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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:01] SPEAKER_00: Make a variety of healthy meals in minutes with a Veeve.
[00:05] SPEAKER_00: They're unique and innovative frozen cubes allow you to quickly prepare a nutritious meal
[00:10] SPEAKER_00: in less than three minutes.
[00:12] SPEAKER_00: Go to evivenutrition.ca to find healthy, vegan foods and recipes.
[00:19] SPEAKER_00: And use the code Canada's Podcast 10 or $10 off your first order.
[00:26] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's Podcast.
[00:28] SPEAKER_00: The number one podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.
[00:34] SPEAKER_02: Hi, welcome to Canada's Podcast.
[00:36] SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Celine Williams.
[00:38] SPEAKER_02: And today I am joined by Dominic Dubet, the co-founder of Evive,
[00:42] SPEAKER_02: which is an innovative, healthy frozen food company in Canada
[00:45] SPEAKER_02: that is best known for their smoothie cubes.
[00:48] SPEAKER_02: They are available in almost every grocery store across the country,
[00:52] SPEAKER_02: as well as online.
[00:53] SPEAKER_02: Dominic, thank you for joining me today.
[00:55] SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me, Celine, great to being on the podcast for the first time.
[01:00] SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
[01:01] SPEAKER_02: I'm very excited to talk to you.
[01:02] SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of reasons.
[01:03] SPEAKER_02: I know a little bit about your story, but there's always more to know.
[01:06] SPEAKER_02: And so I like to start with a big broad question of,
[01:08] SPEAKER_02: can you tell me a little bit about your journey towards the founding of a Veeve,
[01:12] SPEAKER_02: what your background was, how you got there, what this has looked like for you?
[01:18] SPEAKER_01: Sure.
[01:19] SPEAKER_01: I'll start by putting a bit of history behind Evive for the listeners
[01:24] SPEAKER_01: we've never heard of the grand before.
[01:26] SPEAKER_01: Please.
[01:27] SPEAKER_01: Evive is a six years old company that I co-founded with my wife, Claudia,
[01:32] SPEAKER_01: Inkeback.
[01:33] SPEAKER_01: And we started the company right after college with the idea of making it more accessible
[01:39] SPEAKER_01: for people to prepare very healthy smoothies.
[01:43] SPEAKER_01: And so came up with the idea of a smoothie cubes that would enable people
[01:47] SPEAKER_01: to simply shake their smoothie and go.
[01:51] SPEAKER_01: So no blender smoothie, no cleaning of the kitchen in the morning,
[01:55] SPEAKER_01: but still the very high nutrient, the superfoods, the greens,
[02:01] SPEAKER_01: everything organic, everything plain base.
[02:04] SPEAKER_01: So that was sort of the vision.
[02:06] SPEAKER_01: And we started without having any idea of what having a business that was
[02:11] SPEAKER_01: or starting a business.
[02:13] SPEAKER_01: And step by step grocery store, right grocery store.
[02:16] SPEAKER_01: We got our way to coast to coast and now even a little bit in the US.
[02:23] SPEAKER_01: And also we are launching new line outside of the smoothie world.
[02:29] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, a client is interesting journey and happy to share a bit more about it.
[02:35] SPEAKER_02: So I'm really curious.
[02:36] SPEAKER_02: You started this out of college.
[02:37] SPEAKER_02: You said with no, so it sounds like incorrect me if I'm wrong,
[02:41] SPEAKER_02: because I recognize people can be entrepreneurs when they're quite young.
[02:44] SPEAKER_02: But it sounds like neither of you had really been an entrepreneur before or thought,
[02:49] SPEAKER_02: hey, this is the thing I want to do as being an entrepreneur.
[02:51] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's so true.
[02:53] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, never, never saw herself as entrepreneurs.
[02:55] SPEAKER_01: We were, you know, I was, I did mechanical engineering and I was going to go
[03:02] SPEAKER_01: and work in a shop somewhere and Quebec has a mechanical engineering.
[03:06] SPEAKER_01: And Claudia was doing a psycho education, which is psychology for children pretty much.
[03:13] SPEAKER_01: And she was into her master actually.
[03:16] SPEAKER_01: And, but she had that passion, we always had that passion for nutrition and healthy food.
[03:22] SPEAKER_01: And she was making those very complete smoothie.
[03:25] SPEAKER_01: And it just, it just was so obvious that to us that this wasn't accessible for most people.
[03:33] SPEAKER_01: Because of the complexity of putting all those ingredients together of knowing what superfoods
[03:39] SPEAKER_01: are, I would want and making it delicious, but also very nutritious.
[03:44] SPEAKER_01: People have to think the time and in the morning, no, it has time.
[03:48] SPEAKER_01: So we just saw that, you know, everybody would win to drinking more smoothies,
[03:53] SPEAKER_01: but the accessibility of it wasn't there.
[03:55] SPEAKER_01: So pre-making them in little cubes, which just, you know, it was just an idea that we loved.
[04:00] SPEAKER_01: And we started selling, you know, very homemade prototype on a Facebook page.
[04:07] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we got a couple of orders from friends and friends of friends in our hometown.
[04:12] SPEAKER_01: And we're like, you know what, let's, let's give it a go.
[04:15] SPEAKER_01: Let's, let's put it on the site for a moment and try it for four or five months and see where it gets us.
[04:22] SPEAKER_01: And then after four or five months, you're like, it was super hard.
[04:26] SPEAKER_01: It was like not fun at all, but we had a feeling that we needed to continue.
[04:32] SPEAKER_01: And so we pushed and we pushed.
[04:33] SPEAKER_01: And eventually we had a team and a client and everything sort of came together.
[04:39] SPEAKER_02: I love that. And I love that it came from, and I think this is such an interesting thing that happens.
[04:44] SPEAKER_02: Is it comes from your own experience, right?
[04:45] SPEAKER_02: Where you're like, this is the thing that I am doing that I am seeing a gap in,
[04:49] SPEAKER_02: because it's I use it myself, right? That's, that it's something that you use.
[04:53] SPEAKER_02: And to me, quite often, the best stories are stories like that where it's,
[04:58] SPEAKER_02: I would like to have something like this to make my life easier in the morning.
[05:02] SPEAKER_02: And lo and behold, you create a product that many people feel the same way about.
[05:07] SPEAKER_02: So I think that's really cool.
[05:10] SPEAKER_02: I'm curious. You said it was very hard at the beginning.
[05:12] SPEAKER_02: What was challenging? Like what was the hardest part of getting it to where it is now,
[05:18] SPEAKER_02: of getting through those first months?
[05:20] SPEAKER_02: Because it's also a really unique way to start it, selling it on Facebook, going through the way that you did it.
[05:27] SPEAKER_02: It's quite unique.
[05:28] SPEAKER_01: I mean, when I look back at it, I'm like, it was, it was, it was, it was a weird first year
[05:35] SPEAKER_01: because we didn't even know how to sell it, food product, literally like,
[05:40] SPEAKER_01: how do you get in the grocery stores?
[05:42] SPEAKER_01: You know, how do you deliver? How do you, how do you price it?
[05:45] SPEAKER_01: How do you make it? You know, what's the rules for the packaging?
[05:48] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So all those things, you know, we, we had zero answers
[05:52] SPEAKER_01: and nobody around us, you know, who had done a similar journey that we could just, you know, call and refer to.
[05:59] SPEAKER_01: So it felt, it felt really, like, disabilizing because we didn't have any answer.
[06:07] SPEAKER_01: And you know, you go out of school and at school, you have the, you have a game plan.
[06:11] SPEAKER_01: You know, you know what you're going to do for the next four months and then for the next year and,
[06:15] SPEAKER_01: you just go step after step and you study your thing and you get through it.
[06:18] SPEAKER_01: And then you enter the, the, the, the, the, Evive journey and you don't have a plan.
[06:24] SPEAKER_01: You have, there's nothing you can follow that'll guide you to a destination.
[06:29] SPEAKER_01: So that was pretty, that was pretty tough and manufacturing the product.
[06:35] SPEAKER_01: not having any capital for machineries
[06:38] SPEAKER_01: or even renting a place was a bit hard.
[06:41] SPEAKER_01: So we were making this moody center of parent's kitchen
[06:45] SPEAKER_01: for the first three months.
[06:47] SPEAKER_01: And then we found a small little place
[06:50] SPEAKER_01: that we're making and made past us
[06:53] SPEAKER_01: that had a table in the back.
[06:56] SPEAKER_01: That's all they had for us.
[06:57] SPEAKER_01: And so we were paying like, I think it was $100 or $200 per month
[07:01] SPEAKER_01: to access that table and they had a freezer space.
[07:06] SPEAKER_01: And so that's where we produced for a whole year after that.
[07:09] SPEAKER_01: And cutting the cubes with a big nights
[07:12] SPEAKER_01: and scooping them in craft paper bags
[07:15] SPEAKER_01: and home delivering them to, yeah, to the people.
[07:20] SPEAKER_01: And when you, there was no way, you know,
[07:24] SPEAKER_01: the pricing and all the energy that we put into it
[07:28] SPEAKER_01: made sense financially.
[07:29] SPEAKER_01: But we had no idea.
[07:31] SPEAKER_01: We didn't even know how to calculate it.
[07:33] SPEAKER_01: So, but it got us good at first year
[07:35] SPEAKER_01: and validated concept, learned a ton of things.
[07:39] SPEAKER_01: We sort of understood how to go through the grocery model.
[07:43] SPEAKER_01: We founded the Shibuter and yeah,
[07:46] SPEAKER_01: and then we were able to sort of grow from there.
[07:50] SPEAKER_01: So that I'd say those are the, that was the first year.
[07:53] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, three and that's.
[07:54] SPEAKER_02: So what was the turning point of going from,
[07:58] SPEAKER_02: you know, having a table in the back.
[08:01] SPEAKER_02: And I don't know this is the,
[08:02] SPEAKER_02: I don't know if this is gonna be phrased right.
[08:03] SPEAKER_02: So bear with me.
[08:04] SPEAKER_02: But from having that table in the back of a place
[08:06] SPEAKER_02: that made pasta that you used to freezer space
[08:09] SPEAKER_02: to being able to get a distributor
[08:12] SPEAKER_02: and get into grocery stores,
[08:14] SPEAKER_02: what happened that turned that table?
[08:17] SPEAKER_02: Because there's a lot of things, right?
[08:18] SPEAKER_02: It could be an investor, it could be a mentor,
[08:20] SPEAKER_02: it could be who you spoke to.
[08:22] SPEAKER_02: Like I'm just curious what that looked like
[08:25] SPEAKER_02: for you or what that change was.
[08:27] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[08:29] SPEAKER_01: We, a couple of things,
[08:31] SPEAKER_01: we got into an incubator in our hometown.
[08:36] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so got a bit of tips from there,
[08:41] SPEAKER_01: what's your business model?
[08:43] SPEAKER_01: How are you gonna fund this?
[08:44] SPEAKER_01: And so that, those types of questions
[08:47] SPEAKER_01: that just oriented us to what the priorities were.
[08:52] SPEAKER_01: And then a year, a year and a half
[08:55] SPEAKER_01: after we start,
[08:57] SPEAKER_01: we got a couple of angel investors
[09:00] SPEAKER_01: and some of them had food backgrounds.
[09:04] SPEAKER_01: And so at that time, we started to have a better view
[09:08] SPEAKER_01: of who the distributors were,
[09:12] SPEAKER_01: what margins do you have to build in your product
[09:15] SPEAKER_01: to make it work, et cetera, et cetera.
[09:17] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, we, and then, you know,
[09:20] SPEAKER_01: we obviously learned much, much more by actually doing it,
[09:24] SPEAKER_01: but we had a couple of people,
[09:27] SPEAKER_01: very generous people that we could call and talk to.
[09:31] SPEAKER_02: I love that.
[09:32] SPEAKER_02: And I think that's such a,
[09:33] SPEAKER_02: thank you for sharing that
[09:34] SPEAKER_02: because I think that those incubators having mentors,
[09:39] SPEAKER_02: having people that have some of that insight
[09:42] SPEAKER_02: is often the key to that next level of success.
[09:45] SPEAKER_02: It's often the key to getting it from someone's table
[09:47] SPEAKER_02: in the back of a kitchen
[09:49] SPEAKER_02: to what you've been able to produce now.
[09:51] SPEAKER_02: And I think that's a really important thing
[09:52] SPEAKER_02: to acknowledge as part of your journey.
[09:55] SPEAKER_02: So I appreciate you sharing that.
[09:58] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[09:59] SPEAKER_01: And yeah, for us, even with a little bit of capital
[10:02] SPEAKER_01: and some mentoring,
[10:04] SPEAKER_01: the manufacturing piece was a challenge
[10:07] SPEAKER_01: for the first three years
[10:09] SPEAKER_01: because after that table in the back thing,
[10:12] SPEAKER_01: we didn't have the capital to build a million dollar plant, right?
[10:15] SPEAKER_01: And nobody was producing what we were doing.
[10:17] SPEAKER_01: So we couldn't just go and ask for somebody to co-pack it.
[10:20] SPEAKER_02: Right.
[10:21] SPEAKER_01: So we had to produce it.
[10:23] SPEAKER_01: So we found another place,
[10:25] SPEAKER_01: bigger place with a couple of equipment
[10:27] SPEAKER_01: that they had already an incubator,
[10:30] SPEAKER_01: but for food in Sancia, Santh,
[10:33] SPEAKER_01: which is South Shore of Montreal.
[10:36] SPEAKER_01: And we produced there for almost three years.
[10:39] SPEAKER_01: And we built a team,
[10:41] SPEAKER_01: and it was an incubator,
[10:41] SPEAKER_01: but we had a small room,
[10:43] SPEAKER_01: build a team from just me
[10:45] SPEAKER_01: and one of my friend producing to,
[10:47] SPEAKER_01: at the end where I think 25 working, two shifts,
[10:50] SPEAKER_01: everything by end.
[10:52] SPEAKER_01: So that ramp up was quite interesting
[10:56] SPEAKER_01: because we ended up having a manufacturing plant,
[10:59] SPEAKER_01: but not owning any building or any machinery.
[11:03] SPEAKER_01: So that was helpful.
[11:05] SPEAKER_01: Lots of time, but we made it work without an intensive capital
[11:10] SPEAKER_01: investment.
[11:11] SPEAKER_01: And then we sort of move out of there
[11:14] SPEAKER_01: into a partnership,
[11:17] SPEAKER_01: sort of a cool packer agreement
[11:19] SPEAKER_01: because we had sort of the volume
[11:21] SPEAKER_01: to justify somebody else at that thing
[11:25] SPEAKER_01: their plan to the evief production.
[11:28] SPEAKER_02: That's phenomenal.
[11:29] SPEAKER_02: And it's so interesting how you navigated
[11:34] SPEAKER_02: the consumer product good space
[11:35] SPEAKER_02: without having a background in it
[11:37] SPEAKER_02: because I think it is a uniquely challenging consumer product,
[11:41] SPEAKER_02: consumer package goods, CPG.
[11:42] SPEAKER_02: I said it wrong,
[11:43] SPEAKER_02: but I think it's a uniquely,
[11:44] SPEAKER_02: it's a uniquely challenging space,
[11:48] SPEAKER_02: especially if you don't have a background in it, right?
[11:50] SPEAKER_02: Like I think it's phenomenal that you've,
[11:53] SPEAKER_02: that you took on all these different ways
[11:57] SPEAKER_02: of getting to where you are now to learn
[11:59] SPEAKER_02: and to keep going
[12:02] SPEAKER_02: because it sounds like a lot of work.
[12:04] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, all the industry
[12:07] SPEAKER_01: have their challenges,
[12:08] SPEAKER_01: but food has their own.
[12:12] SPEAKER_01: I always find myself lucky
[12:14] SPEAKER_01: that our product is not perishable
[12:16] SPEAKER_01: because it's frozen.
[12:17] SPEAKER_01: I have friends that are in cold,
[12:20] SPEAKER_01: crisp juice companies and stuff like that
[12:22] SPEAKER_01: and they have to deal with short term,
[12:24] SPEAKER_01: short shelf life.
[12:27] SPEAKER_01: And that for me would just be like so much more complex.
[12:30] SPEAKER_01: So you can always compare yourself
[12:32] SPEAKER_01: to another person in the industry.
[12:35] SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I think,
[12:37] SPEAKER_01: I think being in the food industry in Canada,
[12:40] SPEAKER_01: that one of the challenge for the food entrepreneurs
[12:41] SPEAKER_01: is how can you get it out of the country?
[12:44] SPEAKER_01: How can you start making some noise in the US?
[12:48] SPEAKER_01: And that's where we're working on right now.
[12:51] SPEAKER_01: And there's a couple of very inspiring
[12:53] SPEAKER_01: and competitive working on that at the same time as we.
[12:56] SPEAKER_01: So we exchange tips and tricks,
[12:59] SPEAKER_01: but building a brand that can go in the US
[13:01] SPEAKER_01: hasn't been done that often.
[13:06] SPEAKER_01: So that sort of a goal,
[13:08] SPEAKER_01: make it work in the US as well.
[13:11] SPEAKER_01: And it's starting nicely.
[13:14] SPEAKER_01: We started in October, September last year
[13:17] SPEAKER_01: and it's going nicely, but many challenges ahead.
[13:21] SPEAKER_01: It's like starting a new company and I'm pretty excited.
[13:27] SPEAKER_00: The Veeve wants to inspire you to get more from life
[13:30] SPEAKER_00: through healthy eating.
[13:31] SPEAKER_00: For a breakfast smoothie,
[13:33] SPEAKER_00: simply put the cubes in a bottle,
[13:35] SPEAKER_00: add your liquid of choice,
[13:36] SPEAKER_00: wait 20 minutes and shake.
[13:39] SPEAKER_00: The best part is you don't even need a blender.
[13:43] SPEAKER_00: Our lunches are also very versatile.
[13:45] SPEAKER_00: Quickly prepare a soup or a bowl
[13:47] SPEAKER_00: and personalize your meal with your favorite sides
[13:50] SPEAKER_00: like rice, pasta or quinoa.
[13:54] SPEAKER_00: Go to vvevenutrition.ca to find healthy,
[13:57] SPEAKER_00: vegan foods and recipes
[13:59] SPEAKER_00: and use the code Canada's Podcast 10
[14:02] SPEAKER_00: for $10 off your first order.
[14:06] SPEAKER_02: I spoke to Susie from Love Good Fats.
[14:10] SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you know them.
[14:11] SPEAKER_02: So I spoke to her a couple of months ago
[14:12] SPEAKER_02: and they're in the US now
[14:15] SPEAKER_02: and she was saying something similar
[14:16] SPEAKER_02: that it's like launching a different company
[14:20] SPEAKER_02: when you go into the States.
[14:22] SPEAKER_02: And so hers are not frozen.
[14:25] SPEAKER_02: I imagine it's even more challenging
[14:27] SPEAKER_02: when you have something that is fresh or frozen
[14:31] SPEAKER_02: than it is when it's something that has a much longer
[14:33] SPEAKER_02: expiration date, like a packaged bar.
[14:36] SPEAKER_02: So I imagine that you are facing
[14:39] SPEAKER_02: specific challenges inside of what you're doing
[14:42] SPEAKER_02: and congratulations for doing it.
[14:44] SPEAKER_02: I think it's really exciting
[14:45] SPEAKER_02: that it's launching in the States.
[14:47] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you.
[14:48] SPEAKER_01: We launched as an e-commerce business first
[14:51] SPEAKER_01: in October last year.
[14:54] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, people can subscribe to a box of smoothie
[14:58] SPEAKER_01: that they receive every couple of weeks.
[15:00] SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it's a model that's been there in the US
[15:04] SPEAKER_01: for a couple of years now.
[15:05] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, US people have been buying food online
[15:08] SPEAKER_01: for numerous years.
[15:10] SPEAKER_01: The education is sort of, it's more ingrained
[15:14] SPEAKER_01: in their purchasing habits than it is in Canada.
[15:18] SPEAKER_01: So that's good for us.
[15:20] SPEAKER_01: But now we're sort of navigating the retail space
[15:23] SPEAKER_01: entering our first retail rules.
[15:25] SPEAKER_01: And so that's interesting.
[15:27] SPEAKER_01: We, you know, although we have all those
[15:30] SPEAKER_01: prior success in Canada and all those numbers to show,
[15:34] SPEAKER_01: they don't really care because it's like,
[15:37] SPEAKER_01: what have you done in US?
[15:38] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[15:39] SPEAKER_01: And so you sort of need to find the first couple
[15:42] SPEAKER_01: of retail chains that will give you a chance
[15:45] SPEAKER_01: even though you have no prior success in the country.
[15:48] SPEAKER_01: So.
[15:50] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's so interesting how they discount
[15:54] SPEAKER_02: what has happened.
[15:54] SPEAKER_02: And it's a different market, right?
[15:56] SPEAKER_02: I recognize that it's not, but it's really interesting
[15:58] SPEAKER_02: how it's like, okay, that's great that it worked in Canada,
[16:00] SPEAKER_02: but that doesn't tell us anything about here.
[16:02] SPEAKER_02: It's such an interesting difference
[16:06] SPEAKER_02: in how they approach the markets.
[16:09] SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious.
[16:11] SPEAKER_02: Evie is six years old now, started in 2015, is that right?
[16:15] SPEAKER_02: So if you were to go back to 2015, Dominic and Claudia,
[16:19] SPEAKER_02: and you were to have a chance to talk to them,
[16:22] SPEAKER_02: what, what would you tell them now?
[16:23] SPEAKER_02: Like what would you, what advice would you give them?
[16:25] SPEAKER_02: What would you want them to know
[16:28] SPEAKER_02: as they're starting this business?
[16:30] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[16:32] SPEAKER_01: It's a good question.
[16:34] SPEAKER_01: You know, it's hard to answer because we've made
[16:37] SPEAKER_01: so many mistakes, right?
[16:38] SPEAKER_01: And we've lost it.
[16:39] SPEAKER_01: We've lost so much time making those mistakes,
[16:43] SPEAKER_01: but I've asked myself, like, if I hadn't done
[16:47] SPEAKER_01: all those mistakes and all those pains that we had,
[16:50] SPEAKER_01: I don't think Evie would be what it is today.
[16:52] SPEAKER_01: I don't think the product would be what it is today.
[16:56] SPEAKER_01: So it would be hard to not go through those obstacles.
[17:02] SPEAKER_01: I think obstacles is the way I believe that's so true.
[17:07] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I don't think I'd go back.
[17:10] SPEAKER_01: I think I'd do it again.
[17:12] SPEAKER_01: But there's many one thing that I think we could have
[17:16] SPEAKER_01: learned a little bit sooner was that try to find,
[17:20] SPEAKER_01: we were not passionate about food manufacturing.
[17:23] SPEAKER_01: And if I had figured out sooner that,
[17:26] SPEAKER_01: we should focus on product development and marketing
[17:31] SPEAKER_01: and branding and all the things that passionate us.
[17:35] SPEAKER_01: Sooner, I think it would have been a little less painful.
[17:39] SPEAKER_02: I think that's totally fair.
[17:42] SPEAKER_02: I think so what were some of the,
[17:45] SPEAKER_02: like, what were the biggest challenges that you faced
[17:48] SPEAKER_02: in doing what you've done and getting to where you are?
[17:52] SPEAKER_02: Because, you know, from an outside lens,
[17:56] SPEAKER_02: I see things like not having a background in CPG,
[18:00] SPEAKER_02: not having a background in food menu.
[18:02] SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, that seems like a lot,
[18:03] SPEAKER_02: but that doesn't mean that that from your perspective
[18:05] SPEAKER_02: is what you would say, here's the biggest challenge.
[18:08] SPEAKER_02: Here's this part that we just messed up royally.
[18:12] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, everything that was totally new to us,
[18:16] SPEAKER_01: like food manufacturing and doing it without capital.
[18:22] SPEAKER_01: That was, I'd say the number one challenge.
[18:25] SPEAKER_01: And then raising capital was also a challenge
[18:29] SPEAKER_01: because I had no really no clue how to approach this.
[18:34] SPEAKER_01: And it's a competitive thing to raise capital,
[18:38] SPEAKER_01: the vetted investors, they get pitched all the time.
[18:41] SPEAKER_01: So you need to have a compelling story
[18:42] SPEAKER_01: and you need to show the right things.
[18:44] SPEAKER_01: So it took me a while to understand that dynamic
[18:46] SPEAKER_01: and eventually, you know, we're able to raise
[18:49] SPEAKER_01: a successful EA as series A in 2019.
[18:53] SPEAKER_01: And but that path to understanding
[18:56] SPEAKER_01: that the fundraising process was a lots of nose,
[19:02] SPEAKER_01: lots of nose.
[19:04] SPEAKER_01: So that was awesome learnings.
[19:07] SPEAKER_01: So I'd say those two things, yeah.
[19:09] SPEAKER_02: I think that's really, I think that's very valuable
[19:12] SPEAKER_02: for our listeners and our viewers
[19:13] SPEAKER_02: because we tend to glorify the idea of raising capital
[19:17] SPEAKER_02: without talking about the hard part of it, right?
[19:20] SPEAKER_02: Like it validates a company which is true,
[19:22] SPEAKER_02: but it's not for everyone and it is challenging.
[19:25] SPEAKER_02: It's not an easy thing to,
[19:26] SPEAKER_02: it's not like you just go out and say,
[19:27] SPEAKER_02: here's my business idea and people are like, great.
[19:30] SPEAKER_02: Let me throw some money at you, right?
[19:33] SPEAKER_01: I mean, it all depends, you know,
[19:35] SPEAKER_01: with who you want to raise and how you want to raise.
[19:38] SPEAKER_01: But Chloe and I were pretty, pretty picky in a sense
[19:41] SPEAKER_01: that we didn't want to raise money to raise money, you know,
[19:46] SPEAKER_01: we want to raise it with the right partners.
[19:48] SPEAKER_01: And so that adds a layer of complexity, you know,
[19:52] SPEAKER_01: it reduces your list of funds or angel investors.
[19:58] SPEAKER_01: And then you want to raise it the right valuation,
[20:00] SPEAKER_01: you don't want to, you don't want to sell for cheap.
[20:04] SPEAKER_01: So we were patient in a way,
[20:06] SPEAKER_01: we wanted to build up the stories
[20:08] SPEAKER_01: and the numbers nicely so that, you know,
[20:11] SPEAKER_01: we would get the right valuation, a good valuation.
[20:16] SPEAKER_01: So those two things made it a bit slow and complex for us.
[20:22] SPEAKER_01: But in the end, you know,
[20:24] SPEAKER_01: I'm so grateful we were patient and we worked hard
[20:27] SPEAKER_01: to build those economics because it's all going us
[20:32] SPEAKER_01: to go our own way and keep the company going
[20:36] SPEAKER_01: in a direction that we intended to go six years ago,
[20:40] SPEAKER_01: without any external person trying to go in a different route.
[20:45] SPEAKER_02: So I think that's really good tips for anyone who's thinking
[20:49] SPEAKER_02: about just for the record.
[20:50] SPEAKER_02: I'm going to say it for anyone who's thinking about raising money
[20:52] SPEAKER_02: is to be particular.
[20:55] SPEAKER_02: Don't just take money from anyone.
[20:56] SPEAKER_02: Like let's be really clear on who you want to take money from
[20:59] SPEAKER_02: and what that partnership,
[21:01] SPEAKER_02: because it is a partnership is going to look like.
[21:04] SPEAKER_02: And then also to be patient about how you value your company
[21:08] SPEAKER_02: and what your company's value that,
[21:10] SPEAKER_02: not to rush in just because someone's giving,
[21:13] SPEAKER_02: you know, someone, maybe not the right person
[21:15] SPEAKER_02: is saying here's some money for you.
[21:16] SPEAKER_02: I think those are really good tips in general.
[21:18] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because you will get term sheets, you know,
[21:20] SPEAKER_01: we got term sheet two months after,
[21:23] SPEAKER_01: not even two months after we started front raising,
[21:25] SPEAKER_01: but it was terrible terms, you know,
[21:29] SPEAKER_01: because you know, that's probably what we,
[21:33] SPEAKER_01: when we were showing, we were probably showing
[21:35] SPEAKER_01: we're a terrible company, but because we're in the,
[21:37] SPEAKER_01: in the early steps of the process.
[21:39] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So they see that, you know, investors that have seen
[21:43] SPEAKER_01: tons of pitch, they see that you're new to the game
[21:45] SPEAKER_01: and you know, the confidence level is quite low
[21:48] SPEAKER_01: so that they'll pay for, they'll pay for,
[21:51] SPEAKER_01: you know, something that they're confident is quite low.
[21:53] SPEAKER_01: So you want to build up that confidence
[21:55] SPEAKER_01: and that network effect to build a better value.
[22:03] SPEAKER_02: Yeah. So I have, I'm going to ask this question
[22:07] SPEAKER_02: because I know that you are both slightly off topic,
[22:12] SPEAKER_02: but because you are both life and business partners
[22:16] SPEAKER_02: with your wife. Yes.
[22:19] SPEAKER_02: I'm curious how, how do you balance that?
[22:23] SPEAKER_02: And if someone is interested, if someone's like,
[22:26] SPEAKER_02: oh, I think I want to go into business with my partner,
[22:28] SPEAKER_02: what advice would you give them?
[22:30] SPEAKER_02: Because I imagine that there are some very unique challenges
[22:34] SPEAKER_02: to being both.
[22:37] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's for us, it's great.
[22:42] SPEAKER_01: Since, since the, since day one, we wanted to give it a go,
[22:46] SPEAKER_01: we wanted to try and, and, and share, you know,
[22:50] SPEAKER_01: share a project together.
[22:52] SPEAKER_01: I think we were lucky in a sense that we are skills
[22:55] SPEAKER_01: and, or interests are very different.
[22:58] SPEAKER_01: While I would go at the plant and, and do all the manufacturing
[23:02] SPEAKER_01: and stuff, she would be doing the branding
[23:06] SPEAKER_01: and owning the branding and building all that and marketing.
[23:09] SPEAKER_01: And so we had, we had our own things
[23:12] SPEAKER_01: and it always stayed like that.
[23:14] SPEAKER_01: We sort of had our business unit and, and we're always exchanging
[23:18] SPEAKER_01: about the whole, the company is a whole,
[23:19] SPEAKER_01: but we were not doing the same thing.
[23:22] SPEAKER_01: So that, that I think was, was pretty important.
[23:25] SPEAKER_01: And then we're not people that fight a lot, you know,
[23:29] SPEAKER_01: we've, I've been with Klo for 11 years and we're,
[23:33] SPEAKER_01: we don't fight much, you know, and, or we fight in a very healthy way.
[23:36] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[23:37] SPEAKER_01: And so when things get tense in, in, in the company,
[23:41] SPEAKER_01: it's, it's easier to deal with, you know,
[23:44] SPEAKER_01: especially when you start having employees,
[23:46] SPEAKER_01: you don't want to be, obviously, fighting, fighting with your,
[23:49] SPEAKER_01: with your co-founder and that can be,
[23:51] SPEAKER_01: that can bring a, a weird time limit.
[23:54] SPEAKER_01: But, yeah, for us, it's been, it's been great.
[23:56] SPEAKER_01: It's great to share the day today and the challenges and the risks and,
[24:00] SPEAKER_01: and all that.
[24:02] SPEAKER_02: I think that's always the wonderful thing about having any business partner,
[24:05] SPEAKER_02: right? Is that you have that, you have someone who gets it.
[24:08] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[24:09] SPEAKER_02: Right? Who is like, yeah, I'm in this every day with you.
[24:11] SPEAKER_02: I get what you're going through.
[24:13] SPEAKER_02: I think that's a really powerful thing in general.
[24:16] SPEAKER_02: So I can appreciate that.
[24:18] SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I think the, the number one thing is if you want to try, try it, you know,
[24:23] SPEAKER_01: and, and just make sure that you don't go maybe all in because this thing doesn't work out.
[24:30] SPEAKER_01: You know, you have an exit test, an exit door.
[24:32] SPEAKER_01: But for us, it was really, really progressive.
[24:35] SPEAKER_01: Like the first year we could have literally stopped after one year and we
[24:39] SPEAKER_01: have zero debt and we would just have learned, you know, tons, tons of things.
[24:45] SPEAKER_01: So for us, it was always going step by step and, you know, you know what, if it doesn't work out,
[24:50] SPEAKER_01: doesn't work out, we were not like putting your house and your kids in guarantee to the,
[24:56] SPEAKER_01: the barriers.
[24:57] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[24:59] SPEAKER_02: Yeah. I mean, that's, I think that's an important thing to, to keep in mind in general, right?
[25:04] SPEAKER_02: Is that there's, it's finding that balance of risk and reward, right?
[25:10] SPEAKER_02: If you have no debt and you don't, you're not mortgaging your house, you're not putting
[25:13] SPEAKER_02: things at risk, then the reward makes more sense.
[25:16] SPEAKER_02: But some, for some people and for some times, the risk might not be worth it.
[25:21] SPEAKER_02: And so it's finding you, you and Claudia found your own balance of risk and reward and
[25:28] SPEAKER_02: pursued this in a way that made sense for someone else. It's going to be different.
[25:32] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. For, I mean, for us, it was for the first year and then, then you get in the,
[25:36] SPEAKER_01: I mean, at some point if you want to continue, you have no chance to, you need to get some money
[25:41] SPEAKER_01: from, from, from the bank and this and that. And then, and then the dynamic change,
[25:44] SPEAKER_01: you can't just quit any time, but we had sort of a first year for us. It could be three months,
[25:50] SPEAKER_01: could be six months, but we had that space where we could test, test it.
[25:53] SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So I want to go back to something you said at the beginning,
[25:57] SPEAKER_02: which was that you're known for your smoothie cubes, but there's more to come. So tell me a little
[26:01] SPEAKER_02: bit about what's still to come for a Veeve. What's the future of this company look like? What do you
[26:11] SPEAKER_01: want to do? I mean, I was talking about, you know, how, how Clow was making those very healthy
[26:15] SPEAKER_01: smoothies in the morning and we saw a gap in the market. And, and we saw the same gap, but for
[26:20] SPEAKER_01: lunch preparation, especially now that people are working from home. The lunch is like in between
[26:27] SPEAKER_01: two meetings and, you know, it's, it's a weird time where you, you want to eat, but you don't have
[26:33] SPEAKER_01: much time. So we want to make it simpler and healthier to do lunch prep. So the concept is meal cubes.
[26:41] SPEAKER_01: In the same, we're in the same idea of the frozen cubes. So meal cubes that are very versatile.
[26:48] SPEAKER_01: You can pop them in hot water and it makes you a soup that will, you know, very filling soup.
[26:57] SPEAKER_01: Or you pop them on quinoa or rice or pasta and it makes a very healthy bowl.
[27:03] SPEAKER_01: So, so that's where we've been up to for the last couple of months. We launched the meal cubes
[27:09] SPEAKER_01: in about 50% of the retailers across the country. So you'll find them in the soby,
[27:14] SPEAKER_01: slow-bloss, natural food stores and also they're available online. And we also sell pre-cooked quinoa,
[27:22] SPEAKER_01: pre-cooked pastas that are frozen. So you can literally assemble your bowl in no time during
[27:29] SPEAKER_01: during your lunch prep. So flavors like chili, we have a Thai bowl and vegan mac and cheese. So
[27:41] SPEAKER_02: healthy options, but also taste delicious. I love that. I think that's huge as you know,
[27:48] SPEAKER_02: I am someone who worked from home before the pandemic started. I run my own business. I work
[27:53] SPEAKER_02: from home. And you're right. Even for those of us who were not stuck at home because the pandemic
[27:58] SPEAKER_02: lunch is often the hardest thing because it is. I have 30 minutes between two calls or between
[28:02] SPEAKER_02: two things or I'm trying to multitask and something like this sounds phenomenally easy to do.
[28:09] SPEAKER_02: And easy to do is, I mean, I think it's the reason that I love the idea of your smoothie
[28:14] SPEAKER_02: cube so much is that it's easy. Not everyone has a blender. Not everyone has a time to get all the
[28:19] SPEAKER_02: fresh ingredients and balance it out and blah, blah, blah. You've made it so easy and accessible
[28:23] SPEAKER_02: for anyone to have a healthy breakfast and a healthy and easy lunch. Yeah. And something that is
[28:31] SPEAKER_01: very if even the philosophy of the product is that it's not a frozen meal, like just put in the
[28:37] SPEAKER_01: microwave. It's something you make. You can assemble the way you want. You feel for a soup,
[28:43] SPEAKER_01: you do a soup. You feel like having the Thai on some rice noodle, you do that. You can add
[28:50] SPEAKER_01: vegetable to it. You know, so you really make it your own, but it takes five minutes.
[28:55] SPEAKER_02: So that's the cool thing. I think that's amazing. I look forward to seeing all of these. I'm
[29:04] SPEAKER_02: looking forward to what else you might have coming out in the future. And to what does it look like?
[29:08] SPEAKER_01: Like I was saying, if we visit R&D and marketing hub, we love to have ideas and develop them
[29:16] SPEAKER_01: and present them to the Canadian and US market. That's what we like to do.
[29:23] SPEAKER_02: So cool. So for our listeners and reviewers, where can they find you online? Where can they find out
[29:29] SPEAKER_02: more about your smoothie cubes and now your delicious lunches as well? Yes. So evivenatrition.com
[29:36] SPEAKER_02: in Canada, in the US, we ship nationwide. Perfect. I will have the link to that in the show notes
[29:43] SPEAKER_02: for this so people can find it really, really easily. Dominic, it's been lovely chatting with you.
[29:49] SPEAKER_02: Thank you for taking the time. I really appreciate this. Your journey is fascinating and I know
[29:53] SPEAKER_01: our listeners are going to love it. Thank you so much. It was great chatting with you. And thanks for
[29:58] SPEAKER_00: the invitation. Absolutely. The Vive Nutricious drinks and foods help you to live a healthy lifestyle.
[30:06] SPEAKER_00: So you feel amazing and have the time to do what makes you happy. Go to evivenutrition.ca
[30:13] SPEAKER_00: to find healthy vegan foods and recipes and use the code Canada's Podcast 10 for $10 off your
[30:21] SPEAKER_00: first order.
