How a 23-Year-Old Founder Raised $1M to Tackle Food Waste | EP 36
Description
In this episode of UNinvested, host Sahil sits down with 23-year-old entrepreneur Eddy Connors, the non-technical founder of Goodie Bag—a startup tackling restaurant food surplus. Eddy shares his inspiring journey from backpacking in Indonesia to founding multiple companies focused on sustainability and social impact. They discuss the challenges of building a tech company without a technical background, the importance of conviction in entrepreneurship, and the innovative strategies that have propelled Goodie Bag to the brink of closing a $1 million pre-seed round.
What we explore:
How a transformative gap year in Indonesia inspired Eddy's entrepreneurial spirit
The creation of BerBeda, Eddy's first company making athletic wear from recycled ocean plastic
The decision to graduate college in two and a half years to pursue entrepreneurship
Choosing to build a startup over entering the corporate world
Overcoming hurdles as a non-technical founder and bringing Goodie Bag to life
The significance of a strong team and early sales tactics in startup growth
Insights into fundraising and the TechStars Farm to Fork program
Eddy's personal routines that contribute to his focus and productivity
Where to find Uninvested:
Website: https://www.uninvested.org/
In this episode, we cover:
[00:17] Introduction to Eddy and the mission of Goody Bag
[00:35] Eddy's journey: from a gap year in Indonesia to founding BerBeda
[03:22] The decision to accelerate college to pursue entrepreneurship
[06:04] Choosing startups over traditional career paths
[09:38] Building Goodie Bag as a non-technical founder
[12:22] Committing fully to GoodieBag and validating the idea
[14:43] Navigating fundraising and experiences with TechStars
[17:55] Early sales strategies and the importance of team dynamics
[19:28] Reflecting on the entrepreneurial journey and lessons learned
[21:41] Eddy's daily routines that enhance focus and productivity
[00:00:00] Eddy: Can you build something that people find valuable?
[00:00:02] Sahil: No matter what, I will figure out how to make this idea work.
[00:00:05] Eddy: It was not scalable, so we went without salary for 10 months.
[00:00:08] Sahil: As a non technical founder, how did you make your idea a reality?
[00:00:12] Eddy: I don't want the life you have. I'm not going to take your advice or suggestions for how I should live my life.
[00:00:17] Sahil: Today on UNinvested, I'll be speaking with Eddy Connors, a 23 year old multi time non technical founder who is addressing the restaurant food surplus problem. With his newest startup goodie bag. He's currently closing out a 1 million pre seed round to truly make a difference in this world.
Just to start, tell me your story.
[00:00:35] Eddy: Yeah, let's do a bit. Uh, well, nice to be here. So I'm Eddie co founder and CEO of goodie bag. What we do is we help connect. People to local shops perfectly good on sold food at discounted prices for pickup Ultimately making sure good food doesn't go to waste and then giving people more affordable options on local food I'm happy to predate myself on how we arrived at goodie bag.
Yeah, that'd be awesome. I'd love to know the full story grew up In a town called Bronxville, New York, one square mile town outside New York City, pretty popular for people in that region to get into like wealth management, more so the finance and banking industry, but never really kind of resonated with me as the path I wanted to, to pursue professionally.
And so I ended up taking a gap year out of high school and spent a couple months backpacking throughout Indonesia by homestay, which was a really awesome way to just have a incredibly different experience than the previous 17 years of my life, you know? And so I was living in some rural areas. Some jungles, beaches, fell in love with the country, fell in love with the people.
Um, it was easily some of the most beautiful places I've ever been able to experience, also exposed to the juxtaposition between these pristine, um, natural climates with some of the most prevalent pervasive plastic pollution that exists. Um, so Indonesia is unique in, and not a lot of people know about the country, which is part of the reason I went to.
It's the fourth largest country in terms of population, but it's also one of the most biodiverse countries. Um, it's something like home to 50 percent of the world's biodiversity. I was 17 at the time, very impressionable. Right. And I started becoming much more aware of how foreign industry impacts our world at large and particularly degrades the environment.
And so I saw a lot of plastic pollution riddle, these communities realized that the fashion industry was. second largest leader only behind the oil industry. I was always a minimalist guy. I just wanted to be able to like get out in the morning and then stay out until I came back for, to, to go to bed. So my first company I started was coming back from the state.
Animal athleisure wear brand called Bravada, which means be different in Indonesian. And the idea was I wanted to create a company that embodied the business practices. Um, that were necessary to create sustainable change. I was making athletic shorts from recycled ocean plastic and then ethically manufacturing them in Indonesia.
That was kind of my first go at solo founding a company. Ultimately, it led me to study strategy and entrepreneurship kind of like more formally out of the elite school of business at Stanford. CU Boulder ended up meeting my co founder, who is my college roommate, for now, Goodie Bag, uh, which we ideated right after graduating, uh, college.
[00:03:22] Sahil: I also had the opportunity to go to Southeast Asia for like four months, actually, over a year ago now. And that trip really opened me up, you know, gave me a different perspective, you know, on my life, on the world. Coming out of that trip, you went to, you know, college at CU Boulder and graduated in two and a half years.
So take me through your thought process of wanting to speed run college. Was it to I just want to build a company or is there something else driving that?
[00:03:43] Eddy: There's nothing that's been more impactful for me than, than travel. That particular experience, like immersing myself in that new culture. And so I love, I love hearing when other people also have experiences at, at Young Medians in general.
[00:03:56] Sahil: Yeah, at the time I didn't realize, like, I came back, I was like, Oh, I thought it'd be a totally changed person. And when I, right when I came back, I'm like, Oh, I'm the same person. Having like a retrospective look now that's like been like over a year. I'm like, I'm a completely different person, you know, my values, what I want out of life has completely changed.
[00:04:13] Eddy: For me, the biggest realization too was that there's nothing preventing me from achieving my most ambitious goals, coming back to the United States. It truly is a privilege and an opportunity to have access to education. To funding, you know, we can talk about that too, but yeah, just like the climate, the, um, ability to create your own company and now living in the time that we live in, it's never been easier before.
So that also kind of just, just fires me up in general. And I know that that's going to be how I spend the rest of my life is. Creating companies that align just with the impact I want to have. So yeah, I came back to the States, started Barbada on the, for the rest of my gap year, knew that I wanted to, to pursue entrepreneurship and still wanted the college experience.
The network and value that comes from that. So I started looking at universities that had an entrepreneurial program, the lead school of business, which is CU Boulder's business school that had a really strong emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation at the time. I got into the business school and then also I wanted to be in an environment that was conducive to an active lifestyle.
And so growing up, particularly Westchester County, the nature closest to me, it was the dog park, it just wasn't part of, part of the, the culture to like go and hike or do anything outdoors. That ultimately led me there. Sahil was both the entrepreneurial program and then just being one of the more beautiful places of the country.
I was a freshman in 2019 and like you mentioned graduated two and a half years later because I wanted to get out and build. Didn't resonate with like, oh college is the best four years of your life. That stuff never just, you know, Like sat with me while like it never was aligned with what I thought life was about.
It was more of a stepping stone. That's how I viewed it. I viewed it as a stepping stone ultimately to accelerate the achievement of my goals.
[00:06:04] Sahil: You kind of talked about this when you're talking about your trip, but also was it ever the possibility to like go into like a corporate world or even a startup role and get like two years of experience before trying it out on your own?
What is, cause I'm sure you got that, whether it be your parents, friends, like, Hey, maybe Don't go out into the venture cap don't go out into the entrepreneurial world, have zero salary, and maybe get a base somewhere.
[00:06:28] Eddy: For sure, for sure. Rarely people are encouraging on, on the path that, um, like you said, that requires a financial sacrifice.
And I remember taking a gap year and people being like, Oh, like Eddie, like, and these are parents of like, peers or whatnot being like, like Eddie, like, it's going to work out. Like, don't worry. When I told them I'm going on a gap year, cause I was the only, I was the only guy in my grade, I'm pretty sure to take a gap year.
And so it was just inherently by being a less than. common path. It was viewed upon as less than, you know? It's like a, like an inferior path to take. And that was the common narrative. Candidly, like, even at that age, at 17, I was like, fuck it. Like, I don't want the life you have. I'm not going to take your advice or suggestions for how I should live my life.
I had that really strong self doubt. Sense of self, which has definitely served me over time because you have to be convicted. Otherwise, there's a million reasons why you should not do this. Why you should not start a company. It's fucking hard. All the questions of what are you doing next? What job do you have lined up?
I had a little bit of breathing room since I graduated early, where not as many people were like concerned about, are you going right into the workforce? Major props and blessings to, to my, to my family and my parents who do support me. They supported my decision to take a gap year. They supported my decision to start a company.
I've been fortunate in that circumstance to have, to have them as people who ultimately believe in me and know that. Whatever I set my mind to, I'll achieve. I mean, I remember Sahil, like after graduating, he had some jobs and being like, fuck, I don't want to go down this route, but Barbada is not at a point where it's like generating meaningful revenue for me and I didn't feel compelled to like double down on that.
Ultimately highly concentrated industry when you go into fashion and just wasn't really like what I wanted to do. Like I'm more so liked it from a aspect of creating like a minimalist product. Like I still wear the shorts today. What it would have taken to succeed in that industry. Didn't excite me. It was, it would have been all marketing.
You would have really had to differentiate through the marketing side of the business. So I just wasn't at a, at a place where it's like, Oh, I want to take that forward or even that, and I had like confidence that that would be able to succeed in this concentrated marketplace. I didn't raise money for it or anything like that.
Candidly, I was sitting with it. I did not know what my path was going to be, but I did know that I had full confidence in my ability to execute, to create, if I had an alignment And a, and a desire to do it. It was just, what am I going to do? And I knew that entrepreneurship was the, had the most creative potential of a path for me.
Because there's no ceiling. There's no one telling you what to do. It's just the market. Can you build something that people find valuable and then ultimately turn that into a sustainable business? An opportunity to design something from the start that was going to create positive value for others and the planet.
That consumed my. And so it wasn't until my co founder, who was my college roommate, Luke. At the time, we went through this 10 week startup summer program after graduating. And we ideated a business concept that ultimately became Goody Diet, won that program, and haven't looked back, haven't looked back since.
[00:09:38] Sahil: So did you need a certain level of traction to keep going? Like, did you have like, we have to hit these milestones, or I'm gonna do something else, or I'm gonna go get a job? Or was it like, No matter what, I will figure out how to make this idea work.
[00:09:51] Eddy: So not until we went through the program, Sahil, did I have full conviction on the business idea.
So we, part of that 10 weeks was like doing the market analysis. What is the market opportunity for this? What, what is the, the, the revenue potential? Um, what are similar concepts that have failed? What are similar concepts that have succeeded? And so, by the time we went through the ideation of Goody Bag, and resonated with the mission, which was, there's food that's being wasted, there's people that are wanting more affordable options on food, and local shops need support.
They're the backbone of the country. They're the heart of the communities. I'm a strong believer in food. overall decentralization of industry as a means to be able to create more equitable and harmonious outcomes. I think anytime we consolidate an industry without transparency, negative outcomes happen, whether you want to look at, and let's take food, big ag, right?
Like it's still largely consolidated, something like 85 percent of the food supply. comes from less than six companies. And these companies aren't taking into consideration consumers health to drive their business practices. And it kills our planet. It kills people. And so getting into this industry, it fired me up.
Like I knew that there needs to be innovation in the food system. Um, the fact that 40 percent of all food being produced is being wasted, that's largely inefficient. And so I had, I had conviction on the larger opportunity. One, it was a problem worth while to solve, you know, like somewhat like this needs to be solved.
So I had that conviction on the larger opportunity and then going into our specific solution, which was a marketplace solution that became clear. Once we talked to a bunch of shops in Boulder, Colorado, that they were interested and they had a need. So we got validation. Yes, there's surplus product that's going to waste.
Yes, there's an interest if we can provide the solution for people to use it. Then we looked at the larger market opportunity and saw that. Um, similar models were successful in Europe and that the United States was slow to follow this next phase of innovation and that there was a huge opportunity to do it better in the United States and tailor it to the unique needs of independent retailers in the United States and consumers.
Um, And so once we won that program in August, we were like, okay, what are our other options? I would. Regret not giving this a full shot.
[00:12:22] Sahil: Ideas are a dime a dozen when it comes down to it, and you had a great idea. So as a non technical founder, how did you make your idea a reality?
[00:12:30] Eddy: Dude, so we partnered with a dev shop, got our MVP.
So a dev shop, it's, um, a third party engineering firm. Um, there's, there's thousands of them out there. There's a lot of horror stories that go with, with working with dev shops, typically, cause there's just lack of accountability in, in general, from just a blanket statement. And we experienced that. So we had a dev shop, really cost effective way to get to market.
So less than like about 15, 000 total investment. We had our MVP in market and we made our first sale less than three months after winning that program. January 2nd, 2023, we made our first sale from a local pizzeria. They had leftover slices and our software would allow them to say, Hey, I have a goodie bag, come get it in the next two hours at it's 50 percent off.
And then we would send a text message at the time to people who joined our waitlist, who would get a text. This pizzeria called Barchetta has a goodie bag at 50 percent off. Someone bought it and they showed up. And so for us, my co founder Sahil is very visual design oriented. So he does all the UI, UX prototyping.
So we prototyped what the platform should look like. And then we just collaborated with a dev shop. To, um, actually do the backend coding of bringing it to life. And so that was a really cost effective way to, to get traction to, and to demonstrate a degree of a need, a degree of product market fit. Like, yes, people are purchasing what we're offering.
It was not scalable. We ran into so many technical issues. The next 10 months got blessed through an introduction to a different development team that we rebuilt the entire application with and released like an actual native mobile application. Looking back on it. We had to go down that path. We had to do that.
Otherwise, otherwise you never, you never start the iteration cycle to be able to inform, get the feedback you need to evolve the business. And so if we did it again, a technical co founder from the start would have been awesome, for sure. Not letting that prevent us from getting into market was the best, one of the best decisions we made early on.
[00:14:43] Sahil: Looking at it today, you've raised, you know, close to a million dollars. You told me you're almost raising, finished closing up a pre seed round. How did you balance getting sales versus starting to go investors? And what was that? When did you make that switch?
[00:14:55] Eddy: Team is the answer to that. Um, Sahil, we're, we're four full time, um, two, two co founders, Luke, my co f uh, former college roommate, and then this woman, Brianna, a 44 year old serial entrepreneur, just a badass woman.
And then one of my older brothers is full time sales. And so being able to rely on them to keep the ball moving forward, my brother's killing it with, with, um, increasing our growth through his sales efforts. Um, it freed up my time to be able to focus more so on investment. And it is, it's a full time job, fundraising, especially in this climate.
So we, we went through the TechStars Farm to Fork program, which took place July to, uh, October of last year, 2023. And they prep you a lot. So they, they, um, Kind of drill you to be ready to fundraise post program. So getting all your documents in order, getting the pitch down, going through investor meetings.
And so that was a, that was a great learning experience and, and network builder for me. So coming out of it, we felt really confident in our story. And how to convey it to investors. Um, but ultimately what helped us most. Thought help. Was continuing to grow, getting revenue, going in, launching more markets, getting people paying for our product.
There's no substitute for that. And that, that has served us really well.
[00:16:19] Sahil: At what point were you like, we need to fundraise now. Was it right after the program or it's like after you hit some certain threshold?
[00:16:25] Eddy: So we went without salary for 10 months. Um, out of. My co founder's parents basement. We were eating out of our savings.
It was a grind. I wasn't doing anything else other than building this company. Um, working out, keeping care of my mental, then getting into Techstars. That was our first kind of like largest check. They, they give about 120K to all their portcodes. And so we just took a small salary for ourselves through program.
And then a couple months after, and then we were back to, all right, we're all salary and we got to build. Cause we weren't at a point where we could like bootstrap, like our revenue wasn't meaningful enough to be able to cover our, our costs, our burn. And so we knew that in order to achieve the growth we wanted to achieve, we needed an injection of capital.
So not every company needs to fundraise or needs to go the VC back route or the goals that we set. And for our particular business model, um, it made sense for us to, to go through, um, a funding round. And so it was obvious, Sahil, it's like, okay, we can't grow. Being cash strapped is limiting our growth.
We've demonstrated our ability to, um, go to market effectively. And, and people are buying our product and we're making money off of it. In order to scale this, we need an injection of capital. In order to continue building our product, we need to be able to pay our engineers, right? And so capital was just, it was a, it's a lifeblood, right?
You can't, you can't sustain yourself without, um, without capital as a startup. And so we kicked off our fundraise.
[00:17:55] Sahil: Going back to your sales tactics, you said your brother's killing it, but you know, in the, bring me to the early days, what were some of the scrappy things that you did to really succeed?
[00:18:02] Eddy: We would just talk to the business owners.
Um, We would go around town, walk into restaurants, ask the owner, um, ask to talk to the general manager. A lot of face to face, and it's still face to face on the supply side. We still go door to door. Talk in the independent restaurant, pitching our, pitching our service to them. Um, so it's very much a, um, yeah, a, a hustle based business.
But then on the demand side, some of like the early stuff we did, we do classic like tabling events on campus, and just give people like, um, cards to join the wait list, um, or a goodie bag. And that's how we got our first like 400 people on the playlist was just like in person we would do like there was a housing event that that we were allowed to go to but see you and we had like this cornhole set up and we were like, if you hit it in the cornhole, we'll give you, um, a I forget what it was, like a hundred dollars cash, I think it was, but in order to attempt, you had to sign up for our waitlist.
And so we just got like a bunch of people on the waitlist that way. Nobody ended up paying anything on us. So we didn't, we didn't have to pay out the, uh, the hundred dollar marketing expense, but just scrappy stuff like that, just like in person, not scalable by any means, but just like, we need our first couple of hundred people on the waitlist.
Let's go to where they are. And for us, we were targeting college students heavily, Facebook groups. We did digital kind of free scrappy guerrilla stuff like that. And then ultimately found more effective ways over time.
[00:19:28] Sahil: Being back at your journey, which has been a very long journey regardless of how young you are, if there's anything you would change, what would it be?
[00:19:35] Eddy: It's interesting to give an honest answer to that question. Because I do feel that the path that I've experienced with, with goodie bag has led us to the circumstance we are right now, which is we have a phenomenal team. We have a phenomenal go to market strategy, and we're poised for a lot of growth.
Could we have done things differently to get us to where we are today? added to a different position, like there were entire quote unquote failures, like mistakes and failures that we made where we went to a market and that market just didn't work for us. And we had to pull out and we wasted money and time, but it wasn't, that's necessary for our, for our ultimate growth as a company, you know?
And so I'm hesitant, Sahil, to say like, Oh, I wouldn't have worked with that dev shop in the beginning and, and would have waited until we found a better dev shop so that we didn't have to rebuild the platform. Or like, I don't, I, I don't think I would have done that in, in retrospect, like that allowed myself to really become a much more effective leader and a much more effective project manager, like to be able to learn, like, how do you, so I think.
Ultimately, I like, that's, that's kind of the belief I adopt, Sahil, is that, um, if you're familiar with like, um, the, the saying Amor Fati, um, it's a Latin phrase for in love with one's fate. I don't think that everything is supposed to always be an up and up, you know, I think there's a lot of learnings in the downed cycles or in the suffering, um, and I really do believe that.
And so. Our path to date has served as an opportunity for us to grow and particularly myself to grow as an individual personally, and then also professionally become a more effective CEO and leader. And so I wouldn't have changed it. Um, are there things in hindsight that we did that failed? Oh yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Um, but, but yeah, without those, we, we wouldn't have eventually iterated to where we are now.
[00:21:41] Sahil: Not always hockey stick growth in the game of entrepreneurship. Even though some people like to say it is but I do want to ask one last question I ask everyone. Throughout the years, has there been any routine that you've maintained?
[00:21:53] Eddy: I've started my morning with a cold shower for the past three years. Every morning, I just wake up and get in the cold shower. Um, I'm a huge cold plunge person as well. When I was in Colorado, I would go into the Boulder Creek. In the wintertime, it would be brick cold. Um, and it was just a really, really Awesome way to gain a sense of clarity and motivation.
And so I've, I've stuck with that practice most religiously or ritualistically, um, in my life. And then I intermittent fast every most days. And, and it, for me, it's, it's just, how can I be the most productive and, um, capable version of myself day in, day out. And, um, and it's what tools allow me to be in that state.
And so for me, cold water. Exercise, fasting, and, um, and nutrition.
[00:22:42] Sahil: Those practices seem to be working, well, I wish Goody Bag the best. But with that, I'm Sahil.
[00:22:46] Eddy: I'm Eddy.
[00:22:46] Sahil: And this is Uninvested. Thank you. This is a personal video. Any views or opinions represented in this video are personal and do not represent those of people, institutions, or organizations we may or may not be associated with in a professional or personal capacity.
The views are expressed are for entertainment purposes only and not to be misinterpreted as actionable investment advice.
