First Time Founders with Ed Elson — ft. Andrew Benin and Allen Dushi of Graza

Ed interviews the founders of Graza, an olive oil startup, about their path to founding the company, the merits and challenges of their partnership, and how they think about money and success. 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.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:48Speaker 01

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• 1:18Scott Galloway?

  Scott, what makes a good co-founder? Well, someone that isn't you. Specifically, someone that has skills you don't have and you bring skills they don't. I would imagine Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer had much different skills. Steve Jobs was an incredible marketer. And the Woz was an incredible technologist who kind of brightened up a room by leaving it. My co-founder at Red Envelope and Profit, my first two companies, was a very introverted technologist who understood finance, kind of kept the trains running on time. And I was sort of the front man. So in sum, what makes a great co-founder is someone who is not you.

• 2:05Ed Elson?

  Welcome to First Time Founders. I'm Ed Elson. My next guest launched their online company in January 2022. Within their first week of business, they generated $100,000 in revenue. By their second month, they were at half a million. And today, they're at eight figures annually. Now, the product they sell might surprise you. It's not a software tool or an enterprise platform. It's something very simple, something you probably use every day: olive oil. Co-founders Andrew Benin and Alan Dushy have shaken up the olive oil market with their extra virgin olive oil brand, Grazer. And from day one, their MO has been product differentiation.

• 2:45Ed Elson?

  The first big change was packaging. Instead of using a long glass bottle like we're used to, they opted for a plastic squeezable one. They also split their products into two. There's the drizzle oil for dressing and the sizzle oil for cooking. These were all changes consumers didn't even know they wanted. Now Grazer is one of the hottest startups in the CPG space. They're available in more than 8,000 stores across the country, including Whole Foods and Target, and have even built their own subscription service for their olive oil. So, without further ado, I'm excited to introduce Andrew Benin and Alan Dushy, CEO and COO of Grazer. Thanks for coming on, guys.

• 3:26Speaker 03

  Thanks for having us.

• 3:26Ed Elson?

  Yeah, thanks for having us. Andrew, take us from the beginning. When and why did you decide to start an olive oil company?

• 3:33Speaker 03

  It's genuine product obsession, honestly. I think that a lot of times you're traveling, you're looking for a new career, you get connected to something. And the difference between getting connected and starting a business and getting connected and just being passionate are monumentally different. But I had aspired, you know, through working for entrepreneurs my whole life to do something, thankfully do something with someone I dearly love, Alan. But I have ties to Spain, and I was out there. My wife is from Spain. I was working at Magic Spoon at the time, pretty successful cereal company. And I tried some amazing olive oil. And my first thought was...

• 4:21Speaker 03

  Like, ah, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna bring the best olive oil from the Mediterranean to New York. I'm gonna bring Homoni Barico. I'm gonna bring the nicest cheese and the nicest vinegars and just be, you know, another bougie distributor of European pervade foods. Uh, and thankfully got reeled back in by people like Alan, by chefs that I'd worked with in the past, saying, actually, we don't need another one of those. We don't need a unapproachable, unattainable, Tuscan olive branch, forty dollars a bottle, kind of bullshit company that no one can participate in.

• 5:01Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  Uh, you actually need something for, for everyone. Um, that's kind of how our forces came together. And we decided to make this as universally beloved as we could.

• 5:12Ed Elson?

  Were you working at Magic Spoon when you had this idea? Were you on a sabbatical? What was going on?

• 5:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, I would like bring olive oil to the office.

• 5:19Ed Elson?

  Okay.

• 5:20Speaker 03

  And do tastings at the office and eventually.

• 5:23Ed Elson?

  You were like the olive oil guy from a young age.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  Eventually I got fired because it was like, you just are not focused on cereal or anything that is in your job description. Uh, we were doing our third olive oil tasting at the quarter at the office. And, uh, it was just kind of obvious, you know, but I was, I was kind of jack of all trades there, first employee. I think people that get into those positions, these generalists, like they're, they're, they want to start something.

• 5:49Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  They don't build up the courage or the capital or, you know, maybe they start something and they fail. It's, it's, it's frustrating to want to be an entrepreneur, but not do it.

• 5:59Ed Elson?

  Yep.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  It eats at you every single day. So that's a situation that I was in.

• 6:03Ed Elson?

  So Alan comes in and gets involved. How does that happen?

• 6:07Speaker 04

  A mutual friend put us in touch. I was, had the same itch of wanting to do something. I also worked for an entrepreneur for my entire career, but I always wanted to start my own thing and, and was just kind of like networking around, hearing what opportunities were there. Honestly, just trying to meet a partner because I'm not the idea guy. Andrew's the idea guy and I was just looking for someone who wanted to like lock themselves in a room until we came up with an idea and was ready to quit their jobs and go for it. And Andrew was, you know, seventy-five percent of the way there, uh, when we got connected. And it happened really fast, you know, it happened in, you know, two weeks, I think, where we. Agreed on on doing this together and taking the leap.

• 6:52Speaker 04

  You know, I I knew him personally, so I felt that was I was comfortable with that. And then when I heard the idea, I was in in thirty seconds. You know, it didn't take much longer than that. I I had known about, you know, the olive oil fraud and all that stuff that that you read about where.

• 7:10Ed Elson?

  Hold on, I don't read about that. What is?

• 7:11Speaker 03

  You don't read about that?

• 7:13Speaker 04

  You don't read about that. Um, you know, most olive oils that you're going to buy in a supermarket are low quality. Um, it's pretty well known. Um, you know, there's a big misrepresentation in the market. A lot of the American consumers think that all good olive oil comes from Italy. So the three biggest brands in the country just have really Italian names. But what's actually inside the bottle is from five different countries and of poor quality. And, you know, when I heard the idea to put, you know, the Casper and Magic Spoon Spin on this industry, my only question was, can we take this to retail or is this an online thing?

• 7:55Speaker 04

  And, you know, my value that I wanted to add to it was making this accessible. You know, as much as this is going to be an Instagram brand and a Whole Foods brand, like this has to be a Walmart brand and a Costco brand also for it to be a business that I would get excited about. Um, and, you know, we were aligned on that. We we thought it was going to take a lot longer to achieve that. But, you know, the the brand hit really fast with consumers and with retailers as well.

• 8:26Ed Elson?

  What was the journey from incorporating the company to actually launching the product and selling it?

• 8:33Speaker 03

  It was a long one and it was in the works for two years prior to launch. I think that. Obviously, raising capital, and we can get into that, was a big part of it. Yeah. Because for us to do what we do, we actually use our capital to acquire inventory significantly ahead of time. And we knew that going into it. We're not working with a co-manufacturer where we're getting maybe competitive terms and getting PO financing right out the gate. Like, we were taking bets and finding people that are willing to take bets with you. Who are those people who's down to bet on olive oil? Yeah. Because it's not VC, I assume.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  I don't think they bet on olive oil at that stage. I think, well, olive oil actually has like growing CAGR year over year for 40 years. It's a pretty big market. It has 49% household penetration. So if you want to like de-risk it, in a sense, you can build that case pretty easily. You're investing in something that every single apartment in Lower Manhattan in the zip code has inside of it. Yeah. Right? That's not what people are pitched frequently. It could be a market builder or something new, or a SaaS company that has zero customers. So like, I think it was

• 9:53Speaker 03

  less about that and more about why are you the people to do this? So we'd raised around 230 grand just on safe notes early on off the Y Combinator website, just printed it off and sent it to some people and got some people interested. That was enough to... Sorry, what do you mean off the Y Combinator website? Like, if you know nothing about raising capital, Yeah. like you go to Y Combinator. Oh, as in that's how you learned how to do it? You download a template.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. And you, and you pick an arbitrary valuation cap. Okay. And then you send it to 100 high net worth people. What was your cap that you chose? Five mil cap. Five mil. No discount at the beginning. We've been no discount since start. Yeah, just like this is it. So we got 230K in the door and that was enough, you know, not to pay ourselves. It was enough to actually build the brand. Yeah. I have some deep connections to the Casper founders and their advisory has been a big part of the early days of this. And it was like, well, okay, it's all about momentum. So now that you have 10K in the door and that means you'll get 50, that means you'll get 100, that means you'll get 200. Yeah. And now what are the steps of getting from 200 to 2 million in the door?

• 11:08Speaker 03

  It's showing something tangible. It's having a launch date. It is being able to send product to people. It's being able to show that the brand is visceral and real and not just a amorphous idea. And we chose the route of working actually with a pretty expensive, highly regarded branding agency after evaluating a lot of different ones. Yeah. We worked with Gander. They're, they're an amazing agency here in Brooklyn and it's not cheap to work with talented designers and talented brand builders. Yeah. You get your money's worth, right? I think that the likelihood of having success at scale is significantly influenced by having a strong brand built

• 11:50Speaker 03

  for you to operate, distilling all of your thoughts, distilling your ideas into the ones that are going to resonate most with people capturing emotion in an illustration, which for us has gone a long way. Sizzle has Sizzle Woman on it and no one knows who she is or what she's doing or what she's wearing, but it's emotive. And then Drizzle has an olive spout spigot and like that is priceless. Actually, these identifiers of Graza. Iconic. It's iconic and that's, and that was what we asked them to do. So they always, you know, mentioned to us that we, you know, build the car that eventually you're going to have to drive and

• 12:31Speaker 03

  you'd rather be driving a car that's a Toyota that's going to go for 400,000 miles than. Uh, second hand, you know, whatever that that could break down. It's not the key to your success, but for us, it enabled us big time.

• 12:43Ed Elson?

  How would you describe? I mean, if you look up the company and we have, I've seen, seen all the olive oil bottles and they are beautiful. How do you direct the brand, the branding agency to capture this strangely like casual approach to olive oil that I've just never really seen before?

• 13:02Speaker 04

  So I mean, to me, it's simplifying the decision of what am I going to buy? Right? A big part of what we wanted to do was take this aisle that if you stand in front of it and you don't know what you're looking for, it's overwhelming, you know? It's, it's really intimidating. I, I kind of felt like I was in a wine shop when I was going to buy olive oil before this. I had no idea what I was looking for. This one's from Spain. This one's from Italy. This one's from Greece. This one's $8 and this one's $40. And like, I made the decision like everyone else did. I'm just like, ah, like, I'm not going to spend eight. That must be crap. I'm not going to spend 40. That's insane. Oh, this one is $18 and it's on sale for $12. Like, I'm going to buy that one.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  And, you know, what Casper did was the same thing. There's like, you walk into Sleepy's and there's a hundred brands and you don't know what to buy. And one is $200 and one's $2,000. And we're just saying, we made the decision for you. We perfected it. This is what you need to buy. And, you know, that's what we wanted to do with Graza. Like walk in, sizzle, drizzle, where it's from, doesn't matter. Like, it's just a really big misconception about olive oil. As long as it's fresh, as long as it's a good varietal, it's going to be good. Like, there's better and best, but that doesn't really matter to most people who are just trying to cook dinner for their family every day. Giving them a better product was a huge win for us and simplifying that decision. I think that's what we did.

• 14:32Ed Elson?

  When you launched, it sounds like it was pretty much a hit from the get go. Is that an accurate? Description?

• 14:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure.

• 14:40Ed Elson?

  How soon did you know? And what were your guys' emotions when this thing started taking off? And what was your strategy on launch? Like, was it, were you just going for Instagram ads? Did you, you know, hire PR people? Like, how did you get this thing in front of consumers? And how did it just start, you know, selling?

• 14:59Speaker 04

  We launched, we pushed play on our website, you know, the night before our quote unquote launch day, just so that we can troubleshoot and make sure that everything was clean. And we started getting orders immediately, which we didn't, we didn't expect at all. You know, we had a PR firm. I was, I was of the mindset of-

• 15:20Ed Elson?

  Did you, did you spend heavily on PR as well?

• 15:23Speaker 04

  We did, we did. And like, like, the medicine for me was, you know, if we do this for four months and have the as featured in this, this, this, this, this, like, that we can put on our website and put in our sales deck and, you know, investor deck. Eventually, like, great, we can cut it off then, but it's, it's delivered. You know, you only get launch press once. So it was a great investment early on. We got a ton of launch, of, of press on our launch day. And in the next, you know, week about it, we also seeded pretty heavily to influencers, big and, big and small. You know, we were, Andrew was flying back from Spain with liters, five liter jugs of oil.

• 16:06Speaker 04

  And we were hand filling bottles and sealing them and putting stickers on and handwriting notes and sending, I don't know, like 25 boxes out a day without paying anyone. You know, we didn't have budget to pay influencers to post about us. Like, that would have been too risky. But we kind of took a bet that these people are going to use our product in their videos because they're making so much cooking content. And olive oil is in all of their videos. And our bottle is gonna, like, be recognized. You know, that little green and yellow nozzle in that shot of oil going into pan? Like, people are gonna see us. And that-

• 16:47Speaker 04

  Paid off, you know, we, we had a couple of really big hits with influencers on our launch day and right around our launch, some that we expected, some that we didn't. And it really drove the sales big time. And, you know, within 24 hours of launching, we had a DM from a Whole Foods buyer on Instagram saying like, love your product. Are you guys interested in going to retail? Like blah, blah, blah at wholefoods.com email me. And I fell out of my fucking chair.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, we were, we were over the moon. And she saw it on an influencer's account.

• 17:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  It wasn't Grazia. Yeah.

• 17:20Ed Elson?

  There's two sides to this, right? There's, there's the branding side, which you guys have killed. And then also there's the quality side, which you guys care about that.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:29Ed Elson?

  So, right. So, you know, that, that Whole Foods buyer, do you think she's, she or he has tried the Grazia product before? Or are they just seeing the product and they see the branding? And it looks cool. And it's an influencer they like, like what, why is Whole Foods down for you guys?

• 17:47Speaker 03

  I think that's step one. Like, if you have digital resonance, I think you're going to pique a lot of people's interest. But I think the product has to follow up pretty strong. Unfortunately, that's normalized now because it's really hard to get taste across without sitting down and doing a tasting, right? A brand that says, we are the best, or we are the tastiest, or we have the best olive oil. Like, it's hard to back that up unless you've gotten people to try your product.

• 18:17Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  A common way in the D to C playbook to do that is you send out samples. There's companies that their entire business platform is sending out samples to garner pre-launch reviews, or reviews in general, sending out product for free, letting people try it, and then convincing them to buy it. We did not want to do that.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  Because it's too expensive, it's too time consuming?

• 18:37Speaker 03

  No, because, because if you evaluate the value of a customer, someone that buys the first time is so different than someone that doesn't.

• 18:44Speaker 04

  Needs to be convinced.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  Like, like, exactly. So, so I think we thankfully have the follow-up. We work hand over foot in Spain to bring incredible quality olive oil. And there is defensibility in it because it is single origin, it is single varietal. The varietal that we pick wasn't widely consumed in America because

• 19:10Speaker 03

  American food brands from Europe, I think the common thinking was we're going to provide something to the American consumer that we think they want or that we know they want. So they were providing olive oil to the marketplace that fit that mold. We were like, no, we're not going to follow what we think the consumer wants. So we're just going to provide the best quality product that we can find, frankly, a product that we like consuming and bet on our ability to convince people that this is the good stuff.

• 19:40Ed Elson?

  It's so funny to hear you guys talk because it feels like one of your main strategies is like honesty in a way, just being upfront about what the brand is, what it can provide, and being honest with yourselves about like, yeah, this is, this is what our product can do and we're not going to embellish beyond it just tastes great and it's fun. And that's fine. That's, that's what olive oil can be. And Scott had a, an interesting line the other day, which was when we were recording one of our markets podcasts, which is the truth always has a nice ring to it. It just always kind of sounds right. And the reason I want to bring that up is because there's this great story, which Andrew, I'd love for you to take us through, which is you pulled off one of the greatest corporate

• 20:24Ed Elson?

  apologies of all time. And it was so good that there was a full Wall Street Journal article about this apology that you gave to your customers. So can you just tell us the story of that and how that happened?

• 20:38Speaker 03

  Credit where credit's deserved. Like that wouldn't have happened if Alan didn't green light it because I had emailed investors, advisors, hey, do you think this is a good idea? No, don't bring attention to something that's not necessary. People might not be even thinking about this. And we have such a good relationship that Alan was like, honestly, if you want to do this.

• 21:01Ed Elson?

  Wait, so let's, let's hear it from your perspective then.

• 21:03Speaker 04

  From my perspective.

• 21:06Speaker 04

  You know, it was our first holiday season and the e-comm business just exploded. You know, we, we didn't do any Facebook or Instagram ads for the first nine months. We had just turned it on in October of 2022. So we just started spending and it was working. We had our first and only sale of the year and people really were just like, oh my God, I can get this product for 21.74% off. Like, great, I'm gonna stock up. And then we started getting gift guide hits. So like our e-comm business 10x overnight and we're having like a lot of small issues, right?

• 21:48Speaker 04

  Like it was taking six days to ship an order instead of one day. Some of the bottles that we were receiving were dented because for the first time we were shipping in cold weather in November and December. And the oil would freeze and it would, you know, kind of suck the, the oxygen out. And when it got delivered, it was bad quality. And I look at every customer service email and we're getting a lot of angry emails. I was trying to give this as a gift and, you know, you ruined my Christmas and just a lot of very small things that were, that were piling up. I didn't honestly think much of it, but when Andrew was like, I think we should just email everyone and apologize.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  Because I don't want to have any negativity like around the brand. I was like, I, I trust his communications, like a part of our relationship is trust. And he had proven over and over again that his instincts with this kind of stuff are 99.999% of the time, right? And so I was just like, yeah, of course, do it. If you feel that, I love when he talks to the customers. I think his voice is our brand's voice. When it feels like it's coming from a person instead of from a company, like people love that. We get great responses. Most of them were just like, I had no idea this was a problem. Like, thanks for answering. I'm going to support you guys even more because this is great.

• 23:12Speaker 04

  A lot of them are like, I can't believe someone yelled at you for, you know, their, their quality oil, like coming a little bit out of shape for holiday and would take that out on you. Like, I support you guys.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  I really think it all stems back to, we are not like a founder first company. And I think for us, that type of vibe has become a little bit incessant in the sense that like, how many founders faces are we all just going to see all the time? How many manufacturing facility walkthroughs are we going to see that you're trying to give the American consumer the vibe that you know where this product is coming from? Like, it all to us felt a little bit disingenuous for our brand. Like, the brand is bigger than Andrew and Alan by a long shot. We're just happy to be working on it. It's a really happy company.

• 24:04Ed Elson?

  What's the alternative to founder first? Because, I mean, from my understanding, your strategy is kind of founder first in a way where it's like, you're building in public, like you're, you're being open and forthright about, here's what it's like to run this company. We, we fucked up this, we fucked up that. We're sorry, we're a company and I'm a dude.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  But I think the fact that that happens infrequently is kind of our nature. Like, taking people on the journey would be publishing something every single week about improvements that you made or design you made or something you launched. And you were the reason it happened and showing the videos of the team and the development and us on the farm. Like, this was the first time I'd spoken to customers in five months and they've never seen my face. It's only been through email communication, through raw human connection, right? I would previously send SMS messages saying, are you having a shitty day? I know that I am, so here's $2.32 off. Maybe it'll cheer you up.

• 25:08Speaker 03

  Thinking that- I'm not the only person having a shit day at work.

• 25:12Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  And maybe someone that follows Grazia is going to resonate with that. Because it's something that has nothing to do with being a founder of a first company. It just has to do with human to human communication.

• 25:23Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 25:24Speaker 03

  I think for a long time, our marketing was the same way you would tell your friends in a group chat on iMessage about Grazia. Is how we were speaking to forty, fifty, sixty, a hundred thousand people. That was our thinking and that's what came through in this message where it, you know, wasn't pleading for forgiveness. It wasn't conversion oriented. It was just saying how it is.

• 25:46Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  There are numerous issues that happened. I'm going to list them out. I'm going to tell you that we're going to work our hardest on improving them over the next few months. And we really appreciate you even buying Grazia once in your life. Like that, that, that means so much to us.

• 26:04Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  Um, so yeah, they didn't come from a video of me and, you know.

• 26:09Ed Elson?

  Yeah, it's basically like, what would, it sounds like the thing that guides you guys is what would I like? Would I want to see the founder of the olive oil that I consume, taking a walk through a, an olive grove? No, I probably don't give a fuck about that. I'm sure as a founder, you can get sort of, or at least what I've seen with founders is you get so, your understanding of reality gets so warped by the fact that that is your life. That's all you know. And so you think that it becomes, it's more interesting to other people than it really is. It's all that you can talk about. Um, but it sounds like for you guys, you guys are pretty.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  We have kids.

• 26:45Ed Elson?

  Fourth, yeah.

• 26:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. Like our, our, we were looking up the train, how to get home to our families as quick as possible, not our Shopify sales walking into here.

• 26:54Ed Elson?

  Would you say that that, that is an advantage? I was just talking to a founder last week who said that one of his advantages is he's single. So he can go.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  He's working on the company all the time. He doesn't have dinner with the GF on Thursday night. Would you say that it's actually different?

• 27:10Speaker 04

  I hate the hustle culture. I really do. Like, we're not a tech company. We're not doing anything that hasn't been done. Like, we are manufacturing a product and selling it to grocery stores. You know, that doesn't take, you know, 20-hour days. Like, occasionally, it does. But if there's something fundamentally wrong, if you have to work, I think 100 hours a week over and over and over again, something's not clicking. You either can't scale up fast enough, or you're trying to force demand, which like, that's great. Like, it has to happen from time to time. But if things are going well, I think you have to run and grow a company that is, you know, sustainable and happy to work at.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  And that's part of the duality, I think, that worked in our favor. Because I've worked at those types of places before, that where people are on our backs, we have to grow as quickly as possible, we've promised like this type of growth to our investors, we have to expand internationally, even though we're not really ready. Chasing growth for growth's sake. I think Graza doesn't chase growth. I think that we address growth opportunities that are presented to us, but we're in this for the long haul, there's a longevity to it.

• 28:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  And I think that our team benefits from that also. I think they know it's not a race to the bottom. We'll be right back after a quick break.

• 28:45Speaker 04

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• 30:32Scott Galloway?

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• 31:05Ed Elson?

  We're back with first time founders. I would love to know how you guys think about money. How has this changed your personal financial goals? And do you view Graza as your ticket to financial security and success?

• 31:23Speaker 03

  I think it depends on each person's definition of financial security and why you want it. I think we have a lot of similarities, but maybe some differences. Mine's all anecdotal. I think the value of money for me in my life has been being able to pivot and change and stop and start. That's something that I learned from mentor of mine from Casper Neal. He was like, this age for you, money is going to mean that you can maybe start another business if one fails. Or you can maybe pivot to change careers. Or you can afford to pay for rent for six months to not force yourself to get a job that you might not like and get sucked into it.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  So that was the value of money for me, flexibility. Now that I have a family, I think it's kind of changed. Where I think de-risking our personal lives and our personal finances, rather than keeping our equity stake in the company as high as possible for as long as possible, has become valuable to me, where I can go to work every single day and feel really strong about my commitment to the organization, without having daily stress of if this fails, I'm done for.

• 32:37Ed Elson?

  Have either of you taken money off the table that has sold secondary shares of the company yet?

• 32:43Speaker 03

  I mean, I chose to for sure. And I think that I was reflecting on it the other day with Alan. Like when I worked at Casper, I was on medical leave for mental health kind of crises that happened in my life. And I got a phone call that we got sold to Target for $970 million. You should really talk to an accountant. And I had a lot of stock in Casper. And in that moment of my life was pretty important too, because I didn't get happier or sad. Like I was where I was in life, independent of this liquidity event. Yeah. I think when you have a family, you do start thinking about it differently. Like I have comfort knowing that.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  You know, the next five years of my family's life are probably okay. Rather than being an entrepreneur where it's like, if I can't do this, or I can't get a salary, I can't like, ah, like, my family, I'm not providing for them.

• 33:40Ed Elson?

  What about you, Alan?

• 33:41Speaker 04

  You know, I think it's probably the scariest part of all of this. You know, I left a great, stable job with a lot of opportunity to take a huge risk at a time where I knew I was, you know, my family was about to grow, but it just felt so right that I did it. And, you know, that first year when we're, you know, I was not paying myself and then paying myself a little and a little bit more and we had a baby and, you know, shit got crazy and it was much more stressful than I ever thought. My wife was pregnant when we like started and, and I left my job and, and we took the risk.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  And, you know, I think the goal is money, right? Like you're doing this for the satisfaction. Yes, like operating is fun, but it's fun because for me it's a numbers game. You know, I really love spreadsheets and love P and Ls and love, you know, just trying to make something and make it grow and operate it right and be profitable and, you know, reward ourselves, reward our employees, reward shareholders, reward everyone. You know, I think it's, it's a beautiful thing when a business works. So, you know, I'm definitely a little less stressed than I was before on that front. And like for me, that's where the stress comes from. Like I, I don't find the business too stressful ever, even when shit is crazy.

• 35:08Ed Elson?

  Have you also sold, sold?

• 35:09Speaker 04

  I did, yeah, much, much less, but.

• 35:12Ed Elson?

  Is that a conversation that, that you guys have when you decide to do that? And also how is the negotiation in terms of the valuation when you make that decision?

• 35:22Speaker 03

  We talk about everything.

• 35:24Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  Like Alan and I will be sitting at an airport after a really long trip and a bunch of meetings and still have a very honest conversation about what our goals are for the company.

• 35:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  There is no, like, I think it's very healthy that.

• 35:40Speaker 04

  Good place.

• 35:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I know. And I know that, and I think our investors know this and like Alan thinks in disbursements. And I think like I'm just trying to acquire as much information as, but I'll speak to every banker when the time is right, just to learn, just to get a morsel of information that I can use to grow Grazia, a connection that I can make. And like, we just, we have, we, we are really clear with one another. We've had very upfront conversation where it's like, well, if someone offered that tomorrow, like we'd kind of be idiots to not take it.

• 36:13Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  You know?

• 36:14Ed Elson?

  As in for an acquisition?

• 36:15Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 36:15Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 36:16Speaker 03

  Or whatever, like acquisition, investment is like, business is going to need capital at different stages. If we can produce it on our own, God bless.

• 36:25Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  If we get it from great partners that don't get in our way, amazing.

• 36:29Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 36:29Speaker 03

  If it has to be a majority investment by a really good strategic, like these are all good things to have. And when you're on the side of good stress, like you have to be grateful.

• 36:39Ed Elson?

  What would success mean to you guys? I mean, you talk about, okay.

• 36:46Ed Elson?

  If we got offered this tomorrow, like we'd probably have to take that. What is the ultimate goal here? Is it changing the olive oil industry or, you know, a big acquisition by some big food brand? I mean, what would make you guys happy?

• 36:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would like to have an Olive Grove one day. I actually really would. I'd like to mill my own oil. Like I, I drive through these fields in Spain for hours. I'd like one of them, a little piece to be mine one day so I can have some fun making oil.

• 37:13Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  The internal goal, like our team, success in a day to day basis, that I think our employees are happy.

• 37:21Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 37:21Speaker 03

  I really think our honesty extends beyond the customer and each other. I think it goes to our whole team. I think the things we talk about, the amount of information that we provide to everyone in the organization is, is second to none. And I think that. Knowing that Graza is employing people that like their jobs, that feel like they're growing, they feel heard and feel respected. Like, I, I, I think a lot of companies that have done amazing things have kept people in the organization for 10 plus years.

• 37:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  And in our world and CPG and startups, it's become leapfrog, leapfrog, leapfrog, looking for more, looking for something else. And I think internally, we have something special right now where people really enjoy each other. And we don't need to, you know, go drinking and do whatever to have that. It's a everyday thing. And we didn't take a, you know, HBS course on management to figure that out. It's just natural. So that's the internal success to me. And as long as we can keep that forever and then, yeah, external success outside of the organization, I don't know, eventually buy a house. That'd be really nice. Like, we were just, I, I rent two houses, you know, the kind of socks, like owning a home and would be really nice.

• 38:33Speaker 04

  That's something we connected on early on, you know, we were just like, what do you want out of company? Or like, I want a business that lets me live a good life. You know, what is a good life? It's like having time for your family, having good, a lot of good friends. For me, it's, it's doing that in New York. For Andrew, it's doing that on an Olive Grove in Spain. And, you know, that isn't a lot of people's answers. A lot of people are like, oh, I want to like, give Ted Talks, right? That's neither of us.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  You don't want to give a Ted Talk?

• 39:02Speaker 04

  No.

• 39:03Speaker 03

  I think I would give a good Ted.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  I don't want to, but if Ted came calling.

• 39:09Speaker 04

  I'll do it.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  No, I, I don't even know if we want to be serial entrepreneurs and then gone to found more company. Like, we like working together. We like this company. What do you think makes you guys a good team? And what do you think you guys could work on? Good team trust, I think, and differences in abilities.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  Um, self-awareness, like I know that I know less about Alan's domain and I don't pretend like I know more. Alan really believes in me and my concepts, my ideas, saying things like the company's voice is your voice, right? That is coming from a place of non-ego, which I think Alan has, you know, it's just like, we know what each of our ability sets are and where they play into the business.

• 39:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, it happened very organically, you know, we didn't come in and say, I'm going to handle this, this, this, this, this, you're going to handle that, that, that, that, that. Like I jumped in, Andrew was, you know, knee deep in the brand already, working with Gander and like, that was overwhelming. And I was just like, oh shit, like, I'm not ready for this. I don't know this. I don't know any of this stuff, but like, you fake it till you make it, like, like anything else. And as the business grew, there were a lot of things that I could just grab onto and run with, or not as it grew, as it was getting closer to launch, like just setting up our warehouses, setting up our backend systems, like talking to banks, talking to everyone that you need to talk to, to get a business running.

• 40:42Speaker 04

  And Andrew was like, oh shit, I didn't know you had to do that. Um, you know, we, we got very lucky in the match and our, our, you know, my obsession with scale and value and retail. Like I'm always thinking about how do we be better in Whole Foods? How do we be better in Target? How do we drive our costs down so that we can retail this as a better price point and be more accessible to people? I'm a big believer in value and Andrew is just obsessed with the brand and the marketing and the customer and, and we trust each other enough with that. We're very, very open, you know, both on the business front and the personal front, you know, having, having a newborn is fucking hard.

• 41:25Speaker 04

  And Andrew decided to do it, you know, a year after I did, and he listens to me about how crazy that was to like do this and do that at the same time. And a lot of the things that. Don't get talked about, you know, the guilt of every minute that you're at the office, you feel guilty for not being at home. Every minute that you're at home, you feel guilty for not working. Am I gonna fuck up this company? Um, and, you know, even a year later, I was like, that lasted for me six months. And like Andrew's in month three right now and like he feels that. So we just have a really good rapport and we're very open with each other about everything.

• 42:04Ed Elson?

  And we, by the way, we didn't get to what you guys could work on.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  We don't have like a feedback system for one another. Actually.

• 42:11Ed Elson?

  So let's do it right now.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  Let's not.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  No, I think sometimes I feel left out of Alan's side of the organization. Sometimes he feels left out of mine. We don't cross pollinate that frequently. Like this amount of time in the room is like some of the most we spent, you know, this week. It's starting to get better, but that has happened where it's like, I have no fucking idea what's going on on your side. You know?

• 42:38Speaker 04

  I think we each know ourselves well enough. Like I say no too much to his ideas and he has too many ideas, you know, like, like that's something that I talk about with him always. I'm just like, I sometimes fear that I can be too slow or I'm too negative. And like you have that, you know, irrational confidence, like we were just talking about where you have an idea a minute and you think that every idea that you have is the greatest fucking idea that's ever happened, you know? Like we needed to make a gift box because one of the complaints last year was, oh, I bought three sets and I actually got just six bottles in a box when I really wanted three individually packaged boxes. And so like I solved that operationally. He made it pretty, you know,

• 43:23Speaker 04

  with the brand and the marketing team and all those things. But then all of a sudden, he thinks that this is the greatest thing that we've ever come up with and that the brand has ever launched and Whole Foods should carry it and Target should carry it and this store should carry it and that store should carry it. I'm just like, you gotta slow down. Like this was, you know, a solution to a small problem we had last year. Um, and then I start to ask myself like, what's wrong with me? How come I'm not like thinking that way and as excited about every little thing that has come up? And you know, the right answer is somewhere in between. The fact that we have both is really great for us.

• 43:59Ed Elson?

  I just want to end with this final question to both of you, which is, what is one piece of advice that you wish you could have given yourself when you started the company back in 2021? And Andrew, we'll start with you.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  I think for me, having the foresight into how I work and how I operate might not be the best example for other people that come into the organization. And having structure, reporting, structure, management, roles and responsibilities clearly defined is a good thing to work on early on because we're all different. And you know, while I don't need, right, you know, that type of structure to feel productive at work and feel connected to what I'm doing, it is beyond reasonable that it is very helpful for most people.

• 44:57Speaker 03

  And I think having that kind of coaching along the way actually would have been really helpful.

• 45:04Speaker 04

  Mine is easy. It's don't have a baby three months in. Business, wait, wait a few more months. You know, that, that was really crazy. And obviously I'm thrilled that I, that I did it now, but just to be ready for the stress of that, the stress of, you know, the risk that you're taking, the financial burden. Like you can say as often as you want, like, I'll do this. I'm going to quit a job. Like I'm fine having no income, but like that first like month when a check doesn't come in is fucking real. And no one prepares you for that, even if you are okay, even if you have the savings, if you have everything.

• 45:46Speaker 04

  Like it's a very different feeling than, than you expect when something isn't coming in, when it's been coming in steadily your entire career. You know, it's, it's very, very different.

• 45:59Ed Elson?

  Well, guys, this is awesome.

• 46:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:01Ed Elson?

  Thanks so much for coming on.

• 46:02Speaker 03

  Thank you for having us.

• 46:05Ed Elson?

  This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our executive producers are Jason Stavers and Catherine Dillon, and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to First Time Founders from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Join us on Wednesday for office hours and Monday for Prof you Markets.

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