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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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That's E-M-M-A-G-R-E-D-E dot com slash S-U-R-V-E-Y and enjoy the episode. My guest today is one of the most successful food tech founders of the last decade, and her name is Julia Collins. Julia co-founded Zoom, a startup with an audacious idea, a fleet of robots that made and cooked pizza.
At its height, Zoom reached a $2 billion valuation and raised hundreds of millions of dollars along the way. Julia is Harvard and Stanford educated, and she was the first black woman to co-found a unicorn. But what I find most interesting about her is that every company she has built has been pointed at the same goal, making the more sustainable choice the obvious one.
If you've ever wondered what is actually happening behind a founder's highlight reel, the pitch, the raise, the exit, this conversation is the one for you because Julia is sharing exactly what you need to do if you're dreaming of this for yourself. She's honest about all of it, including the parts that are hard to say out loud.
We talked about what it really takes to land a pitch and the importance of your early stage team. We talked about her life-changing Zoom exit, the fallouts and the heartbreak that she faced, and why the smartest thing she ever did was to really protect and set herself up for her next chapter.
Lastly, we talked about the lesson that took her the longest to unlearn, the relationship between how much she thought she had to suffer in order to succeed. Make sure you like and subscribe. Here's something to think about. Most people have one or two big reoccurring payments that just leave their account every month and do nothing else for them.
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Chapter 2: How did Julia Collins transition from the restaurant industry to tech entrepreneurship?
ridiculous. It was so clear that I was a fish out of water. It was like I was doing cosplay for founders. And when I knew it wasn't working, first of all, I didn't feel as confident My jokes weren't hitting. My pitches weren't landing. Because you tried to change yourself. I was costuming myself. I was really trying to pattern match so hard against a pattern that had nothing to do with me.
There's nothing I could ever do. There's no costume I could ever wear that was going to maybe look like the next tech bro founder. That's just not going to happen. And so I think there was a crisis point where I just realized like it wasn't landing. I wasn't resonating. You know how you can tell when you pitch? And everyone's leaning in and they can't get enough.
And it's an hour meeting and it goes to 75. That's how you know you're landing. And that wasn't happening for me. And I think from that point of realizing, like, I'm failing at trying to be somebody else. I just had to revert back to who I was. And I slipped those little mules back on and wrapped that DVF dress back up and showed up as myself. And it just started to land.
And the deals just started to get done after.
I mean, I honestly love that for you so much that that actually happened and you decided to go back and just to be yourself. So I really want to understand, I mean, for anybody that's sitting here listening today, and again, we're going to track through your journey a lot. Given all of your experience, what do you want other founders to take away from what you've learned?
I mean, the biggest thing that it took me the longest to learn was that you have to first show up for yourself.
Yeah.
The way that we're taught to burn the candle from both ends, it's like almost criminal. And I thought in my mind, Emma, I thought there was a relationship between how much I suffered for it and how successful it'd be. I had this script playing in my head that it costs something. It costs something. And I thought, okay, well, if it costs a lot, then maybe I'll get even more successful.
And it took me really becoming a mom, having a second baby, now being a single mom to realize that actually my superpower is not in how much I grind and gruel, it is in how well I can treat myself. Absolutely.
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Chapter 3: What lessons did Julia learn from raising over $450 million in venture capital?
That is who I am. But... What is happening behind the scenes is like a four-dimensional chess match of logistics and timing.
In order to be here today, the flight that I took, the tucking in of the kids, the missing of the bedtime, the FaceTime in the morning, the workout, the this, I've already pitched three times before I even got to the set to do Glam to have the pleasure of being with you today, including a pitch in Europe. So what I've given up really is the flexibility and spaciousness.
And the optionality of free time. I don't actually have a tremendous amount of free time. That's the trade-off. That's the trade-off. And that's where I am right now. This may change in the future, but that is where I am right now. After all the success that you've had, right?
Because you really have had. So let's just talk a little bit about your journey because I've known about you for the longest time. The first black woman to co-found a unicorn. Yes.
Chapter 4: How did Julia navigate co-founder fallout and what impact did it have on her journey?
And I think the first time you come up in my newsfeed, it was, you know, sometime around when you got that unbelievable $2 billion plus valuation for Zoom. You'd raised a lot of money. That was like, I was like, oh my goodness, there is somebody like doing it. She's out there. So just talk us through for those of people that don't know you, because you started your career first.
Actually, we should start here. You are Stanford and Harvard educated. You then started your career in the restaurant businesses. And then you've had all of these incredible startups that you've co-founded, that you founded, that you've gone out and raised a lot of money for. Give me the 101 for anyone who doesn't know who you are.
I mean, the thing that's always been true about me is I am so passionate about food. Like I love food. I bring cookbooks on beach vacations. I'm so crazy about food that I will go to the grocery store just to watch how people shop. I'm so fascinated by it. I knew it was my calling.
Chapter 5: What financial habits shaped Julia's relationship with money?
But I come from a family that's super achievement oriented. And it was sort of like, what flavor of Dr. Banker lawyer are you going to be, Julia Elizabeth Collins? And so what I thought that I needed to do was go to the best school. And at that time, for me, that meant going to Harvard and studying engineering.
And I remember going to my grandpa and saying, okay, but when I graduate, I don't actually want to go into engineering. I want to go into food. And do you know, he He actually cried. A little tiny tear rolled down his beautiful face. For a good reason, right? He said, you might as well go pick cotton. Because in his generation growing up, that is what you could do as a Black person.
Go work in a restaurant or you could work as a sharecropper. And so he didn't see the association with success and food. So what did I do? I said, okay, let me get another degree. Let me try to hedge this bet a little bit. And off I went and he said, you know, if you can get yourself to Stanford, I'll help you. And so I got myself to Stanford.
You know, I was very much achievement oriented and I was sort of like putting my passion to the side because I thought that I had to have a certain level of prowess and prestige in order to earn the right to do the thing that I really loved. Did you know early on that it was food? Always, always, always, always, always.
If I had two nickels to rub together when I was living four to an apartment in New York City, I was getting a reservation at the top restaurant. It was a passion for you. It was a passion, like an all-consuming passion. It was all I did with my free time. It was all I talked about.
And that's maybe another clue to entrepreneurs is like that wacky, crazy thing, that zany thing that you're obsessed with, that's probably what you're meant to be doing. and not what is the textbook thing to do.
100%. So take me into your first venture into food, the first time you were in a business. Okay, so do you know Danny Meyer? A little bit, tell everybody else.
Danny Meyer is like the Emma Greed of food. He is like the one to watch. You know, he's like the Michael Jordan of the restaurant industry. Can't miss. Golden ticket man. Golden ticket man, Midas touch guy. I made a list of everyone in the world who I want to work for in the industry. Danny was at the top. got an intro to Danny, got in his office. How'd you get an intro to Danny out of interest?
You know, you ask this person who's working for that person and this person interned and this person knows the uncle. Because you weren't connected, right? You had an incredible education, but you didn't have, like you weren't a connected person. No connections in food because what you're supposed to do as a Collins is supposed to be some flavor.
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Chapter 6: What does Julia believe about success and sacrifice?
Give me a half an hour. Show me your income statements for three of your restaurants. I'll do a quick analysis and I'm going to tell you a project that's going to be worth you having me here for. And I pitched him and it was Shake Shack and that was it. And Danny really gave me my first shot in the industry. And had not been for that, I don't know that I'd be where I am now.
But really important little nugget for people because right then you proved your value. Yeah. He's not somebody that's interested in, you know, traditional... education backgrounds and MBA was not impressive to him, but you proved your value by saying, actually, I'm going to be able to look at your businesses and provide something back to you that maybe you're not seeing internally right now.
So as opposed to you saying, I, you know, I just want to work with you. I'd like you to mentor me, me, me, me, me, me. You were like, here's how I can provide value to you. And I'm going to prove it if you give me a shot.
And that is where I think a lot of young people, when they're looking for mentorship, get it twisted. You need to come in, you need to do your research and you need to understand what is the one thing that I can deliver to this person that is going to make it sticky for them to want to invest in me. Because it isn't that people aren't kindhearted or don't want to help you.
It's that people are busy. So you need to be able to show how you can demonstrate that value quickly. That right there. Yeah. So you did. Yeah. And then you're in business with Danny. Well, I was working for Danny as like a lowly intern at Shake Shack, but it was a foot in the door.
Absolutely. And then from there. And also Shake Shack back then was the hot, shiny thing in the food space, right? That's where everybody was investing. I know my investors put a lot of money into Shake Shack and everybody got great returns off of that, but it was a business that was, it was kicking. Like everybody was interested.
And it was early. This was when there was still just one shack. Right. With the plans for the second. Oh. So I had an opportunity to really see how it gets built from the ground up. And then from there, Emma, you just never underestimate the importance of being delightful to work with, saying yes a lot. I think we get to a point later in our career, we have to learn the art of no. Absolutely.
But it's not early. It's not in your 20s. I think sometimes people are playing that say no script a little too early on.
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Chapter 7: How did Julia's personal experiences influence her business decisions?
And even with the MBA and the background of education that you had, you still had to start at the bottom. You still had to intern for Shake Shack and say yes a lot.
Even more so because the people who are working with you don't want to hear about your Stanford MBA. How is that going to help them when the restaurant's busy and you've got a line out the door? So I actually sort of like muted that part of my academic success a little bit and just showed up as like the delightful, hardworking person. who was going to always get it done.
That's amazing. I mean, it's just so amazing. I love that you actually say that. So you went from intern to full-time with him. Right. And how do you actually start on becoming a founder?
So I think the first thing that you need to do is like work for an early stage team. I think that's a really good first step. So I met these two amazing hipster guys, Thomas and Dave. They'd bought a food truck, painted it bright orange. It was called MexiQ. The food was delicious. There were lines out the door. but they didn't have an operating plan. They didn't have a go-to-market strategy.
They didn't have a supply. So they didn't have a lot of the structures that I had learned working for Danny. And then I had kind of refined and toned being at business school. And so I was able to come in and be the first employee on an early stage team do that for about a year and a half. And that was what gave me the confidence to say, okay, this time around, I can actually.
Because you actually helped somebody else operationalize their ideas before you decided to go out on your own.
That's right. And then there's also a money piece of the equation. And I don't think we talk about this enough. So I am not somebody who has like a work back plan for my whole life. But what I have done, because I know I like optionality, I like opportunity, I like to be able to switch it up.
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Chapter 8: What is Planet Forward and how does it relate to Julia's vision for sustainable food?
If you're going to be able to play in that kind of risk space, the way that you balance it is having a really strong personal wealth strategy. So for me, when I was in high school, I knew I wanted to save $10,000 before I got to college. And I babysat and I saved my $10,000.
Then when I was in college, I knew that I wanted to save $100,000 between college and then eventually going to graduate school. And one way or another, I saved that $100,000. How did you do that? I worked a full-time job in New York City. I had an illegal bartending job in Harlem and I taught the SATs on the weekends.
And that $100,000 was because you knew that you needed that as like a safety and a buffer? Yes. Interesting. Because then when I went to Tom and Dave to say, hey, listen, this is big. I'm going to help you build it. I didn't also have huge salary requirements at that time.
So you were able to essentially work for them for the pleasure of the learning. as opposed to having to get paid like a meaningful salary.
Yeah, there was a salary. And you're right, it wasn't meaningful. But I had shored up my own personal cash to the point to be able to do that. And that is how I've thought about my wealth building journey is in these increments. In order to do this incredible, wonderful thing that I want to do, what can I do to make sure that I have the financial stability in my own life to make that possible?
That is a wonderful way to look at it because I think that certainly for me, I had no choice. You know, it's like I left school with zero, it's almost like I have the opposite story to you. I left school with zero qualifications, but the same kind of thinking and the principle applied.
If I was going to go and do all of these internships, and I knew that I needed to do that to get the foot in the door to go to where I wanted to be, there had to be some responsibility taken for my own.
And I wasn't nearly as sophisticated to think about it like a personal wealth plan, but I was like, I have to shore myself up because I need to be able to afford to do all of this work for other people for free. And And so it was really about creating the conditions to say, okay, I'm going to split my week.
I'm going to do four days of paid work over here and three days over there where I'm not paid, but I'm getting the experience. But that actually set the conditions for me throughout my twenties to say, okay, how much do I need to get me from here to here if I'm going to take that opportunity over there?
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