For the people that are listening, what is the best way for them to reach out and say hi? You mentioned earlier that it took you four years or so to do your Series A, so would it be possible for you to walk us through the fundraising journey? It was scary. He posed the thought that if each family used concentrated Grove laundry detergent, approximately 95% of consumer plastic waste could be eliminated. But I have a saying that Ive said many, many times through the last six-and-a-half years on this journey, which is, The only way out is through. Even though for those first four years four years is a long time, especially when Chris, Jordan, and I, and a lot of people on the team had given up good-paying, stable jobs to come do this. What I meant with the reporting is where trust is not present. How Grove Collaborative Grew From a Tiny Self-Storage As a college student at Loyola Marymount University, Jason Wilk, now 34, blew through his budget, collecting overdraft fees. Landesberg has over 34 years of experience and has had the privilege of treating many of our local athletes as well as college athletes and professional athletes from the NBA, NFL and boxing. You were just on TV during the Giants game. If anyone listening ever has an opportunity to work with Josh Mehlman or anyone from the Serious Change family I cant speak highly enough about the folks at Serious Change, Nestle Ventures, and MHS Group, and Pennington Capital Ventures Group, the four largest participants in our seed round. 7. Mr. Landesberg co-founded Grove Collaborative in 2012 and has served as its Chief Executive Officer See Stuart Landesberg's compensation, career history, education, & memberships. I started at Toro at the very beginning with just a couple of us in a room making investment decisions, and it was a really interesting experience and learned a lot of interesting and some different lessons there as well. var _Hasync=_Hasync||[];_Hasync.push(['Histats.start','1,4553220,4,511,95,18,00000000']);_Hasync.push(['Histats.fasi','1']);_Hasync.push(['Histats.track_hits','']);(function(){var hs=document.createElement('script');hs.type='text/javascript';hs.async=true;hs.src=('//s10.histats.com/js15_as.js');(document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0]||document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(hs);})(); Stuart Landesberg is a well-known figure in the world of media. Stuart Landesberg: So, the Grove was really my idea, and the initial based it upon the experiences that I had had. It was close a lot of times. Stuart Landesberg: The first four years, candidly, were kind of a scary experience. This is a BETA experience. 34 CEO, Grove Collaborative What the company does San Francisco company specializing in natural and sustainable . Stuart Landesberg Consumers are now demanding that companies provide products which consider impact on the world. We had a couple of other potentials on the insiders that wouldnt have let the company go out of business. Its been multiple rounds that youve gone through. Augusto Marietti, 31, and Marco Palladino, 30, launched the company out of a garage in Milan, where they both attended university, and were constantly flying back and forth to Silicon Valley to fundraise. Before founding Pittsburgh-based Duolingo, he sold two inventions to Google, including reCAPTCHA, the software that spits out the squiggly lines you type to alert a website that you are not a bot. Meika Hollender, daughter of Seventh Generation founder Jeffrey Hollander, launched a new company with her father. Please note GuruFocus will not track the insiders transaction performance if he/she does not have buying transactions. : I think about this frequently because I know so much now that I wish I had known in the very beginning. They sit on a lot of boards. He said the company had about 200 customers before it ever had a website. : It was a crazy experience, sad, educational, and really formative. Chlorine can irritate the respiratory system, might disrupt thyroid function, and may form carcinogenic byproducts. There were multiple times I wasnt sure we were going to get the money we needed to keep going. Those folks have been, again, really terrific capital partners. So the first thing I would say is having a board culture that is consistent with your company culture and your operating culture is going to make a ton more fun and authentic. : I dont believe everything I read. I feel so fortunate to have such a great group of capital partners whove been with the company through a pretty transformative period. Stuart Landesberg: From Is he going to fund the term sheet? The day they funded, we had $40,000. Stuart Landesberg - Co-Founder & CEO - CrunchBase So in 2016, he founded Dave, short for David, who beat Goliath, which Wilk sees as the big banks. The worlds most popular digital language-learning tool, seven-year-old Duolingo has 28 million monthly active users. Really, its great. I think my own style as an executive, as a startup founder is definitely influenced by the folks who I most looked up to as a young professional at TPG. Yeah, just having a comfort with intellectual honesty, I think is especially important in a board context. He is from . Chris and Jordan both are I cannot say enough good things about them as individuals, as partners, and I cannot stress how important or how valuable it is to have great people as partners on this entrepreneur journey. : The second piece is that it wasnt the money in the Series A that led to the business transformation. I define success for the company our company vision statement is that consumer products will be a positive force for human and environmental health, not just less bad, but actually more good for human and environmental health. How do you see it? I know they funded me $40,000 in the bank. 2004-2023 GuruFocus.com, LLC. He told Jason Calacanus of The Next Unicorn that Grove Collaborative was started because he believes that families care about providing the best products in their homes. Obviously, once you put it out there, and you start seeing the reaction, then youre able to breathe. How was that experience for you? Landesberg is proud of the Seedling brand that Grove launched. After we made our repositioning, a bunch of our strategies just started working better because the business was better positioned. Grove Collaborative Holdings Inc is engaged in providing consumer products. The first was that consumer presence wasnt and still isnt super-well represented on shelf. I think there was never a day that I worked at Lehman Brothers where the stock was higher than my first day. Alejandro Cremades leads the vision and execution for Panthera Advisors as its Co-Founder and. If you want me to help you with your fundraising, just book a call. Alejandro: Yeah, and by the way, I agree with you on that, and I love Alfred too. For the people that are listening, what is the best way for them to reach out and say hi? sale : Got it. The company was removed from consideration after our investigation, and its CEO resigned in mid-June. Enjoy a 7-Day Free Trial Thru May 08, 2023! You think of them as a big machine and greater than any one person. On the other hand, we also wouldnt be as successful if our board members werent happy to hop on the phone at a moments notice about any issue. At the end of their time, if they liked, he would take their credit card and run it through a card reader to pay for products. As a result, Next Trucking has doubled revenue every year since 2016, reaching $46 million in 2018. Grove not only provides a good price point for a valuable product but also explains why that product is good for the buyer. of 259,609 shares. : Got it. So then at what point do you make the decision of starting your company, Grove Collaborative. Stuart Landesberg: When we started the business, none of us had ever built a consumer internet company before. In those early days, I wish I had just Im really grateful we did focus as much on the consumer as we did, but we also wasted a lot of time in cycles on things that werent ultimately value-creating in the long run but were only there to sort of swage short-term founders of a small business insecurities. While working on cybersecurity in the military, they came up with the idea for Cybereason, a cloud-based cybersecurity platform specializing in continuous monitoring and response to advanced cybersecurity threats. Alejandro: Got it. Stuart Landesberg: Yeah. The above-and-beyond effort that he did inspired our COO who talked about it to all hands, and it was like really awesome, and thats real leadership from someone whos been with the company for just a couple of months and who works on the floor in our St. Peters Fulfillment Center. Each order of Seedling tree-free products helps Groves initiative to replant deforested areas across the United States. I am really grateful to have such phenomenal investors. Before teaming up to found Chainalysis, CEO Michael Gronager, 49, cofounded cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, while CTO Jan Moller, 47, built the Mycelium cryptocurrency wallet. In any organization that reaches scale, theres leadership all over the place. Yeah, just having a comfort with intellectual honesty, I think is especially important in a board context. I think of it as we all are working together, and we have various roles to play. I am always excited to dispel the notion that capital creates success because its definitely a really helpful tool on the way, but it is not a driver in and of itself. I believe that the category is going to go from 3% online to 40% or 50% online in the next two decades. Synthego is cashing in by selling the genomic equivalent of pickaxes, shovels, maps and other tools. I dont see it as either I work for the board or the board works for me. He believes that Grove wins over Amazon by being trustworthy for its consumers. I think that normally, people give themselves three years, so the fact that you were at it for four years is remarkable. 2. I think they both embraced it and added immeasurably in their specific dimensions to what we were bringing to market. Weve made this switch, and things took off. : Thats great, and I think that having such phenomenal investors has also allowed, perhaps to have a phenomenal structure at a board level. Stuart Landesberg is the director & 10 percent owner & President & CEO of Virgin Group Acquisition Corp II. Alejandro: Got it. What I meant with the reporting is where trust is not present. Id been at it for four years with mixed results. I can start with the very first financing, which was me putting my own money in, and a couple of people who I worked with putting in small amounts of money. 14. Stuart Landesberg: Every board is a little bit different, just like every companys different. The investor can be transparent about his or her goals too. We end up spending resources in part where our stakeholders, including our stockholders, want us to focus. and Sculptor Master Fund Ltd But Bullpens mantra is to do unusual deals, and they did this one. It was so close, and this group Serious Change out of New York; they didnt blink. : Obviously, when youre looking on the investment side, and you take a look at companies that make sense versus companies that dont make sense, what were some of those patterns that you were able to recognize? So make us insiders of that breakout moment. Stuart Landesberg: Paul Martino at Bullpen Capital who I also think the world of and if you folks who are listening have an opportunity to work with Paul or Bullpen another phenomenal group. I called Paul, and I was like, Paul, theres a price at which this deal gets done. How did the idea of Grove come together? : Got it. We offer a really curated selection of 1,000 SKUs, some of which are from national brands like Seventh Generation, Mrs. Meyers Method, some of which are from brands that we owned and developed in-house. But I dont think I understood at the time that there were really important milestones, and the story of what happens in-between those is much less important. Theres no subscription fee for the consumer experience. My parents were probably some of the largest early customers of the brand called Seventh Generation, which back when I was a kid, I thought was the biggest company in the whole world. Over the past 18 months, Right? , Stuart Landesberg Those are a few suggestions, and I think as always being clear upfront about board expectations is really important. Also, remember, if you need any help whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at, Robert Sadow And Jonathan Sadow On Raising $100 Million To Reinvent How You Commute To Work, He Sold His Last Company For $130 Million And Now Raised Millions To Help Others Build Wealth, Satyen Kothari On Selling His Last Company For $130 Million And Now Raising Millions To Help Others Build Wealth, He Built An $8 Billion Venture Capital Firm To Invest In Startups That Are Fixing Our Broken World, Drew Oetting On Building An $8 Billion Venture Capital Firm To Invest In Startups That Are Fixing Our Broken World, This Entrepreneur Raised $124 Million To Power The Next Generation Of The Web. You were talking about the pivot earlier, and Im always a believer that theres not a single business plan or pitch deck that is going to hit the market and its going to be bulletproof, so in you guys case, you started to receive feedback, and that really contributed to making or to understand that it was the right time or the right decision to change course of action. So the business model has always been about providing better products to consumers and making it really easy for folks to switch from products that our parents used and products that are better for our homes, our families, and the planet. 10 percent owner Sculptor Capital Holding Ii Llc In 2015, they decided to do something about it, starting Lattice. He views the collaborative customers, employees, and partners as incredibly conscientious and dedicated. If theres a person who wants to get to know our company better, there isnt a board member of a major investor that I cant get on the phone, see them today to talk to that person. The business opportunities are created by the business, not by the financing. But Im aligned with your point. : Yeah. Sculptor Capital Management Inc, And in your guys case, youve raised a bit of money. Founders Roth Martin, a former art gallery owner, and Stephen Hawthornthwaite (aka Hawthy), a former investment banker, launched the footwear brand after listening to their wives complain about the lack of stylish, comfortable shoes.