YouSaid · the spoken record

Ooshma Garg

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23
first
2018-11-09
most recent
2018-11-09
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1
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podcast

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  1. “Well, Ishmael, I cannot wait for you to relieve my mother of delivering food to me and come to the UK. It's a very exciting time ahead, but thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. You'll be our first customer.”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Easy and healthy food at home and rely less on takeout or frozen food that may not be the most healthy or the most satisfying. I just think with regards to international expansion, product expansion, kind of revenue and market diversification to even larger markets that could use the products that companies like Goble make, there's a huge opportunity out there. And we have our plan to reach the multi-billion dollar valuation and revenue levels in the next upcoming years with a number of these efforts. And we just recently closed a deal with Walmart, which is kind of launched us into a new realm where other partnerships are coming our way and helping us establish these moats with exclusive access to millions of people who could use gobble. So we have a few announcements coming out in the next couple months that are very, very big for the company and the industry. So do look out for them because you'll be seeing a lot more from us.”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Some point, and it's really urgent, and it's on my mind. So it's probably the most important thing I could be doing right now. So I just teach myself to lean into it and go into it head on because then it'll be over as soon as possible. I love that one. And then I want to finish today with the next five years for you and for Gobble, what's that exciting roadmap ahead? You know, I think as I've mentioned, this industry itself is at the very tip of the iceberg for many reasons. One, even just in the market of dual-income busy households, we're at the tip of the iceberg, a lot of the US companies have not expanded internationally and our industry is actually an international industry in the UK, Canada, Australia, et cetera. And a very interesting thing is that we're only serving 10 to 15% of the population by income. And I think there's a huge opportunity for the Uber X of our industry to serve the mass market that actually needs this the most and help them make”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I often say that startups die of suicide and not homicide. That is a prolgram quote. And essentially it describes our industry very well. No one is going to kill you. There's trillions of dollars for the taking. And everything is about execution. I mean, I love that quote. You sound always composed, put together, calm and collected. So I have to ask this one. How do you deal with shithit the fan moment, Sushman? Oh man. You know what's funny is first of all, if I have time, I like to work out. I think all the benefits of working out are not appreciated enough. And if I have time, I like to do that. Although most of the time when shit is hitting the fan, I completely do not work out. And I eat lots of carbs instead. So what I really do, if I have to act fast, is I lean into the discomfort. So it's kind of like firefighters that teach themselves and learn to run into the fire when there is a shit hits the fan moment. I know I have to solve it. I have to solve it at”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Companies working with the wrong people at the very highest level of a business. So being very careful about that is what I would bring to the table next time around. The other thing is that every year I work on this idea and this problem, I actually see an even bigger opportunity. And I see how Gobble could be even bigger and do more. And I understand it more deeply. I think that also has some parallels to science, which is the more you discover, the more you see that is unknown and the more you see that you can still learn. That's exciting because I wish I could have explained the fullness and vastness of the vision even in earlier fundraising rounds. And one thing that I'd like to do very well next time around is to be able to really articulate and map that opportunity for us.”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yes, I think it's, you know, recently, as we have so little time and every minute matters, there's this quote from Augustus Caesar to hasten slowly. So every single minute matters in my day, but I understand that all the big gains will happen over time. So in that regard, I think it's important to be as upfront with potential venture capitalists for you as possible and to be radically transparent, listen radically, be candid, and just really share your vision for the company out of respect for yourself and your team and ensure that those stakeholders are 1000% aligned with if you want to sell in three years, if you want to go long, what happens when things go bad, the kind of executives you want to hire, the team inside your company, because little differences along the way can really make for a lot of frustration on the board and for the board members and for the CEO. And I think that that in some cases can actually like”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yes, yes. So choosing people who can play that long game with you is very valuable. Our Series A lead was Ajay Chopra from Trinity Ventures, you know, who built an extremely successful company himself. And his kind of operational discipline has taught me a lot and has been valuable to the company through all the ups and downs of the industry and made us one of the most successful survivors still standing today.”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “I think I did really well is work with investors who are very aligned with our vision. So Gary Tan and Keith Raboy had invested in our business early on. Keith Raboy was one of our first checks. Gary Tan was a seed investor and then kind of initialized, grew as gobble grew. And then he co-led our series B financing. And they both see the long-term vision of the company. In fact, Gary and his wife built their young sons' Halloween costume out of gobble boxes. They built a gobble rocket, which I think is an omen for the company. And so Halloween was yesterday, and they showed everybody this gobble rocket. And I think that's just a great sign of investors who are literally eating and wearing your product with their kids.”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yes, you do have that time. I think every company does. It's a combination of seasonal factors, of having the right team in place, the right infrastructure, and how much cash you have. We've raised how much cash we needed. I've been really conscious about the number of venture capitalists we work with, the amount of dilution we take, and expectations we set for ourselves and avoiding any kind of tricky terms underneath the table, which I think other meal kit companies weren't able to do so readily. discipline has really benefited us and it's allowed us to keep expectations and alignment with our investors.”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “This company while also doing something that makes them fundamentally happy at night every day with their family. So I want to do right by that. And it's similar to sort of a Warren Buffett strategy. I think a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of people in general don't fully grasp and embrace the benefits of compounding. And so if we can continue growing at a certain pace year after year after year after year, you get to some really big numbers very, very quickly. And that just requires patience and vision and showing people that and saying, hey, by 2020, we'll be X billion valuation. And then by 2025, we'll be here and we'll be international. So it's kind of the founder's job to really share that vision for the future, not just for tomorrow and to kind of teach people to long for the endless mystery of the sea.”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Yeah, I think that you have to hire a team that aligns with your vision and that has the same culture as you. And one of our cultures is not to play for optics, not to be too showy and not to be a flash in the pan. One of my family members just got an offer from a company in Silicon Valley. She's in school and joining the company next year. And the author letter said, you know, we're so excited to have you. We will either be a multi-billion dollar company or we'll be dead. Either way, sign here and looking forward to seeing you. And that was actually in the letter. That's exciting and I hope that they're around and I hope they grow very, very, very quickly. But we're building a company with people who want a job for the rest of their lives. And they believe in the mission of what we're doing. And it's not just mission driven. It's also business and opportunity driven. They think it's a fertile ground for a business and that they can make tons of money working in”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Put that right DNA, there are multiple opportunities in the space to be the next multi-billion dollar players in direct-to-consumer. I mean, I couldn't agree with you more there, and especially on kind of the excitement for CPG around D2C, but you mentioned the element of kind of looking under the hood there. And I just want to dive a little bit deeper because you said to me before that survival is success. You should coin all these quotes about this. What do you mean by survival is success? And why is it maybe more paramount in offline versus online business? Yeah, well, with a business that's offline and online, every dollar counts. There's inflation that's increasing your costs and there's so many little fees.”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “And especially in our market, in direct-to-consumer food delivery, venture capital oftentimes thinks that it's played out based on a couple players trying and failing, but actually the CPG industry could not be more excited about the shift to direct to consumer and understands that it's going to be playing out over the next five, 10, and 20 years. And the analogy would be like if you were to judge Instacart 1,000% on web fan. And some VCs do, but I find it's important to specialize at least in some areas so that you can look under the hood because people eat in many different ways and it's a multi-trillion dollar industry where there's multi-billion dollar companies in fast food, in grocery, in delivery. And in fact, if you choose the people who have the right DNA to stay the course, continue being innovative, hire a fantastic execution team, you should have multiple food companies in your portfolio because”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “You think that all the marketing channels are very saturated. But if you want to grow long term, you can find flu oceans in these saturated marketing channels for yourself. I love that element of finding blue oceans in the saturated marketing channels. I mean, you say they're about wanting growth to morrow. You said before, and I love this quote, the call mistake with the current thinking is maybe conflating execution with market opportunity and thinking of still early markets as zero-sum versus markets of abundance. Can I ask, what did you mean by that quote and what do you think the right mindset of the problem is? Yes, every market is different, but so many of the greatest multi-billion dollar companies that we see in the public markets today were built over decades. And some of them have been around for over 100 years now. This direct-to-consumer market is still in its first decade. It's five to maybe six or seven years old, depending on the sub-industry.”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Each of those worlds and steps is very saturated. Our product innovation and product market fit moment took some time and it took that thousand days to product market fit. That's the folklore in Silicon Valley. And now that we're in this marketing and distribution bucket, we have to approach it with lead bullets and in the most strategic way and dedicated and ambitious way that we can. But I don't think that there's a silver bullet for free or easy marketing in any industry long term. There might be flashes of light, but this is why diversification was so important. And when I was talking about RVP marketing, Robin earlier, first thing she did is took our Facebook dependency down by 50% and started planting the seeds into other channels that are growing such that we can genuinely turn knobs up and down. And if you want to grow tomorrow,”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “All of the fruit on the trees of the seeds you planted long before. So luckily we have a fantastic EP of marketing, Robin Risso, who spent 12 years in the subscription business, joined us, and has really taught me about this diversified and iterative and long-term approach. And it's been paying off quite nicely. I mean, absolutely it has. And it's been incredible to see goggles growth. But I do want to ask, in terms of those distribution channels, I think a big concern for me is maybe the large incumbents really paying up for the channels. And you said about kind of really keeping in mind your character LTV, but with the paying up, it makes the cash just too high in a lot of cases. How do you think about this? And would you agree that there's maybe a lack of free and open distribution today? I think that companies go through a product innovation, a marketing and distribution innovation and a cost innovation. And actually to excel at each of those three steps is extremely hard. And I assume”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “How do you think about this and respond to this with the distribution channel testing and iteration mindset? Yes, I think it is somewhat like a venture portfolio and I think it's even more like the life of a scientist and someone who has dedicates their life to a few amazing discoveries that take 14 or 16 hours a day and thousands of sub-experiments and iterations to get there. So I have a lot of respect for really, really, really great demand generation or quantitative marketers because the right way to do it is so tedious and requires so much patience. So like a venture portfolio, you are planning a lot of seeds. But unlike a venture portfolio, it is your sole responsibility to iterate on each of those seeds, water them, and check them every single day to tell everyone else to be patient, to make sure they know that a lot of money will be lost and some of the seeds won't grow. And then only months and then years down the line you see all”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Them lots of money and hope that one of them will be lucky if you invest in enough numbers, that may happen and should happen, especially as you get growing insights underlying your investments. But for the entrepreneur, you only have one real bet. And it's just like this big powerball, you know, mega millions lottery that's happening right now. I would rather do everything I can to have a guaranteed multi-billion dollar outcome than a 0.0001% chance at a overnight multi-billion dollar outcome. I mean, I totally agree with you, which is why I'm a VC and not an entrepreneur, but I do have to ask you, you mentioned obviously kind of pouring money on the marketing channels there and gobble really grew in the early days through word of mouth. I was really interested. Once that low-hanging fruit and early adopter ecosystem's been saturated, we had Alex Toussig on the show from Lightspeed and he said about marting being very much like a venture portfolio, placing lots of bets and doubling down on the winning channel.”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Now this is so unfair of me, Ushma, not in the schedule, but I'm too intricate not to ask in terms of kind of those cautionary tales of pouring fuel on the fire maybe of half-baked products and half-baked marketing channels. Just to maybe kind of take the slight blame for that, is that kind of the founders who are kind of incessant on this aggressive growth and kind of unicorn statuses? Or is it the VCs kind of pushing them for such aggressive growth behind the scene? You know, at this point, I think it's a combination. I think that the entrepreneurs are very excited to get big very quickly and people by nature want shortcuts and they would rather not do the hard thing. And I think that there are companies that have gone from zero to hero overnight, but they are the point zero, zero, zero, one percent, and they have a large amount of luck that goes with it. And so I think that venture capital is playing a very different game than the game that entrepreneurs are playing. And so for them to invest in a portfolio of companies and give”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yes, I meant that Silicon Valley has a lot of companies and cautionary tales that raised a lot of money early on. And when you raise a lot of money early on, you have to be very big, very quickly, and you have to be very loud. And you set your expectations sky high from the first minute, which I actually think makes you weak by definition because you're pouring money into half-baked ideas very quickly, half-baked marketing channels or products or this and that just to get growth very quickly to meet the expectations that you set for yourself. It's a bit like the tortoise and the hare. And I think that in this world of Silicon Valley, sometimes we focus on just the here and now. A lot of companies, at least in our history, in the food market, have come and gone. And at the time, everyone would bet on them and not bet on us.”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Was a groundedness and a sense of home and connection that I was missing. My parents would send me food and hope that I would eat if they live in Texas, they'd send it to California. And when I was in that very dark place, I wasn't calling them. I wasn't calling any of my friends. I wasn't eating home-cooked food. Things were going to waste. And that's where that aha moment came from. My dad actually visited California, got himself on a plane, came to my house, and fed me a plate of his food. And all of the emotions and the feelings of love and purpose and abundance and self came back. And that became my mission. From that day in 2010, the mission became integrating home cooked food into the life of very busy people and into the modern family and maintaining this sense of love and belonging, which I think is very intrinsic to every human being.”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Quite a bit of money, but not in the way that I intended. And this disconnect between mission and money and actually just kind of running a bootstrapped business with teams all over the world and burning on both ends led me to one of the most dark places that I've been in in my entire life. And out of that dark place, Gobble was born. My family ate together every single night growing up. My dad is the head of nutrition at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Texas, the chief of nutrition and an endocrinologist there. So he dedicated his life to studying diabetes and obesity and then would come home and prepare this colorful, warm, healthy North Indian meal for our entire family every day. And God forbid you talk about eating out. This was just the way it was done. Going to school and starting businesses, I lost that sense of family and that home-cooked upbringing. And it was much more than just calories and nutrition.”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Sure, starting gobble surprised me. I interned on Wall Street for just a hot minute for two summers, more out of parental obligation to A steady and stable life, which is funny because I was interning in the summer of 2008 and Daw, the Lehman Brothers collapse happened outside of the window from JP Morgan. But I had another company when I was in college at Stanford. And in fact, I was entrepreneurial all the way through my childhood, but just didn't know what that meant. And so I would start student groups and ask our principal to give me a thousand dollars to start the Model UN society and run big charity functions and garage sales and all kinds of entrepreneurial things. And I sold Girl Scout cookies for all the way through school for 18 years. And then finally, I think coming to college, I figured out what that was meant to be. And I was lucky enough to go to school in Silicon Valley and work at startups starting in my freshman year and then come up with my own ideas. And through a bit of trial and error, I started my first company that I bootstrapped for three years. And we were making”

    2018-11-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Being A Wartime Leader in a Time of Peace, Why Marketing Channel Diversification Is Like The Life of A Scientist and Why Small and Mighty Beats Loud and Weak with Ooshma Garg, Founder & CEO @ Gobble · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source