The Startup CPG Podcast

[00:00:17] Jessi: Hi Marcia, welcome to the show today. How are you?

[00:02:27] Marcia: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Good to see you again.

[00:02:30] Jessi: Yeah, good to see you. I think you are the guest that I've had on the show, that I've known the longest, I think, since we met in 2015 or so

[00:02:42] Marcia: 2015.

[00:02:44] Jessi: Yeah, so it's so nice to see you and Marcia has been on my personal podcast and just has been an amazing connection over the years and just such a wealth of knowledge. So I'm so excited to share with our audience today all of Marcia's wealth of knowledge and just experience. And so yeah, so happy that you're here today.

[00:03:05] Marcia: Thank you.

[00:03:06] Jessi: Well, I'd love if you could tell us just a little bit about your, about yourself, about mind shift capital, about the Angel Capital Association like your background and angel investing since that's what we're going to focus on just a little bit more about you.

[00:03:20] Marcia: So I became an angel investor, it was over 10 years ago now and I didn't really have any idea what angel investing was. I thought, I don't even know as somebody said, hey, do you want to come to this angel investing group meeting? And I was like, what's angel investing? Have no idea. And I ended up going and I was just fascinated at the amount of innovation that was happening. And I was living in Pittsburgh at the time, I didn't really think of Pittsburgh as an innovation center, but it's certainly has become one over the many years and they have amazing universities, they have amazing entrepreneurs there and I just, my eyes were open to this new world and so I started to learn more and more about it. I then became a member of the board of the Angel Capital Association. We are, we do not invest, we are the professional society of all angel investors in the US, so we educate, we do public policy work to make sure our legislators know how important entre partnership is to our economy, we do things like collect data and try to help people be smarter about the decisions that they're making related to investing and then part of what the other part of what I do is with mind shift capital. We are a women led venture firm that invests in women led companies. And so I'm a venture partner. What that means is that I helped to source some of the deals especially here in the U. S. That are mainly of course women lead, but mainly tech. So we invest in food tech, health tech, ed tech or fin tech companies. Very

[00:04:53] Jessi: cool because yeah, if I remember right mind shift has is a global fund. You source deals from all over all over the world.

[00:05:00] Marcia: Yeah, primarily the Middle East, um, a little bit in Turkey, you know, um Pakistan even now. So lots of interesting things happening all over the world.

[00:05:10] Jessi: Yeah, that's so cool. I think, I think you say at the the end of your podcast, which will, we'll talk about as I'm a listener to Marcia's podcast, I think you say if you want to be the change in the world, invest in the change you want to see in the world. And so I love seeing you live that out as something that you say and then hearing the ways that you live that out.

[00:05:31] Marcia: Yes. And in fact, I just recorded about two weeks ago a ted talk where that was my theme. If you want to be the change you need to invest in the change you want to see in the world.

[00:05:39] Jessi: Oh, I love that if there's a video to that, we should link that in the show notes because that's that's awesome.

[00:05:44] Marcia: As soon as it's out. That's, it takes a little while until they actually. But yeah, we'll be out soon.

[00:05:50] Jessi: That's amazing. And how many, like how many angel groups and, and investors are in the Angel Capital Association?

[00:05:56] Marcia: So we have about 250 groups and we represent about 15,000 angels as well. We're, we try to represent, you know, the good majority of the angel investors at least here in North America. We do have some global investors as well as members, but really what we want to do is bring people together. We're great networker. We have events, we allow people to come together. Um we have an annual summit and then we do some regional events here and there and we have a lot of syndication platforms where people can get to know each other and also get to share deal with

[00:06:32] Jessi: and then as far as data there's the Angel Funders report. Right,

[00:06:36] Marcia: right. Yes, we put that out every year. In fact, by the time you release this podcast episode, the Angel funders report with the 2021 data will be released and you can get that on the Angel Capital Association's website, which is just Angel Capital Association dot org.

[00:06:53] Jessi: Okay, awesome. Yeah, I'll link that in the show notes too. So just to kind of like frame our conversation, I wonder if you can start us off with some kind of like 101 definitions like what is an angel investor and like how does an angel investor differ from like a venture capitalist? And then you mentioned like angel groups versus individual angels. Like what's the difference between an angel group and in an individual investor?

[00:07:17] Marcia: Perfect. So if you haven't seen it already, you could definitely put in the show notes, the link to my rap battle. I wrote a rap battle for angel investors versus venture capitalist. Kind of like Snow White versus Elsa. That's kinda where I got the idea. Um, but it explains a little bit about the difference between what an angel investor is an adventure capital. So

[00:07:36] Jessi: hold up, did Marcia just say rap battle. Let me just head to Youtube here real quick

[00:07:44] Marcia: Angel investor versus venture capitalists Let the battle begin. I'm here to tell you, hon about my funds in their game. I got so many investments. I'm just making it rain my lps. They love me. I'm on phone number 10. That's more than your group will ever have in a um, startups line up and just see who gets to pitch graphs with hockey stick, showing how we're all getting rich. We picked the best. It's a quest and it's really quite fun. Our dollars are smart isn't art. Your money is just um, that's not nice, very mean. You seem quite cold hearted. We are angels. we rise up, we will not be outsmarted. We are mentors advisors networking gurus, you put money in, I'm not sure what else you do. By the way. Our checks come from our own accounts. You use other people's money. We're the ones with all the cloud. We provide capital to companies at the earliest stages. We are

[00:08:35] Jessi: simple compromising in terms of

[00:08:37] Marcia: our pages and pages. We

[00:08:39] Jessi: create structure

[00:08:40] Marcia: and trust and build up the culture, your predatory investors. That's why your capital is called culture,

[00:08:46] Jessi: yep. That's Marcia rapping about angel investors versus venture capitalists. Make sure to watch the whole video for the added visual effect and full lesson. I added the link in the show notes. First we had Seth Goldman sea shanty. Now, Marcia rapping, I think all this musical content is adding a whole new level to the podcast.

[00:09:06] Marcia: An angel investor is somebody who writes a check out of their own checkbook and invests into an early stage company or what's better known as a startup and a startup can get funding from a lot of different places. But at the beginning it's very, very hard because they're, they're very young and it's pretty risky investment. They usually have to start with friends and family or people that they know or people who have a strong interest in whatever it is that they're building. Um, then when they get to an angel group and angel group is a more sophisticated version of angels pulled together, um they've kind of established themselves in one particular area or one particular sector and they invest together and always great to be dealing with an angel group. Sometimes you can, they're hard to find, sometimes you can find angels who are super wealthy and they might rate bigger checks, but at the end of the day, you know, most angels, they don't have a lot of disposable income to put toward this asset class and we always tell people to be very careful about how much money they're putting into alternative assets. Alternative assets could be anything like real estate, wine, um anything that's not like a publicly traded stock. And so private investments fall in that category. And so being with part of an angel group is great because you get to meet other people network with other people, but you're you're also getting the um all of the expertise of everybody in that group. So let's say that a company is doing X. And they come to an angel group and they're looking for funding. And now there's like three of the 50 members actually have experience in that industry, they can be very valuable in evaluating the company. And not only that, let's say that then the angel group, a couple people are interested, so they end up writing some checks and they give that money to invest in this company, they can go on and help the company to grow in a lot of cases because they have a level of expertise or they have a network or they have people they can introduce them to so that that company can go on and and grow and get to meet more milestones which will allow them to then get to a place where they can raise more money,

[00:11:13] Jessi: right? So usually angel investors are much earlier stage taking on more risk and potentially going to be more provide more connections expertise to you than when you're further down in the road and maybe raising like institutional sort of

[00:11:28] Marcia: capital. Exactly. And you know, VC money is great when you're at that later stage and you know you have um more product built out, you know they're not going to come in at the very earliest of stages now they have some some of them will have like a seed fund they call it where like S. E. D. Where you know, they might pick some companies to invest in early on. But for the most part it's angels that are investing early. In fact I've heard the statistic thrown around like at least 90% of the deals the venture capitalists invest in actually come from angels, wow. Yeah.

[00:12:05] Jessi: That's very interesting. And so for for an angel investor, like what what does one need to do to become an angel investor because I think that's something you talk about on your on your podcast of helping people realize that maybe they can be an angel investor. So I think it's interesting to think about like who are angel investors and like what their, what it takes to be an accredited investor per se. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:12:30] Marcia: Sure. So there's a couple of things first of all nowadays, according to the sec, because they changed the rules in 2016 and they allow for what's known as equity crowdfunding. Equity crowdfunding is where you invest a little bit of money and you get a small piece of ownership into the company. Some people have heard of Kickstarter, Indiegogo even go fund me there a way to do crowdfunding. But this is different, this is equity crowdfunding where they would actually get a piece of ownership into the company in 2016 when the rules were changed that allows for anybody to invest for as little as $50. Um Now, what you're talking about with, when we throw around the term accredited accredited is a little bit of a deceiving term from the standpoint of it kind of sounds like you have to have a credential almost like a certification or something like that. And that's not the case. It's strictly a definition and it was put out there by the Securities and Exchange Commission to say that if you have a certain level of wealth or a certain level of income, then you are now what they consider accredited meaning that you have in their mind enough wealth or income, that if you did make an investment like this and you lost a little bit of it, you would not be completely destitute. I guess that's kind of how they look at it. So essentially they, what they are really trying to avoid is people who, who absolutely cannot afford it, who are on fixed incomes and things like that. They don't want them to get caught up in too many things that might not allow them to be able to, you know, continue survival, all those fun things we want to make sure that they're taken care of. So the public markets are very regulated. If you invest in a stock, you can get all kinds of information about that company. The private markets are not regulated in the same way. And that's why we have these rules around that. The sec. S put these rules around actually making investments, right?

[00:14:27] Jessi: So with, like, the crowdfunding rule that you mentioned does that. So, you know, when we're talking about seed round series, a like, does that rule impact any of those types of raises or is that, you know, a different kind of set of, you know, a different raise that you're actually doing when you use what falls into those guidelines.

[00:14:47] Marcia: So, without getting too technical, because there's all these regulations around how you end up raising theirs Wreg d and reggae, a reggae plus Greg Cf is crowdfunding um depends on the offer. Um, most of the time if people are doing a crowdfunding campaign for an equity crowdfunding campaign, they'll do that and then maybe later or even or before they could do where they're raising a priced round, we call it where they would, you know, raise, like, let's say a seed round and they would have accredited investors come into that. So they're, they're different offerings. Um, typically it's not really the best idea to have them going on at the same time. It's confusing to the marketplace. So usually you would do one and then once that was done, you know, if then you hopefully have enough money to be able to, it's a milestones and actually grow the business before you have to fundraise again.

[00:15:38] Jessi: Right, And then how again, I like to think about what an investor's thinking about, Like how does an angel investor make money and then are they building out like a portfolio with a certain number of companies? Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like from the investors side of how they're going to make a return.

[00:15:56] Marcia: Yeah, So this is definitely risky. A risky asset glass. It's, you're putting capital to work in a very risky environment with startups. But um, so that's why we talk about diversification and diversification is super important and it basically means that you want to expose yourself to as many possible options as you can get and in a lot of cases, that means if you are an angel and you're writing checks directly to a company, that would mean that you would want to write to, you know, write men each checks over a time period, let's say 3 to 5 years maybe, you know, studies show that you want to have at least 10, maybe 15, even 20 companies in your portfolio at a minimum with, um, then there's, so that would be, if you were a direct angel investor, you could also invest through funds. There's angel funds, there's VC funds. Um, nowadays, there are a lot of funds that you can invest in for, I'll say what's considered a lower dollar amount. And when I say lower, I just mean typically, um, in the past, when I'm talking like at least 5, 10 years ago, if you wanted to invest in a venture fund, you had to put in a minimum of at least $250,000 if, if not a million. And in in those cases, you know, almost everybody is getting knocked out of that. You know, we don't have that kind of money to be able to do that. So nowadays though with angel funds, some cases you could put in as little as $10,000 and be able to diversify your portfolio and have maybe 10 or even 15 company that you would have exposure to as opposed to some angels will write checks, $20,000 a piece. I mean, that's a lot of money to, to get 10 companies in your portfolio. I mean you'd now be investing at least 200,000. So, you know, when you're thinking about it and the risk factor is, it's kind of like, it's like anything you want to make sure that where you have a lot of risky assets, you're keeping that as a small amount of your investable assets and then, and the other, the other money that you're investing you will put into, you know, all different types of things. You work with your financial planner on that or you work with, you know, um platform like E Trade or Fidelity or anything like that and they'll give you a lot of options, you know, based on your risk profile. But I would say that angel investing is probably much higher end now with risk can come reward. Um even though there are a lot of companies that do go out of business or they don't make it, they run out of money. Number one reason why I start up doesn't make it as they run out of money. Um there can be some big hits and you know, people, you the big ones are the ones that we hear about like Uber google Apple, you know, people invested really early days in that and you know, became like billionaires, but um more realistically is you, if you're an angel investor and you're in it for the long haul meaning that it does take 57, 10 years for a company to exit, you would probably have, um, you know, depend if you have a diversified portfolio, you could have several companies that would return maybe two or three times the money that you invested. That's like what we would consider to be a really good return. Um You hope that you're going to have one company um in the group that returns maybe like a 10 or 15 X and if that's the case great, but if the number one reason and the only reason that people are investing is for a financial return, then you're probably in the wrong business doing angel investing because they do want to invest in the change they want to see in the world they want to help entrepreneurship thrive, They want to see the types of innovation that's happening. Um You you can't have innovation without risk, it's just, it's not gonna happen. We wouldn't, we wouldn't be in the country we live in and be for people to be able to think up and try to do anything they want to um if it wasn't risky, so there's a lot of risk, but there can be a lot of more,

[00:19:56] Jessi: Yeah, yeah, that's super helpful. And for you mentioned an exit, like for angel investors and investing in general, are there other scenarios other than an exit that an angel investor makes a return or is that the primary method, Like curious about that piece?

[00:20:13] Marcia: That is the primary method. Um Most of the time and it's not because the companies go public. Um So some people think, oh we're going to do an I. P. O. You hear that? Sometimes that's usually statistically showing that doesn really happen. It's usually where the company gets acquired. That's a very traditional exit route. However, um nowadays there are other types of ways that angels can get paid back. And one of them that's becoming pretty popular is called revenue based financing. And let's say that you have, and I know for for this particular podcast, you have a lot of consumer packaged goods. Um Let's say you have a company that is producing revenue. Uh you can go out and if you find a rev based financing group or or fund, you could apply for funding there. And if you get that funding, what happens is you don't have to give up any equity in your company which is huge. So what would happen instead is you would agree to pay back at a percent of your revenue. So let's just, I'll just use numbers and I have no idea if these are actually accurate, but let's say that you got, I don't know um 200 or $500 just say $500,000 to make it easy um from revenue based financing, you would then be paying back that money over a period of time, a certain percent of your revenue, so every month, the end of the month, you would see, oh my company made, again, I'll just use a round number, like 100 grand, um you would have to take a percent of that and give it back and then you would keep doing that until it was paid back. It's pretty aggressive, so from the standpoint of, you know, you could be paying back, um, a pretty, you know, relatively speaking, a larger chunk of your revenue, um in order to pay it down, but if you are a company that is producing regular revenue, it's definitely an option. Yeah,

[00:22:04] Jessi: very interesting. I'm also curious about tips that you have for a company deciding whether they should seek outside funds, because we see this come a lot up a lot in our sort of CPG community of, I think I could use, I think I could use more money, you know, should I, should I raise money from angel investors? Um and I'm wondering about your perspective on what people should think through, when they're deciding to raise money. Are there companies that, you know, shouldn't probably seek outside funds depending on their goals? Um Yeah, just curious about your perspective on that, and if you have any specific, you don't CPG, um, you know, pieces in there, that's definitely awesome as well,

[00:22:42] Marcia: So I would say if you have any way to not raise money, don't raise money because uh you, if the longer that you can bootstrap your company the more you can get non dilutive funding, whether that's through grants or getting help with whatever R and D. You're putting together, um, you know, in some cases, you know, with consumer packaged goods, you might not need R and D or you might, it depends, um, you know, but anything that you can do in order to get that built out, and what I see sometimes is I'll give you an example, um, there was a consumer company and they had exited a previous company, so they had some money from that and they were able to put that to use for the new company. And then that was, you know, how they grew it. By the time they took on angel investors, they were well on their way had contracts with, you know, some of the bigger distributors and, you know, that got them, you know, it was very attractive to the incoming investors. What isn't very attractive is when somebody comes out of the gate and says, well, you know, I really need to raise money for, for my company, I want to grow it, and this is what I'm doing, and they may have an absolutely fabulous idea. And then you would say to them, well, okay, but have you tried to raise money from people that, you know, oh, well, I don't want to ask people, I know why not? Well, because I don't think what if it doesn't work okay, but so you're okay to take money from angels, but you're not okay to take money from people that you know, that's like a bad sign.

[00:24:19] Jessi: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Um And then, like, I think, I've heard you talk about like the the team, like the team when you're looking at a company that's raising funds and that you're looking for maybe even first of all, a team. But can you talk about a little bit about that team piece?

[00:24:36] Marcia: Yeah, the team is, you know, you hear people say, oh, we're betting on the jockey, not the horse. You know, people can have a fabulous idea and if they don't have the right team to take it to the finish line, it's it's not going to go anywhere. So or you could have like a pretty good idea, but if you have the team chances are you're going to end up pivoting at some point in your business and doing something a little bit different than what you started with. So if you don't have the perfect product at the perfect time with the perfect market, that's okay. But you really need to just get out there and get started and you need to be surrounded with the people that complete the team. So it can't be all engineers that are trying to run a company. It can't be all visionaries who are trying to run the company and it can't be all of the sales people who are trying the company, you need a little bit of all of that in order to get to the finish line.

[00:25:28] Jessi: Yeah. When you, when, when you take on outside investment money, also as the founder and you know, this company has been yours up to this point, potentially, and wholly yours is also something to think through that. Maybe someday you won't be ceo like, you know, this adding outside funds is going to add outside perspective, like maybe you won't lead this the whole time now that other people own it. Like I'm curious about the mindset to kind of think through of as you're adding other people that now own something that you originally created.

[00:25:59] Marcia: Yeah, I mean, that's definitely something to think about. You know, the good good C E O S out there will be able to run their company and take it, you know, to a certain point and then they're going to know when they don't have the level of expertise to take it further, but if they take it that far and they're really working with their investors and they're keeping that line of communication open and they're working with their board, um, it could be a real win win, I've seen it happen over and over again, where the founder is still involved and can still be part of what's happening, but, you know, now you're bringing somebody in who can grow the company to the level that you really want for exit, right?

[00:26:38] Jessi: Yeah, Well we're going to talk more angel investing content in a minute, but we're going to take a little break and talk about tea and I believe Marcia is drinking tea along with me. So at startup CPG, we had our annual Shell Fie award and one of the winners was uproot teas and so that's what we are trying today. So I am drinking the tea and earlier today I had the peppermint and yesterday I had again my child. So I've been trying all the uproot teas, really enjoying really interesting. I'm curious, Marcia, how's your tea so far today? What do you think?

[00:27:16] Marcia: Well, I have the camel right now because it is a little later in the day, so I didn't want to have any caffeine or else I'd be like on the ceiling later. Um, but I love it. It's very light. It's not um, I, it's very flavorful, but not like overpowering sometimes if you let it, sometimes you let TCP a little bit too long and then you're like, whoa, this is like, but this is lovely.

[00:27:41] Jessi: Yeah, it's, I think the flavors are really amazing. I got to try tiny little samples at expo west earlier this year and was really impressed and then to get to like drink a whole cup at home. I've been very happy and the, so they uproot tease one, our branding award because the, the branding and packaging is really cool and like the T came in little compostable zip locks, which I thought was really

[00:28:04] Marcia: cool. That was totally cool. It's, it actually says right on the package that it's warm food. So

[00:28:10] Jessi: I love that, which

[00:28:11] Marcia: is so cool.

[00:28:11] Jessi: Yeah, so yeah, we're super glad that the uproot Ty's team kept us fueled today. So thanks

[00:28:18] Marcia: Marcia for also

[00:28:20] Jessi: trying with me. It was super fun. Um, and yeah, and then for those listening, there will be a mini interview with Cindy, the founder of a protease at the end of this episode. So stay tuned after I talked with Marcia, there'll also be a little mini interview with Cindy all about uproot tease. So stay tuned and yeah, so that was our, our little quick little sampling shell fees

[00:28:44] Marcia: break,

[00:28:44] Jessi: awesome. Um, I also, I'm curious about again, investor mindset, so like what is, what, what can a brand keep in their mind of like when reaching out to an investor, like what's top of mind for an angel and when you're reaching out as a brand or building your pitch deck, like what can they keep in mind as far as like kind of putting themselves in the shoes of the audience that they have. So it's, there's a couple

[00:29:11] Marcia: things that are you're going to want to have in that pitch deck and what I always have been telling entrepreneurs at least lately is you want to make it as easy for the investor as possible, especially if you're, if you want to pitch to an angel group, you know, they get inundated with a lot of information. Usually you have to go through their, you know, whatever their upload processes where you upload their upload your information as a company to potentially get funding. But I'm telling you, I really think that short videos, if people haven't used loom yet, I would, I love that application, It's fantastic. You can literally make a five minute videos free, you can make a five up to a five minute video and then you just can give people a link. You could walk somebody through your pitch deck in five minutes and at least give them enough information so that it's like a teaser. You're never going to give them all the information in five minutes and that's not the point. The point is to give people enough information to want to sit down and learn more because if you're going out initially and you're just Trying to get people's attention, trying to get their attention with 60 minutes worth of content and like 35 slide deck is not going to get their attention. What could get their attention though is a 3-4 minute video of you explaining what your company does and why you're doing

[00:30:38] Jessi: it. Yeah, that's a great tip. I'm a huge loom lover uh, user, such a good tool. So, um, so yeah, that's, that's a super interesting tip and on the, in the, you know, pitch deck or out reach also, you know, since since there's so many pitches that investors reviewing or groups reviewing, any advice about kind of like not bearing the lead or like to help, you know, to help make the most important information more clearly accessible and any examples that you have.

[00:31:08] Marcia: Yeah, yeah, don't bury the lead. It's a good point that you just made. Um, like at one point I remember I was, this was a while ago, but I was listening to to a pitch and they probably had maybe seven or 10 minutes that they could pitch. And so I'm sitting there and listening, it was a good four or five minutes into the pitch that they mentioned that they had like a really big contract that they just signed with some big company like walmart or Target or something like that. And I was like, oh, and then I'm sitting there thinking to myself, I wish I would have paid a little bit more attention for the last four or five minutes? I was more thinking about like what's for lunch and you know those types of things? And now I was like, oh my gosh, you know, why, why did they wait so long to give, you know, this really big piece of information? So I would start with some of the really big hot things that are happening with the company and then get into, you know, the details, but usually a good pitch deck will start with, what problem are you solving and how are you solving it? And you don't want to be a solution in search of a problem. You want to have an actually big, really big, hairy, audacious, terrible problem that you're solving and then you can help find the solution.

[00:32:21] Jessi: Yeah, that's, I think that's super. That's really helpful perspective to here too because I think when, when you're in it day to day and it's your brand, it feels very important and it is very important. It's your life. But when you're reaching out to other people, you're seeing hundreds, maybe thousands of deals and you, you can't, you can't give them all, you can't read all the details of everyone or there'd be no time left in a day. You would need some sort of time turner or something. So making it easy for people to see, see if they want to learn more and go into more detail and see if it's a, it's a fit. That's, that's very

[00:32:57] Marcia: helpful.

[00:32:58] Jessi: Um, also in in general, are angel investors when you're working with an angel investor, are you usually, is there going to be a board of directors involved or angel investors sometimes going to sit on the board or forming a board of directors as part of a, as an early round, I'm curious about that piece.

[00:33:16] Marcia: Yes, that's a big part of it. And if you want to know more about that, you should check out Barbara Barbara Clark's book and I'll give you the link when we are done here. But you wrote a whole book about building your business through building your board and knowing your board. And it is super important, especially at the earliest of stages, because you need those people to be helping you. You should not look at them as like the enemy or that they could potentially fire you or anything like that. It's more about putting the right people with the right balance on the board of the things that you need. So, um, the really good startup founders that I've seen have looked at what they needed as far as board members and put together a right mix. Usually at the earliest of stages, it's the founder, maybe one other person from the company and an investor. And then when you get into like a series a round or maybe a tiny bit bigger, but you're still pretty small, you might have a five person board, then two people from the company to people and um, representing investors and then one person who is a, like an independent or somebody that would be almost super specific to the industry that you're in.

[00:34:32] Jessi: Yeah. And when you sit on the board of a company, what, how, like how do you view your role, what do you think about when you're sitting on a board or staying in touch with with a company that you've invested in?

[00:34:44] Marcia: Okay, so there's three things, the only three things that a board member should ever worry about at every single board meeting. Number one and I'll go in order of least importance to most importance. Number one. Do you need to change out any of the management team, including the Ceo? Do you need to fire the Ceo? That's one thing you need to be thinking about number 21 and what and how are you going to exit this company? It should be talked about at every board meeting, whether it's you think an exit is going to happen in 10 minutes or 10 years and the number one most important thing that any board member should be dealing with at any given time is making sure that that company does not run out of money.

[00:35:21] Jessi: Yeah, that's very helpful

[00:35:23] Marcia: because it is not like being on the board of a public company, It's not like being on the board of an established company. It is literally like being on the board of something that is just going crazy all the time because that's the way startups are. It's just, it's a constant craziness and it's really important that the Ceo and the board have a good relationship and that the Ceo feels comfortable to be able to say, hey, this is happy that's happening and they also, the Ceo also needs to take direction from the board if they're saying, hey, you know what, it seems like your burn rates too high, you've hired too many people or you haven't hired enough people or you're not growing fast enough. All of those things, those are conversations that you should be having every step of the way.

[00:36:05] Jessi: Yeah. Is there anything that you really like to see or, or even they could be things that you didn't like for, as far as staying in touch with companies that you've invested in, as far as like regular updates. You know, whether or not you're on the board, but just kind of any best practices for keeping your investors up to date with what's going on. You kind of mentioned like some the importance of transparency and being able to share, really what's going on. But wondering what that can kind of like practically look like if there's good cadences or you know, just things that you've seen that you're like, oh, I really like staying in touch with, you know, a company when they do X, y, z.

[00:36:41] Marcia: Yeah, that's a really, really, really good point. So the worst thing that a founder can do is only give up dates around the time when they're looking for money because angels know that investors know that they know that you're only being nice because you're waiting for the next check. The best founders I've seen are the ones who communicate at a minimum on a quarterly basis and it doesn't have to be a lot. It literally, if at the end, the best I've ever seen is where there was one founder in particular. He was really, really good at the end of every month. I think what he did was he actually would keep like a running, um, like open draft of an email and any time something happened during the month, he would just write a line about what happened. And he would send that to the investors at the end of every month. And it got to a point where people weren't questioning, well, wait a minute. We haven't heard from Company X for a while. Why is that? Oh, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, here comes Company X. They want more money. All of a sudden we're hearing from them. If if I have to start to think to myself, I wonder what's going on with that company. I haven't heard from you enough because I should be hearing regularly about at least quarterly about what you're doing and where you are with cash when you think you need to raise again and what milestones if you hit. Yeah,

[00:38:02] Jessi: that's, that's very helpful. And to know that I like the tip of just like even the running email. Like it doesn't have to be complicated and fancy. Yeah, people

[00:38:11] Marcia: are like, oh, I have to do newsletter. I have to do this big update letter. I have to like put all these financials together. I mean that would be great, but but at the end of the day we get an entrepreneur's life is crazy life. And so being able to just keep communicating and keep those um those communication channels open because you know what, you're always fundraising, even if you're not fundraising, you're always fundraising. So you want to make sure that you're keeping all of your investors informed is going to make your life a whole lot easier down the road if you want to, you know, open another round later on. I'm

[00:38:45] Jessi: also wondering about like resources since since you are with an organization that has, has developed and has so many resources, both for angel investors and for entrepreneurs. I constantly and sending people to the entrepreneur Knowledge center center on the A. C a website, but I'm curious about, you know, if a founder, if you're raising money for the first time or even if you've raised an early fund and you're trying to just kind of, you know, you're trying to figure it out. Like should I do a priced round or convertible note or you know, just trying to kind of get the lay of the land, understand, you know, even whether to raise like what resources do you tend to point entrepreneurs to that are thinking about fundraising or in the midst of fundraising?

[00:39:26] Marcia: Well, we could do a whole podcast episode on whether do a price round or convertible note for safe. Um, we've had a couple of those, we have a couple of podcasts or a couple webinars at the A. C. A. That have gone through that. Um, I think that's going to be my next rap battle to all do a convertible note round. Um, but I really think it all depends on the company and if you are a startup company out there and you're pretty, pretty early and you don't have a lawyer that is an expert in startup law, stop everything you're doing right now and go get a lawyer who is a startup attorney. Do not use your friend's brother's sister who is a lawyer who just happened to help you out because she's in family law and she heard about startups before. No, no, no, no don't do that. I've, seeing too many people mess up how they form the company, how they develop the company. And even when they first start fundraising, it's going to be different for every company priced rounds, convertible notes. There are a lot of factors involved. It depends on the type of industry, the type of company. Like I said, we could do a whole episode on that. Um, but I think it's really, really important that you have a good relationship with an attorney who can help you think through what it means for your business.

[00:40:45] Jessi: Yeah, that's, that's a great, that's a really great tip and then yeah, there's so much just good how to info or breaks downs or you know, there's a lot of great information out there, like I said in the Knowledge center on the A. C a website, it's a super um super great place to start. But yeah, I love, I love the point about the attorney start start with their get everything set up right from the beginning.

[00:41:07] Marcia: I literally just had this conversation with this woman and she was like, well, you know, I um I don't remember what she had some kind of family issue and so she had this attorney that she was using and all of a sudden the attorney was creating documents from scratch and charging her all this money to create these documents that weren't even start up documents that would start up documents this particular person made? And I was like, oh my gosh, please don't do that because there are a ton of them that are already out there. I mean the Natural National Venture Capital Association has, you know, they have a whole set of series, a docs that you could use once you're at that point, there's resources of the Angel Capital Association, there are a lot of things out there that can help you where you do need to get an attorney involved, but it does not have to cost a ton of money,

[00:41:55] Jessi: right? Would you say that an attorney specific to like the industry would be helpful as well, like since, you know, for CPG or just startups

[00:42:04] Marcia: maybe, maybe. But I'm just saying like, for when you're starting your business, what you really need is a startup attorney.

[00:42:12] Jessi: Yeah, that's, that's very helpful. Um, and then as far as like finding and connect with investors, I liked your point earlier that, you know, basically you're always fundraising whether whether you know it or not, but if you are, if you think you're going to fundraise down the road or maybe you already are in the process of fundraising, how do you recommend connecting with potential investors and groups? You know, how do you, how do you kind of start that process? What does that look like? Or what do you recommend that that look like?

[00:42:40] Marcia: Well, especially if you're a CPG company, there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of things out there for crowd funding and I don't even mean that you have to start with equity crowdfunding, but if you have a really cool product or something that isn't even manufactured yet, but you have the concept, you could go on to Kickstarter. It's a great marketing play. It's like a great way to sell your product. You don't have to give any equity away. You could raise money. I mean, I've done Kickstarter things where they promised it and that I'd get it in like six months and I didn't have it for two years, you know, nobody cares. Like, I mean, maybe some people care, but like, I mean, people understand that your your growing business and you're trying something and they're taking the chance that you, you know, you might get to have this really cool thing down the road. There's that um people should check out start engine um you know, I was just talking to the ceo howard marks and he's really building something amazing over there and so people could get um finding that way um network with people, network with people in a way that before you actually start asking them for money, like I've literally had people send me linkedin messages that say I need $50,000 that's all it says. Um you know, I'm like uh no, okay. Um So yeah, so you have to really work on building a network with people before you need the funding, but there's there's a lot of things that you can do and a lot of avenues to start looking for that early so that you don't end up in like a panic and you're like, oh my gosh, I need funding and I don't know where to go.

[00:44:08] Jessi: Is it like I think you maybe, I've heard you say it before um and I don't remember where it comes from, but the like if you ask for um if you ask for money, you'll get advice. If you ask for advice, you might get money sort of thing,

[00:44:22] Marcia: right? I don't know who first said that either, but it's brilliant because it's true.

[00:44:26] Jessi: Yeah, Would you, would you say to is it important? Like, like in CPG to kind of look for groups or angels that have some expertise within your industry or you know, since on the advice note of reaching out and being like, oh, you, you have experience with, you know, I'm an energy bar, you had an energy bar Or you know, those kind of things, can those be good connection points as well? one

[00:44:50] Marcia: 100%. In fact, that's the first place I would go. Look, you want people that really care about what you're doing, understand what you're doing. They can open doors for you that you wouldn't get even with, like the most sophisticated, you know, super angel because they know your space, you know, you could have somebody who's super accomplished really wealthy who could write you a check, but they can't help you open a door, you know, to get into the industry where you need,

[00:45:15] Jessi: right? And if if you reach out to someone and they say no, but you know, or, or you know, you got advice and you're raising money, They say no, but maybe, you know, maybe it was not no forever. It was. Um, but like how do you recommend staying in touch with with people like that that you meet along the way, like, similar, like to kind of keeping people up to date. Like you would would an investor

[00:45:39] Marcia: the guy who I was talking about who did the email draft, he would actually send that, not just to his investor, but to the friends of, you know, the company he would call it. And um, he, he'd send that out now. He wouldn't put anything on there that was proprietary or you know, something that only investors should know. He'd send that in a different draft. But you know, for the most part, he was pretty transparent. He'd let anybody know that wanted to, what was going on with the company. More people hear from you and the more people see that you're actually doing things. I mean, you can't go on social media and say, I mean, you can under some rules, but again, get a good attorney that will explain the rules to you. Um, but you know, in a lot of cases, you can't just go onto social media, be like, hey, I'm fundraising, give me money. Um, that's kind of frowned upon by the sec. So, but what you can do is you can keep telling people about the milestones you're hitting with your company if you, you know, were featured in a magazine or because your, because your products really cool or you want an award or you got, you know, written up in an article. I mean, all of those things and just showing the consistency is letting people know, oh my gosh, I've seen you everywhere. I don't, I don't pretend I don't, I certainly don't look at myself as somebody who's like, really good with social media at all, but I've got people tagging me in things on linkedin and everywhere, and then I'll see somebody and they'll be like, hey, I see you all over social media. I'm like, really, like, I don't feel like I'm all over social media, but enough times that you're, you know, showing kind of what you're doing. People's perception is reality that that you're, you're out there, you're getting things done.

[00:47:14] Jessi: Yeah. We recently had all from aura bora on the podcast, talking a little bit about their fundraising journey and he was saying that he's had people that he's met and like for years that he just kept them on the email list and you know, maybe you'd, you'd answer a question, you correspond a little bit and then it's just years down the road that they're like, you know what I'm going to jump in on this round. I've seen what you've been doing over these years and now it makes sense for me.

[00:47:39] Marcia: That's exactly right. In fact, you know, I several of the companies that mind shift invested in, we've known the founder for years, sometimes 56 years before we made an investment. Yeah, that that

[00:47:51] Jessi: makes sense. Um Well I would love to, you know, tell us a little bit about your, your own podcast because I, like I said, I enjoy your podcast. I was listening to an episode yesterday. Um, so yeah, tell us a little bit about that.

[00:48:05] Marcia: So it's called the Angel next door. There's a lot of podcasts out there to help entrepreneurs and talk about entrepreneurship, but we don't get to hear a lot about how people became angels and why they are angels and then how they kind of fit into the ecosystem. So that's kind of what I'm trying to demystify. Um I would like it if everyone was an angel investor in some way, shape or form, whether it's by investing with money investing with time investing their expertise. There's a lot of ways that people can help startups and startups need a lot of help. You know, founders can be great at their big idea, but sometimes they're not so great at the business part. Sorry. Um but you know, they need help in a lot of ways. So what I'm trying to do is get people to know more about this, get to know how they can help um founders, how they can get more connected, especially women, people of color were not going to change the amount of funding the abysmal amount of funding that goes to underrepresented founders until we get more people sitting at the table writing the checks

[00:49:05] Jessi: and on that. Um I think you're also um invoice involved with like the Next wave impact group and ceo can you talk about a couple of those organizations as well.

[00:49:15] Marcia: Sure. So next wave impact fund is a fund that was put together to invest in impact companies meaning helping people in the planet. Um and we were a group of women who came together and pooled our money in order to invest and we invested in 15 companies. We've had three exits already, which has been amazing. Um and yeah, and there's a lot of companies that are doing just amazingly well. So that's a great um great example of a good success story of people coming together and really looking at a cause and getting a financial return, which is a big deal. I really have kind of a hesitancy towards using the word impact sometimes because people think impact means um charity and it's not, it means impact, it means they're doing something big and awesome and so to show that we can make an impact and we can get a return to me, it's a huge deal and um we've been able to do that at Next wave. Alicia rob, put the fun together and it's just been incredible. Um and then um Ceo is a little different. She is a non profit. They have people who come and they donate money and then what they do is they lend out the money at a 0% interest rate to companies, but also super, super cool concept.

[00:50:32] Jessi: Yeah, yeah, very cool. Again, love, love seeing the, the way that you're living out investing in the change you want to see in the world. So that's, those are super cool organizations to check out

[00:50:42] Marcia: totally

[00:50:43] Jessi: anything else you want to share on. Um yeah, about the Angel Capital Association or anything that that we, that we missed.

[00:50:52] Marcia: Well, anybody who's interested in education or learning more about angel investing, we are going to be having a um a demystifying angel investing webinar. It'll be on december 15th at noon Eastern time. You can find out more information on the Angel Capital Association dot com website. Um If you're listening to this after the 15th of december 2022 that's okay too. You can still go on to the Angel Capital Association's website and you can get a link and watch that webinar. It is free. We do have other webinars and other education things, those are paid, but definitely a ton of information within the Angel Capital Association that encourage everybody entrepreneurs. Angels, anybody can check out and get a ton of information and then, yeah, I think you've hit all my hot buttons. I really think that people need to know more about what what angels do, what entrepreneurs do, of course, because angels wouldn't even be necessary for entrepreneurs weren't around. Um and really just getting to know about the super cool things that are happening in the world. I worked in court America for about 16, 17 years and I was fascinated when I started to go to Angel meetings and learn about the different innovations happening right in my own backyard. So I encourage everybody to just check it out and nowadays you can just do it on your phone. You can go to a, you go to start [engine.com](http://engine.com/) or any of these crowdfunding equity crowdfunding platforms or even Kickstarter and learn about some really cool things that are going on.

[00:52:24] Jessi: Yeah, it's so incredible. So well, thank you so much, Marcia. This was the delightful you shared so much amazing wisdom and I'm so excited to share this episode with our community and just really, really appreciate your time. And then also just all you do in the world for the startup community, for the angel investing community. So so glad that, you know, you could sit down with me and drink some uproot t together and and

[00:52:49] Marcia: yeah,

[00:52:49] Jessi: cheers.

[00:52:51] Marcia: Thanks Jessi.

[00:52:52] Jessi: Don't head out just yet. Keep listening for a mini interview with Cindy lee, founder and Ceo of approve. You won't want to miss learning out one of our amazing Shell Fie award winners who is making change in the T world. Hi Cindy, welcome to the show today. So excited to have you here. How are you?

[00:53:10] Cindy: Hi Jessi. Thanks for having me. I'm good. I'm just sipping my morning peppermint tea, having a cozy morning and excited to chat today.

[00:53:19] Jessi: Yeah, I'm so excited to chat with you. It's nice to see you again. I got to meet you in real life at Expo West in the organic tent with it was so fun and that's where I first got to try your teas and this morning I'm drinking chamomile in my bay max mug from Disney world. So

[00:53:37] Cindy: I love that. I love that.

[00:53:40] Jessi: I am a huge fan of all of your teas. I think my current, my current, my favorites change, but I think again my cha is currently probably my go to, but I love them, I love them all. So it's just, I love having

[00:53:56] Cindy: and

[00:53:56] Jessi: like I am just such a like t nerd, so it's such an honor to get to talk to someone that's a T EO and like, you know someone that like loves and knows about T like like yeah, I'm just a, you know a geek here for all the tea, the tea

[00:54:11] Cindy: knowledge. I'm so happy to get to talk to you as well because you know, a lot of people will tell me what their favorite of my teases and for some reason not to many people say that again, Micah is their favorite. Um and I think it's one that is so special and underrated, especially in the US. I think you know everyone knows black tea. Green tea is kind of having its moment in urban cafes, but to, I feel like is on the up and up. So I think you're early on the trend here.

[00:54:45] Jessi: Nice. I, I feel cool. I'll do my part to spread the word that it's, it's

[00:54:51] Cindy: delicious,

[00:54:53] Jessi: awesome. Well can you tell us a little bit about, you know the story behind starting up rooty?

[00:54:59] Cindy: Absolutely. Um so before the pandemic I was working in san Francisco as a management consultant at being in company, working mostly with large tech companies and private equity companies. And I had always sort of known during my time there that while it was a great place for me to be learning a lot of foundational busin skills, it wasn't necessarily where I saw myself staying for the long term and I had always wanted to do something a bit more entrepreneurial. So during the pandemic I decided to shake my life up a little bit by moving to a new state, quitting my job, just kind of changing a lot of things in my life all at the same time. And I really started spending time thinking back to what some of my interests were before I was a concern and I thought back to a research paper that I had done back in undergrad, I had majored in economics and I wrote my senior economics paper about the global commodity t trade and at the time it was kind of a half fun project, half just getting to know the background of this commodity product that I had loved my entire life coming from chinese immigrant family, my parents used to bring bags full of loose leaf tea from china to our home in Los Angeles every time they went back to their home country um And I just thought it was so funny that whenever I went to grocery stores or cafes and restaurants, they don't really serve loose leaf tea unless you're going somewhere like a high tea, very fancy posh type of place. Um But there wasn't as much uh loose leaf tea culture um in the in the kind of so same environment that I saw whenever I went to visit china which is just a place to you know a tea house as a place for people to just connect to just slow down with each other and just share a warm beverage. It could be very casual, it could be very long. Um And so I thought that was just really interesting when I was choosing that topic for this economics paper and I was really surprised to find out that there's this long interesting history of um the global commodity t. Trade being set up and the whole supply chain was something that I was fascinated to learn about and just the fact that the T. Crop passed through hundreds of people's hands before it finally got to the consumer and that the price of tea wasn't determined by the farmer, the person growing and producing it, but rather by global auction houses and then distributors and exporters and importers. And I just thought that you know there was must be a way to get consumers t that was not only fresher and better quality but also had a more traceable supply chain so that consumers could learn more about where exactly their t is coming from. And um you know during this time of living in san Francisco working as a consultant, I actually got very involved in my farmers market communities, I started volunteering for farmers markets, just packing curbside veggie boxes during Covid and I got to know a bunch of the small food vendors at the farmers markets and kind of getting into the sf scene of artisanal, you know, single origin goods, whether that's things like chocolate or coffee. And I just saw all of these really interesting business models where they were doing something that was more direct trade with the farmers and producers and there's a lot more traceability and transparency in the supply chains and not only is that, you know, a good ethics, but also it makes the consumer so much more engaged in the stories of the brand and where the products are coming from. And I thought that was so cool, so going back to than you know, deciding to uproot my life pun kind of intended. I then was like okay, I was so interested in this t research I had done before, why don't I try to take it one step further and see what it's really like to to be a tea farmer and I decided to go work on a tea farm for a month in Hawaii and I was on Maui working with a really really small family owned sustainable regenerative farm. And it was really cool to learn not only about the whole process of producing t um that was just mind blowing to learn more about. Was also really cool to see what does it mean to be a sustainable farm in this day and age and what are all of the inputs and all of the things required to grow tea sustainably. Um And that that was so inspiring. And it was during that month long stay on this farm that I decided to start a protease where I wanted to work with farmers like the ones that I was with in Hawaii um to get consumers really really high quality tea and also empower farmers to continue growing sustainably and telling their stories.

[01:00:12] Jessi: Oh that's amazing. And so all of your teas are single origin correct,

[01:00:18] Cindy: correct. Yes.

[01:00:19] Jessi: Yeah. That's so cool. So how did you, did you launch with a T. That was from that the farm that you went to first then. How did you find the other farms to connect with?

[01:00:30] Cindy: Yeah, that's a great question. So now I have three amazing farm partners. The first one is a farm in Hawaii. That's where our McKay black tea is from. And I knew I wanted to launch with uh simple yet nice variety of teas that I could offer to any tea drinker. So I had in my mind that I wanted to start with some sort of black tea, green tea and an herbal or botanical tea. And so I already knew I wanted that specific black tea from Hawaii. It's one lots of T awards in in the past. As soon as I tried it, I was just like, I've never had black tea like this before. It's so multi and caramel and floral. It's amaze and if I try to imagine if someone has never had loose leaf tea before, what kind of experience do I want them to have? And I was like this black tea is it? Um And then so for the green tea, I actually got connected by the farmers in Hawaii to one of their friends in kyoto japan who has tea farm there and he specializes in very classic japanese green teas. So the sentia is what I ended up going with. It's just such a delicate, very much wild but also a bit earthy green team. So I wanted to launch with that one as well and then I wanted to find a farm that could supply me with herbals and botanical teas. I went to college in new Hampshire and when I was there I had volunteered on an organic farm. So I was a bit familiar with the different farms in the area and what they specialized in. And I had actually always heard of a farm in Vermont just across the Connecticut. Um and how amazing their camomile blossoms were we, which is what you're drinking now and I just thought it was so cool that this farm specializes in Holcomb rommel blossoms rather than grinding up the flour just because I think, you know, so many people have had chamomile tea before, but most of the time it comes in a tea bag or it's really finely ground. So you never actually get to see the flowers themselves and see what they look like. And I also just think with the whole blossoms when you open the pouch and smell them, you just get punched with this. So we apple smell and it's so, so amazing. So I yeah, that's how I decided to launch with those three teas and those three farms as well.

[01:02:51] Jessi: That's amazing. Yeah, it's, I I love seeing the whole flowers and like these are just like there's so high quality and like there's just there's no comparison to drinking like a bag t that you get at the grocery store chamomile to this. Like it's a completely different experience. Like if you like that at the store, this is going to blow your,

[01:03:11] Cindy: you're going to be

[01:03:13] Jessi: like, this is the greatest thing ever because yeah, and then it's a multi layered experience because you get to see the flowers, they're beautiful, you get that smell and then you're steeping them and then the tea itself is just so good. So

[01:03:24] Cindy: yeah, exactly. I love showing people the multi sensory experience that you can have with tea and actually in a lot of my life, whether it's virtual or in person tea tastings or tea workshops that I do, I always typically walk people through a a sensory experience through the five senses and we talk about for seeing the tea leaves or flowers and then the smell and then watching the water infused through all of the tea leaves. And I think one really magical moment for most people and experiencing loose leaf tea for the first time is then getting to taste and smell the flavor profile change a little bit once you re steep it a second time or a third time or fourth time. And that's something that you just can't get out of a tea bag because with tea bag tea typically you're getting either broken bits or tea dust which inherently there's nothing wrong with. But the downside is that you won't get as many re steeps out of it because there just isn't enough surface area for the hot water to penetrate. But with loose leaf tea you're typically getting a fuller flower, a fuller tea leaf. And so the options for the number of re steeps just increase and it's just such an experience to go through all of those. And I think when people first learned about it, their minds are blown and it's so fun to be part of that.

[01:04:50] Jessi: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's amazing. And when I, when I had, when I kind of like switched to loose leaf tea was just it was such a game changer. Like I went from being someone that like kind of like t to being borderline obsessed with tea and having a look in my house. So you know like really really

[01:05:08] Cindy: changed the same and I think it's always so funny because you know there are so many more people in the US now who are really into specialty coffee and it's been so inspiring actually from a tea lovers perspective to watch this third wave coffee movement and watch that accelerate during the pandemic as well where a lot of people got really into you know home cafe and making the perfect latte at home and having all these tools and gadgets and getting really into single origin, beans and space the kinds of roasts and all of that and I really think there is a opportunity for t to take the same sort of cultural nuance to that level. Um and there are tons of cool T gadgets that you can have, there are tons of different roasts of tea that you can get into different, you know origins and so I'm quite excited because I think we're on the precipice of that for t.

[01:06:06] Jessi: Yeah, I think so. I think so too and when you launched I think you sold out very quickly right, can you tell us a little bit about that.

[01:06:14] Cindy: Yes, absolutely. So I launched December of last year, so we're kidding just about little one year mark soon and it was such a in hindsight, you know, I didn't necessarily plan to launch in December, I wanted to launch earlier, but as you know things just get pushed back. So I ended up launching one December 2021 and it it was such a great time because not only were we entering holiday season, but you know, the colder weather t is a pretty seasonal product. Um and you know, who doesn't like getting gifted t. So we sold out of two out of the three types of teas that we launched with um within the first two weeks. And so luckily you know it was right before I was fulfilling all of the holiday orders. So we got I'm shipped out and then kind of had to regroup. I had to chat with all of my farm partners and try to predict what my inventory needs. We're going to be for the next couple of months, but that was really exciting and really, really validating and I didn't expect that to happen but I'm really happy. It did.

[01:07:22] Jessi: Yeah, that's amazing. And I'm also wondering if you can tell us a little bit about the packaging because the packaging is compostable, It says right on it, I'm worm food, which I love Yeah, tell us a little bit about finding that packaging and choosing that and

[01:07:37] Cindy: yeah, so one of the things that was really important to me was the compost ability of the packaging. I just personally care very deeply about veering away from single use plastics as much as possible. And I think I'm lucky in terms of having a product that is very shelf stable, it's dry, it's lightweight, it's really easy. And so I, I think a lot of other product types don't have the luxury of going outside of plastics. But since I had the option, I definitely wanted to do something that was compostable. And the reason, you know, I also had considered materials that were recyclable versus compostable and ended up going with compostable because I figured even if someone didn't have municipal composting in their area, even if they ended up putting this in the landfill, it would still degrade much faster than you know, anything else in the trash. And so I was comfortable with that. Whereas something that's recyclable may not biodegrade in a reasonable amount of time. So I wanted to do something compostable and then I just did a lot of research on, you know, what are the differences between backyard and home compostable versus industrial compostable. So I decided I wanted something that was backyard and home compostable to make it really easy and accessible for everyone and I am so happy, I found um I found these amazing pouch partner pouch manufacturing partners, they're called. Elevate packaging. I actually also got to meet some of those guys at expo west. They stopped by my table at fresh ideas as well. So it was really cool to get to meet them in person. And I, yeah, I love their packaging. I've tested composting it in my own home compost and can guarantee that it works. So um, yeah, I'm just really, really happy that I have been accessible option like them.

[01:09:42] Jessi: Yeah, that's amazing. And what should we be looking out for coming up next year with a protease in 2023. Anything that you're excited about, even if you can't share my, maybe all the details yet or Yeah, just what are you thinking about and what should we, what should we look out for on the horizon?

[01:10:01] Cindy: Yeah, absolutely. There are so many things I'm really excited about now that I have one year of actually being in operations under my belt. I feel like I've ironed out some of the kinks from the beginning, hopefully. Um, but I am really excited to be launching new teas with my current farm partners and just expand the product line. So um, just a couple of months ago, um we had launched two additional teas with our japanese foreign partner. Um that's again, make a, that you mentioned before and the hoagy to, and we also launched a peppermint leaf tea with our Vermont Farm partner and I'm excited to go back to my farm partner in Hawaii and figure out what are some good additional products that we can launch with them and just really building out a robust product line with these three existing farm partners first? Um Eventually I would love to expand to have more farm partners but you know, as you know supply chain is a tough one and so each additional farm that I added a whole new supply chain. Um so for now we're going to be working with our and supporting our three existing farm partners and just expanding the product lines and I'm excited to be putting together um more of an experience kit um where you know, the idea is that you can choose to purchase a kit that's for one or a kit that's to share with friends and family. So the kit that's for one would come with a really cute mug, a strain a selection of teas um and probably you know, scooping spoon and all of that would just be like beautifully branded and all tied together and then the t the kip to share would come with its own little teapot or oppress, you know, some sort of device that could hold a lot of tea when you're making a lot at once as well as several different mugs or cups um and then a selection of teas as well. And so I'm really excited, I just love the customer unboxing experience and opening and seeing something so beautiful that makes people really excited to incorporate this into either their daily routine or a special experience. And so that is something we'll definitely be working on in 2023.

[01:12:24] Jessi: Amazing. And are you going to be mostly focused on e commerce? Are you going to be doing some retail expansion as well?

[01:12:31] Cindy: Yeah, great question. Um the plan is to focus mostly on e commerce still, although we do have a wonderful array of 20 ish um retail partners right now, but I think it's just been so, so helpful to get that data and immediate feedback from customers through e commerce um that I would love to continue focusing not on that in 2023.

[01:12:55] Jessi: Yeah, that's amazing. And you sent me one of your lovely strainers and oh my gosh, I have so many tea strainers and I think it might be my new favorite, like it's so easy to clean so fine. You don't have any like extra dregs in the bottom like Yeah, I really love it. It's the perfect size. So yeah, I can't wait to see the kits you come up with. That's going to be amazing.

[01:13:20] Cindy: Thank you so much. I do love that strainer a lot. And you know, I get a lot of questions about what are the best advice is to use too steep loose leaf tea and I think the shape of a strainer basket that we have is perfect because it's enough room to allow for the tea leaves to actually expand in the water? I really suggest that over, you know, the, the medicine ball type of um steep ear's because they kind of just don't give the tea leaves enough room to really let all of the flavor out. So I, yeah, I love art.

[01:13:52] Jessi: Amazing. Well I could talk with you about tea all day, but we should wrap it up here for this particular segment, but I'm so glad that you came on the show today. So grateful for you sharing your tea with me and sharing more of your story and just excited to keep cheering you on at startup C b G and continue to see a protease growth. So thanks so much.

[01:14:15] Cindy: Amazing. Thank you so much, Jessi. Thanks for having me

[01:14:18] Jessi: learn more about uproot teas. Go to uproot T S dot com or follow uproot dot t s on instagram. Cindy also created a special discount code just for our listeners. So use code Startup CPG at checkout for 10% off your order on her website.