we truly enjoy doing is kind of a secret power”

Q Despite not spending a lot of time talking about that, that, you raised incredibly successfully, and obviously, the funding allows for team expansion, but the Lumi team is still modest at just 30 today. I'm interested. How do you think about this, given the behemoths in the space that you're up against, maybe with 10,000 plus in their ranks, how does that factor into your thinking?

A Well, I think that it makes you act very, very differently. Think about your hiring very differently when you realize that, yeah, your competitors could copy-paste a bunch of humans or teams of people onto different challenges and different things that you're thinking through. You have to think about how to, how to be very smart about what you're building, and I think that's something that really expands Excites me. It's the types of people we're attracting. Every single person in, at Lumi, like, even just a month before they were hired, would not have guessed that they would end up working in a packaging company. These are incredible technologists and incredible people at the top of their field, whether that be engineering or operations, and I just think that they would not have guessed that they would end up, like, at a packaging company, and I think that what's fascinating about that is that means that all 30 people that I have working at Lumi would not be people who would be within the Scope of hiring or the candidate pipeline of any of my competitors, and so I'm attracting a completely different type of person, and I like to think that the 30 people I have, even though it doesn't rival 10,000 in number, the 30 people I have are 30 incredible future-thinking people that my competitors do not have and might not have had access to, and that puts me in a great spot.

AI assessment note: “the 30 people I have are 30 incredible future-thinking people that my competitors do not have”

Q No, absolutely. The multiplier effect. I'm with you completely. What motto or quote do you frequently revert back to?

A There's a quote that I love that's up on our office wall. The best way to predict the future is to invent it. I like the quote, not just because it is a great quote, And it really reminds you to wake up every day and, like, create the future that you'd like to see, but I also like the quote because no one couldn't agree on who to attribute it to, and so I love humanity in the sense it is attributed to everyone from Alan Kay, the computer scientist, to Abraham Lincoln, to Peter Drucker, to many others, and I love not only the quote itself, but I love the fact that no one couldn't agree who said it first or best, so for all those reasons.

AI assessment note: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Q I'm completely in the same field as you, but I do have to ask, given that experience bootstrapping and maybe that kind of more thrifty mindset, how has that impacted your philosophy today running Lumi?

A Yeah, I think that back to what VCs think, I think that there's a concern about a bootstrapped entrepreneur about whether they think Too small. They're going to be too overly concerned with profitability and things of that nature because your goal, if you understand the dynamics, of course, of a venture-backed business is to grow something very, very large and impactful, and that's really the model, and I think that I knew that going in, so I approached this business fundamentally different, but I feel like the positive parts that stick with me are thinking about the unit economics, thinking about the actual fundamentals of the business very, very early, realizing that you can't really It's very hard to change this over time, so I think when you hear about founders falling into the trap of being like, well, we were growing so quickly, and everyone was patting me on the back, but then three years later, I realized that on every transaction, I lose money or something like that. It's really impossible for me to imagine ever saying that, because I just think that, um, I think for better or worse, that might be a founder that has not run a food shop business, because you dig into the fundamentals on a food shop company very, very early, because you have to, because you have to survive.

AI assessment note: “positive parts that stick with me are thinking about the unit economics”

Q No, and you've made great success of the content strategy itself. So I mean, I have to ask the subsequent question is from that time kind of building out the strategy, what have been the core pillars to your success with content, do you think?

A I think that we are approaching things from a little bit of an interesting angle where this is like very true. We actually create our content because we really enjoy doing that. And I know that may sound strange or I guess no founder would come on and admit they don't enjoy creating their content, but I run this YouTube show that is like really kind of cheeky and fun about shipping and packaging logistics. My co-founder runs a podcast where we invite on just incredible luminaries from e-commerce and design space. I think that for my co-founder and I, This is a conversation we have actually had with each other where we think about the things that we enjoy doing as human beings that don't necessarily just fit into being like a CEO of a packaging company or the head of product at a packaging company, and how can we fold those into the business? And our answer has actually been this content. Like, I really love creating videos, but as a CEO of a packaging company, like, it's not part of my job description. Like, if I didn't do this, none of the VCs involved would be like, where are those videos, Jessie? Like, so I think that finding ways to smashing Into our, like, little entity things that we truly enjoy doing is kind of a secret power of our content strategy.

AI assessment note: “things that we truly enjoy doing is kind of a secret power of our content strategy”

Q being one of my favorites, I have to admit, But with the scaling of Lumi and breaking it down into both funds raised and then the team built, we discussed earlier that the weather first time or not at the rodeo being the bootstrap versus VC. How was the fundraising experience for you, given that I'm not sure how to be not rude, but the non-so-sexy nature of Lumi's offering?

A Yeah, I think that there's a bunch of angles to look at our fundraising. I mean, there's like raising money as a five foot tall female CEO. I'm literally five feet tall. There's raising money for packing tape in boxes in Silicon Valley. I think all of it was kind of fascinating, and talking to venture capitalists who sit down and take meetings about everything from future of AI to, like, frontier tech projects, and then talking to them about packaging, it's interesting to watch how I actually found it to be incredibly clarifying, because I could tell if I was boring someone to death, and if I was in the first few minutes of a meeting, I mean, it was clear to me that this is not a fit, like, this This person sitting across the table from me will never be sitting around a boardroom table, like, fascinated about these challenges, but then I would say that was the minority where I felt like I was truly.

AI assessment note: “I actually found it to be incredibly clarifying, because I could tell if I was boring”

Q No, I, I love it. I love especially the element you said there about never having had a job. Can I ask a very rude question here, Jessie? Would you say you're unemployable? I would say I am, so don't mind.

A I think it's fascinating. I think that I have never had to find out if I am employable, and maybe that's by design, but it's actually, to me, I don't know. I really have no concept of whether I could get a job, but I would say that I have thought more about the inverse, which is that I almost feel like I've intentionally not gotten a job because I worry. Like, if I had ever had a taste of, like, a real income where you work 40 hours a week and someone, like, just tells you you're doing good because you've done a reasonable amount of work, I have no concept about whether I would have done any of this. Like, it seems so out of reach To me, that you could, like, put in 40 hours and, and have, like, a healthy income, so I don't know, like, that's the inverse to me. It's like, I just don't know how I would even react to that.

AI assessment note: “I think that I have never had to find out if I am employable”

Q God, I want to join Lumi after hearing this, but, uh, tell me the next five years for you and for Lumi, what's the exciting roadmap ahead?

A So to me, what people see when they look at Lumi is we're making packaging supply chain easier for modern brands. We produce a lot of gorgeous packaging, beautiful unboxings, but I think that what they don't see as much is what fascinates me about why we're creating Lumi is I have tremendous amount of respect for the manufacturing industry, the men and women, and like People who have invested in equipment that takes up city blocks all over the world and how that connects to the people who are building product and need to tap in to that manufacturing capacity. So we are really like a blind two-sided marketplace in that sense. And so what fascinates me is as Lumi grows, we're continuing to democratize access to the world's best manufacturing so that a new entrepreneur launching can access the same high level of manufacturing somewhere in the world that someone who's been at it for five years or 10 years and has really networked in. So And what that leads to, like, if you democratize access to the best manufacturing, um, and make supply chain easier to manage, what that leads to is it becomes easier, kind of in the same way Shopify made it so much easier for us all to launch our ideas on a whim. It becomes easier for fantastic products to get out there. There's more challengers in every consumer products category. The best products succeed, hopefully. I mean, you're talking to a p…

AI assessment note: “So that's the future I see if we keep doing our jobs”