YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeremy Andrus

lines on the record: 93
first: 2022-07-04
most recent: 2022-07-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Eight, eight and a half years later to ten times that size. You know, we still sell a woodpelled grill. Granted, it's a better one. What is the difference? The difference is it's people and culture and you kind of have to say those things in one breath.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Being here, it's not working. So here's what we're going to do. And that was like this burden lifted. This burden lifted. We said we're going to build a new team, which we did. We built a new team in Utah only because this is where I lived and I built Skull Canty here. So I knew people. And I needed to build a team fast. It's a really interesting case study, I think. And, you know, we all say that we believe in culture, but I think organizations fail to do it well. And I never really seen the impact of culture because, you know, a startup, you have so many variables. You have product, market fit, you have team, you have financing, competition. But this is a case where 27 years to 75 million dollars.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's when I said we're going to change the people. We're going to change out the people because we can't change the people. And that was a unique moment. And that was very clear to me. When the truck was burning down and I'm in the bat, I'm in the locked bathroom washing my face with cold water and just looking in the mirror and saying, number one, I don't have to do this. I do this because I love it and I hate it. And I've paid off the Subaru and my mortgage. So I don't need to put food on the table. And I feel for my life right now. And that's when I said, we're going to start over. And it took me a few weeks to sort of formulate the plan. And it took us, you know, 12 months to execute it. But I remember the moments I stood in front of the team in Oregon and said, you know what? This isn't working. When trucks are burning down in the parking lot and you're unhappy.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm done. I can't do this. I can't get anyone to think differently. There's too much inert in this culture. They don't respect me. They don't aspire. And they're not respecting me. Like neither here nor there. But they had no desire to change. And I realized that, you know what? Human beings don't change that much. They just, like, we kind of are who we are.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And really determining through a lot of conversation and thought, what is the vision of our business and what are the cultural values that align with that and really help us build a team based around cultural values and like inform how we think about the future? I failed miserably. I mean, like, I didn't make any progress. And, you know, people, I was very passive aggressive place where people were sort of respectful to my face and really, really spoke negatively behind my back. It was scary. It was this moment of a truck burning down that I said.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. You know what? It was the answer I eventually came up with. But, you know, it was, I would say, first of all, when you build your career in startups, you take for granted the fact that culture is built very organically. It's built by the people you hire and how you behave and how you model your cultural values. I got into Traeger and very quickly I would show up and feel sick to my stomach. I mean, like how people treated me, how I saw other people work together and treat each other. And so I had tried to change the culture, you know, pre-buying the rest of the business. And I just couldn't do it because no one viewed me as like really being in charge, as CEO but minority shareholder. After we bought the business in June of 14, I really set out to change the culture. I was very deliberate.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I say what a journey. I haven't loved every moment, but I appreciate how each of those moments have contributed to who I am today. And by the way, I'm halfway down with my journey and I'm looking at the next 15 or 20 years and saying I'm better equipped than I was when that truck was burning down, better equipped than when I saw my first pair of skull candy headphones get purchased at retail. So this journey is, it's remarkable and it's definitely, it is not for the faint of heart.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very respectful will pay you severance. You can look for a job on our dime for the next eight weeks, all sorts of things that we thought were the right thing to do to good human beings. This wasn't their fault. Next time we go back to the office, one of our 18 wheel rigs is up in flames. And it was like halfway melted downstoned fuel. And moments like this, being an entrepreneur is like, it's wacky. No one really ever prepares you for moments that you can't anticipate like this. And there are moments where I said, boy, if this doesn't break me, then at least there's a good story. I don't know if there's a good outcome, but there's a good story. And I just sort of look back and...”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm like, hold on a second. This is like Bill Marriott starting another hotel company and writing the name Marriott on the top, like name the brand. You can't just take your name anywhere and compete. And so we sued, we won. He can no longer do that. But back to one of your earlier questions, which is, I fortunately had real stability in my partnership with my financial partner because there has been so much drama along the way. I mean, this moment that you describe of, you know, this incident of arson, I've never heard of anything like it. We're three months from having bought the business. You know, we had decided to outsource our fulfillment and distribution because it just didn't scale the way that it was configured. They had a stand-up meeting with the warehouse team and said, hey, look, this is where we're going.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bought the partner out. So my private equity fund and I bought the owner, the entrepreneur owner, who was the second owner of the business. Then we got on the inside and we sort of said, holy crap, there's a lot of dysfunction here. Then we got the opportunity to rebuild the business. And it was complicated and it was hard and it was a toxic place. And just as this thing is starting to go well, the founder of the business, Joe Traeger, who had sold it ten years before, joins another grill brand, and they start putting his name on the grills. I mean, like on the collateral, on the grills.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Within weeks this was a disaster. The partner to remain nameless, he was a hard partner. And we saw the world very, very differently. And I got a few months into it, and I just said, I can't build a great business as a minority partner with these constraints. And so things came to a head. It got very spirited. Very quickly, and you know, there was some conversations that sort of knocked me off my horse a few times. And we bought the business a few months later.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So we actually bought the business from an entrepreneur who bought it from the founder, a phenomenal entrepreneur, bought a bank when he was 18 years old, moved to Hollywood, produced the fugitive, founded Planet Hollywood, Terminator, like really, really interesting entrepreneur. So he bought it from Joe Traeger, who's the founder. We bought it from this guy. And we initially made a minority investment. And I had written a check for an eight-figure check that I pulled out of my skull candy experience. And by the way, I didn't have two nickels to rub together when I co-founded Skull Candy. Fortunately, I married a woman who made good money and put it down payment on a house, but so we took this hard-earned money from Skull Candy and we parlayed it into Traeger with my private equity partner. We bought 48% of the business. And I knew with...”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So you take over the company as CEO, you wrote a story for Harvard Business Review where there was an arson at one of your shipping facilities that spurred you to reset the company, move it to Utah out of Oregon. You ended up in a lawsuit with one of the founders whose last name was Traeger because they had gone on to make a grill for a competitor and it was marketed as designed by Traeger. But you had bought the rights to that name.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He came out to visit and he said I got to know you at a conference. I kind of fell in love with your product. The firm bought me a grill. I started cooking. I fell in love with it. And I'm sort of rolling my eyes, not visibly saying. And you know what? Truth is he actually fell in love with the product. Like, this is a guy who had never cooked and fell in love with it. And so not only does it help them appreciate the business in doing the right things for the business, but it helps them understand where and how to be helpful because they're actually consumers of your product. And so I do think that's a big deal.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's why you become an entrepreneur. It's like, you don't want to be employed and work for your W2 air every other week. You want to make decisions and build something special. But when you partner with someone who genuinely cares about your success and recognizes that you built a business and so they're betting on you, not financial structure and stuff like that. And they respect you as an operator and they believe in true partnership. That's the difference. And so I would say the funds that I've partnered with, they've been incredible partners and they've actually become very good friends. The second thing I would say is they actually do really appreciate this business. And they cook a lot. And I remember when this guy James Ho, who's the lead director from AA on this deal.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's actually really interesting question. I would say a couple of things number one when you become an entrepreneur, you don't realize until you've had a not so good financial partner that you're actually getting a boss.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think that this is all made easier because your partners had Traeger Girls and they were like happy with the pro like there's like a part of this to me that's like they all had the product and the product is real to them”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“AA doesn't view the world that way. They said, you can't deposit IRR in the bank. You deposit cash in the bank, the return. And so they didn't come in and say, we got to flip this thing fast. They said, let's do the right thing for this business. That's where value is created. And so I think who you partner with really matters because I've seen some tough stories and tough outcomes for the operators who sort of came in and said, we're going to take a big swing and we want to generate some wealth for our families as the financial partner, you've got this portfolio of risk. As an operator, you have a portfolio of one.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a Coinbook. Look, here's what I will say. I think the greatest determiner of outcome, of course, you've got to buy a good business and you need a good management team. The quality of your private equity partner matters so much. And I've learned that and I've had multiple private equity partners as an operator. I've sat on boards as an independent with other private equity partners. And I have incredible private equity partners, starting with the first one I partner with nine years ago, Trilantic. They were awesome. We worked together through it, brought in a group called AA, the world's best partners who actually care about the business. And interestingly, unlike most private equity funds where it's all IRR. So it's not just getting a return, but how fast can you get a return?”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so it's something that we've really focused on even when we felt like leverage was high. It's like we got to navigate this. This is a financial piece that we've got to navigate, but we need to make sure that we stay focused on building something great long-term. But it's, you know, the model is... You know, oftentimes it works out, oftentimes it doesn't.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We learn to run the business that way. And I will say that debt is a really interesting disciplinarian. We had to manage to covenants and the leverage was high. And so you've got to really figure out how you get a return on what you invest in the business. But look, you do see businesses run into issues. Businesses don't go up into the right year after year after year. Over time, good businesses do, but they tend to do it in fits and starts and unpredictably. And when you over lever a business, particularly one that's intended to grow and growth is not predictable, you can find yourself spending more time thinking about balance sheet and liquidity and like, I'm going to keep the lights on than actually thinking about consumer and product and growth.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It does. Do you Do you know what, honestly? It can be a very challenging model. And my experience was we put debt on the business when we sold two-thirds of it. And the business, we had some challenges the year after. Our margins got hit. We had low cost competition that we had to figure out how to position around. We went from having, let's say, a very healthy amount of leverage to a very painful amount of leverage”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I got to know at 13, became the CEO in January 14, bought the rest of the business in June of 14. We sold two-thirds of it in 2017. We took it public a year ago. And for me, these transactional moments, they just don't mean anything to me anymore. Now, I know they mean something to my investors and to my team, so that's important, but I'm here. Like this is the last thing I will do because I have so much passion for what we're building. I'm not sure why or how I would find the passion somewhere else.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember sitting with my private equity partner that I initially nine years ago and I said, hey, look, I've got real PTSD having run a public company where everything's about the quarter. And that's a really hard way to build a long-term business. And I have this belief that you can't even build a business the right way within a private equity holding period like three to three, four, five years. You've got to make investments and do the right thing every day. And I said, we're going to invest beyond your three to five years. We're going to build something great that lasts forever. But my intent was to build and sell it. And I got into it and I fell in love with it. And I said, I never need to have another job. You know, it's like the grass beneath my feet is so green. It's always a struggle. But I like our issues and I like where we're taking the business.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Their backyards with their families, on their cul de sacs with their neighbors, those two things I came to love far more than just building a business. And I kind of came into it thinking, we're going to build a business and sell it.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do and you know what? At first it wasn't the P&L, it wasn't the balance sheet. What I loved was the passion because as I'm a student of Grey Brands, I'm learning every single day. And I look back and I realize how little I knew then. But I felt compelled by the passion. Now, what happened is I got on the inside is there were two things that have really fueled me well beyond a private equity lifecycle. Nine years this month. The one was that I fell in love with cooking. And this is really what Traeger, like I want people to fall in love with cooking because of the mission of the business. And that's the second piece I love. It's to bring people together to create a more flavorful world. And that mission is...”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got one done And so, you know what, it is a little bit of a needle in a haystack, and I really do consider myself incredibly fortunate that I not only found a business that had potential, but I found a business that I love and that speaks to me every single day.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Capital that's willing to invest, it's like you've got this funnel that gets so narrow at the bottom and the bottom is a deal that you know what it went well there was a lot to like and I did realize early on that like myself setting out to buy a business and sort of the classic search fund model had very low likelihood. It's like I wasn't a deal guy. I love to invest as a hobby but I wasn't a deal guy And I joined Solomir. And then I told Solomir I was like, look, don't pay me. Like I really respect those guys and they've become very good friends. But I said, I actually need a platform much broader than a single fund. And so I went out and I invested in a dozen other funds who were investing in the types of businesses that I wanted to buy. And suddenly there was a platform of a dozen funds who saw hundreds of deals every year. And I barely”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That should never have worked. I mean, it's like there was so much that had to go right. And it did. And we made a ton of mistakes along the way, even if we did something's right. And so I went into this process looking for a business to buy. And I said, this is what you do. You join a PE fund. You've got this captive check. You find a business. You buy the business. You run it, you sell it, and that's how these things go. And honestly, I will say that Traeger has exceeded my wildest expectations. And I look back at that process and I realize that it's actually as an operator. It's actually really hard to buy a business because you've got to find the right business, a business that you appreciate, a business that you're prepared to run, that you want to run. A business that needs a CEO, a business sets for sale”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, boy, you know, I got to tell you, it's funny how you look at things leading into this sort of a process or prospectively, I got lucky as an entrepreneur. You know, I connected with this guy that had founded a snowboard audio helmet brand called Skull Candy doing a few hundred thousand dollars in revenue. And I just said, this is awesome. We're going to build a business. And we built a $300 million business on $800,000 of equity. And that's just what you do, right? Well, I look back and I said,”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Smoke medium high, and there was no marketing department. So I said, if this passion can be built with this product, there's a solution here that has a lot of legs.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I was almost blind to all of the issues that existed in Traeger because I heard the passion and I said, it's not the industry I was looking for. I have no idea what the product is. I'm not a griller. My wife was the griller in the family if I were to be honest at the time And, you know, it was bigger than I was looking for. I was looking for a business doing, you know, 10, 20, 30 million dollars of revenue, found this one doing 70. And so it wasn't the profile I was looking for, but the passion that consumers had. It was not only fascinating to me, but there was passion for a product that was very rudimentary. It was like smoke medium high. You know, cooking is all about precision”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I honestly it rested in like a single criterion, a single thing that I found, and it was the passion. I believe there was a business to be built, and I saw sorts of opportunities. But what I've realized in consumer brands is that finding true product market fit, like true brand energy, is a really hard thing to do. And just having capital and being really methodical doesn't get you there. I mean, you look at some of the best brands in the world, a Nike or a Coke, you know, they'll spend money and launch something, have a go flat. And so there's great method, but there's also, you know, there's some synchronicity and some luck to sort of really connecting with the consumer. And it existed there. And yet it hadn't been scaled.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the company had been going on for a couple of decades there. You had been at Skull Candy. That company had gone public. You had left. You were doing private equity. You were looking for a company to buy and run. And you found Traeger beyond the elements of, okay, there's a great customer base. What were the elements of the business that attracted you to make the deal to acquire the company and come in as CEO?”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As society is more divisive and there's not time for food and food is calories, it's not experience. But I found these trader owners and I said there's like, I don't know what this is, but there's something really special here. And that's sort of how it started. And I came in late. I mean, Joe Traeger founded this thing in the mid-1980s. And I found it 2013.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thought of grilling and I just said, you know what? It's commoditized. It's boring. There's no money to be made here. And then I spent time with some Traeger owners. And I heard this undying passion that you just don't hear that often for any consumer product. I'm a passionate consumer of really great brands. And it was mind-blowing to me that I had never heard of this thing called Traeger. I had no idea what a woodpellet grill was. And I sat down with Traeger owners back in 2013, and I heard them say things like my Traeger changed my life. And that's sort of stopped me dead in my tracks. And I said, boy, I love food. I think food is really interesting as this sort of communal shared experience amongst humankind that's kind of been.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would say, first of all, I'm an entrepreneur. I love building businesses. I love, you know, I love product. Before Skull Canyon, I was actually developing hotels. And so I was not classically trained really to do anything except sort of find a business I had passion for and figure out how to build it. When I found Traeger, what was mesmerizing to me was the amount of passion that Traeger owners had for their Traeger. And it's sort of interesting to think of the history. I was more of an early stage startup entrepreneur. Trader was 27 years old when I met him. 27 years old based up in the Pacific Northwest, 70 million dollar brand, sort of a slow grower over time. Definitely not a space I was looking at. Yeah, I love lifestyle brands, interesting, disruptive categories.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is actually like a phenomenon in. Triggers went from a pretty small company to now they're a Traeger influencers. You run an influencer marketing campaign. I see grill tips on TikTok. You have a huge suite of new competitors. There are like artisan pellet grills now. But the story of Trigger is actually really complicated. The company was around for a long time. You were the CEO of Skull Candy, which is a headphones company. Which is how do you go from doing classic consumer tech like headphones to where we are with Trigger now?”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A space that's just lacked consumer innovation for decades and we brought something better and consumers are freaking out. They love it.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, a trader grill, it's a backyard grill that uses all natural hardwood pellets as both the fuel and the flavor. The pellets, interestingly, they're a byproduct of a different manufacturing operation. We set up sawmills and we take the dust that's left over. We compress them and make pellets. And at Traeger grill, what it really does is it gives you all of the benefits of cooking with wood, but it makes it easy. And so it's like you can go from zero to hero, king of the cul-de-sac being terrible at cooking and suddenly you get a Traeger, and not only do you become great at creating this delicious wood-fired food, but you love the process. And it's the journey of learning to love to cook and getting better. Traeger does that. And it's a disruptor. I mean, we view the outdoor cooking space as”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Episodes a little longer than usual, but it's a good one. Jeremy and I got really deep into the benefits and drawbacks of private equity taking over companies, about what it's like to run a public company, which he swore he'd never do again after he was the CEO of Skull Candy, and how he's managing a company that ships big, heavy hardware products through the supply chain crisis and looming recession. Jeremy was game for all of it. We really got into it. This episode goes places. All right, Jeremy Andres, the CEO of Traeger. Here we go Jeremy Andres, you're the CEO of Trigger Grills. Welcome to Decoder.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“House replacing most of the team and moving the company from Oregon to Utah. Since then Traeger has grown revenue by ten X and you'll hear Jeremy say he expects the company to close in on a billion dollars in revenue soon, but he still has all the challenges you'd expect of any modern company. Supply chain issues, figuring out how to grow recurring revenue, managing and expanding software division, and of course consumer behavior that's changing is one version of the pandemic seems to be ending and people are spending their money on travel instead of home goods.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today, I'm talking to Jeremy Andrews, the CEO of Traeger, which makes absolutely beloved wood pellet smokers with all sorts of features. High-end models even have cloud connectivity, so you can control them from your phone. Traeger also recently went public. The company says it will book between 800 and 850 million in revenue in 2022. Now the Traeger story is fascinating. The company had been around for 27 years and not growing very much when Jeremy bought it with the help of a private equity company and became the CEO. He had no previous background in the cooking market. He had previously been CEO of Skull Candy, the headphone brand, and as he'll tell you, his early run as CEO of Traeger was a bit of a nightmare, culminating in an arson. A truck at one of Trager's warehouses was set on fire, leading Jeremy to say the company's culture was irrevocably broken. He responded by cleaning.”
2022-07-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How arson led to a culture reboot at Traeger, with CEO Jeremy Andrus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT