Cotopaxi

“And the return rate was like zero, like whatever they got, no matter how funky it was, they were, they loved it.”

“We had 30,000 social media posts in that first 24 hours of our launch.”

“We ended up with a handful of investors that invested, like I mentioned, Kirsten Green from Foreigner Ventures and a handful of other amazing people that stepped up and some of my friends from business school, like the Warby Parker founders the founders of Har…”

“We donate we donate one percent of all of our revenues. Which to be clear, a lot of times is many years that was actually more than we made. We maybe weren't even making money, but we're still giving money away.”

“We had a chief impact officer before we had a chief marketing officer. We didn't have a marketer.”

“We've made, we sold five million backpacks made of remnant leftover repurposed material from other outdoor brands. It's the leftover scraps.”

“I think I did a good job taking a business from zero to around a hundred and fifty million in revenue, and there's probably better leaders that can take it To the next level.”

“I suspect I'll probably go back to Cotopaxi and not as a CEO. I think I've given that role up and I'm okay with that now. I maybe play an executive chairman kind of role where I can still be very involved in our mission and our purpose and the culture.”

“I sat on the couch all night the next day and the entire following night. So, 36 hours on this couch. And during that period, and I took detailed notes, I still have the journal entries on my computer, and I basically had the entire idea for Cotopaxi.”

“People that's wonderful, but people are not going to buy, buy your product because you're doing good in the world. You need to first create a great product. And he was absolutely right. So I really do think that's first, like you have to go build a great produ…”

“Give them a little bit of equity. And we figured out some creative structure around compensation. If we ended up fundraising, if we didn't fundraise, it was like, I didn't have to pay anything. So they were taking a little bit of risk with me, but because of t…”

“Bank capital, they bought out a lot of our early investors and those early investors made a fantastic return.”

“We've more than tripled our revenue, you know, since they've invested two and a half years ago.”

“We'd grown a hundred percent almost the year before.”

“I pitched over a hundred different investors, lots of family offices.”

“I pitched a hundred investors to get our first investor, you know, Kirsten green at forerunner. She backed us. I pitched a hundred investors in our first to raise that seed round.”

“We raised three million dollars and had a, so a seven pre, 10 post.”

“Our first major investor, Kirsten Green, Our second major investor, Ellie Wheeler from Great Craft. Our third major investor, Brooke Harley. Our last investor with Bain Capital, Cecilia Chao. There's a trend. Women are leading rounds in our business.”

“And even in the last 12 months since I started that fundraising process, we've think businesses increased 50%.”

“I go get Kirsten green or someone from our board, Cecilia Chow from bank capital to go jump on a call. And it's like, you know, they, I can help, I can attract and retain talent better.”

“Our slowest growth year in the last 10 years was actually 20 20. We grew 40% that year, but we were profitable, significantly profitable, and it was because we tightened our belt in such a big way.”

“We gave three percent of our revenues that year to impact work.”

“Are we a multi-billion dollar business? Not yet, but we will be.”

“If you look at, you know, the percentage of businesses that have started in the last 10 years, we are in the top one percent.”

“Yes, you can have balance and you can still build an extremely efficient and great business that's doing great work. You don't have to put in a 120 hours a week, a hundred hours a week and not have any balance. And torch, you know, family relationships and eve…”

“In fact, I'd say you shouldn't own the vertical entirely to give effectively. I think you specialize in what you're great at.”

“And I started a process being capital gave me a handful of search firms to go talk to. I talked to four or five of them. I didn't want, I didn't hire any of them. And I decided I'm going to go run the process myself. And bank capital was like, that is a mistak…”

“The only problem is he wanted to be CEO. He didn't want to be president. He didn't want to be my right hand. And I had some other options that were really great right hands that would have been happy being president forever. And at the end of the day, I did, I…”

“I think the one thing that I'd love to do better though than what I've seen Patagonia do and this is coming from someone with deep admiration for Yvonne Chouinard and for Patagonia. I guess if there was a criticism I'd have is why after 40 years was he the onl…”

“And I actually think it's a win for Cotabaxi to, like, I don't want to give the company away to a foundation. I actually want to create something that can create wealth for many people within our organization, and that can allow them to go pass on this to thei…”

“One of my favorites is actually a company called Office Vibe. It sends out polls through Slack, which we use Slack, and I measure Literally every day, I'm tracking and measuring our culture, and I can try, I can slice the data based on gender, based on tenure …”

“I was so convinced 12 months ago that I would never take this company public, that I didn't want to sell it to anyone. I just wanted to stay independent and private forever. And I'd say I've changed my mind. I don't, I'm open to all options.”

“But I think at the right time, let's say the, you know, let's say Cotabaxi is, you know, five hundred million in sales and has you know, 75 or eighty million dollars in EBITDA. At that point, it's like, it's stable. You know, the business is stable. I think th…”

“As an entrepreneur, so much is about, it's about you, right? And especially as you build a brand or a platform like you'built, it's like a lot of is it about is about you.”

“I'm not the CEO anymore, and I have a CEO that's, we got a major upgrade. When I left. And so I'm not going to be the CEO”

“Instead of doing layoffs, we decided to cut our executive salaries in a pretty significant way, and we cut everyone's pay by 10% for three months, and then we cut it down to five percent for the rest of the year, and then by the end of the year, we ended up gi…”

“We ended up having our first profitable year in 2020, and it was significantly profitable. And it allowed us to pay those bonuses to our team. And then in 20, 21, we grew a little over 60%. And then in 20, 22, we grew over 90, about 90%.”

“And all of a sudden, you know, in August of twenty-twenty, we made the decision, we're remote first forever.”

“We just hired the CEO of Eddie Bauer, joined our team last year as the president, Damien Wong.”

“Over the history of our business, the last almost nine years, we've helped and aided 3.8 million people living in poverty through our efforts.”

“The first thing that they did was they tied our bonuses, our compensation as leaders in the company to our impact work.”

“Last year, 97% of all of our products that we sold were made of the three, one of the three R's.”

“I'm going to be joining the board meetings. I'm going to be moving into a chairman role. Every quarter I'm going to do a meeting with all new employees, which I love doing this currently. I do it actually currently I do it every month, but all new employees I …”

“We had Kirsten Green led our first round. This is an investor that she's backed Warby Parker and Away and Birchbox and Dollar Shave Club, and she believed in us, and she believed in our mission, and so she wrote the first check, and that was the beginning of t…”

“We went to them and said, hey, all this remnant material that we see, all this leftover, we want to use it, and we want you guys to design the bags. The only rule is to make no bag alike, and so that's been really fun.”

“You know, we've worked together for six and a half years now, and we've never had an argument.”

“We had 30,000 social media posts the day of our launch, of people using our bags, outliving our brand values, and it was a really special way for us to go build the brand.”

“We had over a 100,000 people participate in one of our Questable events.”

“We hired a, someone to head up our impact work In the first year of our business, before we even hired someone in marketing, we hired someone in impact.”

“Over the last two years, our focus has really been on becoming sustainable and profitable, and we've made some amazing progress, and we're finally to the point where we don't have to raise more venture capital moving forward.”

“I believe we can go build a billion dollar business.”