The Exchanges

Q of became the, the company it is today, but it was still really exciting. I mean, I, I remember when that Roadster came out in 2008, it was still kind of a novelty car, but. I guess you left to continue your studies. You went back to Stanford, but did you leave with the intention of like, okay, there's something to this battery thing, and I want to pursue this?

A Yeah, so I was a mechanical engineer, and the, the thing that vexed me was that battery performance was not improving at the rate that we had seen, even sort of in my solar car days just four years before that, and I knew nothing about the chemistry. I knew nothing of what went on inside the battery, and I looked at it and said, look, if these Performance curves are projected forward. They're going to stall out and we're not going to have EVs, you know, replace every gas car. So I left with the mission to study material science, physics, thermodynamics, chemistry, all of the disciplines needed to find a breakthrough in batteries. And I did that for a couple of years while also looking for a technology to build a company around. So it was very purpose driven. And, um, you know, I think I'm a, I'm a sucker for The hardest problems, and we had sort of figured out how to make battery packs for EVs, and, you know, now the hard problem was making the chemistry better.

AI assessment note: “I left with the mission to study material science, physics, thermodynamics, chemistry”

Q All right, so let's, let's dive into the problem for a moment. I mean, you're, let's, let's go back to 2011, because you've, you founded the company in 2011, and what was the, the problem you were trying to solve at the time? Was, was it the same problem you're still trying to solve today, or was it a different problem at that time?

A Same problem. And this is, this is one of the, the, the beauties of, of picking the right problem is you get to focus and you don't have to pivot. Um, so the problem we wanted to solve was that what I saw was that the performance of lithium ion batteries, particularly in energy density, the improvements were slowing down and reaching a plateau. And the reason that was so important isn't because you necessarily need longer range for EVs, but in the long run, you need cheaper batteries. And it turns out the more energy each battery cell can store, the cheaper the battery pack can be. And the way to think about the reason for that is if every battery cell you have stores twice as much energy, then you need half as many cells. And if you need half as many cells, you need less manufacturing equipment, less packaging, less labor, all of those things. So the best way to make EVs affordable long run is to make the highest performing batteries. And that was the thesis that we started with.

AI assessment note: “Same problem... the problem we wanted to solve was that what I saw”

Q Yeah. So you and Gleb basically joined forces and, uh, I know you, essentially, you had to raise some money to begin the process, and you raised about five million dollars back in, I think, back in 2011. Tell me what the pitch was to investors. You said, we are going to build a better battery that does X, Y, and Z. What, what were you saying to investors?

A So we, we told investors, we're going to make a battery that improves energy density, uh, meaning how much energy the cell can store, which will either enable us to increase range for EVs or, uh, lower costs. It'll also enable us to reduce charge times, which this chemistry has a side benefit of. And we could apply that same chemistry into consumer electronics because graphite's in every lithium ion battery. It's in Your cell phone, it's in the laptop, it's in your car, and so we can apply this chemistry across different markets, and we could start in consumer, where we could get to production much faster, and then we could scale into cars, where the opportunity is just, just mind-bogglingly large. So really, from day one, we laid out the plan that we executed, and, you know, we, 10 years in, we got into our first consumer electronics device, and, you know, it'll be Sort of around five years more from then to get into, you know, first car that folks can buy.

AI assessment note: “we told investors, we're going to make a battery that improves energy density”

Q All right. So let's talk about what the battery can do right now. All right. You've got a G-Wagon, an electric G-Wagon, let's say, and I don't know what the range is on it, but what, what does this new battery bring to the table? Why, how, how does it improve the vehicle from a consumer standpoint?

A So we tell our customers that we can deliver for them a 20% increase in, in energy density, which they can translate to 20% longer range. So if you've got an EV with 250 miles of range, we get you to 300 without having to redesign everything, without having to have a, you know, battery pack that has to replace your back seat. It just fits into the exact same space where your current battery is. Um, and so if, and if you've got 300 mile range already, then we can get you to three 60. And so that's where the technology is today, and then over the next few years, we'll get that to a 30% improvement. Eventually, we think we can get that to a 40% improvement over state-of-the-art graphite chemistries.

AI assessment note: “we can deliver for them a 20% increase in, in energy density”

Q for a moment, because essentially, a lithium ion battery, it stores energy, right? And from, and you'll do a better explanation, because you know the science, but essentially from, from what I understand, the lithium stores the energy, and then over time, that lithium transfers to the, for lack of a better description, the other side of the battery when it spends the energy. Is that more or less right?

A Yeah, that's like, that's a pretty good start. So there are, as you say, there are two sides to the battery, two really important components. The anode, which hosts the lithium when the battery is charged, and the cathode, which hosts the lithium when the battery is discharged. And so when you're charging up the battery at night, you're forcing all the lithium to move into the anode. And then as you're using it, as you connect it to the motor, the The lithium ions kind of run back to the cathode, and the electron goes and does a bunch of work in your car. And so the anode side, the material that stores lithium on when the battery's charged, is today graphite. In almost every single battery in the world, it's just graphite. Same as your pencil lead.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, that's like, that's a pretty good start.”

Q All right, so let's, let's dive into the problem for a moment. I mean, you're, let's, let's go back to 2011, because you've, you founded the company in 2011, and what was the, the problem you were trying to solve at the time? Was, was it the same problem you're still trying to solve today, or was it a different problem at that time?

A Same problem. And this is, this is one of the, the, the beauties of, of picking the right problem is you get to focus and you don't have to pivot. Um, so the problem we wanted to solve was that what I saw was that the performance of lithium ion batteries, particularly in energy density, the improvements were slowing down and reaching a plateau. And the reason that was so important isn't because you necessarily need longer range for EVs, but in the long run, you need cheaper batteries. And it turns out the more energy each battery cell can store, the cheaper the battery pack can be. And the way to think about the reason for that is if every battery cell you have stores twice as much energy, then you need half as many cells. And if you need half as many cells, you need less manufacturing equipment, less packaging, less labor, all of those things. So the best way to make EVs affordable long run is to make the highest performing batteries. And that was the thesis that we started with.

AI assessment note: “Same problem. And this is, this is one of the, the, the beauties”

Q for a moment, because essentially, a lithium ion battery, it stores energy, right? And from, and you'll do a better explanation, because you know the science, but essentially from, from what I understand, the lithium stores the energy, and then over time, that lithium transfers to the, for lack of a better description, the other side of the battery when it spends the energy. Is that more or less right?

A Yeah, that's like, that's a pretty good start. So there are, as you say, there are two sides to the battery, two really important components. The anode, which hosts the lithium when the battery is charged, and the cathode, which hosts the lithium when the battery is discharged. And so when you're charging up the battery at night, you're forcing all the lithium to move into the anode. And then as you're using it, as you connect it to the motor, the The lithium ions kind of run back to the cathode, and the electron goes and does a bunch of work in your car. And so the anode side, the material that stores lithium on when the battery's charged, is today graphite. In almost every single battery in the world, it's just graphite. Same as your pencil lead.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, that's like, that's a pretty good start. So there are, as you say”

Q help put together an executive order around the stuff late in 20, 23. Tell me what that order actually in practical terms will do. Like, what will it slow down this process? Will it actually create actionable protections for us? Or is it just, I don't know. I mean, again, it's an executive order. It's not, it's not law, you know, a congressional law. What, what, what does it do?

A Well, so there's multiple parts to answering this question. So, I mean, this is, I think, like, a 111 pages. It was done in record time. In six months, it touches algorithmic bias, so AI that's used in current AI systems that are biased and how to deal with those issues. It deals with AI and biological weapons and needing to lock down the supply chains for where people can get dangerous materials and saying, you know, we need to handle that better. It deals with AI and the next GPT-V and GPT-VI systems. It says that if you train a system That uses more than 10 to the 26, I believe, flops or floating point operations, too technical jargon. Then you have to notify the government. That's like basically like saying, if you're building a nuclear weapon that's really powerful, the government has to know. Yeah. But to your real point, your real question you're asking is, what can that executive order do? Because it's not law, it's an executive order. It's not legally binding for making sure that all the companies have to do all these things. Um, A lot of it is changing what's called federal terms and conditions. So to get federal funding, if you're a biology lab, you will not be able to get that funding if you don't do these new sort of protective measures for the dangerous biological materials. So what that's doing is using the leverage of the government and its funding power to star…

AI assessment note: “A lot of it is changing what's called federal terms and conditions.”

Q Like you would do these, these road shows where you'd go to different cities and, and, and host these fashion events and things like that. Um, but, but the thing about a community, right, is that it, it can turn on you. And, and I think pretty early on your, some of your users did turn on you in, in part because of your shipping fees. Like what exactly happened?

A Yeah, so we launched the app with five dollar shipping at that time, and our cost of shipping was turning out to be 10 dollars and 50 cents on an average. And so we were basically losing money left and right on every order. And if you remember, having come out of dot com, I didn't want to build a business where you were losing money on every order. So we were like, what do we do? And, you know, our shipping fee was nine dollars at that time. We had discounted to five dollars for the launch. So we said, you know what, we'll just, Take the discount away and go back to normal things. So we put a little note in the app in May of 2012 saying, hey, we are, the discount is going to finish, the welcome discount is gone, and we're going to move the shipping to nine dollars. Hmm. I kid you not, Guy, within 24 hours, Tracy and our mailbox and Twitter was flooded with hundreds of people saying, you are going to make us bankrupt. We won't have any clothes to wear. You guys are crazy. How can you change the shipping? And it was a revolt by our community for us to move our shipping from five to nine dollars. We had never seen this level of passion ever in my life.

AI assessment note: “it was a revolt by our community for us to move our shipping”

Q And, and from what I gather, initially when you launched, there wasn't like a buy now Button on the site, right? Like, I read that something like that, that, that employees of Poshmark would set up face-to-face meetings with the, how did, what was going on there?

A We were big believers of putting the product out into the customer's hands very early. So we got funded in February, and by May, we were starting to test the product in, of, of, of, of, of, and by August, we were starting to see transactions happening. But, We hadn't gotten our payment processing set up. We hadn't gotten shipping set up, so we were still just a content site, and so people would literally write a comment, and Leanne, who was our first employee in our, today our SVP of community, was heading up the community management, so people would just email her, and she would say, uh, you guys want to buy this thing? Please Bring your money or PayPal me the money and then meet us. And, and typically our meeting was at the district wine bar in Soma in San Francisco. And that's where the product would happen. It would be almost like a little physical product exchange. And half the time it was cash and product being exchanged there. We were not making any, we were just trying to facilitate the transaction.

AI assessment note: “We hadn't gotten our payment processing set up. We hadn't gotten shipping set up”

Q And when you, I mean, one of the things that I'm curious about in terms of inventory is, Unlike a lot of apparel brands, you could probably overestimate, I mean, or order more inventory than you needed, because it wasn't like your styles were changing. These were evergreen styles, right?

A Yes, and that was a huge benefit for us, um, both in terms of sort of learning about demand from early on and not having to get it exactly right, because we knew whatever we weren't going to sell in that season, we could just keep on the site because it wasn't going out of fashion, and also kind of resulted in a really great customer experience because we could lean into inventory confidently. It just meant that we were in stock at a really high rate, And so, you know, we wanted to make sure that for these busy families, we always had the black leggings or the t-shirts that they needed, um, and we were able to do that because of this point.

AI assessment note: “Yes, and that was a huge benefit for us”

Q much as they thought they could. And it's interesting, they're opening all of these factories, and Mexico apparently is really benefiting from this. A lot of factories opening in Mexico, in Guatemala, Central America, in Peru. Is there a world where you would look To, to this landmass here in North South America, um, to, to bring more of your manufacturing there, just, just in case there was a disruption?

A I think potentially, um, we have looked at it, um, a little bit so far, and sort of where we've netted out, at least to date, is that because, ah, those regions just have sort of less access to cotton, it is a little bit harder on both the development front, but also the sort of transport of the fabric, which, which you would need to potentially import into those countries before you make it, and so it adds a little bit of complexity. Um, with that said, though, we're still curious about it. It's hard not to be when, you know, the lead times of getting something from Guatemala are three days on the water versus three weeks. And so it's definitely sort of on the radar. But for now, I think we're sort of firmly in, um, in Vietnam and India with still a little bit of production in China.

AI assessment note: “we have looked at it, um, a little bit so far”

Q Tell me specifically what you were, what, what you were thinking of. I mean, you would give kids clay or, you know, glue and construction paper, but, but the, that wasn't what the box would be. I have to assume the box would have instructions on Creating a specific project, right? That was the idea.

A Right. So we would provide materials and we would provide the instructions. So the very first crate that we sent out was centered around color. And so what we included in this crate was first kind of a, a frame or a mat for a picture along with contact paper and a Squares of tissue paper. And so they're able to make creations, um, and then put that up against the light and see how the tissue paper squares actually interacted with each other in terms of color mixing. Another project that we had was a little tote bag. So a canvas tote bag, you would take the tissue paper squares and actually wet them and dye your tote bag. And again, what you would do is you'd have this amazing creation. As well as a lesson in color mixing, too, because we knew the consumer, the parent, would not necessarily buy into the idea of, here's a pot of yellow paint, and here's a pot of red paint, and then you mix those to make orange, because that was a typical way of learning color mixing. We had to go at it at, with a unique angle.

AI assessment note: “we would provide materials and we would provide the instructions. So the very first crate”

Q Here's more from my conversation with Steve Altimas, whose company is planning to send its first lunar lander to the south pole of the moon early next year. Okay, let's talk about your, um, your launch. I know there have been some scheduled launches that have been nixed. There are a variety of reasons, weather, and other challenges, and your next window is, I think, is January of twenty-twenty-four, right?

A Yes, we had a launch window in November, but, you know, there's priorities going off the launch pad all the time, and so we have to fit within the manifest of what's going off of launch pad A at Kennedy Space Center. So SpaceX has given us a launch date for January 12th of 2024. Um, we have a five day window to get off. Uh, there's only a certain amount of days per month that you can fly to the moon where it's in the right position, uh, to where we can land at our designated landing site. Um, so we're very excited about it. The lander has been ready for some time now, uh, since the end of September, uh, and we will ship it Later this month, uh, to the Cape for processing. We'll take Christmas off and, uh, get it, uh, final, fine touches to it and get it on its spacecraft adapter and get it, uh, encapsulated on the Falcon nine and get it out to the launch pad, do a rehearsal and launch it on, uh, I think the launch window opens at 11:59 PM on January 12th.

AI assessment note: “SpaceX has given us a launch date for January 12th of 2024.”

Q been to Warby Parker stores, I've gone on the website, and the one-to-one model doesn't seem like it's emphasized as much. I know you still do it, right? You still give one pair of glasses away for everyone you sell, but Um, I was surprised that it's not like front and center of how you position your business. So can you talk a little bit about that for a moment?

A Sure. I, I think we've learned, um, and we learned this very early on. In fact, actually when we were working on the business plan is what's most important to customers. Um, and when they're buying glasses, what's most important is the glasses look good on their face. Then how much do they cost? And then is it good quality and is it good service? Um, lastly, you know, is there a social ethos behind the brand and is my purchase sort of helping and serving others? So with that knowledge, When we're meeting new customers for the first time, we lead with fashion, right? Glasses are a core part of someone's identity. We want them to look great. Then we tell them that's only 95 dollars, right? Including all the bells and whistles. And frankly, it's not until usually after they purchase that they even learn that for every pair of glasses we sell, we distribute one to someone in need.

AI assessment note: “when we're meeting new customers for the first time, we lead with fashion”

Q you can cure most of them. The challenge is that most of the time, cancer is not detected until it's symptomatic, and by that point, you're in stage three or four. Um, the idea here is that, is that a full body scan could possibly detect diseases in their early phases, and, and that will enable a patient to, to, to deal with them earlier. Is that, is that right?

A Correct. And what's really unique about these scans is when you come in for a scan, we scan your liver something like 13 or 14 times. And we're actually filtering for different tissue composition. We're filtering for blood, fat, Protonicious tissue. And there's one really, really special filter that you need to have very, very good hardware to do, which is a filter for hardness. And what we know about cancer is, well, not everything that feels hard is a cancer. All solid tumors are harder than the surrounding tissue. And so it enables us to be a lot more sensitive for very early stage cancer. And that's why the vast majority of the cancer that we catch is actually stage one or localized to the organ of origin. So we're, so we're able to do what women do for their breasts, which is feel for lumps. We can do that digitally with these machines through the entire body, including the parts that you can't feel very well yourself, and be able to do that at a quality that enables us to detect these lesions very, very early.

AI assessment note: “Correct. And what's really unique about these scans is”

Q So here you are, there are four other guys, probably talking about their software as a service product, and then you present, and what? What happens?

A So I presented with passion, I had a great presentation, and then after the stage pitches, there was a breakout room in which the five of us each had a table where we could display our product concept or technology. Um, and so for me, it was that, you know, poster board with the sketches of the product, And no one came to my table. It was so embarrassing. I was so upset. And at the very end, as I was packing up my table, a guy named Phil came by and said, you gave the best presentation. And he said, as you can tell, I have very little hair. I know little about hair care. But he goes, I don't really invest in the products anyway. I invest in the people. And he goes, you've got something, and here's my number, let's be in touch.

AI assessment note: “after the stage pitches, there was a breakout room... no one came to my table.”

Q Was the payoff good? I mean, I mean, it's, you're getting into a few small local groceries and But a lot of work, you got to make all that tzatziki, and you got to make all that feta, and you got to make all that hummus, and then package it, and was it worthwhile? Was it a good revenue stream?

A It was not a good revenue stream. It was losing money. It was giving us heartache. I remember even the first delivery I took, uh, the grocery store refused it. I delivered it in the backseat of my car, and they said, well, You know, has this been refrigerated? Uh, you know, since you delivered it, I go, no, we pretty much made it through it in my car and brought it over. So I had to throw that all away. Obviously we're making this stuff without preservatives. And as we made it a few days later, these packages were kind of blowing up, uh, because we didn't have any preservatives in it. Uh, so we didn't really understand the business at all, and it really, really struggled.

AI assessment note: “It was not a good revenue stream. It was losing money.”

Q And I guess while you were there, you, after that project, you decided to, to tackle another project around water electrolysis. Can you tell me a little bit about what that project was?

A Yeah. So after this solar powered toilet situation, I was looking around for what else to do. And a lot of folks at Caltech were working on splitting water in order to replace fossil fuels. And the idea was we could use clean, renewable electricity, split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then use that hydrogen as a fuel to fuel everything we do today. And we wouldn't have to use any fossil fuels. And the scale of that solution was really compelling to me. That's But I realized that the technology had been around for over a hundred years, and we don't make hydrogen by splitting water today. We make hydrogen a different way from a fossil fuel, actually. And we do that because it's the lowest cost way to make hydrogen. And I didn't see a route for hydrogen production to become lower cost than the production from fossil fuels. And therefore, ultimately, I didn't see A chance for there to be a big impact. So I ultimately stopped working on that project too.

AI assessment note: “we could use clean, renewable electricity, split water into hydrogen and oxygen”

Q so you come up with this, this plant based menu. Um, and, and that's, that's one way that Kernel's gonna be different from like a typical fast food or casual restaurant. But I understand that you're also planning to operate these locations, these Kernel locations in a different way. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Like how is Kernel gonna be run differently than a typical restaurant?

A So the main difference is that it's a, it's based on a hub and spoke model. So one of the most difficult parts of making a great meal is the prep. And what we've decided to do at kernel is centralize the prep. So we do all of our preparation, all of the food prep in a central kitchen, and that will service a couple of handfuls of restaurants within a, Five to 10 minute bicycle ride. And we'll put this prepped food into totes and load the totes onto a wagon and pull them by bicycle to the restaurants every hour. So when the restaurant receives their tote, they load the prep food into the, into the system. When you guy want to order food at Colonel, you take out your device. And you go through our app or our web app and see the offerings and decide what you want and do the little double click and pay and, uh, agree upon a time to, to pick it up or have it delivered. And, uh, the system takes it from there. The system knows what time it needs to start cooking the food, what time it needs to start toasting the buns, uh, and, and then hands that to the second person Who puts that all together for you and then hands that off to a person who bundles and, and puts the, um, the items in a bag and places them in a cubby. And so where a typical fast casual restaurant might have, you know, a dozen folks at peak period, uh, Colonel would have three. Uh, when you come into the restaurant, yo…

AI assessment note: “So the main difference is that it's a, it's based on a hub and spoke model.”

Q I wonder when you, I mean, what did you have to make? What did that truck have to sell per day for it to be worthwhile? What was your goal?

A In northern Kentucky, we have a 210 day season. I remember these numbers, and I was like, well, For inclement weather and blah, blah, blah, you got about a 180 days to sell. If you can make a thousand dollars a day, you make a 180,000 dollars. You've got food costs and labor costs and operational costs. You can make, you can net well over a 100,000 dollars. Even debt service meant to pay the truck off over a five year period of time. So I remember calling Ed and I said, Hey, I've done the math and, and I think I can get the truck up to about a 150,000 dollars a year. And he's like, no way. And I'm like, yeah, I, I think I can. He said, well, that's you.

AI assessment note: “If you can make a thousand dollars a day, you make a 180,000 dollars.”

Q And, and so, how about you, Andrew? And what are some of the things that you, You, you guys did well at Dang that you, you know, you, you'll continue to kind of use, you know, in your, in your sort of professional career.

A There's a concept, uh, that we labeled disagree and commit. So I felt like Vince and I were pretty aligned. For most things. And there were certain things where we weren't aligned. And I think we fought pretty hard. Um, one of them being the energy bars, the dang bars that we launched in 2019. And ultimately it came time to make the decision And Vincent was like, all right, I'm going to do this. We're going to do this. And this is why, and I know you're concerned, but just like, trust me. And I did that. And so the disagree and commit the disagreement happens behind closed doors. And then, uh, and then we come out on the other side, we're aligned publicly and we move on and you keep going like that with your partner. That's something I will take to the future.

AI assessment note: “There's a concept, uh, that we labeled disagree and commit.”

Q Yeah. And that you could start to move to the next chapter in your life, maybe. I'm wondering, Vincent, back to you, um, could I, I, you know, I, I'm feeling that sadness for sure, and I, I really, um, empathize with that. And I wonder how you, what helped you just emotionally cope, cope with it? How, what was helpful during that time?

A It was about, I'd say a three month depression or depressed period. And, um, I sought out a therapist during that time just to talk through these issues. Uh, I had a support group of other entrepreneurs and, you know, they were able to lend some perspective on loads that they had went through as well. Um, but I also leaned on Andrew. I mean, Andrew was my rock during that time and he really, uh, helps, you know, keep, keep things together and can keep a really positive perspective. You know, it kept reminding me that like, Hey, this is just chapter one, you know, we learned so much from this, and we're just gonna put our learnings to work to us in the next chapter. And, you know, hearing things like that would, would keep me motivated.

AI assessment note: “I sought out a therapist during that time just to talk through these issues.”

Q And so, tell me how you started. I mean, what did you just buy a bunch of, like, tomato paste and some spices and, you know, just simmered it down?

A You know, the way ketchup is made industrially is pretty difficult to replicate at home, because it's essentially a rehydrated paste. But, If you want to make it at home, you start with whole tomatoes, much like you're making a pasta sauce, and you just reduce, reduce, reduce. So we found these recipes, and we bought a bunch of ingredients. And, you know, we were just throwing stuff into the shopping cart, partly because we knew we wanted to make a bunch of different classic ketchup formulas to test, but also we wanted to test some flavors, some spicy ones. We had a misguided idea around a blonde ketchup, and we went back to Scott's apartment, and we cooked them all there. And we just, we just spent days cooking ketchup.

AI assessment note: “we found these recipes, and we bought a bunch of ingredients”

Q Right. And, and, and I think at this point, the company is just, Herschel is just the two of you. So, all right. So you're at this trade show. With all these samples in New York, uh, and what happens?

A When we, when we first walked into the trade show, we were the first people to show up. Uh, we had hockey bags full of our samples. That's very Canadian of us. We, uh, we rolled up to our booth, and there was an apparel rack, uh, sitting in the booth. So, um, We went and asked the show organizer, uh, you know, if there was any shelves, if there was any racks, if there was any other things that we could have, because we were a bag company, we weren't selling clothes, and, and they said, you know, that's all we've got, and, um, Jamie noticed a big, huge pile of pallets sitting on the other side of this art museum, and we literally spent the better half of the day, at the very least, going to get tools, uh, ripping apart pallets, And constructing our, our very first trade show booth.

AI assessment note: “we literally spent the better half of the day... ripping apart pallets”

Q But that didn't, didn't happen, at least initially. So, so what happened instead? What, what happened that summer?

A Yeah, so I was surfing in La Jolla one day, and I came out of the water, and I was going back to my car, and a woman stopped me on the beach and asked me if I had ever considered modeling before. And, um, It was something I kind of chuckled at at the time, but she explained to me that her son had been living in Europe and had been traveling and having this incredible life experience. And, um, if I'd be open to exploring it, um, she would introduce me to this guy. So I said, okay, well, I'll take a meeting. So I met this gentleman. Uh, he was a manager and he was having a casting in San Diego with a, an agency from Milan in Italy. And So he encouraged me to come to this casting, and he told me that if I happened to get picked, he would represent me, and so I remember I showed up, there was a line wrapped around the block, and I waited in line, and I met with this group, and you know, they ended up choosing me to go, and I think I was like one of, there was three guys that were selected, and so I flew straight to Milan with a suitcase of the wrong type of clothing, and I ended up spending the summer working in the, in the fashion industry as a model and fell in love with it and was like, why would I go home? I'm traveling the world. I have an opportunity to continue doing this. And, and so that's what I did for a couple of years.

AI assessment note: “I ended up spending the summer working in the, in the fashion industry”

Q right, when you go DTC, um, It's working, but you also decided to work with retailers, brick and mortar stores as well, and a lot of DTC brands then, even now, won't do that, because you can make a lot more money just selling direct to consumers. Can you kind of give me, sort of help me understand why you wanted to work with brick and mortar and do DTC?

A I think partly because we had to out of necessity, you know, we weren't flush with the capital. And so keep in mind, like over, so over the first few years of the business, we raised two million dollars of, of capital from friends and family, no financial institutions. Some of our competitors had raised 20, 25, upwards of fifty million dollars. We couldn't compete with them solely on the social playing field. Um, so we knew that we needed to compliment what we were doing, and we needed another customer acquisition vehicle, and we knew that wholesale could be a critical component of that. So after kind of hitting the pause button on wholesale while we were developing and building our digital community, once we established an engine of growth and we got out of the gates, And these wholesale accounts could take note of what we were doing. A lot of the no's that we originally got when we first showed the samples to these buyers turned into yeses.

AI assessment note: “partly because we had to out of necessity, you know, we weren't flush with the capital.”

Q And at what point did you start to think, you know, Drew's the person that I could, I should maybe talk to about starting a business with?

A He was my best friend. I've known him since kindergarten. He was just such a big part of my childhood and growing up that I had this trust factor, number one, first and foremost, trust in him. And then two, second, he had just started a company. He knew a lot about the branding and marketing side. I knew that he was athletic. I knew that he didn't like to lose. We had a lot of those same character traits that you want. In a partner when you're going to go to war when you're starting a business. And so I called him, and I was, I was like, hey, I know you're doing poolside, but how do you feel about frozen Greek yogurt?

AI assessment note: “he had just started a company... And so I called him”

Q And, and in terms of building your team out, I mean, in those first sort of, you know, Initially, it was just the two of you, but tell me how you started to build out your, your team. I mean, by 2012, 13, I mean, was it five people, six people?

A It was a handful of people. We outsourced some of the functions early on, like finance. We were outsourcing a lot of the transactional pieces of finance, but we eventually started hiring against some of the weaknesses. So we brought in A finance guy to help us day to day run the finance side of the business. We brought in some people on the marketing team to help build out the grassroots marketing campaign. We brought in a salesperson to help on the sales side of the business. And then as we started expanding, obviously like product was huge. So we brought the R and D function in house and hired a food scientist. And so there was a handful of us. We had a little space It started out as a one bedroom apartment in Boston that we all worked out of, and then eventually we got a little bit larger space that housed about 10 of us.

AI assessment note: “It was a handful of people. We outsourced some of the functions early on”

Q Right, right. You need to find somebody who could help you figure this out. But before I ask you about that, how did you, did you guys already have a name for your brand? How did you come up with a name?

A I was still working at the construction company, and a good friend of mine there was of Greek origin, and she was walking by me in the hallway one day, just very casually said, hey, if you and your friends are still working on that yogurt company, you should think of Yasu. It means hello in Greek. And I went back to my office, I Blackberry messengered Amanda, and I said, hey, what do you think of Yasu? And she's like, I like it. And we sent it over to the designer who we had already contracted at that point. And we said, hey, can you play around on front of packaging with the name Yasu, spelled Y-A-S-S-O-U. And she actually iterated a concept back to us a week later that just, she had dropped the U, and she said, what do you think about this? It's just Yaso. And she did it in two-tone, Y-A-S was in green, S-O was in brown, and we immediately loved it. We felt that it had energy, and we were, it was easily trademarkable, because it was, frankly, a new word, and that was it.

AI assessment note: “she was walking by me in the hallway one day... you should think of Yasu”