Yo, what's up y'all? We have a cool conversation today with Aron Rahi, c e o co-founder of a company called Ingredient Brothers. His company basically helps other companies find, locate, identify, vet good ingredient suppliers. So an example is, you know, sourcing the right coconut, milk, noodles, things like that. We get into a cool conversation about sort of how he got into the food and bev industry where he came from, how he and his co-founder started the business challenges in scaling the business. And he asked me some good questions too. Really enjoyable podcast. This one was an hour and a half, and I think you guys will dig it. Would've kept going, would have to jump off for a customer call. So yeah let me know what you guys think and feel privileged to keep giving you guys these shows. All right. See ya. So, dude, I'm really excited about this. I feel like you guys have an awesome business and I love the branding and kind of marketing vibe of the site.
I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we're trying to do something a little different in the B2B space and be a little quirky, so I appreciate that it resonated a little bit on the research you did.
Totally. and so, you know, you guys know Chris Johnson on our team.
Yeah. We know Chris Johnson on your team. Yeah. Yeah.
Awesome. That's cool. That's awesome. He got, he got me excited about this about this meeting. So I'm excited to learn more. It's you know, like we, so we usually talk to like companies that have you know, some sort of software technical type of solution, and a lot, like, I'm not a software engineer, so sometimes like, there's a little bit hard for me to like comprehend, but I was just talking to Chris, I'm like, I'm excited about this. Cause I totally understand exactly what the company does.
I started as a, my first job was a product manager, and then very quickly realized that not a software person, and I'm like, software adjacent. And so you know, I can appreciate that. But yeah, so ex excited to dig in and talk a little bit more on, on supply chain and product stuff.
So I feel like a good place to start is like, just about you. Tell us about like your background, where you grew up if you've always been interested in entrepreneurship that sort of thing.
Yeah, awesome. So, you know, I'm Aran founded Ingredient Brothers about two years ago. Originally from South Africa. So, grew up in South Africa, came here for grad school. I'd say entrepreneurship is in my DNA to some extent, have always been someone to try and sell something. It, I lost it a little bit when I studied accounting and then went to work at Deloitte. Mm. But I think, you know, as, as, as early as I can remember, I was like selling coloring, coloring books to people at school when I was in second grade. And then was doing some catering at some point and organizing parties. And so it always had that flare. And, and you know, I'd say also my dad was, came from Israel to South Africa and started an import business there. And so, you know, had been exposed to it my whole life.
And so when I came here and really got bit by the bug of the ecosystem, which is, you know, really special in the us. This passion for innovation, passion for moving things forward, this desire to invest in things that will likely fail, but still that willingness to do it is, is really amazing. And it, it just allows people to, to ex, you know, explore things. And so I've got to do that first within a startup and then, you know, now doing it for myself. And so that's, you know, it's been a, been a lot of fun. I, you know, my background, how I got into the food space here was I joined a startup called plated.com, which was a meal kit company that was acquired by Albertsons. And, you know, that was where I first got to see some of the inefficiencies in, in let's say B2B procurement. And then moved over to a company called nuts.com, which is a very different company. It's a family business, been around for very long time, very successful. And I was there as, as the co o and also, again, as, as organizers and, you know, that company has really well developed supply chain, there was still a lot of opportunity. And so I kept seeing these you know, sparks of opportunity within the B2B space that, that got me excited to start. Ingredient Brothers with actually a former employee of mine@nest.com.
And so you got your MBA at Columbia, right? Yeah. And did you do undergrad in the US or did you do that? No,
No. So I did undergrad, like the University of Johannesburg, which no one on this podcast will ever heard of. But it was, it was a great experience, but then then came here and, and was very fortunate to, to get into Columbia and do my MBA there.
Ok, cool. No, we have a couple South Africans on the platform. This goes out to like, I dunno, 30 or people, so I'm confident there's gonna,
That's someone will know. Okay, good. Yeah.
Okay. So you moved to the us did you know that you, when you moved to the US I guess, to attend school, did you, did you think you were gonna do something in the food space or an entrepreneurship? Like how did that interest come about?
It's funny cuz I always tell the story. I, you know, I arrived at Columbia pretty naive about how, let's say the bigger world worked and had studied a lot of finance you know, was at Deloitte, did c ffa, was in love with Warren Buffet, thought I was coming to Columbia to like the head of fi you know, finance and that they were gonna welcome me in with open arms. And then it was a conversation I had just before school started and it was with the recruiting people and they said, well, if you wanna be in finance, you've got six weeks to decide, you know, cuz on, on campus recruiting starts. And I was like, well, what is that I thought that we have, I thought I was here to figure that out and then decide what I wanted to do. And so, you know, I had like a misconception of what, what reality was.
And so it, what what that did was very quickly forced me to make a decision and say, you know, either I'm gonna, you know, jump into something that I have no idea if I actually wanna do, or I'm just gonna say, you know, no, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go that down that route and just, you know, trust my instinct and try and do something a little bit unconventional. And so that's what I did and that, you know, almost allowed me to then explore through business school startups and, you know, get, get back into that rhythm of like wanting to try and do something eventually.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, the finance world has a lot of like cache and you know, it's, it's, yeah. That's interesting. So I mean, Warren Buffet didn't go to Columbia, right? Just like Ben Graham, correct. Yeah, yeah,
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was very, I like my selection criteria was not very thorough. <Laugh> I, you know, I, I don't know. I was, you know, I didn't really know anyone who had done an b a in the US and it was, it was just, I was just enjoyed further learning and I didn't even realize how much learning there is at an b A. Right. It was a lot less academic and more social than I had expected, but, you know, still got out of it a tremendous amount. But again, like yeah, came to, came to Columbia for the finance side, but really left with a great, you know, I would say some understanding of the New York startup ecosystem, which allowed me to, you know, be where I am today.
So you were at Plad, did you, like how did you develop the interest in sort of maybe the sort of food, I mean, what's the correct industrial categorization of this industry? It's like food and Bev technology.
Yeah, food and Bev. I, I, whenever there's those dropdowns, they don't have no what I'm looking for. So, you know, maybe there isn't, but I, I would say, you know, develop it, I probably from an early age, I'd always loved food and so that was, and cooking you know, not just the consumption of it. And so had had gone to culinary school, I'd dropped out of college after my first year gone to culinary school thinking maybe I'd be a chef and maybe, you know, finance or you know, what, you know, that that wasn't for me. And what I realized was I wasn't as good as cooking as I thought I could be, and I thought I could add a lot more value on, on the finance side. And so always had that hankering for being in the food space. But then really when I came here and just realized how big the market is, I mean, it's just every day it surprises me how incredible the food industry is in the US and how much opportunity there was that, you know, coming outta B school it was, you know, timing was also good.
There were a lot of milk kit companies that were raising a lot of money and needed people. And so you know, I was able to get in and almost get an education for free into the food supply chain. Right. So, you know, very lucky from that perspective, you know, basically able to use, you know, someone else's startup to learn and build process and build, you know, you know, an understanding of how things worked. Yeah.
So you went through Plated, sold that, and then went to nuts do com.
Well, I didn't sell that, but
Participated, they sold it. Yeah, I was, yeah, from, from the Sideline said, yeah. Yeah, that was, yeah.
You said that's awesome. Yeah. Good. Yeah, <laugh>. Cool. How did, ok, how did you, where did you meet your co-founder? At what company?
At nuts.com. So nuts.com? Yeah, so I joined Nuts you know, 2017 and, you know, came into what was a pretty lean team and we were trying to figure out how to, to scale, you know, both the team and try, you know, start to really think about how do you, you know, protect yourself against like, the big behemoths that are coming after you every day. And, and so we started to hire and really build, build out a lot of the team. And so, you know, ALA who's my co-founder was one of the, I think it was like the second employee that we, I had hired within very quick succession there. So he came and worked, worked with me there and like on sourcing some of our biggest products. And so we got to know each other really well. And he actually left you know, two weeks before the pandemic started, he went to go run operations for confectionary brands. And so we were both you know, going through the, you know, decision making of what was happening in New York, New Jersey through the pandemic together in parallel different places. And then at the end, you know, not the end, but in 2021 decided, you know, it would be a good idea to join forces and start something together.
Yeah, that makes sense. So you lived in New York during the pandemic? How was that?
Well, I, yeah, I, we, I was based in New Jersey and gotcha. I would say that it was, you know, being in a warehouse with 200 people having to make a, you know, and obviously it wasn't just me, it was the whole leadership team together because at that time, every day information was coming in and I just remember, I remember moments where it was like, no masks, you know, we're not wearing masks today. And then tomorrow the announcement, like, everyone needs to be wearing masks and we can't get masks. And it was, you know, I think having to make decisions as the country makes decisions was ex ex incredibly tough. And then you're also at this really interesting juncture where you have people, customers relying on you, who've relied on you, and also new customers who, you know, if you can help them during this time, you can build a lot of loyalty and then that, you know, you need to keep your people safe. And how do you do that responsibly? Right? So, you know, there was, it's it was you know, not conflict, but there was, you know, just a lot. It was super tense and super scary. But, you know, I think as a company, I'm very proud of what we were able to achieve and, and the scale we were able to do and how we were able to keep people safe was, you know, I'd say you know, life-changing experience for me you know, coming outta 2020,
You guys started including your brothers basically as the pandemic was like in, in full swing, is that right?
Yeah, I mean, May, 2021. June, 2021. Yeah. We decided to do it in hindsight, you know, maybe timing was a little weird cuz you know, every port was con congest, you know, it had like crazy congestion and people had stuff on the water. But, you know, relative to 2020, I think, I think with, you know, relative to 2020, it was you, you know, I think I was like, well, how much worse? You know, that was really, you know, I, you know, relative to that, you know, I think it was felt like a no-brainer. But then in hindsight when you look at it, you're like, oh, well maybe not the, not the smartest idea.
No, I mean, I remember like march through, I think August basically, we just thought, okay, like we're all dead soon anyway, so fine. You know, let's try to do what we can. And then I think things quickly turned like Q4 of 20 to like this insane growth it seems. Yeah. Like that's my, that's my memory of it, but I can't believe that's like three years ago now. So <laugh>,
I also can't believe that it does feel like yesterday. Right. So yeah, it really does feel like yesterday.
Okay. So you guys started ingredient Brothers and like, you know, walk us through kinda like what the Aha moment was, like how you guys sort of thought about the opportunity, why you guys started the business?
Yeah, I mean, again, I, I'm strong finance background, always, like always looking for inefficient markets. Like that's like my number one thing is like, where is there less information available? And so that, you know, in the retail world, there is so much information available that to be competitive you have to really differentiate or it's a raise to the bottom. And so you know, I think in the B2B space, I always say to people, the example I give is like buying a one pound bag of almonds. If I give you an hour, you'll come back with like a hundred different options and flavors and delivery times and all these different attributes. And then I go and say, go and buy 40,000 pounds of almonds will probably take you a week and you won't have the right answer. And I think that, you know, I saw that firsthand throughout my time.
And then you also, you know, again, like there's just not enough time in a day for buyers and sourcing people to go deep into certain commodities. And so there's just, there's just information that's left on the table and there's, you know, because of that there's margin available and, and you also have a lot of, I'd say incumbents who are, you know, have been at this for a long time, have got great businesses and ha you know, the desire to innovate as much on, you know, in terms of tech technology and some other things. I think I felt like we could maybe, you know, we don't have to reinvent the wheel, but let's just do things just a little bit, you know, better or just try and do things well. Right. Regardless of what everyone else around us is doing. And, you know, maybe we could build a business, but I mean you know, I didn't, you know, send someone today, I, you know, I, I think when we started I told Ala like, it's gonna be the two of us in a room for many years before we can afford to hire anyone.
And you know, thankfully now we're a team of almost 20, so Wow. Things went a little different to what I had expected when we built it. So I don't think there was like an aha moment. It was just like, let's go try and sell some coconuts and maybe it'll work out <laugh>.
And I mean, in prior roles, I think you sort of took like a front row seat to building a company. Was it a pretty easy transition to sort of being the final decider in your own? Yeah,
I think, I mean, I think certain aspects of it have been easy because I've have so much, you know, I have a lot more experience and it's a traditional, you know, people starting out that are, are a lot younger who haven't gone and been in industry for as long as I have. So I think some of those aspects that, you know, I got to learn through other experiences in terms of leadership and decision making and maybe some organization. But again, you know, when you start a business, I'm sure you know right? There's no checklist mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so, you know, you start day one and you look at your calendar and it's empty and you're like, okay, well I mean, you know, you like Google, like what do you do when you start a business? Cuz like, how are you supposed to like, you know, how do you get the ball rolling and like start to build that momentum? I think that that doesn't exist anywhere. And I think it's, you know, that's what, you know, that was you know, that was fun in high, you know, it was really fun to start to try and figure out what to do. But I guess, you know, so that that wasn't there. I didn't know what to do at the beginning. But yeah, once we started to get the ball ready, I think you know, my experience has helped a lot in, in, in helping us scale.
Mm. Can can you remember like the first time that you were like, ah, like this is what I should be doing as like the co-founder and ceo? Like, did you, do you remember that moment?
I mean, there's been a lot of those moments, but I think that the first real deal we got was amazing. It was like euphoric cuz we got it from a, I'd say much bigger company that we expected. It was also like, like, you know, peak pandemic freight rates and we were super uncompetitive, you know, everywhere, but we were still able to, you know, get people to take a chance in us. And I think, you know, when we, you know, when we were managed to do that, I was like, wow, like if, you know, this is, you know, if we can do that with them, then who else is there? And so that was really mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, having, you know, started having fun. But, you know, I also just love being in the food space if I get to talk about food all the time. It's always a, it's always a good place to be.
Yeah. Why do you think they, they ultimately chose you guys?
I mean, I think in this industry, if you are communicative and you're fast and you care, I think that you, it goes a long way. And so when we were too hungry guys, just the two of us trying to win the deal, we were on top of things, you know, and we were able to like really move. And I think we've kept that mentality with, you know, as we've grown. But I think that that really did help. You know, you know, in B2B it's very easy to get lost in people's inboxes. Food is super regulated. There's tons of paperwork that needs to get done. And so, you know, if things get lost you know, a three month onboarding can take 6, 12, 18 months. And so I think our ability to move fast and you know, there was also some I think people were looking for something different during the pandemic, right? Where they had issues and a lot of suppliers weren't there for them or like, weren't communicating, not, not maybe because they didn't want to, but just because they were super overwhelmed with everyone's containers being lost. That I think, you know, coming in and being like just a fresh voice you know, allowed someone to, you know, allow people to take a chance on us.
So what is Ingredients brothers approach to like finding and identifying the best ingredients?
Yeah, I think that's a, a difficult question to answer, right? Cuz you know, I think the problem is that define best for every company that we work for is different of course. You know, when we started I was like, okay, we're gonna source coconut milk and it's gonna be amazing. And then, you know, we realized that like there's like, you know, 24% coconut milk and you can get it for five different countries. So we're gonna source it and we're gonna have options for people and we're gonna have one standard coconut milk, but we're gonna give, we're gonna source from these five different countries. And then suddenly you realize that all five of those coconut milks taste, look, feel very different. And so when you ask what the best is, well it depends on what the customer's requirements are. And so I think what we've started to, you know, you know, what we knew before going into this, and I think having experience, you know, in both of, you know, both OP and I have come from roles where we've had to source many, many products.
And so being an expert in any product is impossible, right? You can know a lot, but you can never be an expert. And so I think a lot of what we've spent time doing is figuring out how to identify the right supplier with the right supply chain who can be that partner, right? Because like I said, best for one person may not be best for the other. And, you know, when you're using products to in manufacturing where there's, you know, variability is not your friend you want to make sure that you have the right partner on the other side. And so our role really is to go through that validation and that betting stage to find the person who is the expert Mm. Who knows, you know, what the best is, who knows how to control those, those parameters that you're looking for. And so I think once we realized that, that that gave us a lot more confidence in what we were doing and having and our process to sourcing
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So on, on coconut milk in particular, like why is there so much variance? Is it just like native,
I mean, variety, time of year, it, you know, the processing methods, you know, could be different. The age of the machines can impact the taste of the product, right? Sure. Like there's just a lot of differences that can happen. And I think that, you know again, for manufacturing, you, you, you know, if you're just repacking it for a consumer, consumer has a lot more tolerance. You know, when they're cooking they can adjust, you know, they can adjust a little bit. They can do things. When you're manufacturing millions of pounds of product to you, you really don't want to be on the line and say, Hey, why is this different from last time? How are we gonna adjust the recipe? So, you know, that that's, that's something we, we learned upfront.
I mean, it seems like you guys have to scale like the taste that you guys at leadership initially have, you know, how have you done like the ability to be like a tastemaker and identify these different qualities? Do you guys have a rubric that you've implemented in the company to kinda enable your team to identify manufacturers and such, or?
Yeah, I mean, I think we definitely have a, again, it comes down, if you take taste out of the equation for the beginning, it comes down to like, how are we evaluating and onboarding vendors, right? What are we looking at in terms of like who they are, what the capabilities are you know, how good, you know, in terms of like their QA process and their measurement process. How, you know, how good is that? And so we have obviously our QA team and our sourcing team go through that. And then, you know, in terms of taste and preferences, like we've started to, you know, we're definitely a young company and still learning, but we've started to develop, you know, opinions and understanding on certain ingredients and you know, what people may be looking for. So if we're working with certain customers and we understand, oh, they actually wanna mask the coconut flavor because this is a product that they don't want the coconut to shine through, maybe we should look over here.
Whereas okay, they're looking for like a really big coconut punch, this is what they want. Or if they're, you know, it's a coconut water product, and I'm talking a lot about coconut. We do a lot of other products, but like, it's just an easy one to, to latch onto. But, you know, coconut water, the same thing, right? There's sweetness levels and, and you start to understand like, okay, if this person is mixing it with other things, maybe they, you know, can get a coconut, a more mature coconut than maybe less sweets. And so, you know, there's, there's definitely some cri Yeah, there, there we go. So there's definitely some criteria.
Do you guys work with this one?
Yeah, sure. No, no. <Laugh>
There seems to be a lot of exception handling. Is, is repeat scaling repeatability internal to your operation? Something that you guys think about or there's enough like long-term relationships where you don't have to worry about that as much.
You know, the success here is long-term relationships and, and making sure that you're, you know, we're building out supply chains for, for key accounts because you don't want the, the onboarding time just takes so long. You want to be able to build and like, you know, foster these really great relationships. But, you know, supply chain is about managing problems. It's, you know, I think if you try and build this perfect supply chain that never goes wrong. I think you're in denial. And I think that, you know, our success is in our ability, our process to manage issues. Not necessarily to, you know, we aim to try and execute perfectly every time, but to assume that that's gonna happen I think is wrong. And so, you know, having the mechanisms throughout the supply chain to react really quickly and then, you know, provide the customer service that we need to, I think that that's really important. And, you know, we're pretty honest about that upfront.
Mm, that's cool. I mean, I cannot, I mean, we sort of have a similar issue since we're placing talent in companies. Yeah. Like the people sort of exist on a supply chain esque Correct. Type type of, you know, approach. And one thing that I've found is like, having Slack in the supply chain is like a necessary thing. Especially when you're dealing with people where, hey, I may have a baby or surgery Yeah. Randomly come up. Do you think about that?
Yeah, I think, I think we think about that both from a supply perspective, right? So, you know, we don't try not to have single supply for anything and we have backups and backups and backups. So I think, you know, in general that's really important. But even from a people perspective, right? You want to be able to support your customers. If you don't have slack in the system, if QA questions come up, if logistics questions come up and everyone's slammed at getting the next order out, then you're never gonna be able to react. So I think, you know, our business is as much product as it is people, I'd say arguably more people in process than it is product. And so having Slack in that system is incredibly important because when something comes up and you need all hands on deck, you, you know, if you don't have the hands, then you're, you're left and you're, you know, the customer's gonna get disappointed in the end of the day.
Is this a space like in ingredient sourcing where like private equity and venture capital have like taken an interest in? Is it like a well-funded space generally?
Yeah. I mean we're, so we're bootstrapped and continue probably to be bootstrapped for a while, but there is definitely a lot of private equity in the space. I think, you know, it's, it's prime real estate for private equity cuz you have a lot of I would say older businesses, family businesses that have been around for a long time and maybe next generation is not as interested in coming in. And so you also have a lot of fragmentation, right? There's, there's tons of room for consolidation. You know, you'd be surprised how many people in import coconut into the us it's not a, it's not a small number right? For a small market. And so it's, you know, I think that there is a lot of investment opportunity and there's a lot of people looking at the space as, as as time goes on. Yeah.
Is there, is there like a specific reason you guys haven't taken outside capital? Is that something that you guys wanna do in the future?
I mean, I think at the beginning when we spoke to a few people, just casual chats, we weren't as sexy as maybe we are now. Mm-Hmm. And then I think that, you know, having a little bit of control as we grow is gonna be helpful. You know, I think it's, it's been really nice to, you know, just answer only to ourselves and you know, and I know you've raised money, so I don't want to touch on sensitive points of like, what it's, what it's like to have you know, investors. But I think investors are great and not strategic, but it's definitely outside pressure. And I think for us, we're trying to position ourselves as, as our employees being our biggest stakeholder and not our investors. And so, you know, can we make that work? We'll see, right. You know, maybe in two years, you know, things will change, but we're really trying to position ourselves that way. And, you know, it will likely mean that we grow slower, but it could also mean that, you know, it's more sustainable. And I really at the moment couldn't see myself doing anything else with my time other than sourcing and selling ingredients. So, you know, the thought of an exit is not even on the horizon. So, you know, that's also probably a non-starter for, for many people.
Cool. No, I mean, we can get into it. Like, I think we can edit out anything sensitive. <Laugh>? No, we, we bootstrapped the company for like eight years. Ok. I mean we took some, some angel money from some friends who sold their companies, you know, small checks. And then we got to a point where we had some serious like, acquisition interest and we were like, well, there's a lot of opportunity out there to like, continue to go and scale into and market share to take. And that's when it made sense for us to take some outside capital. But yeah, the pressures real. I mean, they can be really nice, but all to, and like this is constructed in a way where is not investment unless there's some real scale Yeah. You know, scale that you're able to get with this balance sheet. So.
Totally. And so like eight years in, like, do you think you should have taken the money earlier or, you know, you happy with the time that you took, the time that you took the money?
You know this? Yeah. It's funny. I feel two ways about it. I mean, I started the company when I was like 23.
So I, so, so I think had we taken the money earlier, I think we probably would've just blew it. Part of me thinks now I, I think that's because, you know, it's like my second job, I'd only worked maybe for two years. And so I'm pretty like grateful for the time to like learn how to be a good leader and like manage people and not like blow up when things go wrong. Cause if you don't have guidance around that, it's real easy to kinda descend into some sort of, you know, I know, let's say like habits. Yeah.
So for us, I think from like a culture cultivation standpoint, I'm pretty happy that we waited. I think from a market opportunity standpoint, like had I had the reps in to lead a company, I think it probably would've been financially better for us to take money sooner. Yeah. You know, looking purely at the financial metrics, I think it probably would've been, but it's hard to know because you're like relinquishing control. Correct. Yeah. You know, you have a board now with an outside stakeholder versus just management, you know? So Yeah, I think in our case I'm pretty happy we waited, but if we were looking at solely the financial metrics, I think that we probably could have, like, we've been growing maybe 50% a year, which is pretty solid, you know?
Yeah. I mean, that's amazing. Yeah, exactly. But
Then, you know, you think like, ha you know, we could have been growing 50% sooner or something like that, you know? Yeah. And so but we ended up with like a really great firm that has like a control. This is recorded, so I have to say nice things. No, <laugh>. That's
Mind. No, no, no. I'm just kidding. Nah, these, I mean, they're still like, there's still pressure and they still wanna win. But I mean, we ran a process, we got a bunch of term sheets and, you know, talking to like the West Coast funds, one thing that really stuck out to me is I was like, what happens if we don't grow 5000% a year? Like, just what happens? They're like, well, you have to grow hundred percent per year or more. And I'm like, yeah, but the company has never done that. Like, I don't even know if we're se like we have the right leadership structure to be able to do that. Like, I'm gonna have reorganize the whole company. And they're like, yeah, gotta grow these guys. I felt like they, they were excited about what we were doing and they were able to come to the table with a deal that made sense for us, because we could stay on our plan and take a couple of bets to accelerate the growth. And if they hit, that's great, but if they don't, like nobody's really Yeah. Upset or concerned about it. So,
Yeah. I think I spoke to some, a lot of at the beginning were like, looked at the business and like, why didn't you turn this into a tech play? And I was like, the last thing I want to do is build software. I respect software, but I don't understand it well enough to build a software company. And everyone told me, oh, this, you know, you're moving containers of product. Don't do that. Sell software. And so I think that that was like the, you know, I think a lot of, and the margin profile of a B2B ingredient business is super low compared to sas. And so that's also, you know, even though the volume's really good, the, the margin profiles are great, and so that, that shied people away. But I think as we've grown, there's been a lot more interest from people that you mentioned, right? Like similar people who are like-minded who understand the business. It's, I think, you know, I need to do that calculation in my head, like to your ex your point, which is, you know, if I got this injection, how, how much could I accelerate growth and what, what would that mean for me and the company? And I think, you know, for now we're, we're, we're good where we are, but the, you know, that every co every probably three, six months, you'd be reevaluating based on what, you know, new information.
Yeah, totally. I mean, one of, one of my friends, he took a look at our business and he was like, dude, I think you guys have under invested in the opportunity. And that was like, oh, he's probably right. You know, and there's a tendency, I think for like founders to, you know, like, you wanna be bootstrapped and be profitable. Cause it, it creates optionality. Yeah. You know, and that's awesome. But there is a sense of like, hey, are we maximizing this? What, what the business is capable of?
I struggle with that every day. Yeah. <Laugh>, you know, like you know, I definitely struggle with that as a founder every day because I do think, you know, you don't wanna miss the boat either. And so, you know, you don't, you know, suddenly you're not growing anymore because of you didn't have the capital injection. Now it's gonna be difficult to raise. And so, you know, there is a timing aspect of it that, that does come into play. And, and I think about that, you know, quite often, but at the same time, always come back to that optionality and, and what are we trying to build here and what's gonna make me happy selfishly, right. And, and so, you know, that's, you know, what's gonna make me happy is what I'm doing now. Cause I'm happy doing it. And so why, why change it for now? Right. So I think that that's
Totally. And like, I don't know, waiting and like continuing to grow the business and getting a better sense of the levers that really drive growth, like that only helps raising from a more favorable position. Yeah. I think that's been my experience. And so, yeah. And, and, and I also think like this winner take all dynamic like that is, I don't know, sort of believed by some other venture class. Like, I don't think that exists in most markets.
Oh. I mean, when people say to me, who am who is my competition? I say it's myself, <laugh>. Like it's, the food industry is so big if, I mean, the US is incredible from that perspective, and I echo that a lot, right? Where, you know, you're just in an industry where in a, in a market that is so big and you know, to some extent feels really open to new in new people and new players and, and giving people a shot. You know, and I haven't done this in other countries, so I can't speak, but if this is what it feels like here that I, you know, I feel like we're the only people that will, that lead us to failure is ourselves, right? Because of our execution and not focusing and not setting the right priorities. And unless someone coming in, now I'm not trying to be an Apple and dominate the the cell phone market, right? I'm just trying to sell more ingredients. And so maybe that's, you know, what investors are thinking about. But you can build a enormous company that no one even thinks about is a competition in this space without, you know, having to, to worry about a market share problem.
And I'm assuming in software engineering it's the same thing, right? Like that that equation just keeps changing for you guys.
No, I mean, so much of what you said about like opacity and markets creating opportunity for margin and they're not being like a, like a standard, like even how to think about software engineering or software engineers like capabilities. There's no rubric. You know, one person's senior engineer maybe totally different from Facebook to Google, and it's different, you know, at a small company versus a large company, their rates are totally different. You know, public market, you know, public companies are driven basically by interest rates for comp packages, you know, smaller companies. It's basically, which are driven kinda by the value of, you know, venture capital around. So yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of opportunity for us and I think like who we compete with are like recruiters that are basically running their businesses on like pieces of paper. So it's just, it, it's just, you know I think it's similar in that like, if we this up, it's probably we mismanage something like for like a very long time, like two years of mismanagement, you know? Exactly.
Yeah. That's, and that's how I feel. Yeah. Similar for you.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Okay, so where's your team located, by the way? Are they mostly in like New Jersey and New York area, or you guys have spread out?
No, so, you know, obviously low margin business, you know, we started importing some stuff from the Philippines and I started reading about people in the Philippines working for US companies. And it, it wasn't, ah, it wasn't even on my radar. And I say this a lot too, because I was like the anti remote person. I had like a <laugh>, I had a work from home policy documents where my employees had to like give notice. And like, I was like very, I was very deliberate about getting people into the office prior to, prior to the pandemic. And then you know, when we started, things had changed. And I think, you know, there were a couple things that had, you know, evolved to an extent that, you know, I had to open my eyes to. And so we were importing and I was like, you know, what's, what's the big deal?
I'll meet some people and let's just see. And you know, we met you know, Jacqueline, who was our first employee we met her and it just, you know, she accelerated the growth of the company tremendously and helped us so much. And, you know, from that spark we just started to, you know, think about, obviously we're building a global company, right? It's, you know, we're bringing ingredients from like eight or nine different countries you know, the time zone, you know, our suppliers are most of our suppliers in Southeast Asia. And so, you know, the time zone is really important. And so, and you know, these products also consumed by people all over the world. And so you can find people all over the world who have, you know, experience in sourcing those products. And so it's been really great for us to build a, you know, truly global team. And so we have, you know, people in the Philippines, we have some people in South Africa, Columbia, Argentina, and so, you know, we've, we've got a pretty, you know, diverse group of people that work together on solving these these supply chain issues.
That's awesome. So has your philosophy on remote work changed?
Yes, I think it's changed to some extent. I think you know, not to, to some extent. I think that if you're, if you're not, if you're remote first, and when I mean remote first is that, you know, I think there's a difference between having like a team of people who are outsourced to do a specific task that are remote versus building a team, global team that are all leadership and decision makers within the company. Whereas if you have some hybrid or other models, I think that can get, you can get into trouble for a number of reasons, but you know, if you have an office somewhere where some people are making decisions in, you know, like a corporate spill and like there's like a central office where that, you know, you're not involved in the decisions cuz you're sitting remote somewhere else, I think that can get a little bit dangerous.
And then I think that, you know doing hybrid is really tough because you're spending a lot of money on rent that you could be spending on other things. And so I think that, you know, my, my my perspective, which is probably not the right perspective, but at least my perspective is if you go remote, go remote and like invest fully in it. And I think you can find, not everyone loves remote, but you can find enough good talent who appreciate it and will give, you know, as much if not more effort within a remote setting. And if you wanna be in person, be in person. And there is as many people who want that setting to be successful too. And so I think, I think it can work and you know, we've learned a lot of lessons along the way, but it's been an incredibly rewarding experience you know, building this team all around you know, from everywhere. So
That's cool. And so Ingredient brothers is remote first,
Correct? Yeah, that's it.
Ok. Ok. Yeah. So are we, I I like it. And I, I actually tend to think like remote is a form of compensation that is easier for smaller companies to pay than bigger companies. I think it's like an a competitive advantage actually. That is, that's good. You know? Yeah. Cause big companies suffer from coordination problems, which we don't have to.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's certain decisions that are a lot easier for me to make than for a big company with thousands of people. And, you know, having to deal with all the HR stuff that I wouldn't, you know, we've, we we're doing, but not to the extent that you need to do it at a big company.
Yeah. There's like basic like HR and admin things that become like a nightmare to do remotely and to not come across like a total in doing them. Like, you know, I'm sure you've heard of like the better dotcom riff that was like done purely over zoom, you know? Yeah. And that, and that's an example where like, you know, there's probably a more humane way to do that, but it's hard to do something like that over remote in a humane way. <Laugh>,
Yeah. We haven't bridged that gap. Yeah. We haven't bridged that gap.
No. Just as an example. Yeah.
What ingredients do you guys actually source now? So coconut and coconut related products, what else?
Yeah, so we're doing a lot of different products. So we source cassava flour from Brazil, tapioca starch from Brazil and Thailand. We do a lot of spices mainly out of India. We do coconut milk, coconut oil, lots of different kinds of coconut oil. We're starting to do noodles even we're we do a lot of freeze dried products, so like, you know, freeze dried fruits and vegetables both in like powdered form pieces form. So, you know, there's a, there's a bunch of things that we're bringing in now from, from all over. So it's a, you know, we're, we're somewhat product agnostic, you know, we have like our core catalog of things that we're very good at, but we, we enjoy building good relationships with our customers and then allowing them to dictate to us almost, you know, where they are having issues or where they see opportunity where we can help them you know, just improve their supply chains. So that led us to, you know, sourcing noodles which is something that I never thought I would source in my life, but, you know, here we are. And I think it's, you know, that's been, again, like another aha moment was like being able to close something like that just gives me more conviction in terms of the service and what we're trying to do and, and what we're offering.
So when you think about the future of the company, do you think about it in terms of like what products you guys will have in your catalog? Or do you think about it like from a growth standpoint?
Yeah, I mean, I think I think about it in terms of, you know, how do we organize this database of, or, you know, natural ingredients that we're building and expose it to people. And so, you know what, you know, as we're going along this journey, you know, we do have our own software, you know, be it like, you know, not the most complex software. We are building our own software and
And as, as part of that, like, you know, we are building this incredible data trove you know, in, of vetted and, you know, understood, you know, vendors as well as products from all over the world. And so because we're, you know, demand focused and we're, you know, taking on what customers are looking for, we've, you know, our, our product catalog has just grown tremendously. And it's, you know, how do we slowly expose that to customers over time to, you know, you know, build the business and really grow into like a platform where we can, you know, almost democratize the sourcing process for a buyer, right? How do we reduce that friction between the supplier and the buyer? Right now there's just, you know, we, we are a middleman, right? And so our job is to facilitate sales between, you know, it's to showcase the supplier, right?
You know, our job is to be an advocate for our suppliers. And right now that is between, you know, there's so many barriers between, you know, the supplier and the end customer. And so a lot of our focus is just breaking down those barriers one by one in terms of just how do we make it as seamless as possible so that our customers feel like they're buying from the supplier and not from ingredient brothers. And so, you know, that's, I'd say that that's like the long term, you know, pie in the sky, really what we're trying to get to over time and and something that we're, you know, or every day working towards.
Mm-Hmm. What's your view on like how to forge long term relationships?
I mean, it's communication and trust, right? It's like the simple, you know, the simplest thing is, is, you know, when you identify a good partner, usually it's based on the fact that they're communicating with you and they want to communicate with you, right? You know, you can have the biggest customer in the world, but if they don't answer your emails and they don't, you know, they're not good partners, it just doesn't, it doesn't work well. And so I think, you know, being able to one, be communicative and also like the two-way data communication and not, you know, I think that, that it's understated a lot where a lot of times, like our suppliers will fill in the dark with like, what's happening? Does the customer like the product? How are sales? We see the orders, but like, give us more context, like, what can we do better?
I think that, you know, again, like being that partner who can easily provide that information with the systems that we're building, I think will help forge that relationship. Because I think a lot of the time when you don't have the software and you don't have the, you don't have the data in front of you, you spend most of the meeting trying to put that together for them versus giving that to them, and then spending 80% of the meeting actually talking about things that matter and moving and moving the needle forward. So, you know, that's what, you know, that's what I hope, you know, we can do, you know, with, with our supply base. And also just in terms of you know, building a, you know, good relationship with suppliers who wanna grow with us, but also see the value in growing with us.
Awesome. So you define relationships as you know they're dependent on communication and trust. How do you, how do you, what does trust mean to you? Like how do you define
That? I mean, I think it's just doing the right thing, right? And as, again, it's, I think it's super simple, but there's just, you know, there's decisions that you're gonna be presented with every day where you could kind of snake around or, you know, take a shortcut or do something. And that, you know, may I think in the long term will hurt you. And if you rather think long term and say, you know what, like, we're just gonna tack all of these things head on and be completely transparent about it, I think you can get to a really good place versus, you know, taking shortcuts and then suddenly finding yourself a few years down the line where you've lost that trust with suppliers and all customers, and that, that just doesn't win with everyone. So I think, you know, maybe it's like sacrificing short-term profits for long-term gain is, is is one business way of saying it.
Mm. That's awesome. Yeah. There's so many parallels between our businesses. That's, that's cool. <Laugh>, <laugh>, it's the same thing with devs and with companies. You know, I'm still taken by your definition of trust. That's a, that's a really good one.
It was a good one. Okay. I'll have to watch it back and write it down to make sure I remember it.
<Laugh> like what, so is this like a values thing in the company? Like how do you make sure that as you guys scale, like, like this is maintained across the organization?
Yeah, I think, I think I, you know, I don't know if it's exactly comes through with this value, but we try and like take an approach of like a no blame culture, right? Ah, and like in a no blame culture, you, you are responsible for admitting that something went wrong, right? And to feel safe that we all solve this together, right? And like, we gotta learn from it. And there's accountability still, but in the same time, like, you've gotta create this feeling that like, it's better to say something and get it out there than to hide it because you're nervous about what the ramifications are gonna be. And so if you continuously do that, then I think you can improve on all aspects of relationship building. And so that goes to, you know, being completely honest and transparent with the customers when things go wrong.
Same thing with the suppliers, and same thing internally, right? Where, you know, you try and expose things as quick as possible you know, take accountability for it, but then also be able to, you know, utilize the resources around you to move forward and build it, build something better. And so I think that that's where it comes through, you know, the most within what we're doing is like, how do you create the safe environment where you almost like, you know, you almost, you know, cheered on for saying something so that we could, you know, we can all learn and move forward rather than holding it in. Easier said than done.
Easier said than done. You know, I would say that we're not nowhere near perfect, and we're a very small, young organization that every day is learning and every day figuring out things that we didn't know about ourselves.
What are maybe the most surprising things that you've learned, sort of being the chief decider in this past two years?
I think I love hiring people <laugh>. And so, I mean, that's probably gonna be a problem at some point, but I think that that's been, you know, if it's, you know, I, I thought like, hey, if I'm just selling ingredients and buying ingredients, that that would be the most fun. But then I spend most of my time recruiting and meeting people, and I think that that was probably the biggest you know, like, you know, how do I build this business, or all I'm doing every day is just hiring and developing the team more than, you know, selling the ingredients. So I think that was probably the most surprising. Just really enjoyed and the fact that now I get to meet people from all around the world, you know, that's even more fun. So, you know, I think that that's been, that's been very surprising. And again, like a blessing. Cuz I, when we started the business, thought it was just gonna be me and Patel in a room. And you know, I think he will say thank God that we have a group of people around us to, to you know, to you know, basically like barricade ourselves around, you know, so we have some safety nets.
Yeah. Why do you think that's so gratifying to you?
I don't know. It just gets exciting when you find people that you think can add so much value and are just driven and you see that spark and you're like, oh, wow. Like, you know, if you can put yourself in, if you can put them in a position to succeed and give them the keys it's, it's can be a lot of fun. Right. And I think selfishly it's just you know, some people have hobbies outside of work. Work is my hobby. I love, I, you know, love working. It can be super stressful and anxiety prone at many times, especially as an entrepreneur. But at the same time, I don't think there's anything else I'd wanna be doing at, with my time. And so if I can do it with like, driven amazing, thoughtful, curious people and provide them with some opportunity to, you know, have fun and, and build, build their career. Yeah. Just you know, selfishly that's, you know, adds, adds to my fun and hopefully adds to their fun and, and you know, my, you know, fulfillment in life, I guess
I like work too much to have like a long list of hobbies. <Laugh>,
Well, I have the hobbies, I just don't do them. Right. So
Same here. I managed to like get to the gym. I have gym in my house. Maybe I get there like once a day. That's about it. 20 minutes and then I'm back at it. Yeah, yeah,
You mentioned some sort of like, call them ingredients and a good hire. Like, do you have a list of sort characteristics and traits you look for? Like beyond the skills? I feel like that's the easy part.
I mean, I think curiosity is like number one trait. You know, every, every role in company is different for what you look for. And in a startup where you will likely have people that have, you know, will get less direction than they would've gotten at a big company. Less oversight and definitely less. There's less, there's no playbook for a lot of the roles you hire. And you are coming in and you're like expected to develop things from scratch. And, you know, usually it's something that someone else has been doing before but not been doing it well or has been doing 20% of what they should have been doing because they've had no time. And now you bring people in and you're like, Hey, you need to just go and like, this is the objective, but how you get there, I don't, you know, I can't tell you.
Right. And I don't have time to tell you. So finding people who are curious and understand that and can, you know, take that on and be excited. Right. And look for the gems, you know, and look for those, those, you know, I think that that's really what I look for in terms of, you know, other than the skills and some of those things which are also really important. Right. And, you know, understanding someone's previous experiences is really digging into those moments where, you know, they saw opportunity at companies and they grabbed it and they went for it, and they drove it and they can really talk about it. When they talk about it, their eyes light up, like, this is the thing that they wanna be doing next. Mm. I think those are the things I try and look for in, in people.
Awesome. Yeah. That's so cool. Okay. I have a, I have a selfish question. Like, as somebody who like basically works in like food and dev, how do you identify like a good restaurant? What are your tells?
I'm gonna, I, you know, I'll answer this, but it's definitely not gonna be the right answer because I think it's a difficult one. I'm also someone that I'm like, I love food. And so if it's decent, it always feels like the best meal I've eaten. I'm always just overly co overly excited about the food. But I think you can tell a lot, you know, in some, to some extent by the menu and the complexity of the menu. And if some I look for, you know, if, if it's simple and it's clean and it feels like, you know, there's been some thought put into it, you know, that's really what I'm going towards. And I also just have bias towards certain cuisines. I love spicy food and so mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, it doesn't matter what the restaurant is, if it's got, you know, know spicy swan food, I'm usually enjoying it. And so, you know.
Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, I used to live in Shanghai and so we went over to and got to eat some good dofu and yeah. All that good stuff.
Yeah, it's amazing. And thankfully in New York, you know, I mean, I haven't had it in, in Chang, so I don't know, but I mean, in New York you get, you know, incredible tasting food that feels like you know, as authentic as I hope it is. And so, you know, if it's any better than, you know, then I'm on the next plane. But at really, really great food here to, to explore.
You know, the funny thing about eating in China is that, like I, the food was pretty good, but I love, like their culture around eating, like, you know, nice long meals, they're kinda messy. And like you're, you're drinking like these, you know, $2 beers that are basically water and you're having like 10 of them over the course of a meal. I love that. And New York, that's tough to do. That's like meal if you have like five beers.
Yeah. You're not doing that in <laugh>. Yeah, definitely not doing that in New York. But yeah, I, I sit my, my one beer very slow, so.
So it takes me the same amount of time as your 10, but, you know, very slow.
Awesome, man. Well, where can people find you on the interwebs and find your company?
Yeah, I mean, we're very active on LinkedIn. I mean, I think that's, you know, that's our platform of choice. And so, you know, you can find us on LinkedIn and then ingredient brothers.com. We're always willing to take a call and if anyone wants to chat about any ingredients, we're, we're happy to, we're happy to chat. We're growing, we're curious and looking for new business as always.
Yeah, that's awesome, man. What a great conversation. And it's probably more selfish questions I can ask, but I
No worries, no worries. <Laugh>. I, I'm not, I'm not the best food rec person, you know, I think you know, I'm used to sourcing like containers of things. It's, you know, yes, I think about it a lot, but we're, we're bringing, you know, like the, the volume is so different and you know, I'm not as connected to the restaurant game, and so people will, you know, ask me those questions and I'm like, I don't have the real answer.
I'm still gonna ask you. Ok. Is the Michelin star overrated?
Oh man, I think it's, it's similar to art, right? And when I go into an art museum, I don't know anything about art. So either looks nice or it doesn't look nice. Yeah.
I think there are people that go in and understand and maybe have more of an appreciation, and so they can understand and dissect what was being done. And I think with food, you know, you will get like three Michelin star restaurants that are incredibly tasty and great, but I, you know, sometimes I'd even say that the tasty ones or you know, those ones that are known for being incredibly tasty still, like, if you haven't like eaten your way through a bunch of others or like worked your way up, you may not have as much appreciation. Like if, you know, if that's your first fine dining experience, you may not, I mean, not that I've eaten in three Michelin star restaurants, but you know, I, that's what I assume. And so I think with some of like the really avant-garde, you know, really like, you know, trying to you know, pull color the culinary world in a direction, you can go in and, and just be confused by the story <laugh>. And I think it's, and I think it's similar to the art where you just maybe, you know, you're just not, you, you know, we don't have as much experience to understand, whereas like someone who's a Michelin, you know, judge will have eaten at many and, and, and, you know, has a better, you know, understanding for food and the composition than, than we do. So, you know I dunno if that's a good answer. Sounds,
That's a great answer. No, it's a great answer. That's, do you, do you like to go? Ok, this is another strange question. Sometimes when I go to really nice restaurants, I like to eat beforehand like a little bit. So I'm not starving when I go to the restaurant and like, you know, cause enjoy the food. I'll just course, you know. Do you eat until then?
Yeah, I mean, I, I like Liz Li been an entrepreneur for two years, so it's been a while since I've had anything that resembles
<Laugh>. But I'll I'll say that, yes, at some point you know, I probably wasn't the person to eat a slice of pizza before the meal. Like you were, so yeah, I, I tried to appreciate the food a little bit more, but I, you know, I, I don't have you know, definitely haven't been to a ton of fine dining, dining restaurants, but at some point I'll, you know, I'll let you know, you know, what I do when I get, you know, get the opportunity. What's your favorite restaurant in Nashville?
Okay. That's a tough one. Have you been to Nashville?
Yeah, I've been to Nash. Well, I've done Nashville, like very tourist Nashville, so I've had, you know, that, that experience. But I, you know, absolutely love, love being there. The food was great. So, you know,
The food, the food's great. I mean, and there's some fine dining here as well. I think of the restaurants that I've been to. My favorite one is this place called Lockland Table. And it's in East Nashville. It's in a neighborhood called like Lockland Springs and it's like a husband and wife duo small restaurant. And I feel like they, you know, they have the whole farm to table ship. Ok. And, and it's good. It's tasty. They got it. Yeah, they got it down. It's really good. The, the big like food thing here is like husk and basically all those related restaurants by these two guys. I forget their names, but they, I think they also, no, I think it's a different people that own catbird seat.
And Catbird seat's like this, I dunno, fine dining multicourse thing, it's like 50 or something.
Now that you took the done, done. Yeah.
No, no. See, I personally, like, I, for me, I love eating well and cook at home and eat well, but number one, it's a lot of time to just course out. And I don't know, it's like I try to be open to it cause some people like find dining experiences, but I'm a more simple guy. I like eating street food outside.
And I think that's the beautiful thing about New York and you know, New York you have fine dining and it exists and it's amazing. But this, you know, I would say the affordable, you know, mid-tier restaurants that are, you know, from every, you know, every type of cuisine that you can find is incredible. And that's, you know, that's something if I ever left the city would really miss because you can wake up in the morning and want Chuan and you'll get incredible Chuan needs food and if you wake up and then you want Ethiopian, you get incredible Ethiopian food and there's just, you know, there's little Egypt and you know, little India and the China and Chinatown. There's so many different places to go to and, and it's accessible ish, right? It's like not,
It's not what, you know, like I would say you would, in other places you may have to pay for some of that food and that's, you know, that's pretty special about the city.
Totally. And, and there's like almost like an ethical dimension to this. Like if you're like building a business and you know, like everybody's sacrificing, you feel kinda ridiculous being like, I'm gonna go to like a fancy nine course meal. You're just like, what am I doing?
Exactly. You know, <laugh>. Yeah, I completely agree completely. It just
Is ridiculous, you know? Yeah. There, so I would say by volume of like calories consumed my, the place that I've gone the most is place called ha Kebab in Nashville. It's like a turkic kinda kebab spot. It's good. They have like their couba days, they gonna diet coke, get some,
You know, that's you're done. I, I'll come join you one day for that. Sounds good.
Oh, it's so good. Like when people come visit, I'm like, alright, we're going like to house sick above. We're not gonna like some high end spot <laugh>.
That's amazing. I have a question for you before I forget. You know, when we started the business, we, we basically stumbled upon like no-code, low-code platforms and we built everything on on Airtable, which has been completely, you know, I would say game changer for us. As a small business. How, you know, have you found any growth in people requesting software engineers who are focused on these low-code no-code platforms like Airtable?
Yeah, there's been a lot of growth there and I mean we built our whole business on like Google sheets for the first like five years. You know, the database was basically, we used like an off the shelf applicant tracking system and we would track all the billing through sheets and we would kinda do like, I mean we had a CRM to like manage the sales pipeline, but it was all basically very low code. We built, we built our own app and actually ported all the data to like our own database only because we were like, well if we wanna expand the business to do more than hiring or if we actually wanted to like augment some of the like human decision making and matching companies that we found really hard to do with a low-code solution. You know, because when you have it in your own database, you can start to do things like track why retention on a specific company account with these three developers is doing better than another company and start to, you know, pull out some characteristics of, oh okay, we see why, you know, and the analyses are much easier to do when you're doing retros.
But yeah, there's been a lot of devs that like typically what a company would hire us for on that or hire like us to find them devs and that scenario would be like they've hit the limit of scale with a low code, no code solution and they now wanna move to an environment where like they have a Python based app and they have their own data based in Postgres or something. Yeah. so
Yeah, I think that's where, not not struggling, but that's where I think about, you know, cuz we're building only on Airtable and we've, I think, you know, we're hacking our way through it in a way that, you know, we, we having, you know, the data structure we have is really great but you know, to find or to understand what you're recruiting for, cause you know, as someone who's done only software engineering for the last couple years may not wanna come into an environment where it's in Airtable and they're, you know, building upon a platform like that. But you know, you know, that's been definitely the struggle to figure out like, you know, what the right profile is as we scale to build that tech stack. Cuz you know, I like Airtable selfishly cuz I can see the database and that's easy. That visualization allows me to help and build things, you know, in a way that I would never have gotten if we had just built a software platform. So, you know, it's, that's been really nice for us. But the how we scale that and you know, to, you know, when or if we move on to another type of, you know, backend and you know, start to develop our own front end, that that, you know, that's you know, another big thing that we're always thinking about.
Yeah, totally. Have you guys had trouble like finding somebody that is excited about like building on top of Airtable?
I I mean we do definitely had some trouble. You know, the pool is, you know, the pool is not huge. I think, you know, we've tried to, I've been, you know, we've been a little bit creative where there are definitely consulting companies out there that offer Airtable Consulting. Yeah. And so I usually try and poach people from those companies. Smart, right? So like that's, you know, that's number one. So there are some of those that are, are, you know, coming up and you find a lot of, there's some really large companies building incredibly complex things on Airtable. So there are people that have done some great projects and then, you know, if you find people who are really good analysts and you know, have done some sequel and you know, maybe, you know, are curious to develop that skill further, then I think, you know, something like an Airtable is like the the perfect platform to, you know, learn on. And so you, you know, maybe it's not, you know, they haven't got a tremendous amount of experience in on the platform, but they've got a lot of that thinking of how to build the database structure and you know, what, you know, you know how to, how to build the, the platform and then, you know, they just have to learn how to use Airtable and, and, and co and you know, develop on top of that.
Yeah. I'm looking at our database right now to see if we have any folks that have familiarity with the, using Airtable, like to basically solve like a, a technical problem. And we do, I mean I could always, yeah, I could introduce you to some if you want. Okay. If you guys are hiring. Okay.
And how big is your team now?
Right now? Like 30 people. Not too much. Not too many people internally I think in terms of people we have on projects, like through the platform about a hundred or so. Okay. Yeah, we'll do about, I dunno, 14 million this year in revenue. So
Yeah. I assume the margins are pretty good in the business.
They're pretty solid. Yeah, totally. But you know, there's this, there's this thing about like, pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered. So margin to me is, you know, meaning like you don't wanna take too much margin, you know? Oh
The margins are good cause the opacity is, is there and I think there's so much demand for software engineers, so
Yeah, definitely. And also I feel like, you know, the, well technical recruiters at companies need good partners cuz they're overwhelmed and then a lot of times CTOs are responsible for hiring and that becomes like a whole show cuz they can't, they don't have time,
They don't wanna do it a hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No totally. I mean, so the way, the way that I think like we have been successful and this just happened earlier today on like a sales call, we're scaling our AE team. So basically the whole team's pitching in on taking some leads. But I love when like we get a referral from like an engineer to like a cto, that CTO comes in and they're like, Hey, I heard you guys are good. And that's only cause that engineer, we probably got hired through the platform at one point, you know, and heard about us. And so I, I feel like the engineers and the companies, usually the stakeholders technical, they, they want us to make money cause they know that we're treating people well. So, you know, I feel like that's good.
Yeah. It's very similar to our business, you know, in, in, in a way cuz it's just, it's that b2b, you know, same thing on the margin side, right. Where, you know, we gotta be fair from day one so that we can scale and not, you know, like exactly what you said, I forget the saying, but Yeah, exactly what you said. Like not take it, you know, it's short term gains, you'll lose it in the long term. Right. Like, doesn't matter. And so then, and then I think the same thing with referrals and just, you know, keeping that like service going and just being true to that. And then yeah, people move, you know, like yes people, new people start new things and then, you know, you can just continue to build that flywheel.
No, totally. I mean there's on a, on like a metrics level or like even on a p&l there's like an inverse relationship I found between margin and retention and you know, finding like that point on the optimization curve. Yeah. More like the two are at peak, like that's the, that's the left and right lateral limits for pricing. Yeah. You know?
Agreed. Yeah, agreed. I, I, like I tell everyone, you can get to price parity on coconuts very quickly and so, you know, once you're there, just stay there. Don't try and gouge and then, you know, work on the other things around it and it'll come. But yes. You know. And, and do you have people overseas on like your teams like sales or any of that stuff? Are you using people overseas or
Course. So core team let's see, I think most of the company is based in the US but we do have folks like our, you know, head of all tech, product engineering, even the vetting function on the talent side is in Brazil. Ok. And I, I actually, I find that like from a communication disruptive disruption standpoint, Latin America is like really nice because they're in the same working time zones as us generally. But we, we had an engineer who was with us for a long time. He was a, he was a British guy but he was based in Thailand. He was a really good dev. And so like that worked for us for a while. But I, but I think what we have found is like, I dunno, from a philosophical standpoint, it's important for us to be really good at like cross time zone remote collab. Cause like that's what we're selling, you know, like our devs are based all around the world. So
That's the bigger struggle I'd say we have, especially right now as we've built the team and we have, you know, let's say, you know, I was doing the sales before and my partner was doing some of the supply chain stuff with the team in, in, in mostly in the Philippines and doing the supply chain work. And as we've scaled now we've got like, you know, biz dev people in Argentina and they're working on deals and then the people sourcing the products are in, in a different time zone. And that asynchronous communication is what we're spending, I would say majority of our time building out in terms of process. Because if the handoff isn't good on Monday night, you lose so much time. And that, that has been very, I would say eyeopening, you know, didn't expect it to be as challenging as it would be, but the upside is so incredible that, you know, you gotta figure it out. It's just it's just, it is tough to figure out with the time zone.
No, totally. I mean, pre pandemic, we were like a team of like 10 all in the national office and I was like a stickler about working in office.
Yeah. I was like, listen, you gotta show up to work. Like this is like, we're here to work like you show up, you know? But the irony would be I would have to like take calls outside of my car that were sensitive because we had an open floor plan. So I like, something is up here, but then <laugh>, when the pandemic happened, I was like, dude, ok, I don't want people to get sick. And like also, you know, the regulation sort of prevented us from going adapted. And I think that has generally been positive for the company. But you know, my tendency is like, hey, when something is wrong, I wanna talk to somebody immediately. And that is difficult to do in a multi-time zone business. You know, you, you kinda have to just sit in the anxiety and trust that somebody else will figure it out when they wake up
<Laugh>. Yeah, I mean, exactly. Exactly. I mean I think that that is very true and I'm sure for them it's not great to wake up to all these messages like, you know. Yes. And so it is, there is this handoff that is, you know, that needs to be built. And I think that, I think big companies have solved it, right? You have massive companies that have huge offices overseas that obviously have solved some sort of handoff that, you know, over time have built that out, that it's possible. I think for small businesses it, especially if you've never done it before it definitely can cause a little bit of like anxiety between the teams too. But if you build it, yeah, if you build it well and you can't figure it out, then the upside is, you know, is is, you know, it's almost infinite because you, you know, you figured out communication and that's really odd.
Yeah, totally. I read something a long time ago by Brian Chesky, the Airbnb founder, and it's something that I try to remember myself. He, he said something about like how like you can trade off culture and process and like the stronger culture, like the more you invest in culture and the stronger culture you have sometimes, like, you actually don't have to go that heavy in the process because like you can only really build pro process retroactively attitude at work where people wanna make sure that like things are done well that takes some of the pressure off of you to like constantly be in position where you're like, ok, like what's the right way to hand this off? Exactly. Yeah. Know.
Yeah, that's really powerful and something that I guess we don't, we do, I mean, like we think about, I don't think of, you know, we think about process all the time. I mean, I guess supply chain world maybe, you know, it's, it's important but I guess to your point, like that is true, right? Like, if you can foster this culture of communication, of getting stuff done, then I think, you know, I think a lot of the issues with the communication now is, is probably driven by leadership and some, you know, little bit of like, let's say, you know, not pure focus on certain things and not like, you know, trying to spread the team too thin and then having to like always reprioritize to ensure that like we're getting the stuff done versus, you know, building what you're, you know, building that culture that you're talking about.
Yeah, totally. Like one of the, I mean, one of the observations that I've made is, so we're gonna probably be at like 40 people by the end of the year, and one of the observations that I've made is like, if we get a really tight training program, like it's done well, it's packaged right? There's like almost like an indoctrination process. Like this is how we see the world, this is why we exist, this is why you're here, this is the collection of the team. And then you're really clear about your values and like every meeting you're in, you basically find a way to mention a decision that ties back to the values. What you end up getting is like, people are making just generally more aligned decisions and that actually requires less long-term paperwork, less long-term operational decision making from, from leaders.
Correct. I mean that's, and that's it, right? If you, you, as you were talking, I was like, yeah, that's exactly it. It's like, you know, we have, you know, so I have a guy named Pedro and he's always like, Iran, my job is to make sure you're not involved in anything. Yes, I'm, that's right. Like that's, you know, how do you build that? And I think at the beginning it's just allowing people to go and do, and you know, not fail, but you know, learn as they go, right? Because, you know, we're hiring people from different industries, totally different experience, but have the ability to execute incredibly well. And so it's just about, you know, giving them that, that room and having the time to give them that room. And then on the training side, yeah, I think, you know, budget is always such a, you know, you, there's like a list of a million people you can hire's a and it's thing, the training is so important because it is like if someone comes in and they don't understand how the business works and you spend six months, like you're, you might as well have hired someone else to teach them because the next person spending six months being ineffective because you haven't trained them properly.
No, that's totally it. And, and I would say that's the benefit of having raised a little bit is like when we were, when we were bootstrapped, you know, it's like every dollar mattered and, but if you fully, if you fully load the cost of training and of equipping them into your industry, like when you're on the other side of venture,
Yeah, yeah. You're maximizing now time and so you're like, hey, you can spend an extra five, 10, what, you know, 10% on the comp to make sure that they come in solid with some priors, you know? But yeah, I dunno, you could, you could ask like my leadership team, I would be such a hardass about like, this is the right way to do things. Like don't do this any other way. And oh, I would find myself like working, I mean 80, 90 hours a week constantly. Cause I would feel like anytime there was an operational gap or a decision making
Gap, yeah, you play whack-a-mole.
Yes, totally. And we hired a, you know, we hired like a sales leader. He's funny, I give a about this all the time, but he was on my from the minute he started. He's like, dude, we don't have like a compelling unifying vision. Like we need to have a company story. We need to be articulating this like every chance we get. I'm like, that's dude. Like I don't care about that. I care about the p&l, I care about growth and I care about getting people hired. That's like what we're here to do, right? And I would just shove him off and he stayed persistent. And finally I was like, dude, okay, like, I spend some time on this and I spent like weeks and it still sucked. And I'm like, this is. I did it again. And finally we came up with like a thing where I'm like, like, whoa. Like these values and the story like feel like honest and they feel like aligning to where I can say these three things. Like for us it's like simple, efficient human. Like every decision we make has to keep those three things in mind and you can force rank things you wanna do by if they meet those three things. And that it's like freed up so much cognitive bandwidth for me. So,
Yeah. And, and I mean you, you're eight years in, I guess like, was there a moment in the business and just asking selfish questions, <laugh> where like, where, where you felt, was there a tipping point where you felt more in control, where you felt like today, you know, like you came in with a bit more confidence in terms of, you know, let's say I don't have confidence, but I definitely, you know, you've got that uncertainty every day and like, when is the tide gonna turn to you and when do you feel conviction that you know you're gonna be able to sell? And like what you're selling is like not, you know, snake oil. Like people,
People find out that you know,
A hundred percent dude. Ok. So I think that if you, you either have imposter syndrome or like your sociopath. So I feel like if you have like a high personal standard for yourself, you're at least I, this is me. I, I just have accepted that like, that that fear is gonna always be in the background. Cause
It doesn't go away is what you're
Doing. If it never goes away, dude, it never goes away. And the bigger the business gets, like the more commitments you've made cuz you've now committed to a larger group of people and more suppliers and more companies, you know, more devs. And so you just, like, I'm, I had this conversation actually with like our head of ops, I was like, dude. Like I just, it hit me today that like, I'm making so many commitments and like in my personal life, I'm even careful about being like, I'll show up at this time. Cause I dunno, you know, but at work you just do it. You just accept it. Your name's on every contract, you know, and I just accepted it. And so I think for me, like I, I have good and bad days, but I think the confidence probably comes like, it's like such a answer, but it kind of comes like from internal where you're like, you know what, like I'm, I've generally made smart decisions over the course of my life and I've generally made positive decisions in the company to date. I've made some mistakes, I've rectified them. And if I keep making like generally good decisions there are like, it's gonna turn out okay.
So, so not comforting the answer, but definitely, you know, I would say it, it you know, obviously pushes you more towards self-reflection and, and you know, being comfortable with yourself Right. More than the things around you, which I, I understand. I just wish it was the other way around. Right?
No. They'll come that day where like, you'll wake up in the morning and you'll fall. No. Okay. With everything that you're doing, <laugh>
No, I don't. I mean, but you look at like ward Buffet, you know, and like you and him and Charlie Munger, like, they talk about decision making. Like you could tell that they, you know, there are a lot of 51 49 decisions, you know, in that business that they're in. But like they've still levered up, you know, the scale of their decision making is like to the tune of like hundreds of millions, if not billions, you know? But they have like an an equanimity about it, like a piece about it where like they accept like, hey, like we've thought through this, it's the right decision, let's go for, and if anything, I will say the venture fund that we've partnered with, the, the board member in particular, Robert, he pushes me to like have a lot more conviction in my decisions. He's like, dude, you're gonna know 80% and you need to be okay with that. Cause you raised the money to grow. Just go. And that has been like a very helpful voice in my ear because like, I'm the same way as you, like when you build a business from scratch and you're kinda like, oh, I can't believe this is working. You tend to, at least I tend to be like, it's, it shouldn't be working. It's gonna up one day, obviously, you know?
Well it feels like I'm playing a computer game <laugh>, right. You know, when is, when is it gonna be like, game over? You know? And that's the pro, like it's, especially in this new world, right? Like they're just numbers on a screen and in my employees I've met two of them of the 20, you know, and so it's, it's all very, I think that also makes it less concrete cuz there's nothing to look at. Yes. You know, I'm not staring at a container, right. The most I've seen is like a packet of coconut milk today. And that's, you know, it doesn't give you any sense of like, like realism and that yeah. It's just it's, it's bizarre.
No, no, totally. Like you're like, I mean, I'll tell you the first day I a salary, I'm like, we built a website that, that pays me a salary. And like, and like, you know, I'll get messages from devs like, Hey, I bought my Jeep Wrangler cause of a contract that you guys hooked me up with. I'm like, what? This is cra crazy. And I'm sure you feel the same way, but I dunno, I think that like, it, it lets you get into a space of like, alright, this is gonna sound super woo woo, but the more I focused on like gratitude and being like, holy, like what a blessing. Like this is awesome. The less anxiety I generally feel about any of my decisions and like, you know, I, if I can keep myself in a space of like thankful for the team, thankful for the opportunity that we have, thankful to serve companies and devs and like focus on that, generally I'm okay even when is going wrong, I'm like, like what a privilege it is to even solve these problems. No, I
Agree. Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it, right?
Like people who are getting their MBA would dream about having the problems that we have. They like, they like go to,
Oh, in me of 10 years ago would've dreamt about having this problem. I, you know, couldn't, I couldn't even think of a business idea 10 years ago. You know, I was like coming up with like, you know what if I built the next, I don't know what it was, fill in the blank and like had no idea what I was doing. So Yeah, I agree with you. I think that you, you have to reflect and it's, it's living in that in, in the moment. And especially as a, you know, when you have, you're getting thrown stuff and it's, you know, every day is something new that it sometimes is more difficult to do than then it seems,
Yeah, it focus on gratitude that's been like really help. Like every week I'm, it sounds so stupid, but it's like every week we do a thing where like, you know, obviously every day people report, here's what I'm doing today, but every week we make people being like, what grateful for. And, and like we try to even in meetings be like, you know, look, we're thankful that this has happened so we can fix it and it's a good problem. And having that culture, I think, I dunno man, it, it helps me like not maybe worry so much about like, the burden that we carry as entrepreneurs, you know? Cause I always tell you,
Just turn this into like a mindfulness podcast for, for founders,
Dude. Well, I, I tell, I tell my like head of ops, I'm like, okay, if this company collapses, everybody else gets a job. Except the ceo. The diff CEO gets asked for the rest of his career. Why the did you this company up? And how did you make so many bad decisions? Yeah, right. Like <laugh>, but but everybody else
Has the syndrome talking. Yeah,
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