YouSaid · the spoken record

Scott Svenson

lines on the record: 65
first: 2023-07-24
most recent: 2023-07-24
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

“And a friend of this family that I mentioned before was a very prominent retailer in the UK, and he joined our board early on. And the week before our first store opened in a board meeting, he said, listen, I decided to do this because I really like you too. And I wanted to make the process of failure less painful for you because this is never going to work. And he had his theory because, you know, he could not imagine selling enough cups of coffee to not only pay the rent, but also pay very expensive labor in the UK and all the other cost of goods sold. And he just couldn't envision it because he had never been to Starbucks in the US. He had never seen this coffee revolution. He just thought of it in the context of what existed in the UK at the time.”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's interesting. I think one of our strengths at the time was the fact that we didn't know what we didn't know, but we had an incredibly clear and we were totally aligned on the vision for what we wanted to bring to life.”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so what ended up happening is we had made an acquisition and brought on a very prominent doctor who ended up becoming the new CEO. So I was still the deputy CEO working with this new individual. I stayed in that role for another 12 months. And it was about six months into that experience that Allie and I, with the group behind Seattle Coffee Company, decided at that point that we were really on to something. Allie and I talked about it and we made the decision for me to come in full time because Allie had been”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was a very, very difficult moment. It was one of the most profound lessons of my young professional life. But we, as a team, Allie and I and a group of people who backed us, this family in particular, carried on and pursued this exciting opportunity to build Seattle Coffee Company together.”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, call him out. And so I think he forgave me that, and we stayed friends, and we ended up building this business together. Allie and I built it and they were our backers.”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so it ended up blowing up into, and there were other Things that kind of concern the board. But in any event, this led to him being removed. And despite that situation, and I think it was because Andrew, the person involved, recognized that he knew that I had a certain personal ethic and that I stood by my ethics when I had to”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, no, he was negotiating his employment contract, and there was a disagreement and there was some concerns about the integrity of documents that had been”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I ended up having to ask for the meeting to be paused. I asked for this friend of mine to walk out in the hall with me. I asked him directly whether or not what I saw in the document was correct. He didn't say anything, just walked away and did not go back in the boardroom. I walk back in the boardroom and shared what I had seen, and that led to a front-page article in the Financial Times the next day that this CEO had been removed.”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, there are two components to this story that need maybe a little bit more detail. One was at the time, the idea was we would just do this on the side and that I would stay at Crestacare. Right. That was the vision. Secondly, one of the most profound moments of my professional life was an incident where unfortunately this same individual ended up having a disagreement with the board. It all came to a head in a very dramatic board meeting where some evidence was produced and put on the table and unfortunately I was the one with 15 people sitting in the room that when I looked at this document I identified the element in this document that confirmed the board's contention”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was very entrepreneurial. His family was very entrepreneurial. And so Starbucks had expanded to New York, and the hypothesis we had was, well, gosh, if it works in New York given how international and diverse that city is, it'll work in London. And so we agreed as part of this. Challenge, if you will, that Allie and I and Nigel and Andrew, our two friends, would go and spend a weekend in New York and we would explore Starbucks and we would make a decision. And so we ended up going to New York together and spent a weekend.”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so it's interesting. It all came to a head. I was in Scotland on a work trip with the person I work most closely with, the CEO of the company I was at, and his brother, who were both good friends, and they'd been hearing Allie and I talk about this coffee idea for years, and we were flying back from Scotland to London. They both looked at me and said, You know what? You two need to stop complaining about this or do something about it. And in the spur of the moment, I said, okay, well, if we're going to do something about it, then you need to do it with us. And they said, okay.”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I knew that I didn't want to spend my whole career on the advisory side. I really wanted to become a principal. I wanted to go build things. And this was my first opportunity to step across that divide and get into an operating role. So I became deputy chief executive of a small public long-term health care company.”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you're right. I left Drexel with a group of professionals that moved to another firm Apex Partners, and I spent three years there advising and investing in a range of companies. And one of the areas that we specialized in or that I in particular focused on was healthcare with a focus on long-term healthcare. And I had been advising a company on restructuring their business and raising some financing and did a large financing. And then the CEO on board came to me and said, hey, listen, you've put in place a lot of the framework that we're now going to go and try to execute against. Why don't you come and join us and help us do it?”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I graduated, I really had very little clarity as to what I wanted to do as a career. And a lot of people from Harvard ended up going to work on Wall Street. And I looked at it as an opportunity, frankly, very simply, to make some money to pay my student loans back because I did need to make money and to get an education in business because I graduated with an undergraduate degree in government. And I literally graduated not knowing the difference between a balance sheet and a profit and loss statement. So I had a lot to learn, and I viewed it as a fabulous way to get an education and get paid enough so that I could start repaying my student loans. And it turned out that that was what it delivered me. It was a great lesson for me at that stage as well.”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's interesting. I think one of our strengths at the time was the fact that we didn't know what we didn't know. A friend joined our board early on, and the week before our first store opened, he said, listen, I decided to do this because I really like you too. And I wanted to make the process of failure less painful for you because this is never going to work.”
2023-07-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · MOD Pizza & Seattle Coffee Company: Scott and Ally Svenson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT