Doug Evans Is Revolutionizing Juice

When I was a kid, I loved The Jetsons. I was convinced that by 2000 life would be all jetpacks, flying cars, sky trams and robot housekeepers. My timeline was overly optimistic, but we're nonetheless surrounded by evidence of this inevitability. From the advent of virtual reality to self-driving cars, drone delivery and beyond, even Elon Musk's idea of colonizing Mars now seems plausible. This week ushered in the future of kitchen appliances. Meet Juicero– a complete re-imagination of cold press juice for the home and office that even George Jetson would envy. I know it sounds weird. It's hard to explain. So I'm not going to try. Watch this cool video instead: Juicero is the brainchild of my friend Doug Evans. An idea so big it captured the hearts and minds of Silicon Valley, attracting $120 million in financing from technology's most high-powered VC's, including Kleiner Perkins and Google Ventures. I started hearing rumors about Doug and Juicero about a year ago. Then last month, Doug invited me to visit his 100,000 square foot Los Angeles distribution center. I was excited to finally see what all the fuss was about. But in all honesty, I was skeptical. $120 million for a new-fangled juice machine? I don't get it. He gave me a tour. I met the team and tested the goods. Not only was it the best juice I had ever tasted, I realized there is much more going on at Juicero than meets the eye. A marvel of advanced technology, the future-forward wifi-enabled Juicero exerts 8,000 pounds of pressure to cold-press the freshest juice possible from QR-coded organic produce packs (soon to be 100% compostable) that contain detailed information on nutrition, the farm of origin and the date of harvest (never to exceed 5 days). None of the nutrient degrading pasteurization mandatory in all store bought juice. No more old or non-organic produce typical of most juice bars. And of course, zero home cleanup. The space-age functionality and highly complex machinery are housed in cutting edge design courtesy of legendary product designer Yves Béhar that expertly merges aesthetics with simplicity and user friendliness. Comparisons to Apple are inevitable. And rumor has it even Jony Ive had a behind-the-scenes hand in guiding Juicero's product design. But the gadget is just part of the story. Perhaps more fascinating is the personal journey of Juicero's steward, a most unlikely entrepreneur. A graffiti artist reared on the streets of New York City, Doug Evans traded the classroom for tagging subway trains and hanging out in clubs with the likes of Basquait, Warhol and Haring before finding his calling as a graphic artist under the mentorship of the great Paul Rand. A confluence of tragic events around Doug's 30th birthday would permanently alter the trajectory of his life and career. In 1994, his mother died of cancer. Shortly thereafter, his father died of heart disease. Meanwhile, Doug's brother developed type 2 diabetes, atrial fibrillation, hypertension, and had the first of two strokes. Terrified by the prospect that he was genetically pre-disposed to early mortality, Doug turned to the raw vegan lifestyle, igniting a passion for the connection between lifestyle and health that boils down to one simple, yet powerful edict: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  You know, I keep my life really simple. And it's all about having mission and purpose. And when I look at how important it is for people to consume fruits and vegetables, and organic fruits and vegetables, and raw fruits and vegetables, like that was my mission, and it really drives me.

• 1:30Rich Roll?

  That's Doug Evans, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:43Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody, how you guys doing? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast. The show where each week I sit down with the world's brightest thought leaders, paradigm-breaking minds across all categories of health, wellness, diet, nutrition, artistry, creativity, in the case of today's guest, entrepreneurship, fitness, athletic performance, mindfulness, meditation, spirituality, you get the picture, right? So I'm pretty excited about Today's show, as of the recording of this introduction, it's Friday, April 1st. But on Wednesday, March 30th, I went up to San Francisco to the San Francisco-based headquarters of a brand-new Silicon Valley technology startup called Juicero to sit

• 2:27Rich Roll?

  down with my longtime buddy Doug Evans, who is the company's CEO and founder. So what is Juicero? Who is Doug Evans? Fair questions, right? Well, you might know Doug Evans because he is the co-founder of a retail chain of cold-pressed juice cafes called Organic Avenue in New York City. It would be very difficult to travel to Manhattan and not see an Organic Avenue. They were peppered all across the city. And Doug is a guy who has been in the world of juice for, I don't know, 25 years at this point. He will tell you that he literally has juice running through his veins. That's how important juice is to him.

• 3:08Rich Roll?

  And Juicero, I think, is the external manifestation of this guy's, you know, life and ethos. So what is Juicero? Well, I think it's fair to say that this is a company that is on the precipice or has the potential to completely disrupt and reinvent the consumer juice market, the consumer juice experience. Their main product is this gorgeous kitchen-top appliance that doesn't look anything like what you expect a juicer to look like. It's sort of akin to the Keurig coffee machines with those pods, except for juicing. But it's also not really fair to draw that comparison because this machine is so much more.

• 3:51Rich Roll?

  It has like the technology of 747 aircraft in it and a MacBook Pro and the gearing and it's just, I'm bumbling my words. You know why? Because I don't really know how to describe it. Essentially, it's this completely clean, beautiful piece of art that has a door that opens, a stainless steel brushed door, and then you insert this QR-coded produce pack that contains organic, finely chopped produce. You shut the door, you push a button, the door like sort of compresses, it exerts 8,000 pounds of pressure on this produce pack and it presses out the freshest juice imaginable.

• 4:34Rich Roll?

  This appliance is wifi enabled, it has a scanner that reads the QR code, it can tell you the farm where the produce was picked, what date it was picked. If the produce is past its expiration date, when you press the button to make the juice, it won't make the juice. It's also like incredibly aesthetically pleasing and that's because guys like Johnny I from Apple, Eve Bahar, the famed product designer, Tony Fidell of Nest, some of the brightest minds in technology and design have conspired to influence and craft and create the look and the feel and the technology behind this really amazing machine. Doug raised a boatload of cash, $120 million from some of the top Silicon Valley venture capital

• 5:19Rich Roll?

  funds, Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures. Also, he's assembled an incredibly impressive list of individual investors, including Matt Rogers, who is the co-founder of Nest, and the guy, I've been informed, who is behind developing the original iPhone firmware, right? Like, these are major players, the best and the brightest in Silicon Valley in tech and in wellness. And it was really a privilege for me to be able to visit Juicero and sit down with Doug on the day before launching the product, before publicly announcing for the very first time what they are doing. Because prior to Wednesday, their webpage was blank, there was an embargo on all press, people knew that Juicero had raised a bunch

• 6:03Rich Roll?

  of money, but they weren't even really clear on what the product was. They've been in stealth mode, it's all cloak and dagger, until...

• 6:12Rich Roll?

  Yesterday, so it was sort of all hands on deck at Juicero when I was there. A lot of anticipation and excitement from the team about finally being able to share what they're doing with the public. And then the day after I left, the following morning, all the press broke loose. There was a profile in the New York Times, articles in everywhere, from TechCrunch to Vanity Fair, to Vogue, to you name it, right? You can do a simple Google search and I'll put an itemization of the most prominent press in the show notes for this episode. It was so cool for me to be able to be there and witness the behind the scenes on one of the biggest days in the company's short history, the precipice of launch day.

• 6:54Rich Roll?

  And to kind of interface and talk to some of the brilliant PhDs that are working on the motherboards and testing the product. I just, I don't even know how to describe it. It was just very special to me and very cool. And I can tell you that to be able to sit down with Doug and get him to focus for 90 minutes in the midst of this whirlwind of this crazy storm of anticipation was really quite something. And he's got a crazy story. His story is amazing. He's a very unlikely entrepreneur, a very unique dude, and nothing if not fanatical about quality. This is a guy, again, who lives and breathes juice. He lives and breathes this company. He basically lives in the office and this is his passion.

• 7:38Rich Roll?

  And it's very exciting to be able to play a part in helping share his story and the story of this company that I think is really going to make an impact on the wellness landscape. And it's going to be very interesting to kind of watch develop and roll out over time. I know I'm bumbling my words. I'm not very articulate here. I'm doing this without a script, but it really is hard to describe what Juicero is. It's something that you have to see. It's something you have to experience. They made a marketing video. I implore all of you guys to watch it. I'll put a link or actually I'll embed that up on the episode page for this episode. So make a point of watching that so you have some context for what I'm talking about. And again, I'm going to put up tons of links in the show notes to all the press, et cetera, so you can read further and understand better what I'm talking about.

• 8:23Rich Roll?

  All right, I don't want to bury the lead too much. I think that's all I'm going to say about Doug and Juicero. I'll let the interview illuminate you further, but before we get into that first.

• 8:39Rich Roll?

  All right, so Doug Evans, Juicero. This is a great conversation. This is a conversation, of course, about entrepreneurship. It's about health and wellness. It's about juicing, the misconceptions and the health benefits of juicing. It's about how to empower a team. It's about aesthetics. It's about design. It's about creativity. It's about thinking outside the box. It's about disrupting industries that need disrupting. And it's about how to provide better access to healthy fruit and vegetables for humankind. I really dig Doug. I love this guy. I'm so impressed with what he has built. I can't wait to see where he takes it. So, without further ado, enjoy this conversation with my good friend Doug Evans.

• 9:27Rich Roll?

  So, just walking around here before the interview, it almost feels like there's this distinct sense of anticipation, almost like Cape Canaveral before the launch. Like tomorrow's a really big day for you guys, right?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:41Rich Roll?

  What is going on around here?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:43Rich Roll?

  Let's just get into it.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Okay, so we're rolling.

• 9:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we're rolling. We're on. We started.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Okay, so 39 months ago, I started Juicero with a big idea and incredible confidence and naivete. So, I was kind of like the Forrest Gump of engineering when I began this project. And so now, all forces are kind of crossing Ts, dotting Is, getting ready for this launch tomorrow, which is 16 hours from this moment.

• 10:21Rich Roll?

  This moment. And are you going to stay up all night and be in this office until the article posts in the New York Times?

• 10:28Speaker 01

  I think that's the plan for the team.

• 10:30Rich Roll?

  Is that the plan?

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:32Rich Roll?

  So, just to, you know, I probably will explain this in the introduction, and we're going to get into the whole thing, but this has been a very cloak-and-dagger situation. A lot of excitement and anticipation in Silicon Valley. There's been a bit of a press embargo. Your website has basically been a blank page. And as far as the public is aware, all they know is that you've raised a bunch of money and has something to do with juice, and it's big. And that's about it.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:01Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 11:01Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 11:01Rich Roll?

  So tomorrow, the public is actually going to find out what exactly this is.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 11:07Rich Roll?

  And that's huge.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  It really is huge and it's exciting. And although I believed that secrecy was overrated, the main reason why I didn't talk about it and those articles, we never announced raising any capital because I didn't think that was something to celebrate. I just want to be able to focus and not take time.

• 11:31Rich Roll?

  But that just ekes out, like, right? That's just, I mean, TechCrunch, like, all this sort of Silicon Valley rags were all kind of covering your venture capital raise.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's hard to raise that amount of capital without, you know, people knowing.

• 11:49Rich Roll?

  Knowing what's going on.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  But I think what happened was people would taste the product and they'd see the demo and they literally couldn't control themselves. They had to tell someone. It was like seeing a UFO.

• 12:03Rich Roll?

  Well, you have this sort of apocryphal story about the Campbell's Soup guy, right?

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:09Rich Roll?

  Can you tell that story?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was interesting. So Kleiner Perkins had, you know, seen the product and it was so funny, one of the partners in Kleiner Perkins, when he tasted the juice, was like, "Stop, wait." And he was running around the office like the Kool-Aid Man, breaking into other meetings, interrupting other pitches, just trying to share what he saw with other people.

• 12:35Rich Roll?

  And just for the audience, Kleiner Perkins is a very prestigious venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. It's sort of, you know, grade A, top of the heap. Like, if you are trying to raise money, like, these are the guys that you want on your team.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, they funded companies like Google and Amazon.

• 12:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  So...

• 12:54Rich Roll?

  And I heard, I read something, or, no, I listened to, like, they have their own little podcast, right? So I listened to this, doing my homework in preparation for today, and one of the guys, I forget his name, was commenting that you had come in without any sleep. And there was something, there was a problem with you going through security. So you couldn't actually bring in all your juice testing stuff that you usually do to do your spiel in your presentation. So you were kind of left without your armaments, right?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Well, it was, it was, it was a great story. I got introduced to Kleiner Perkins through a vegan fashion designer in New York City, Leanne Hilgard from Vot Couture.

• 13:33Rich Roll?

  I know, I've met her before.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so she's great. And she knew someone at the Humane Society who knew someone at Kleiner Perkins.

• 13:42Rich Roll?

  And you're hustling.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  And I'm hustling. Like, I'd been raising, you know, money in $25,000 increments. And then one of the prominent venture capitalists in New York, a guy named Howard Morgan, said, Doug, you're gonna just get crushed here. You need to go to Silicon Valley. You've got a big idea. You know, they back big ideas there. And so I was thinking, okay, well, I don't know anyone out there. How am I gonna get connected? And then Leanne, who I met through Alicia Silverstone, another vegan, had introduced us. Leanne was raising capital for her clothing company, and she had told me she met with Kleiner Perkins. And I like said, really? And she goes, yeah.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  I said, the Kleiner Perkins? And I said, oh, would you introduce me? So she types out this little cute email, oh, I want you to meet Doug. He's the best ever. And so I then have a quick conversation with the assistant to one of the partners there, Amol Deschondé. And the assistant said, well, Amol will take a phone call. And I said, well, I'll be in San Francisco. Which of course, if I was going to be meeting with Kleiner Perkins, I would be, I'd have to fly into San Francisco. So she said, oh, well, okay, well, we'll set up a little meeting for you. So I fly to San Francisco. I bring my original Juicero press. I bring the produce. And I give Amol this demo.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  And Amol... Is bringing in other people. So he's the guy that's bouncing around like the Kool-Aid guy. But Randy Comissar, who's one of the five general partners on the investment committee, Randy wasn't there that day. And so, so I left, I flew back to New York. And when I got back to New York, there was a message that said, oh, Randy could see you tomorrow.

• 15:41Rich Roll?

  So you just turn around and go right back?

• 15:43Speaker 01

  I turned around and I went right there.

• 15:44Rich Roll?

  But you gave them the impression that you were already in, like, you did, when you, when that door cracked open, you just jumped on it and said, oh, I'll be there. Like, you didn't have another reason to be there, right? Like, you were doing it just for that purpose.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, that's...

• 15:57Rich Roll?

  And then you just turned around and went back?

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think it was subterfuge. It was very much...

• 16:01Rich Roll?

  No, no, no, I got you.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  It was opportunistic.

• 16:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, of course.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  And so then I flew back. So, so then they said, well, Randy can meet you. So I like looked at the plane schedule and I knew how quickly I could get there. So I took the next plane back and I landed in San Francisco at 10 o'clock that night to meet with Randy the following morning. But at that time, TSA confiscated the Giucero press prototype. So I landed with literally just my backpack, because I didn't even have any clothes. I always carry a toothbrush and dental floss, but I had no clothes, I had no press. And so I got there bright and early in the morning.

• 16:41Rich Roll?

  Right. And did you have, oh, juice, awesome, thank you.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  And so...

• 16:47Rich Roll?

  So you had to come clean and say, oh, I flew, I flew out to get, like, you had to come up with an explanation why you didn't have your stuff, right?

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Well, at that, at that point, we were already in love, right? So I didn't need to be expository. It was more like, I'm here. And like, they knew that I, Randy knew I lived in Brooklyn, because I had told him my whole graffiti writing, you know, streets of New York spiel.

• 17:11Rich Roll?

  And I want to hear about that in a minute, but, but go ahead.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  So, so I get there and Randy's like, what do you got? And I just told him, I said, well, look, I'll have to set up another time for a demo. But let me just, you know, walk you through who I am, what I'm building, what impact it will have on the world, why this is a good investment for you. And 90 minutes went by. And at the end of the meeting, he's like, "Look, I'm really interested in this. I think we should do it." And, you know, we set up another time to do it.

• 17:48Rich Roll?

  Right. And there's a difference between backing a good idea and, oh, thank you, handing me a beautifully colored green juice, backing a good idea, like, you know, just investing in something that you think has potential versus the kind of ideas that an organization like Kleiner is going to get behind because they're not going to get involved in something like this unless they see, you know, just a huge upside that is worthy of the risk that it's going to take to bring a product like this to market. Like, this is a big idea. Like, you just move your whole operation from New York to Silicon Valley, and it really is a technology play as much as it is a health and wellness juice company.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, literally Randy said, "We will fund you, but you need to be in San Francisco, and you need to work out of our office." And like, that's, you know, that's what, like, that's what we'll take because you're going to need a lot of help. And that's the segue into the Jeff Dunn Campbell's Bolthouse story.

• 18:53Rich Roll?

  Right. Which is?

• 18:55Speaker 01

  So, it was easier, I'll preface the easier, that for Kleiner to make a seed investment than it was for them to make a Series A big investment. So, part of the diligence or due diligence is when they have to validate the business model, the market space, the hypothesis, and speak to experts. So, someone at Kleiner had a relationship with Jeff Dunn. And Jeff is like this, you know, six-foot X tall guy who was the former

• 19:32Speaker 01

  COO of Coca-Cola, ran half of the world, $100 billion business for Coca-Cola. And he was brought in by a big private equity firm, Madison Dearborn, to run Bolthouse Farms.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  And he was running and they were growing somewhere in the order of a billion with a B pounds of carrots and they had a $40 million juice business that he had grown to hundreds of millions of dollars and then they had sold Bolthouse Farms to Campbell's Soup for $1.6 billion. And now Jeff was the CEO of Bolthouse Farms and became the president of Campbell's Fresh. And so I go down there to, you know, as part of, they would have sent me to the moon, you know, I needed to check every box on that diligence list. So I go and I tell Jeff my story. Now I'm prepared. I get there early enough.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  I have backup redundancy and Jeff sees the product, tasted the juice and said, this is the best, you know, juice he's ever had in his life. And then he decided that he asked, could he personally invest alongside with Kleiner Perkins? And then that was-

• 20:52Rich Roll?

  And that's influential on Kleiner's sort of decision tree about how to get more involved, right? In terms of doubling down on the investment.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, this is someone not just saying, hey, this tastes good, but Jeff saw he had spent 30 years in the beverage business and was involved with Adwalla and Minute Maid and saw the, had a juice business under his own dominion.

• 21:17Rich Roll?

  Right. So let's get into what the big idea is and maybe the best way to kind of back into that is to talk about, you know, the juice business in general, what's wrong with it and kind of the problem that Juicero intends to solve. I mean, you kind of gave me, when I met with you in Los Angeles, when you gave me a beautiful tour of your facility there, you kind of gave me, you know, I suppose, some version of the elevator pitch, but it's pretty compelling. So why don't you share that?

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think the- You know, the juice business and you know, this isn't a religious thing. So I love like all juice, but I'm also a designer at heart and I have high standards. So I seek the, the effort of what it takes to get to the best. So very discerning in that front. And so I've been juicing for 25 years. So I started off with a juice man juicer and an Acme juicer and Omega juicer. And then the Green Star juicer and Breville juicer. And I had this range of juicers. And that was, you know, for the first part of my juicing career.

• 22:30Rich Roll?

  Just consumer home use juicers.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Consumer home.

• 22:33Rich Roll?

  We're not talking about like the business end of it.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Single gear, double gear, masticating, hand crank wheatgrass juicers, centrifugal juicers. So I knew a lot about juicers. And then, you know, my life and, you know, I'll just, we'll start here in 1999. My mother had died from cancer. My father was dying from heart disease. My brother became morbidly obese, developed type 2 diabetes, atrial fibrillation, hypertension, and then had the first of two strokes. And so for me, I thought that I was genetically cursed and that I was going to die.

• 23:15Rich Roll?

  And how old were you at this time?

• 23:17Speaker 01

  I was about 33.

• 23:19Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  So early 30s.

• 23:21Rich Roll?

  You're like this mad artist at the time, right? Like I was in New York the other week, last week, at dinner with John Joseph. And I was like, hey, I'm going to go see Doug in San Francisco. I know that guy. I knew that guy back in the day. He was out tagging, you know, he's just a crazy streak graffiti artist.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, my, my background is, you know, very typical, you know, entrepreneur where, you know, I grew up in the, the streets of New York. And I don't know whether I got glasses too late, so I couldn't see the blackboard, uh, growing up because, um, like I was the worst student ever. Like I never did any homework. I wouldn't show up to class. I was, you know, trouble bouncing off the walls, had a sweet tooth and.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Ended up in public junior high school, where I started like writing graffiti. And I wasn't like a famous graffiti writer. It was a choice of either stealing drugs, you know, stealing cars or writing graffiti. And this was in Manhattan? Yeah, this was in Manhattan. What neighborhood did you grow up in? You shut the window. So I grew up in upper Manhattan. So the tip of Manhattan Island. Oh, wow, way up there. Way up there. And so I would go, you know, all city. And it was just, you know, kind of crazy days during the day. I was like a little white kid. And so I would be able to go in and steal spray paint and. What was your tag? Did you have like one tag? Yeah.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Like my tag was pain. Uh huh, nice. So I don't know what subliminal thing that meant. But, you know, just to give framework and how like you connect all the dots. Part of the funding for Organic Avenue was me selling original Keith Haring artwork that I had, that Keith did for me in 1980, when I was 13 and Keith was 21, hanging out with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol and Fab Five Freddy. And. That's amazing. And so I had three original Keith Herrings. I sold two of them to help fund Organic Avenue. I still have one.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  And it's currently at Sotheby's. And I'm debating whether or not to put it in the auction or not. Just because I'm like not attached to material things anymore. So a picture of that, to me, is reminiscent enough of the original. So it's a liability for me to have artwork because I'm so. Transient.

• 26:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're living kind of a gypsy life right now. I don't know if I would sell that, though. I mean, personally, I'm obsessed with that era of New York City, like the Warhol Factory era. I mean, were you like a downtown club kid? Or what was your, I mean, how did you get to know Keith Haring? Like, how does that even happen?

• 26:17Speaker 01

  I mean, I was, I was a little bit of a club kid. And it was just like not wanting to go to sleep.

• 26:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Like, you know, just going from one activity to the next. And so there was, you know, this was the era of graffiti, hip hop, breakdancing. And like Crazy Legs was in my homeroom in high school.

• 26:42Rich Roll?

  Oh, God.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Right? And this other graffiti writer, who's like a famous DJ, K Slay, had told another guy that was in my homeroom to come to my, to like, to extort me for spray paint. Because like I had a lot of paint.

• 27:00Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  And so I wouldn't give it to him. So he had this guy literally walk into my homeroom, punch me in the face, and walk out. And it was kind of like crazy times. So all this graffiti between like 13 and 17 just drove me mad. And so when I turned 17, my, my friends were going to jail. They were on drugs. They were committing crime. And not one of them was going to college. So one of my friends had gone into the army. And I was like, God, I don't want to do that. And then I had this crazy, near-death, arrest, escape, you know, experience.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  And like I got home bloody, like exhausted, bruised, and dirty, and like trembling.

• 27:55Rich Roll?

  This is like your scared straight moment.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  This was my, like, yeah, the anxiety level then was just like through the roof. It makes like what's going on now effortless. But it was like trembling. And then I stayed up that night. And then the next day, I went to the recruiter, army recruiter. And I joined. I said, what is the roughest, toughest thing that you have? Like, I want discipline. I want to get out. And. Like, I literally independently shaved my head in anticipation of like going into the Army. And they said 82nd Airborne, and I was 17, and my parents also thought I was crazy,

• 28:37Speaker 01

  but they could relate that my ego didn't want to go to a community college. Now, like, community college looks like it would be fun. But I said, "I'm not going to college, I'm not gonna work, I'm gonna go to the Army. I believe in the Army College Fund, you know, I'll learn a lot." And so I joined the Army.

• 28:58Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. What year was that?

• 29:00Speaker 01

  That was 1984.

• 29:01Rich Roll?

  1984, wow. And how long were you there for?

• 29:04Speaker 01

  So, it's a crazy story.

• 29:06Rich Roll?

  It's like, this is so weird, cause like, for the people that are listening, like, I'm looking at you, and you just look like a nice, bookish Jewish boy. You know what I mean? Like, you have this crazy story, but it like, it doesn't fit the visage that is in front of me?

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're not, like, I'm gonna show you, I don't know if we're gonna, maybe we'll extract the photo from the military ID. But I'm gonna show you, I'm gonna show you what my, um, what my Army picture looked like.

• 29:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right there. Oh my God.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  So, so when I joined the Army...

• 29:44Rich Roll?

  Alright, send that to me, I'll put it... Can I share that on the website?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  I, I don't, I will have to blur it out, my social security and all that. And it was kind of a crazy, crazy thing. This was the second military ID after I got hardened in there.

• 30:03Rich Roll?

  Wow, yeah, you look like a different guy. So, it's, so it's working, you got the discipline.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  I got the, I got the discipline.

• 30:08Rich Roll?

  It kicked your ass a little bit.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, and then I got out of the Army.

• 30:11Rich Roll?

  Where did you, where did you do base camp and all that?

• 30:13Speaker 01

  I did Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, also known as Fort Lost in the Woods, Missouri. So I did boot camp in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I then did, um, uh...

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Infantry training and combat engineering training there. And then I went to Fort Benning, Georgia to do airborne training, which is

• 30:35Rich Roll?

  Jumping out of planes.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Jumping out of planes, which I don't know why someone would jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

• 30:41Rich Roll?

  How many times you do that?

• 30:44Speaker 01

  I did as few times as possible, but somewhere like in the teens. And you have to stay jump qualified. You get paid an extra $45 a month to jump out of a plane. So it's kind of a crazy thing. And then after the Army, or after boot camp, I then went to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, also known as Fayette-Nom for Fayetteville, North Carolina. And that was, you know, I totally was, you know, isolated. I didn't relate. I still don't know one guy that I went to the Army with.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  I mean, I was there, there were guys, it was like one big blur for me. It was like, so I went from chapter to chapter in my life.

• 31:36Rich Roll?

  And how old were you when you got out?

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's a strange story. I don't know how much you want to dig into it, but I was in the Army for 13 months. And then I got discharged from the Army.

• 31:47Rich Roll?

  What'd you do? All right. Yeah, we don't want to camp out here too long, but I got to know what happened.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  So the criteria for joining the Army was you had to have a pulse to be an enlisted person. And the criteria to be an officer is you needed to have a squeaky clean record. So after doing boot camp, infantry training, combat engineering training, special forces, explosives and demolitions, remote training, unit armor training, I did all this training, training, training. I was acknowledged by my commanding officer as a enlisted soldier who had leadership potential. To become an officer.

• 32:34Rich Roll?

  Right, but the checkered past wasn't going to allow that to happen. So the growth potential was capped?

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Well, the checkered past, my record, and I told my recruiter when I joined the Army, all of this, so I was fully transparent because it wasn't like I had warrants out for my arrest. I had a juvenile record, my record was sealed. But after he nominates me to Officer Candidate School, two weeks later, he calls me into his office and says, "Private Evans, have you ever been arrested?" "Yes, did you do this?" I go, "Yes." He goes, "Did you do this?" "No." "Did you do this?" "Yes." And we went through this, you know, sheet of these, you know, seemingly trivial misdemeanors associated with my childhood.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  And he said, "Did you file this affidavit and this disclosure and this waiver, all language I never heard of, and you're a lawyer? I didn't know this, because you need that in order to join the Army." And he goes, "I believe you that you told this to your recruiter. And, you know, this is not uncommon, but I have orders to discharge you from the US Military for fraudulent enlistment."

• 33:49Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  And to me, like, I'm keeping the straightest poker face, and I'm like celebrating inside my head, saying, "I'm getting out."

• 33:59Rich Roll?

  It's like the best way to get out of this.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Because the only other way to get out early is to go AWOL, or to like pee on yourself.

• 34:05Rich Roll?

  Right, Section 8.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, some crazy stuff like that. And so, he, like, the irony, and I don't know if this has happened before, the irony is the, my discharge, he gave me an Army Achievement Medal for my meritorious service under his command. And then he said, "Look, I have three choices. I can give you a dishonorable discharge, which would be understandable because of your fraudulent enlistment. I can give you a general discharge, because like, maybe it didn't work out. Or I can give you an honorable discharge."

• 34:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  So he actually gave me an honorable discharge with an Army Achievement Medal. I had my wisdom teeth removed, and I was back on the street.

• 34:53Rich Roll?

  I feel like you should have stayed in touch with that guy. Like, I feel like I, if he was alive right now, like, I'd want to call him. And tell them what you're doing now.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Well, I'll see if I could dust off his papers. Yeah, Lieutenant Rogers.

• 35:06Rich Roll?

  I think you should try to get in touch with them.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  He's probably commanding general, I know, who knows.

• 35:11Rich Roll?

  All right, so what happened? You go back to New York City and you start this career as a designer?

• 35:17Speaker 01

  So, I got out of New York. I started to work. I was working as a waiter, I was working as a busboy, I was working in nightclubs. I was now a little bit more buffed, so I was working security. And then I was saying, well, what am I really gonna do with my life? And I did have a lot of focus now, and I had a lot of discipline. And so the closest thing to writing graffiti was graphic design. And I found a book by this legendary graphic designer named Paul Rand.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  And Paul had designed the logos and corporate identities for IBM, ABC, UPS, Westinghouse. And he was working with this designer or this entrepreneur, Steve Jobs, who had left Apple and was working on his next big thing, next. And Paul was also teaching the master's program at Yale on graphic design. So, I see this book, and I'm saying, oh my God, this is like, Paul Rand is like the Warhol, Basquiat, you know, of legitimacy, like he's the real deal.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  So, I see, there's no phone number for him in this hardbound book, but I see that Paul had won the Art Directors Medal and the Type Directors Medal. So I called up the Type Directors Club, and I said, "Do you have a phone number for Paul Rand?" And they just gave it to me. So I called up Paul and I said, "Mr. Rand, I just got out of the Army. I was a graffiti writer and I want to be a graphic designer. I'd love to meet with you." And he hung up the phone on me.

• 37:09Rich Roll?

  He did, really? He just didn't even give you a shot?

• 37:12Speaker 01

  He was like, "I'm really busy." And so I called back.

• 37:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Because I'm used to having drill sergeants yelling at me like, "A graphic designer? This was nothing." So ultimately, Paul said, "Look, next time I'm in New York City, I'll call you and we'll get together."

• 37:30Rich Roll?

  That's pretty good.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it was pretty good, except he didn't do that.

• 37:35Rich Roll?

  Right, right. He's just trying to get rid of you.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so as I'm researching my graphic design, I meet this typographer and he had told me that he's like interested in what I was doing. And I said, "Well, I'm really interested in meeting Paul Rand." He goes, "Oh, you just missed him." And I go, "He was here?"

• 37:57Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  And so, like, literally, I called Paul that night and I said, "I understand that you are in New York City. You said that you were gonna call me and we'd get together. I'm just gonna come see you tomorrow."

• 38:12Rich Roll?

  This guy's like, "I can't get rid of this." I mean, the hustle, the street hustle, man. It goes all the way back to the beginning, right?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, 17, 19 years old. So I go back and I visit Paul. And I said, "Mr. Rand, I don't need your money. I want to learn graphic design." He goes, "I teach at Yale." And I go, "The closest thing I get to Yale is I go to the Yale Club by Vanderbilt Avenue and I eat free hors d'oeuvres, but I'm not going to the master's program at Yale. I've never been to New Haven, just not on it." I said, "I just want to work from you. And give me anything to do." And he opens up the door to his backyard and he has seven acres rolling in Weston, Connecticut. And he goes, "Go pick up any stick bigger than 12 inches wide and make a pile."

• 39:05Speaker 01

  And so I spent the next week literally picking up every stick that was bigger than 12 inches, logs, etc.

• 39:15Rich Roll?

  That's beautiful. I love that.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  And so this was a funny thing.

• 39:19Rich Roll?

  So you win this guy over eventually?

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Well, I won him over when we had accumulated all of this wood. This is a great story. I haven't thought about this story in decades. I mean, this is... So I create this huge pile, and it's now 4th of July weekend. And we said, like, the end result of building this big pile is we were gonna burn it. And so I set up, you know, these big rocks and boulders around this pile of wood that we're gonna burn. And then Paul's wife says, Mary, and she goes, "Well, you have to get a fire permit to let them know that you're gonna burn, so they don't think, like, the house is on

• 40:02Speaker 01

  down, so you have to call the fire department and get the permit to burn." And so I call the fire department, and they go, "Oh, we don't issue permits. It's a holiday weekend." I said, "Well, who does?" And they go, "The fire chief." I go, "Well, do you have his number?" And so I called the fire chief on this Sunday afternoon on the holiday weekend. I said, "I'm calling from the Rand's house. We are scheduled to burn, and we didn't get the permit over the week." And Paul and his wife were just looking at me, like, not knowing what to do. And then we just burned, and we put out the fire. And ever since then, Paul had this kind of great affinity towards me. And I worked with Paul for seven and a half years till he died.

• 40:47Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Like, and without paying...

• 40:49Rich Roll?

  I knew that you worked as a designer, but I didn't realize that you were basically an apprentice under the master. I mean, that's quite something.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:58Rich Roll?

  I mean, what did you... You know, what was it about that guy that distinguished him? Like, what made him great? And what did you learn from him?

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Uh, I mean, he had... First of all, he was, you know, he was just funny. He was funny and he was sophisticated. But he had an incredible eye and taste and his thought process about how he looked at things was every day was a new adventure. And he had a library in his house that he built in Weston, Connecticut, that was probably one of the greatest art libraries, you know, ever. And sometimes we'd go there and, you know, he'd have an assignment. He was in his later years. He was in his, like, late 60s, 70s when I met him. So I would do, you know, I'd set type for him, like, he would sketch something out. And that, like, drove me to

• 41:50Speaker 01

  learn computer graphics. Because before that, everything was just very analog.

• 42:03Rich Roll?

  Right. So for somebody who's listening to this, it might sound like we're getting really far afield of, like, the subject matter at hand. But I don't think that we are. I think this actually gets to the very core of the birth of Juicero, because we have established this incredible, like, sort of, street smarts and tenacity and, like, work ethic and then how you get this discipline. And that butts up against this artistic sensibility that finally finds structure with this mentor. And this guy who had this incredible eye, you know, this amazing ability to discern what's important about a company and distill it down into a symbol that actually influences culture on, like, the most mass level possible,

• 42:42Rich Roll?

  right? And what people listening can't quite comprehend at the moment is the physical manifestation of Juicero, which is this product that, I mean, when you unboxed it for me in Los Angeles, I was like, this is like a work of art. You know, I was like, did Johnny Ive design this? To which you responded, no, but he's on the board.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Well, he's an investor.

• 43:03Rich Roll?

  Okay, he's on, he's an investor. He's involved. But it was very clear immediately that, that you have an impeccable eye for design and aesthetics. And that, that sort of infuses, you know, the products that you showed me. It's, it's quite a beautiful thing.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, the, the interesting thing is that while I was working for Paul, I had to work to make a living. So I transitioned out.

• 43:27Rich Roll?

  He never paid you. He's just like, you can hang out.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  He never, he never paid me. And money never got, he did do three logos for me. So it's interesting if... If someone Googles Doug Evans and Paul Rand, there are several articles written.

• 43:41Rich Roll?

  Did he do the Organic Avenue logo?

• 43:43Speaker 01

  He did not, but one of his, one of the designers who I had introduced to Paul, who became a disciple of his, ended up doing the Organic Avenue logo and the Juicero logo. So it's interesting how I kept, you know, this simple core aesthetic together. But Paul was, as we drove, I gave up, you know, working in bars and nightclubs and supermarkets and started to get into graphic design and then desktop publishing and multimedia and was riding that wave. And then when Paul died, so if you Google, the last logo that Paul did before he died was the Doug Evans and Partners logo.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  And then-

• 44:29Rich Roll?

  And this was like a design firm that you-

• 44:30Speaker 01

  This was, this was like a design consultancy. So I was doing more strategic consulting and, you know, some of the things about when you're with someone of that level, you, like, my design skills were not like Paul's. And Paul made it clear to me every day. And so I would get better, but he convinced me to do other things. And so, but I had to work to earn a living, so I would do many other things. And then I went from this analog to digital and black and white to color and multimedia and online. And then, then Paul died of cancer, then my mother died of cancer-

• 45:15Rich Roll?

  So Paul's death really coincided with all these other deaths in your family?

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and a real kind of wake-up call for me.

• 45:22Rich Roll?

  And that's just, that's, that's your moment where everything kind of shifts for you?

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I, I really became aware of my mortality.

• 45:30Rich Roll?

  And so what happens?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  So then I'm in a nightclub in New York City in 1999, and I met Denise Mari in a nightclub, and she was a vegan. And I never heard the term vegan before. I thought it was short for vegetarian. And- We were talking about a lot of different things. And then the next day, I bought David Wolf's book, Nature's First Law: The Raw Food Diet. And it's so funny. Like, every chapter ended in that book with "cooked food is poison."

• 46:12Speaker 01

  And like, it was a really... Between reading that book, being exposed to Denise, seeing like, what happened in my own family, I just was like... I went cold cucumber. So I gave up eating cooked food, processed food, refined food, meat, dairy, animal products. And I started eating.

• 46:34Rich Roll?

  Like, really, just like that? Like, it was done?

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went literally, within two weeks, I went vegetarian, vegan, raw vegan. And as quick as I could capture the information, it got... And then, I continued to read. I continued to be exposed to the information. And that became kind of the awareness that like, everything... Like, I have a belief still to this day that everything you put in your mouth is a life or death decision. And so, it's about raising my standard. So I look at the food, or I look at a drink, and I go, "Is this up to my standard? Is this a level of quality that's worthy of my consumption?

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Is this the highest quality nutrients on a per-calorie basis?" So it's like, some people will eat anything. Like, I'll look at something and go, "Is that worth it? Like, do I really want to eat it? Do I need it?" So, it was the combination. And now, you know, where I've kind of focused on the mindfulness and the...

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Thoughtfulness around, you know, being present. I can look at something and I can be aware of like my craving. And am I eating it because I want the sensation of it? Or am I eating it for the nutrition? Or am I thirsty? Or am I hungry? And it's, it's, it's a totally different ability. Like I can look at something that I would have eaten in the past.

• 48:03Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Like, I still like, um, you know, the smell of like rosemary chicken or chicken gizzards or something like that. But there's no circumstance of which I would actually put that in my mouth.

• 48:20Rich Roll?

  But also to be able to master that practice of mindfulness where you can take that beat and recognize the craving and like think it through to its conclusion. I mean, most people just, it's just impulsive. You know, the craving kicks in. They're not even consciously aware of what's going on. And then it's in their mouth. And then they just eat it and don't think about it ever again.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's part. I actually did several 10-day Vipassana meditations.

• 48:50Rich Roll?

  Ah, that's cool.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  So, so no reading.

• 48:53Rich Roll?

  Silent meditation.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Silent, no reading, no writing, no speaking, no eye contact, no phone, no computer. It's like totally being kind of quiet and with yourself. Vipassana is Tali for insight meditation. And it's a non-denominational part. But basically you sit in silence and you observe the sensations in your body and you don't react. Like you just don't react. Like you sit down and you feel like, oh my God, my foot has fallen asleep. And instead of moving it, you just observe it.

• 49:33Rich Roll?

  The dispassionate observer. Yeah, and that, that, that, that forces a divide between your thinking mind and your higher consciousness. And you're allowed to see that these are not necessarily the same thing.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 49:47Rich Roll?

  It's a beautiful thing, man.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  So like literally, so I really look and say like, um, you know, now especially with the microbiome, it's like we're like 20% human and 80% you know, bacteria. So the bacteria can cause the cravings, it can cause the action that can make you consume things.

• 50:06Rich Roll?

  I say that all the time, people don't actually believe it, but it's true. It really is true. The foods that you're eating are going to dictate the foods that you crave down the line.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:17Rich Roll?

  All right, so you're having this crazy renaissance. You're doing silent meditation retreats and you're raw vegan, you know. So when is it, when is it popping to your head that you and Denise are going to create this business out of this? I mean, you start like juicing in her apartment, right? That's how it begins?

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean Denise was very passionate about wanting to do something plant-based and she loved the animals and was very ethical in that front. And I was still like working, I was still into the digital, you know, world and the design world. And then I decided that I, to make it easier for myself, for my own selfish reasons, which ultimately became altruism, that we should create a business. And so, you know, Organic Avenue was Denise was the founder, it was her business, I was there to help, I carried boxes, I did a lot of work. And then, you know, I, after Denise was tapped out on our credit cards, then I started

• 51:17Speaker 01

  to invest capital to help it grow. And that started a few years later, you know, three years of different ideas from, you know, tofu cheesecakes to hemp clothing, to ultimately settling on doing fresh, ripe, raw, organic salads, entrees, desserts, smoothies, snacks, and all the things that I could eat. Like, it was like the saying, oh, well, you know...

• 51:47Rich Roll?

  Because this is a different era, you know, Angelica Kitchen was around, but there weren't too many other places, right?

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they, they only had a couple of raw options and they were pretty bland. And so, we did that, and then Organic Avenue literally had 100% growth year over year. And we went from, you know, using like the Juice Man and the Twin Star Juicers, the Green Star, to ultimately getting a Norwalk Juicer.

• 52:16Rich Roll?

  So, explain what that is.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  So, the normal juicer, like the Twin Star is a two-gear juicer, where you have two gears and you put the produce inside, and it literally, the gears crunch it, and then force the produce against a screen, and then the juice comes out, and the fiber gets pushed out, and it's a small, powerful machine, but it literally takes forever to do. And then the centrifugal juicers are much faster, but they just make a, they don't make the same quality juice as the Mastak.

• 52:54Rich Roll?

  They spin super fast, there's a lot, there's some heat involved in that, and so, the idea is that there's some cellular breakdown, and that degenerates the nutritional value of the juice.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the flavor, and the flavor, it basically oxidizes it. It's just this process of oxidation. They've moved towards slower juicers, but we got ahold of a Norwalk Juicer. And the Norwalk Juicer is what was used in Gerson Therapy and High Quality. It was a cold press, it weighed like 65 pounds, cost a few thousand dollars, I think they're $2,600. They sit on the kitchen countertop, and like that was my assignment, that we would get the produce, and we would wash the produce, and then we'd chop it, and then you'd grind it up, and slice it, dice it, grind it, then you'd put it in these cloth bags, and then you'd put it into the press, and the press had like a thousand-pound hydraulic piston,

• 53:49Speaker 01

  and it just pushed the two metal plates together, and you got juice. And then you were left with like a dirty bag, a cloth. And produce would be everywhere, on the ceiling, on all walls, and projectiles. And it was, it was an arduous process. But the juice that it made was pretty good.

• 54:09Rich Roll?

  And this begins in, you start selling it out of Denise's apartment initially, right? What was the first retail location for Organic Avenue?

• 54:17Speaker 01

  That was in 2006, and it was at the...

• 54:20Rich Roll?

  It wasn't that long ago.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, really. It, 2006.

• 54:23Rich Roll?

  It was like forever ago, but also feels like yesterday.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, 10 years, 10 years ago.

• 54:27Rich Roll?

  How old are you, 48, 49?

• 54:28Speaker 01

  I'm 49, I'm going to be 52 in like four months.

• 54:30Rich Roll?

  Oh, you are? What month?

• 54:31Speaker 01

  June.

• 54:32Rich Roll?

  June, alright. We're about the same age. Yeah, October for me.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 54:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Wow, well, you're in great shape.

• 54:37Rich Roll?

  So, so are you. All this juicing is working.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel great. So, so we opened up the first retail store. So, we had a, what was growing, a very strong home delivery business. And we actually had like a showroom on the second floor of this loft in Chinatown. And there were underground parties, and there were events, and...

• 55:02Rich Roll?

  And there's kind of like, there was sort of this cult of celebrity around it too, right? Did that happen later?

• 55:07Speaker 01

  It began early on, that what happened is basically, people would hear about it. And certain out celebrities care a lot about their body and their health, at least a certain part of them. And this was like new, kind of back to the future of cutting-edge technology where we were making things with fresh, raw, organic plants that were, that tasted good. And like, they tasted good, and they were, you know, relatively low-calorie, and they were nutritionally dense. And they were, we undercharged for practically everything. So, people would buy them, but it started off with fashion designers, and celebrities,

• 55:52Speaker 01

  and business people, and they would get delivered. And I remember, you know, just like... Literally from three in the morning to seven in the morning making the product because we were so obsessed with keeping it fresh. And then we'd have to get it delivered. And it was like started there. And then there was no street traffic, like being on the second floor in a loft between 2002 and 2005.

• 56:18Rich Roll?

  Right. Not even any signage? Like you just had to know?

• 56:21Speaker 01

  No, you didn't want to have signage because it was like quasi not, you know, not a retail establishment.

• 56:27Rich Roll?

  Right, you get busted for.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, like we literally had the police come one day thinking like what was going on there. It was like we're.

• 56:35Rich Roll?

  Some kind of like after after-party?

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like we're making salads or something and it's pretty funny. And, you know, the, like, one of the cops really liked the product and came back. So it was funny for the product. And so we ended up opening a store and what took off and probably 60% or more of our sales were juice, cold-pressed juice. So we started with one Norwalk and then we got to two Norwalk and then we got to three Norwalk. And then we, you know, bought our first Good Nature X1 press, which weighs 600 pounds. And it was a big press and we put that in the basement of the retail store on the corner

• 57:19Speaker 01

  of Stanton and Ludlow on the Lower East Side. And literally I thought.

• 57:25Rich Roll?

  It's like Chinatown.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's literally right by Chinatown, but it was the Lower East Side, like right on the borderline. And I almost died that day, kind of lowering this press down the stairs into this basement of a tenement building. And I actually have video of that press in there. And so we did that. And so that was sufficient for us to make product for our one retail store. And then we opened up another retail store in the West Village. And turns out that we had concerned if we opened up the second retail store, it would cannibalize the sales of our first store. Right, that's what we thought. And so we wanted to make sure that this other location was far enough away.

• 58:10Rich Roll?

  West Village in like Lower East Side, those are like universes apart though, in terms of like walking traffic.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, but we had people who were coming like from Short Hills, New Jersey, or Greenwich, Connecticut, or Upper East Side, or Upper West Side, because there were no customers on the Lower East Side. The Lower East Side was the armpit of New York City. We couldn't have selected a worse location to open the first store. But that's just where it seemed kind of hip, because that's where like some of the vegan restaurants were, but it wasn't where the affluent people were.

• 58:45Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  So it was, when you say it was a world apart, that punished us in our whole delivery system, because we had to, it was so far to get to everywhere.

• 58:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  So we opened up the West Village store. Turns out, when we opened up that store, sales in the West Village exceeded the Lower East Side by a multiple, like within the first week. So we had a cash on cash return for opening that first store, literally within months. But now, we had no more capacity, because we were operating out of a 350 square foot kitchen in the basement of this tenement building where the other store was. And that's when we decided that we were going to buy, we were going to rent or find a commercial kitchen, and we were going to get more equipment and expand. So we ended up going to Long Island City and opening up a 2,500 square foot facility, which seemed like just huge.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  And then, we outgrew that, and so we took the building to the right of it, and then the building behind of it.

• 59:45Rich Roll?

  Are you doing, are you self-financing this the whole time, you and Denise? Or are you taking on investors? Like, how are you growing so quickly?

• 59:52Speaker 01

  So, between 2006 and 2009, I ended up putting back on my kind of graphic design, multimedia hat, and I started like doing commission sales for online companies. So I was like, I was used to being the youngest guy in the room, and here I am, like, the oldest guy in the room, working with young 20-something.

• 1:00:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  But I was totally focused on selling.

• 1:00:23Rich Roll?

  Just to make money to put into Organic Avenue.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%. Like, literally, it was, I felt like I was prostituting myself. And I didn't care at the time whether I was selling online ad campaign to Verizon or T-Mobile or Sprint, I just needed to get that campaign. And I earned commission. And doing that, like, I learned selling skills because I was already fearless, but I didn't have a lot of advanced skills. And just sheer persistence and grit and selling, and I was able to put in 20,000, 30,000 a month into Organic Avenue for years, approaching a million dollars. So I used my

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  entire savings and every cent that I was making, and I wasn't being paid, you know, by Organic Avenue because there was no money to pay me.

• 1:01:18Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  And then in 2009, we had our production facility opened, we had the multiple stores, and I just said, "Look, I think this is gonna work." I gave up my, my sales and commission jobs at the point that I found our first outside investor. So this, this guy named Joel Schreiber from Waterbridge Capital, he was a customer in the store, he came into the store, and I didn't realize he was actually looking to, to fund someone else to do a different juice concept, and she had brought him in to like, snoop around at what we were doing. And then he met me.

• 1:02:01Rich Roll?

  He turned him.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  And he said, "I'd rather back you."

• 1:02:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  And so he became our first investor, and then we raised like, you know, maybe a million dollars in small chunks, big chunks. And then the, we opened up two stores in one day. We opened up Soho in the Upper East Side, and then we...

• 1:02:23Rich Roll?

  So at the peak, like, how many retail stores did you have?

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  Twelve.

• 1:02:27Rich Roll?

  Twelve. And so, like, 2010, you guys hit, like, 10 million in sales, right? Like, this is working.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I can't disclose financial figures as part of my gag order. So I don't even know if I can say gag order.

• 1:02:44Rich Roll?

  I read that somewhere in my notes, but you didn't say it, I did.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  So by 2012, we ended up taking on a private equity investor who made a smaller investment than a bigger investment. And the end of 2012, they had a controlling interest of the company. And then, January 2013, I'm having breakfast with the guy there, and he says, "Oh, Doug, I've got a great idea." And I go, "What's that?" He goes, "Well, I want you to come work for us in the private equity firm and look for, you know, other deals like Organic Avenue." And I'm like, "Really?" And he's like, "Yeah, and, you know, you'll still be on the board, but, you know, you're done with Organic Avenue."

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  And it didn't really register to me. And then, I was like, "Oh, okay." And like, I'm really kind of in shock, but in the course of this part, they had bought the privilege to do whatever they want. So they had bought out the investors, they had bought out most of my shares, and they had the right to do whatever they want. And like, I'm fully responsible. I knew that that was a possibility. I couldn't fathom it, because, you know, I thought I was doing a great job.

• 1:04:08Rich Roll?

  It's that thing that you hear from entrepreneurs all the time, where they know it, they know that this is a possibility, and certainly, you hear this story time and time again, but you don't think it's going to happen to you.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't think it was going to happen.

• 1:04:21Rich Roll?

  What would possess them to take you out of the equation when you were the key functioning element that allowed it to grow and flourish?

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  I have no idea, like, literally, I've read the case studies and the Harvard Business School reports, I mean, it's classic, I don't know why they do it, but I couldn't fathom it, because, like, I was hardworking, I wasn't expensive, I loved what I did, and, so, at any rate.

• 1:04:48Rich Roll?

  Right, but there's like, a whole bunch of, there's, there's probably certain things about this that you can't talk about, so I don't want to go too much down the rabbit hole here, but, I mean, the idea was that big money was going to come in, and they were going to blow this thing out, and you got kind of, you were sort of a casualty in this equation, right?

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Correct, yeah.

• 1:05:05Rich Roll?

  And so, you're back to kind of square one.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  Well, now, I-

• 1:05:08Rich Roll?

  You cash out, or whatever happens, happens, right? And then, it's like, okay, well, what now?

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, like, it took me about a week to really figure out, like, what, I had a real problem, and my problem was, like, how was I going to get my juice?

• 1:05:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  That was my problem, because, like, I wanted my juice, I was spoiled, I was used to being able to take a clean glass, and go up to a juice press, and siphon off this fresh nectar, coming from organic produce, and I knew about juice pressing, we were the largest independent buyer of organic produce in New York, so, this was, Sujit didn't exist at the time, like, Juice Press had one little store on First Street and First Avenue, Liquitaria had one store, I mean, this was the early stages-

• 1:06:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no blueprint juice, I mean, basically, it was store-bought, you know, naked, that kind of, Evolution was probably around, though, right?

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, not on the East Coast.

• 1:06:10Rich Roll?

  Okay, so, maybe this is a good place to kind of, you know, stick a pin in, in just talking about juice in general, I mean, I think for, you know, a large percentage of the population, they approach it like, juice is juice, right? Buy it at the store, you buy, you know, your Tropicana orange juice, what's the difference between that and going to Organic Avenue, does it matter if it's organic? And then, there's this whole argument that I kind of want to get into a little bit about-

• 1:06:37Rich Roll?

  You know, people freaked out about juice because they think it's just all sugar and you should stay away from juice. So what are the health benefits in contrapoint to that? Like, you know, there's a whole bunch of stuff that I kind of want to talk about in general, just in the world, the universe of juice.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's an interesting thing. I think that juice, like, can mean anything. Like Lance Armstrong was on juice, right?

• 1:07:04Rich Roll?

  Right. Definitely a different kind of juice.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  Right. So, but I think the, the, the word juice can have many meanings. And even in the juice world, you know, there's products that contain 1% juice, all the way to 100% juice. So the juice that I'm talking about is 100% juice, 100% organic, mostly vegetable juice, and made fresh without additives, without preservatives, and without, you know, processing or pasteurization.

• 1:07:39Rich Roll?

  All right. So, so in the wake of Organic Avenue, you're just wanting your juice.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I wanted my juice. I knew about juice pressing, and I knew about, you know, home juicers. And I, like, you know, was literally daydreaming and sketching to, like, how I was going to get my juice. And I was like, thinking, do I sneak back into Organic Avenue in the middle of the night and fill up a flask?

• 1:08:11Rich Roll?

  You don't have, like, your own juicer at home, though?

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  Well, the thing is, I had my own juicer, but like, I didn't have, like, I was spoiled. I was used to having a whole, like, team of people.

• 1:08:23Rich Roll?

  And you're not going to go into Organic Avenue and pay to have somebody give you juice, right?

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Well...

• 1:08:29Rich Roll?

  That's not going to happen.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  And I was just, and, you know, I knew too much. I mean, that, I think that was a real thing. I knew too much and I had ideas.

• 1:08:36Rich Roll?

  What does that mean?

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Well, the proper way to make juice, like and the proper way to store produce. It's like you really want to make sure that the produce is triple washed properly. And you want to make sure that you're keeping the produce really cold at all times. So, you know, when I see a juice bar and the produce is left out and I see like cutting board.

• 1:09:02Rich Roll?

  Which is probably the, you know, predominantly typical scenario, right? Like, we have this idea, we go to this juice bar, we pay a ton of money to have our juice made, but we never stop to think, well, is that, is that produce organic, first of all? And when was it picked and how long has it been sitting back there? And what is the degradation in the nutrient quality of that produce when it's been sitting around that long?

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, look, I became very aware of the difference between buying produce in a supermarket, buying it in a farmer's market, buying it from a distributor, or buying it directly from the farm. Like, I knew all those steps. So, I wanted to have full visibility and transparency as to where my produce was coming from, when it was harvested, and then being able to use science to determine when it expired. And so, you know, if we fast forward to Giucero now, so here I am, I have a Norwalk press, and my refrigerator is filled with produce, and the waste that I had, it's like you can't

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  buy a half a lemon and, you know, two stalks of celery and a, you know, a quarter cucumber, right? Or three leaves of kale. Like, so invariably, I'd overbuy all this produce and not get a lot of yield, and then I'd end up throwing out the excess produce. And I'd love to say I composted, we didn't have compost in my apartment in Brooklyn.

• 1:10:36Rich Roll?

  You're a gypsy anyway now, right? There's no compost for you.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Well, now there's.

• 1:10:42Rich Roll?

  Is there?

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:43Rich Roll?

  Are you composting?

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not personally composting.

• 1:10:46Rich Roll?

  The company is.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  The company's composting. And I, I mean, I don't have a pot at home. Like, I have a Giucero at home.

• 1:10:51Rich Roll?

  No, you live here, I get that.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  I'm here.

• 1:10:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  So, but we compost, we have, we have tons of compost here. So, the, the insight that I had was to make. Really, like to make the best juice ever, you know, had a few pillars that were paramount. And one was the freshest produce from the farm. And two was keeping it really cold. And then three was having a press to slowly press the nectar out of the fiber. And there were no presses available that were easy to clean. And the produce was all dubious in the path of how it would come.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  So that's when, and I remember I tried having my cleaning lady in Brooklyn, and I tried to give her instructions on how to wash, how to prep, how to chop and prepare.

• 1:11:49Rich Roll?

  She's gonna be your juicer?

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that she would do all the work and like, prepare for me so I could just juice it. And that didn't work out. So that's when like I had this, you know, epiphany where I thought about like creating an entire ecosystem around juicing so that I could like have it, you know, be effortless and easy. Like I wanted to get up and, you know, I have a shanga yoga practice. So I'd be in the shala at 5:30 in the morning. And I loved having a green juice before I went to yoga. Right? It just, you know, helped just keep me, you know, liquid and hydrated and flexible and light.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  And like, I wasn't going to start getting up at three in the morning to do it, and I wasn't going to make it the night before. So there were voids in, so my dream was to be able to make a juicer that would take minutes to be able to get juice. And that would be a press.

• 1:12:52Rich Roll?

  So entrepreneurship 101 is what is the problem you're trying to solve, right? And as you explained to me the other day so eloquently, when you want to buy juice, you have three options, right? You can go to the store and you have these pasteurized. Juice options there, a variety of quality level at price, etc. Secondarily, you can go to the juice bar where, as we mentioned, you don't know if it's organic, you don't know how long it's been sitting around, there's no accountability. Or third, you can make it at home and create a big amount of mess and waste and it's very time consuming. So here's the problem. The solution that you're looking for and that Juicero hopes to solve for consumers

• 1:13:33Rich Roll?

  is the ability to create the freshest, healthiest juice possible in the most facile and sort of time-saving and mess-free way possible.

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:13:46Rich Roll?

  Is that accurate?

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  And I think the insight, which is now obvious, like I predict everybody will be doing this in the future. This is just changing the rules that as opposed to making juice, like we sell a juice press and we sell fresh produce that's washed and chopped and diced and then we allow the consumer to press the juice at home at their convenience. And then we use software to be able to track the produce from the supply chain so we know like every pack of Juicero, Juicero pack of produce contains a little QR code on it

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  and that QR code can be read by a smartphone, Android or iPhone. And when you scan it, it actually says what ingredients are inside, when it was packed and what are the nutrients and what farm each ingredient came from. So it's like total visibility transparency in the, in the supply chain so that you can have that. And then we put a scanner in the press itself. So when you put the pack of produce in the Juicero press, it's reading it so it's processing all this information so that A, it can determine how to best press it to get the most yield

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  and it's making sure that it's not expired because you don't want to be pressing old produce. And then B, it's sending back to your smartphone on the app, you know, what you just consumed from nutrition and calories and ingredients.

• 1:15:35Rich Roll?

  A couple of observations. The first is, it's a closed ecosystem in the way that Apple sort of has created a closed ecosystem with its hardware and its software, right? Like this very easy to use, beautiful consumer experience that's completely contained. But my second observation is, I'm not sure it's totally clear for the listeners, so it's just to like really paint the clear picture. The Juicero is a juicing machine that sits on your countertop in your kitchen. It doesn't look anything like what you would expect a juicing machine to look like. It looks like a beautiful piece of technology. It looks like it could be an Apple computer. You're not quite sure what it is. But essentially, it has a door that opens up. It's a very heavy metal door, like brushed stainless steel with only one button on it.

• 1:16:20Rich Roll?

  It opens up and there's, you know, this orange interface with two pins. And that's where you stick in this packet of fresh produce that you guys produce and ship also. And you close the door and it presses the juice fresh. It reads the barcode on the packet, so you know it's fresh. And then you can dispose of that packet. And I guess the idea in the future is that it's going to be completely compostable, right?

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  But right now...

• 1:16:48Rich Roll?

  But it presses all the liquid out of it and there's zero mess. So there's no cleanup whatsoever.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  When you're done pressing, you're done. You could go on to your next activity. The other observation I want to say is that when you're normally juicing, using any juicer, you're doing the work. In this case, with Juicero, you set it and let it. And the Juicero press does the work. So you could be, like, I can take a, I could like run, check my email, I can get dressed, I can do other things while the press is actually going through its two-minute cycle.

• 1:17:21Rich Roll?

  And if it reads the barcode and realizes that the produce is expired, it will not make the juice, right?

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  That's correct. And it'll send you a notification saying, "Hey, but we'll also let you know that, hey, Rich, you've got a pack that's going to expire tomorrow. I suggest you drink it today."

• 1:17:38Rich Roll?

  Okay. It's crazy. You know, first of all, the thing is like a work of art. You did an incredible job with the aesthetics and the simplicity of it. It really is beautiful. And it's gonna be, I really think it has the potential to change this industry completely. I mean, that is the big idea that, you know, the Kleiner Perkins of the world are sort of anticipating and banking on.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, look, I think for me, it makes it easier to consume more servings of fresh fruits and vegetables. I think what we did was we made green juice taste good, like really good. And so people, like, we have a green in a recipe that has literally no sweet fruit in it at all, and it's 25 calories, 2 grams of sugar. Not that I watch calories or that I watch sugar, but the fact that those metrics are so carefully viewed, we decided to see, you know, could we work within these parameters? And we did.

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  And unequivocally, people just go bananas when they taste that green juice. And literally, if you were to press it and then, you know, let it sit or wait, like, it doesn't taste good over time. Like, it tastes amazing when you press it. Like, that was the insight of not, like, selling juice, but selling produce and selling a press and the system so that you can make the juice and drink it.

• 1:19:17Rich Roll?

  Right, and this barcode will tell you, does it tell you the farm where it was?

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  Tells you the farm.

• 1:19:22Rich Roll?

  Tells you where it was picked and the date that it was picked, right?

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:26Rich Roll?

  You have all this, all these metrics and every nutrient, like the nutrient breakdown?

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  It's a very complex, complete nutrition panel, so you could see the percentage of vitamin A, C, B6, K, magnesium, potassium.

• 1:19:43Rich Roll?

  And the other really interesting thing was this problem that you had to solve about how to create the packaging membrane, because your-

• 1:19:52Rich Roll?

  Putting live produce into these, into this packaging, right? It's alive. There is respiration occurring. It's going to create these gases.

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  And it consumes oxygen.

• 1:20:01Rich Roll?

  Right. So how do you prevent them from exploding, right? How do you, like, that must have been in engineering and, you know, sort of feat to figure that out.

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  I mean, we have seven food scientists and 12 PhDs who work in the company. So this was literally, you know, it's one of the reasons why we had to raise capital, because we needed to be able to bring on the team. And that's what, you know, Kleiner Perkins and the other investors helped structure was, what does this organization really need to look like? And then, what are the job descriptions of these people? And how do we fill these roles?

• 1:20:36Rich Roll?

  Right. Fascinating. So here we are, on the eve of the public announcement. I feel so privileged. I get to talk to you, you know, because as of right now, the public is unaware of what this product is, but tomorrow morning.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:53Rich Roll?

  And I'm going to... People are going to know.

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  And I'm going to give you, like, a link to a video that you can, you know, share with, share with the viewers that will actually let them see it. And it's a little comical, but it'll show the process.

• 1:21:06Rich Roll?

  And how does it feel to kind of be carrying, you know, this whole thing on your shoulders, right? This is a massive organization. I mean, you're a juice guy, you are making, you're graffiti artist making, you know, juice in Denise's apartment, and here you are now, the CEO of what, by all accounts, is, you know, a massive undertaking. And there's, the expectations are very high. Like, how do you, you know, what's your daily routine? Like, how are you navigating this? Like, what's your emotional state right now?

• 1:21:34Speaker 01

  I mean, I feel extremely, like, blessed wouldn't be, like, a strong enough word. I feel, it's surreal. But I feel I've been given an incredible opportunity. I've worked hard to get the opportunity, but I think I'm humble and hungry.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Right, my, uh, my new friend, Chip Adams from Under Armour, said that in Under Armour, they've got a cafe, and they called Humble and Hungry.

• 1:22:07Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  And that, you know, you gotta be humble and you gotta be hungry. So, I think for me, there's a lot of stuff to do. You know, I keep my life really simple. Um, and it's all about, like, having mission and purpose. And, you know, when I look at how important it is for people to consume, you know, fruits and vegetables, and organic fruits and vegetables, and raw fruits and vegetables, like, that was my mission, and it really drives me. And so, I just take it one day at a time.

• 1:22:42Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and what do you say to people when they say, "Uh, well, I don't know about all this juicing, you know, maybe I should just blend," or, you know, "My doctor tells me it's too much sugar." There's a lot of misconceptions, I guess is what I'm getting at, about juicing and the kind of juice that you're talking about versus what you're gonna find at the grocery store.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  I, I agree with every doctor that added sugar is a problem. Like, you know, as, as a whole, Americans are consuming, um, too much sugar in the form of added sugar, whether it's high fructose corn syrup, or refined beet sugar, or cane sugar. But, um, the US dietary guidelines say that Americans should be having seven servings or more of fruits and vegetables, and that they say at least half of them can come from alternatives like 100% juice. And so, I look at 100% vegetable juice

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  and 100% blends of fruits and vegetable juice with no additives, no preservatives. I think that the sugar is one element that comes along with all of these other vitamins and minerals, and flavonoids, and micronutrients, and phytonutrients, that the...

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  I see it as all as a benefit.

• 1:24:10Rich Roll?

  But the average American is really deficient in these things, right? When you're just eating processed food and fast food and too many animal products, you're not getting your dark leafy greens and your vegetables and your fruits in your diet and on the regular.

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  I mean, I think that the essence of being able to do this, I'm going to show you a picture. I can ask my brother if he'll let us post this, but my brother lost 100 pounds.

• 1:24:40Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's fantastic.

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  And reversed his type 2 diabetes and his hemoglobin A1C dropped to well into the normal range. And so really powerful to be able to.

• 1:24:58Rich Roll?

  Is that just by shifting his diet and juicing or did he become like a raw vegan? Oh, my God. Wow.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  So that's his before.

• 1:25:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's a big boy.

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  And that's him on Saturday.

• 1:25:10Rich Roll?

  Wow, yeah, that's a huge change. That's a big time. How long did it take him to lose all that weight?

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  I mean, probably about three years. Since his second stroke, he came in and, like literally, I had to do an intervention.

• 1:25:26Rich Roll?

  How old is he?

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  He's going to be 52.

• 1:25:29Rich Roll?

  Two strokes at 52.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  Two strokes at 52. But now, like, he's lost the weight, he's got his faculty back. And he was diabetic. He was a full-blown diabetic. And now, not only did he go from diabetic to prediabetic, now he's just not diabetic. And he drank, on average, a minimum of four glasses of green juice every day. And this was green juice that had an apple in it or a pear with it.

• 1:26:03Rich Roll?

  God forbid, a little bit of fruit sugar in there.

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think that's it. And I think the question about fiber, fiber's really important. And if you're drinking the juice while you're eating a plant-based meal, you're getting fiber in so many other things. I don't know from a scientific perspective like what happens if you drink, you know, processed, you know, cardonized orange juice because that's not my world. But I do know that, you know, our, like what we made and what we're offering these fruits and vegetables have very healthy nutrition profiles.

• 1:26:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't think there's any question about that. The other thing that's super interesting about what you're doing is, is that you're on the vanguard of this sort of explosion in food technology, you know.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:58Rich Roll?

  It's no, you know, secret to you and to people that listen to this podcast that we're really at a tipping point planetarily, right? The way that we raise animals for food is just a, it's a broken system that's destroying the planet and has, you know, profound ethical implications. And it's making people like your brother very sick, right?

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:20Rich Roll?

  This is pervasive across our culture. And we can say, well, everybody should become a raw vegan, but the reality of that actually occurring is, is not as likely as the development of new technologies around food. So Juicero and then companies like Beyond Meat and Hampton Creek are really, you know, pouring not just money, but a lot of, you know, brilliant scientific minds into solving these problems. And it's just interesting that, you know, you're here, this really is a technology company, like everything that you're doing is, it's not just a juicing company, like you are part of that community of innovation. And I think it's really exciting.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I don't look at us as a juicing company at all. I think we are a technology company and an organic agriculture company focused on, you know, solving the, the produce gap, making it easier for people to have more servings of fruits and vegetables. And now that, you know, I've been vegan for 17 years, I think the raw is very important, but I think that whole food, plant-based diet is, is extraordinary. So I, I think that if, for other people to make it accessible, you know, I recommend eating whole food, plant-based because there's so many things that they can have from legumes and quinoa and, and whole grains and.

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  Steamed vegetables and all these parts. So I think that whole food, plant-based, and being very cognizant about adding oils and adding additional salts and sugars and processed food is the problem. So if someone moves whole food, plant-based, with a lot of salad, a lot of raw vegetables, and like, I think that's a very healthy way to live.

• 1:29:16Rich Roll?

  Right. What has been, I mean, you're gonna get no argument from me here.

• 1:29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:20Rich Roll?

  Nothing to add to that, right?

• 1:29:21Speaker 01

  I just, I don't know, I'm so used to arguing.

• 1:29:24Rich Roll?

  Right, no, no, no, it's all good here. What has been the hardest part of this Juicero adventure that you couldn't have anticipated? I mean, I can't imagine you would have, you could have ever dreamed it would have blown up to be the thing that it is or that it's on the precipice of becoming.

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  I mean, I think the hardest thing is staying focused and like, making decisions. Like, there's so many, there's a, you never have perfect information. The product's never perfect. There's never the perfect candidate. There's never the perfect investor. There's never the perfect deal terms. So it's like, one decision at a time and having the discipline to make decisions and to lead. And so I think that's where, you know, what we're putting out into the world, I'm very proud of. And I think there's a lot of things that we can improve upon. And, you know, we have a whole roadmap

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  of things that we want to do to make it easier for people to have more servings of fresh, ripe, raw, organic fruits and vegetables. So this is a journey. And to me, this launch is really the day of the race.

• 1:30:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:30:40Speaker 01

  Everything I've done today.

• 1:30:42Rich Roll?

  It's the beginning.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything I've done today is the training, you know, to be able to enter the marketplace.

• 1:30:49Rich Roll?

  Right. And we're in this time where, you know, entrepreneurs are like rock stars and every young person aspires to be, you know, a quote-unquote entrepreneur. And there's this kind of conjured sexy lifestyle that's associated with that. I mean, what is your... Can you paint a picture of what your entrepreneurial journey over the last two years has looked like? If you could encapsulate that? Like, what is the truth behind what it takes to have an idea, get it funded, build it, and get it to the starting line, the launchpad that we're at today with Juicero?

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  I mean, realistically, I think it's a little psychotic. Like, it's insane. Because in one part of the world, we talk about mindfulness and then, you know, and balance.

• 1:31:41Rich Roll?

  Right, it's this mashup, like a wellness company, but in order to birth this thing that can help people, you're almost mandated to be out of balance yourself, or compelled, pulled in that direction, I should say.

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  The team that we have at Juicero works so hard, and it's so humbling, and they do things like, our fresh operations team, they work in a 35-degree temperature all the time.

• 1:32:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I saw it.

• 1:32:09Speaker 01

  And you've been there. Right? So, the processes that they go through, from the time they enter the building, till they get into, you know, the place where we're filling the produce packs, they wash their hands three times, using three soaps, three sanitizing agents, and then wear gloves. And then they're operating at 35 degrees. We have people, you know, who are having to work all hours, day and night. So, as the entrepreneur, it's like being prepared to literally be on all the time,

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  and being at service, and, you know, being calm, and the leadership, which is, really kind of sets the tone. So, for me, you know, David Wolf, you know, says, you know, "Have the best day ever." And like, I embodied that, and so the trigger...

• 1:33:05Rich Roll?

  Every time I've ever talked to you, and I've called you, or emailed, or whatever, and I say, "Doug, how you doing?", you're like, "Best day ever." And that's the signature line on your email.

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, what happened is, that's a trigger for me. Like, you know, that brings me back to my core. Like, my state that I want to be at is I want to be at this best ever consciousness. And, you know, just like anything else, you wane off of it. So what happens is I have all these like little goalposts, guideposts that bring me back. So one is whenever someone asks me, "How am I doing?", like, I'm the best ever. So I literally could be in excruciating pain, like, I could just be exhausted. I, you know, I could have just, you know, like, had someone, you know, quit or, like, you know, lose something or break something.

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  And like, that trigger brings me right back to the best ever. And so I think to be on this journey, it's being able to handle the pressure. Like, you know, we hired this 32-year-old PhD who went to Stanford, worked at Google, worked at Apple, and we're recruiting him from Apple. And the responsibility that I'm thinking about, this person, you know, to leave Apple to come work in this startup, and they've got a baby, they've got a family, to come here, right, to ask, like, to attract people and to, you know, have them buy into your

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  vision, like, to me, it was harder to build the team than it was to raise the capital. Because the team you're dealing with, you know, venture capitalists, you know, invest in many companies, right? I'm treating every, you know, Juicero team member as a venture capitalist who can make one bet, and that's how they're going to allocate their 40, 50, 60 hours, 80 hours, you know, per week.

• 1:35:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, interesting. And when you gave me the tour of the LA facility, which, you know, you're, how many square feet is going on over there?

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  That's 111,000 square feet. It's a LEED Gold certified building with solar panels on the roof. It's on four and a half acres, and it's a total green building.

• 1:35:27Rich Roll?

  It's gigantic. And at the time, I don't know what's going on now, but you were cranking out, like, I don't know, 4,000 pouches a day or something like that? And they were, you had a whole team of guys that were just pressing them just for quality cue control, like, just quality control, just to see... If it was all good or where the problems were, right? Not for sale, not for anything, just internal study.

• 1:35:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that was the discipline of kind of building a product that, you know, it's a lot of responsibility. We are going to feed people and we're feeding people, you know, fresh produce. So it's a big responsibility. And so the, you know, I consider myself like the CEO, but I'm also the chief safety officer. Like, it's so important. And to do that, like, building a team and have processes and following the processes and establishing challenge studies and microbiology to make sure that we are really doing things the best you possibly can.

• 1:36:23Rich Roll?

  And what would be the ideal, you know, how would this play out in the most ideal way? I mean, I know that there's plans down the line to ultimately, you know, expand the controlled ecosystem to include the actual farm, so you're completely vertically integrated. Is that still part of the idea?

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  I mean, I love farmers and I think, you know, what I want to do is be a great customer for the farmer and a great partner with the farmer. Like, my kind of end game is to literally have, you know, everyone in the world, you know, of all, like, races and geographies consuming, you know, fresh, raw, organic juice aeroproducts in one manifestation or another.

• 1:37:05Rich Roll?

  I think that's a good place to stop it, to end it. You're changing the world, man. It's really inspiring, you know. I mean, it's, you can throw that term around pretty cavalierly or casually, but, you know, what you're doing here is huge. And I think it has the potential to positively impact culture and people in a really profound way. So I'm proud of you, man. I can't imagine what it took to...

• 1:37:34Rich Roll?

  Take that idea to where it is today. And I'm just so excited to see how it's going to play out. Tomorrow's going to be a big day for you. I can tell everybody here is super excited. I just, you know, thank you for inviting me into your San Francisco lair to spend a little time with me.

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  Well, Rich, you're an inspiration to me. When I grew up, I want to run an ultra.

• 1:37:53Rich Roll?

  We'll go run, anytime you want to go running, man.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I, you know, you're a family man. You've got 10 people living in that house, all plant-based. And you're, you know, I look at you as all love. And it's just, you know, I'm grateful, you know, to know you.

• 1:38:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, to many more juices in the future. And by the way, thank you for, we drank two beautiful juices throughout this podcast. And I can say, because I have done a taste test, the difference is legit. Like, when you, you've lined up like these other juices next to the Juicero version of the green juice, or the beet juice, or the pomegranate juice, there's no contest. So, actually, there is one question I would like to, I think that's, that's sort of important to address, if you allow me to indulge you a little bit. And, and that is, you know, this idea that being plant-based, or that wellness is, you know, an ideal for the 1%, that is, it's, it's an elitist thing, right?

• 1:38:51Rich Roll?

  And so, that's something that I'm always trying to work to kind of correct and find solutions that are accessible for anybody, irrespective of socioeconomic status. Your product is, is beautiful. It's definitely, you know, aspirational for certain people in the way that a MacBook Pro is, right? So, you know, how are we going to help, you know, make what you are doing accessible to people who perhaps might not be able to, you know, afford the unit?

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  It's a really, it's a really good question. So, it's really hard to share a MacBook Pro, right? But it's really easy to share a Juicero. Like, one Juicero could handle, you know, an entire building, or family, or block. So I think that if people want, want to have a Juicero... Or they could easily, you know, share it and collaborate because it takes a couple of minutes to make it. And it will actually bring community and people together. So, you know, we're looking at ways of deploying these and like Boys and Girls Clubs of America or different places where they could be a standing fixture.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  And then someone can, you know, just buy the pack and then press it. And then, you know, we're looking at deploying these in food service establishments. Because you can go to the finest restaurants, you know, in California and not get fresh organic vegetable juice, cold pressed.

• 1:40:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you'd make it easy for any restaurant to just make that available.

• 1:40:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:29Rich Roll?

  But you could almost do like, almost like a vending machine situation where you could get the packs. And then there's just a Juicero and you press it once you get your package like.

• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's interesting. You wouldn't even need the vending machine because the QR codes would allow you to just use your your phone to authenticate and authorize it. But we are going to have Juicero in a handful of Le Pan Cote d'Yenne.

• 1:40:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  LPQs in, in Los Angeles and also in Gracias Madre in San Francisco.

• 1:41:06Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's fantastic. You got to get it in the Gracias Madre in LA too. That honker, that guy honking out there is trying to tell us that we should wrap it up, right?

• 1:41:16Rich Roll?

  That's fantastic to get kind of institutional customers and clients. So that that's how you really get it to spread.

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  I mean, I am literally, I know, even during this podcast, I've just got a call from a CEO who wants to put a Juicero in their office so that all their employees can have, you know, fresh green juice. So I can, I can see them wedged between the water cooler and the coffee maker.

• 1:41:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, definitely, man.

• 1:41:45Rich Roll?

  Thanks for talking to me.

• 1:41:46Speaker 01

  I love you, Rich.

• 1:41:47Rich Roll?

  Cool. So if people want to find out more about Juicero, there's going to be a lot of press rolling out this week, right? The embargo is lifted. I'll put links up to whatever press rolls out. I guess we'll be finding out in the next couple of days. Juicero.com is the website, yeah? And is there social media stuff? Like accounts and everything like that?

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's all Juicero. J-U-I-C-E-R-O. So Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, .com. All Juicero. I mean, it was such a simple word and it was just so available.

• 1:42:24Rich Roll?

  Was the URL wasn't available, was it?

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  URL was totally available.

• 1:42:27Rich Roll?

  It was? You just got it like off Network Solutions or whatever?

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, for $8.99. $8.99.

• 1:42:33Rich Roll?

  I love that. That's fantastic.

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  So it's, you know, sometimes like just things work.

• 1:42:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  So, I mean...

• 1:42:41Rich Roll?

  Did you come up with the name? Or how did you do it?

• 1:42:43Speaker 01

  I came up with the name.

• 1:42:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:44Speaker 01

  And, you know, I will say, like, I'm such a nonviolent guy. I live by Hymza practices, but I love Muhammad Ali. And like the Muhammad Ali quote that I remember that, you know, always comes to mind was, "I hated every minute of my training." And I said, "Suffer now, don't quit, and you'll live the rest of your life as a champion."

• 1:43:09Rich Roll?

  Pay now, love it later.

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  So like I memorized Invictus, I memorized these Ali quotes, I memorized like a lot of these, you know, sacred, you know, scrolls so that, you know, I can know what to do. So the only thing I need to do more of, Rich...

• 1:43:28Rich Roll?

  Take care of yourself.

• 1:43:29Speaker 01

  I need to exercise a little bit more.

• 1:43:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I can be your consciousness on that.

• 1:43:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:43:36Rich Roll?

  You want me to text you and bug you about that? I'm happy to do it.

• 1:43:39Speaker 01

  I think what we should do, I'm going to be in LA pretty frequently. We should go for runs.

• 1:43:43Rich Roll?

  Happy to do it, man. I would love to do that.

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  Okay, terrific.

• 1:43:46Rich Roll?

  All right, man.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  Thanks, Rich.

• 1:43:47Rich Roll?

  All right, peace. Plants.

• 1:44:01Rich Roll?

  All right, I hope you guys enjoyed that. Doug is a kick in the pants. I wish him the most luck. I think what they are doing is truly incredible, truly remarkable. Since the day that I sat down with him, the press embargo has been lifted. The New York Times article is out amongst a trillion other articles that just came out in the last 24 to 48 hours on sites, you know, ranging from Gizmodo and TechCrunch to Vogue and Vanity Fair. I mean, it's everywhere. You can do a simple Google search, read up, watch the video on my webpage, on the episode page for this episode. And please don't forget to peruse the show notes for lots of links and additional information

• 1:44:45Rich Roll?

  to take your edification and infotainment beyond the earbuds. Thanks for all the support, you guys. I love you, guys. Shout out to Sean Patterson for help on the graphics, Chris Swan for production assistance. The music was done by Analemma. I love you, guys. I'll see you soon, in a couple of days. Until then, be well, eat well, and thrive. Peace. Plants.