Episode 02: Noemie Delfassy

Noemie Delfassy is the Founder and CEO of Frecious, fighting for a better food system with healthy organic snacks made from locally sourced fruits and vegetables. In this episode, she talks about leaving an established career path to become an entrepreneur, discovering her life’s work, and deciding to anger seed investors in pursuit of a sustainable business model. She shares how she turned a supply chain disaster that threatened to derail her product launch into a PR campaign, and why she decided to bootstrap the business once she came to the US from Europe.

The Fight to Build a Better Food System with Noemie Delfassy

Episode 2: Show Notes. (TRANSCRIPT below)

 Sustainably produced, healthy food is inaccessible to many, but it does not have to be this way. The food system is wasteful, unjust, and unsustainable. Noemie Delfassy is a food entrepreneur and recipe creator. Her company, Frecious, works with local farms, using in-season produce to produce healthy, organic snacks. Through a combination of technology, supply chain innovation, and operational process transformation, Noemie has managed to carve a niche in the food sector. In today's episode, we hear more about what Frecious does, and Noemie shares the impetus for starting the company. She offers insights into why she left a stable career to go down this unpredictable, but ultimately rewarding, path. Noemie talks about fundraising and the reason she has not partnered with external investors. Despite the availability of venture capital, finding a backer that is as committed to true sustainability as she is, has proven to be challenging. Our conversation also touches on staying motivated on the path you have chosen to follow, dealing with a toxic work environment, and much more. Tune in to hear it all. 

Key Points From This Episode:

•    Get to know today's guest, Noemie Delfassy, and what her company, Frecious, does.

•    The inspiration behind the recipes that Frecious produces.

•    How Frecious goes about testing new recipes and flavor combinations.

•    The two reasons Noemie switched from being B2B to B2C.

•    Two of the challenges Frecious has faced moving into a product line.

•    Noemie's thinking around fundraising and why she made the choice she did.

•    What Noemie's hiring philosophy and approach is.

•    How Noemie maintains so much conviction on the path she has chosen to walk.

•    The moment when Noemie doubted she was able to get Frecious off the ground and how they recovered from this.

•    How Noemie dealt with her former workplace, which was toxic. 

•    Noeme's advice for women who are facing difficulties in their workplaces.

Tweetables:

“Frecious is really a new way to think about how we make food, how we create food. The goal is to really make nutrient-dense foods from whole fruits and vegetables and to make them more accessible because they’re ready to eat, they’re convenient.” — @noedelfa [0:00:37]

“I think I’m not against the idea of raising, but I have never really come across investors that actually care to build a valuable business and not just get in and get out.” — @noedelfa [0:18:45]

“That’s the hard thing for us, and so, we have to evolve in a world that’s built around mean.” — @noedelfa [0:46:47]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Noemie Delfassy on Twitter

Noemie Delfassy on Instagram

Frecious

TRANSCRIPT

EPISODE 02

[00:00:00] J: I’m super happy to get a chance to catch up with you, Noemie. I know it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other in person, and introduce you to my good friend, Mar.

[00:00:07] M: Hi, Noemie. How are you?

[00:00:09] ND: Very well. It’s nice to meet you and see you, Jeremy.

[00:00:13] M: Nice to meet you. I’d love to hear a little bit about what you’re working on. I did Google you, so this really cool thing, Frecious, which I love that work came up, but I’d love to hear about it from you.

[00:00:28] ND: Sure. I’m very passionate about the space. I’ve been working in food and agri business for almost 12 years now. Frecious is really a new way to think about how we make food, how we create food. The goal is to really make nutrient-dense foods from whole fruits and vegetables and to make them more accessible because they’re ready to eat, they’re convenient. The way that we do that is we have a new way to manufacture, but also to source and formulate recipes, really to change the way that we usually think about food, by putting nutrition and the supply chain out the center, instead of at the periphery. We work with local farms, and work whatever is in season, and have used some smart technology but it’s mostly supply chain innovation and a mix of little operational processes I saw in different food supply chain that I managed. To extend the shelf life of raw produce while preserving all of the inherent organoleptic nutritional property.

We started sending the products B2B in Europe and partnered there with some hospitals, and schools. A lot of food service customers, so a lot of catering companies. Our biggest customer was a chain of sushi restaurants across Europe and they made a lot of vegan sushi using our plant-based ingredients. They used them in a professional kitchen. I always wanted to be a brand. I thought that in food, that was a really important asset to develop. We did a little consumer distribution in Europe. It was hard. There was a lot of different languages, a lot of different currencies, a lot of different food cultures 

Four years into my business, I decided to spice things up and move from Switzerland to LA, where I’ve established a new production base and sort of recreated the ecosystem we had with farmers and distributors. We’re now much more focused on the B2C with a consumer-facing brand and starting to look at other channels to really leverage [inaudible 00:02:46] across multiple markets.

[00:02:49] M: That’s awesome. Well, I was, like I said, looking at your product and think, “I should buy some of these products. It looks so appealing. Jeremy, I think it would be great to hear how you come up with some of these recipes like the kale salad pouch. I’m really curious on what goes in, like Mediterranean tomato. I think that sounds even better.

[00:03:12] ND: Yeah. That’s the crowd favorite. The starting point is really nature. It’s what in season and it’s what grows locally. Each pouch is 80% the raw vegetable or fruit and the bulk of our sourcing, we do in a very close perimeter to where we manufacture. This [inaudible 00:03:33] when we – we had a manufacturing facility in Spain. One in Switzerland and we now have one in LA. I create relationships with farmers. There’s so much waste as I’m sure you know, there’s a lot more in the news. Fruits and vegetables are some of the commodities where there’s the biggest amount of waste.

My work in food really started on the farm and in post-harvest. It was a desire to use processes in this whole chain to really limit ways and put consumers more directly in touch with farmers that led me to launch Frecious. That’s my starting point. In LA, we have a lot of tomatoes, we have a lot of kale. In season, we have some squashes. We have excellent fruits, which I’m starting to make better use. We didn’t have fruits in Europe, because they didn’t really grow very much in Switzerland. But now, we can have a sweet line as well.

That’s the starting point. Then the pairing come from my love of food and I’ve grown in different food cultures. Some of the pairings come – I originally am from the South of France so some of the pairings come from Mediterranean culture. My family is Moroccan and I’ve spent a lot of time in the middle east. I’m excited by a lot of different spices. My favorite type of cuisine is Japanese. There are so many different inspirations you could choose from. In general, there are pairings that I like that are more seamless, but I also have tried some really crazy pairing. Like beach fruits and cumin or beach fruits and mint or banana and kale, which actually grow very well together. If you try the kale salad, put it on top of sliced banana. I would love to be even crazier with my flavor pairing.

There’s a lot of research at the DNA level of different foods that go together even though it wouldn’t occur to you if you were to think about it. But I realized in these seven years of marketing innovative foods that actually most people look for something they know. They look for familiarity and they look for comfort. If anything, I will retreat a little and look for the more obvious flavor pairings, especially in the US where I found there is less openness. I really studied how people approach new foods in many different countries. In the US, there’s really a shyness to approaching new food combination.

But it’s really me in the kitchen for now and I’d love to hand this off and to work with few people who are trained for that. I’m not talking really about formulators or chemists, but much more chefs. I’m speaking with a few chefs in LA to see if we could do some partnership. There’s also a lot of food artisans in LA who make very special ingredients like miso. That might be a nice source of inspiration. I really want to promote local food systems. If I can work with other vendors like this, it would I think really further our mission.

[00:06:43] M: We’ve been talking to a few women entrepreneurs and a lot of them talk about kind of this collaborative creation process, where they bring in the customer as part of their product design. I think you mentioned, yes, you’re right. We are not as adventurous as other people regarding to food, but perhaps you can tell us a little more about how do you bring in your customer voice when you decide to put on a new recipe?

[00:07:10] ND: The best way to do that is at the farmers’ market, we have a booth. We’ve given it a break since COVID, and I’m eager to go back. It’s hard practically and economically, but that was really where I tested and vetted all my recipes in the US before launching. It’s wonderful, you stand there, in four to five hours, you come across 500 people. You have lots of opinions. Then the best part of it, because I’ve done lots of consumer research, but I love the farmers’ market, because you can say, it cost $5 and you can do the ultimate test. Do they pay or do they not? Then, you can also see who comes back the week after. That’s really how we had some big fans. The big fans, we took their emails and we would do more in depth tasting sessions, where we invited them and we would do blind test.

So far, I don’t have maybe the kind of collaborative process you described, which is back and forth. It was really an anticipation of the new launch we did last year. But I think that’s the best, and with the digital platforms, you can really do that because people tell you what they think all the time. People give me all the time on Instagram, they say, “Oh! I just squeezed this on this kind of cracker, on a corn chip and you should try it” or they tag me on the parmesan crisp and put Mediterranean tomato on the parmesan and they feel really proud because they found a really interesting combination.

[00:08:42] M: I actually think, consumers when you let them be creators, they become big fans, for sure.

[00:08:47] ND: Yes.

[00:08:49] M: I’ll ask one more question, perhaps before I pass it to Jeremy. To me, it’s fascinating that you started creating these foods for businesses, and then you switch not only countries, but you switch from being a B2B founder, to be a B2C founder. I’d love to hear from you like, what was the biggest difference? What are the challenges in both? Because I think, I typically find founders in consumer swear to me they’ll never do consumer again and founders in B2B who swear they’ll never do B2B again. You have both, which I think is really interesting.

[00:09:24] ND: Yes. I want to mention, there are two reasons I did that. For me, it was a hard – it’s still is a hard choice. There are two strong reasons. The first [inaudible 00:09:34] in my prior experience in food company, I worked in some creative business – for some companies that had creative business models, where they had a consumer facing part of the business that was usually much less profitable, much more complex, much more challenging. You can think of a retail restaurants or packaged food product, that it really allowed them to secure much higher margins and much bigger volumes on the B2B side of the business.

First, I had a bias or kind of an omnichannel strategy being a more viable way to grow the kind of food business I wanted to grow. Second and perhaps that affected me more. I really believe as a consumer, that we deserve better food story. That the companies who make our food have a responsibility to our health and to the health of our planet and that they haven’t lived up to it. It’s traditional been very opaque and a lot of cutting corners whenever possible. I really think now that so many more people are involved in this conversation and asking to understand more and know more about their food. But this idea of trust and you know, what do you send for is best communicated through a brand. That’s the reason.

It’s been a challenge to make that switch, and maybe it’s particular to our product line, which is in a way it can be considered as a new category. There’s so much to build around the product themselves when I’m marketing to consumers. The two challenges have been, one, that I overestimated or maybe I underestimated the ability of consumers here, the average consumer here to make an informed decision on what was good for them to eat independently. In Europe, the experience we had was that someone with written ingredients would be, “Wow! You mean cashew nuts, lemon and salt? That’s crazy. I can keep it for three months, or five months in my fridge? How did you do that? That’s insane.” I think that’s because people are more involved in their food, from birth in Europe and it’s just cultural.

Whereas here, there is a lot more of, what is the health claim? Who is telling me to heat it? Who is eating eat? People are less at least to my impression, and they trust themselves a lot. They trust their own intuition and their experience of eating the food much less than they do in Europe. That’s one challenge where I feel I have to do a lot more convincing in a way that I thought the products would speak for itself. The other challenge, which is slowly changing, because now we’re selling direct. But if it weren’t for COVID, we had planned to launch at Wholefood and supporting and doing the kind of education and the kind of interactions we have at the market and the retail environment with so many intermediaries is really challenging. It really relies on the relationship you have with the retailer and the retailer’s willingness to kind of showcase your product and to do so without the traditional flooding fees and promotion for [inaudible 00:12:56]. A lot of PPG companies are used to doing. It’s unlikely that their retailer will do it.

We have a few retailers in LA who love our products and for example, who gave us the best merchandizing. They put us in the produce section, which has a lot of traffic and they literally put the Frecious pouches, which – they’re kind of small. They look like this in front of the produce. You have boxes of cabbage and carrots, and then in front of, you have the Frecious pouches. There, we sell very, very well. But when we would do – we did a few test in Gelson’s. I’m not sure if you have it in Northern California. It was kind of lost at the top shelf and the sales were very low. In that sense, being a consumer-facing business, distribution is much, much harder in B2B. It was a direct relationship. I didn’t have to convince anyone. They read the text. They read the technical sheet. They tried the product. They said, “We love this.” There was a price discussion. But then once they were in, it was petty cashflow every month for years, and I really miss those.

[00:14:01] J: Miss the steady cashflow. That’s great.

[00:14:03] ND: Who knew?

[00:14:07] M: Yeah. It’s definitely more nerve-racking to be that consumer company.

[00:14:11] ND: Yeah. Now, that changed with – since I’m very new online, it was really a kick-starter campaign instead of our [inaudible 00:14:19] at Wholefoods and even COVID kick-starter campaign that helped us build the size and launched the product. It’s at least been wonderful to have data and to be able to share information. It’s also a new learning for me to be making 15-second video reels on Instagram and to show how I eat the products and to show what goes in the products, but it’s extremely powerful do to all of that education without having to rely on handling sessions and demonstrations in stores, which are very extensive. I’m not so sure that they are very efficient.

[00:14:56] M: Right.

[00:14:58] J: One of the things, Noemie, you mentioned to me was, your decision to not raise money. One of the things you mentioned to me was, you wanted to preserve the ability to experiment. I wonder if you would mind to elaborate a little bit on your thinking there and how it’s panned out for you.

[00:15:14] NG: Sure. I raised money in Europe when I started. We raised 750,000 Swiss Franc, roughly one to one to the dollar. It was the friends and family [inaudible 00:15:26] who invested. We invested together and we didn’t have a prior relationship. When we started doing consumer work in Europe, we went to Carrefour and sold that. Carrefour is the number two retailer in the world behind Walmart, but it’s still a huge sort of massive retailer. Selling through them was a really terrible experience for me. We had no visibility. We didn’t know where the products were sold, and what stores at what price. We couldn’t do any of the initiative. Usually, when we had a retailer, we would go in and train the staff. Of course, it’s just too big. It was a central warehouse that ordered. We still haven’t been paid for parts of those. It was just messy.

Nonetheless, after a 30-store trial, the buyer decided it was a huge success and she want us to launch some 300 hypermarkets in France. I said, “No. I don’t think it was a huge success. Do you even have the numbers?” She didn’t even have the sales numbers because they don’t have consolidated information. It sounds insane until you’re a management consultant and you realized so many of these leading companies don’t have the data that they need to make those kinds of decisions. She just wanted to have this cool product in her portfolio, didn’t care and I would be in a position where I would have to put all my cash in this launch, in inventory and have three months to six months to wait for them to pay me if they pay me. If it didn’t work and take off, I lost my – so I said no.

One of my investors tried to back out. Two y ears or three years after we had raised money, he was very upset that I said no to Carrefour because it’s kind of this thing you don’t do. If you make products, you want to be in those chain and he said, “Why? You don’t want to grow? You want to be small?” Not at all. I really want to grow. I just want to grow in a sustainable way ad I want to truly create value and a good product.

When I moved to the US and I knew that I would have a way to go through a bit of a similar process and to figure out which are the right distribution channels for us, who are the right customers for us, and how does our value proposition translate. I also got a lot of emails, because food is trendy in the investor community, and especially now that we have a website online. I get a lot of emails from investors. I’ve had – I try to be openminded. I have discussions. When I speak to them, it’s usually, they have a view of the world where if I sell with widgets, or if I sell mattresses, or if I sell veggies in a pouch, it’s all the same to them. They sort of have this model and they want to throw cash at it. Then they have their timeline.

I think that it’s very hard. I’m driven by a vision and I wanted to be huge because that is also a testament to the impact that we will have in health and with the farming community that I want to support. But I want to do that over the long-term. For throwing a bunch of money to maybe skip some of those steps, I’m not interested in. Maybe to put a bit of nuance, I think I’m not against the idea of raising, but it’s been very – I have never really come across investors that actually care to build a valuable business and not just get in and get out.

[00:18:59] M: Yeah. It’s so important that you realize to have the same incentives. I think it requires strength of character to realize that and not take money [inaudible00:19:09].

[00:19:11] NG: Or just to have your investor in Europe try to sue you for mismanagement and to go through a year-long time where you have to prove that you actually really have the best interest of the business. But in the end, another investor steps in to value that person out. I said, “Wow! Never do I want to again share my plans and vision with someone who’s not [inaudible 00:19:37]. Now, I realized how much more important it is.

[00:19:40] J: That’s amazing. Thank you for sharing that. It’s really powerful to hear. How do you think about building your team when you think about alignment and you think about your vision? How does that translate into hiring and growing the folks that you’re spending all your time with?

[00:19:58] NG: I hire a lot more for characters and I do for experience. That always served me really well. Sometimes I do a lot more training. I have a very, very small team now in the US because we’re really boot strapped. In Europe, we had a size person team full-time and that works with a lot of talents that came together there. I love people who care. They don’t have to care all about the mission. We work with a lot of people who work in production, people who work in logistics. They’re not wax lyrical with me about food [inaudible 00:20:38] change any day of the week that I – but they care to do things in an honest way and to communicate, so I hire a lot for style. It’s been hard for me to find my more senior contributors, because that I think is really driven by where we ultimately choose to place a big bet in distribution.

For example, when we were about to launch at Wholefoods. I chose to work with a marketer who’s a foodie, and a food writer in LA, very connected to the foodie community but also had a great background in marketing and PR. Then luckily, I had given him a lot of equity luckily it was on a vesting schedule. When that launch didn’t happen, and he wasn’t interested in sticking around for the whole of the adventure, he just wanted the adventure. It was well paid and if he had big marketing budget, so when it started getting really cold and on the kick-starter budget, he is excited about that. It was probably a good thing and he walked away.

Ever since, I’ve been really focused on figuring out which I wanted. Sort of one or two verticals first. Now that that’s become very clear, that’s easier for me and it’s really on style. It’s on personal recommendations and on style when we. They don’t have to share my vision. They just have to be excited initially. Right then, ultimately, [inaudible 00:22:12] everyone who’s worked with Frecious has always said that they ended up eating completely differently after Frecious. It’s not that they only eat Frecious, is that they end up being much more thoughtful and much more conscious about a decision that is – we make such small decisions all day long about what we – that really – unless you pay attention, it can be something automatic. I’m sure we rub off on each other and in a way, they change the way they ate.

[00:22:42] J: I mean, your example of the marketer. To me, it kind of sparks something for me. You and I both started our careers how ever many years ago, 15, 16, whatever years ago. In an organization, one of their value propositions is, 10x in ten years. That’s like – I mean, that’s pretty wildly spread at least among associates. You stick around here 10x in 10 years. You have chosen erratically different path. I would love to hear a little bit about how do you think about – how did you make the decision going to HPS, having the background check. How did you think about leaving a very secure path and venturing out on this very unknown? Then in turning down what seem like quicker exit pathways along the way. How do you thought about that and what informed that decision process and how do you continue to strengthen that conviction? I guess there’s kind of three questions along the way there. But where did it start, how do you strengthen it, et cetera? I love to hear.

[00:23:47] NG: Good question. It was at HBS that I started dabbling in food and did a lot of project around farmers, whether it’s small holder farmers. I spent a long time on Colombia during and after business school around six months organizing small-holder farmers around 12 specialty crops, where the largest supermarket chain [inaudible 00:24:07] that had a really hard time forcing them. I also worked a lot with US farmers and studied that economic incentives for conversations to organic agriculture.

It was first a love of the space, mostly because it ties together so many things I care about. Culture, ecology, pleasure, health, society, and more so agriculture. But agriculture, it’s like a commodity business, especially at the time in 2008, 2009 when I was at business school. It wasn’t yet the excited phase that it is today in the US. It was still the Cargills and [inaudible 00:24:47] and Nestles of the world. I chose an unlikely job after business school. I ran a sushi chain and I love that experience because I had real managerial experience. As a consultant, it’s all theoretical, but I got to manage a 20-million-dollar business, with 350 employees. It was a total mess because it was family owned. In 10 years, they absolutely have no systems or processes. I love systems and processes.

That sort of, my passion for food and then my curiosity to lead a P&L took me to Sushi Maki. I didn’t see eye to eye with management, with no go so I left quite early. That took me to another family business in Switzerland. I worked for the family who owns 80% of the world’s biggest chocolate company. It had around a $7 billion market cap at the time. This is quite a big, wealthy family. They have one family office and one investment manager for their portfolio company and that was me.

In theory, after HPS and BCG, this was a great job because I was strategic, I was advising the chairman of the board and the chairman of the family office, so two boards. I was working in the industry I like. I love Barry Callebaut. It’s a really innovative business model and a really interesting play in food. But I think my mission caught up to me. At the end of the day, they sell chocolate products to a bunch of food manufacturers who I don’t need their products. I consider them really unhealthy for many, many reasons. When I saw that the conversation was changing around food, and I was just furthering the cost of altered process, sweetened junk, I thought, okay. I know that I have seen so many different food supply chain. I know that we can actually manufacture healthy food at scale in a way that would be really interesting for the planet and for humans.

It was totally naively that I jumped in. It helped that in this – unlike at BCG, where I think the work environment is very positive, very collaborative and very respectful, it’s not always what you find in the industry, especially in Europe. It’s culturally very different. It helps that I didn’t feel as appreciated. I was very respected. My role was very important. But as a woman, it was very hard. There were a lot of inappropriate jokes about the chairman in me. It wasn’t an environment where I really felt like I belonged. When I left, I didn’t really measure what I would be leaving behind. What you described as being safety and maybe the prestige of this job. I didn’t really even – so many people were – after my job and I wasn’t even very conscious of that. I guess I’m lucky that I do things really out of curiosity and out of personal interest.

I guess that’s maybe two reasons why I stuck to it even when it was hard. I really believed in what we’re building. I think if I wasn’t so passionate and if I didn’t think that it was such a tragedy that so many – two-thirds of the people who are sick in the US are sick from preventable diseases tied to their eating choices and their lack of [inaudible 00:28:31] and their stress levels. I just see such a huge opportunity through commerce and through smarter business model, so I’m very excited by that.

I think the second is I have to give credit to a man. I have to give credit to my partner, because he really encourages me. I think he complained recently for the first time for the last – we’ve only been together for the last four years, but that it’s been really hard for him to manage this because that’s – and you probably know what we go through as an entrepreneur. He was an entrepreneur himself. He just sold his business in agriculture. At least he could relate, but yeah, he really supports me. When they’re packaging materials in the living room. and when I ask to get up at four in the morning to go through production, and I wake him up and I get into trouble because someone abandons me for the pasteurization transport. He goes with me because it’s in Downtown LA in the middle of the night and it’s kind of dangerous.

Yeah, I think it helps that I have this wonderful job and got so much money and realized I wasn’t fulfilled.

[00:29:46] M: I’m listening to your story, Noemie and I’m like, “Okay. This is a founder that doesn’t take no for an answer and that is so passionate about what she’s doing” that my partner would say, kind of break through walls to make it happen. It just comes out and clear. I know to your point, it’s like this journey is kind of like a roller coaster and you’re on a high at 10:00 AM and you think you have to shut down the business at 11:00 AM and back again at noon. I’m wondering if you can describe if it come to mind, like one of those kinds of scary moments where you’re like, “Oh my gosh! Nothing is working. I don’t know how am I going to get out of this one.”

[00:30:29] NG: When we launched the kick-starter last year, I was new to LA and LA is a very strange place, because of all these powerful people. It’s not only powerful in the traditional sense of the term. In Dallas, there are a lot of powerful people. People in LA who can influence a lot of mindset, right? Whether you call that an influencer celebrity press or whatever. Maybe you’ve picked up on a little oblivious to some of these mechanics, I’m like, “Are you authentic? You don’t even have to be a good person. Even if you’re a crappy person, as long as you like own it, I will still like you.” I just like authentic people and so I don’t mind the crazy celebrities.

Anyway, we were able to mobilize with my little team from the farmers’ market, some really big fans who loved our product because everybody in LA goes to the farmers’ market and there were some great people. I just saw them as customer Emilio and this and that. They turned out to be super famous people. They were like, we will help you promote your kick-starter because I’ve never done a crowdfunding campaign. It’s quite stressful. You really need to get this momentum going and this was in March. I think I launched the campaign in April. It was a month long and shift in September of last year. There was a lot going on in the US, in the world. All they needed were samples. I was like, “Okay. Easy.” We placed the packaging order.

You’ll have samples and that’s how we will promote the campaign so that a bunch of people will be excited to get Frecious at home. The packaging is printed in China and so I was very worried about shipments in China, but everything happened. It arrived in time. I was really, really booked five days in production. I reserved the kitchen 24/7 for five days. That was a lot. We made huge commitment to farmers for our seven recipes and thousands of units each and you book the pasteurization after the kitchen. It was a big commitment.

Then the night before production, which starts at 4:00 AM, so some time around 9:00 or 10:00 PM, I wanted to take photos of our packaging so I filled them up with water just to see them in full volume. As I’m holding them celebrating, I feel like a tiny little drop of water. I feel a few drops of water. I realized, there is like a microleak, but like micro. Like hear, on each side, it wasn’t glued properly and it wasn’t in all of them, microleak. But I started doing tests and it was on enough of them. It was on around two or three out of five that I couldn’t in my right mind go through with production because that’s a huge food safety risk.

I canceled the production. I didn’t want to lose the produce we had bought, so we actually donated. We packed them on old packaging and donated 10,000 units of products to nonprofits in LA in old packaging, but nonetheless, it was a great product. But I couldn’t do any of the promotion and the marketing. Arnold Schwarzenegger was going to take a photo eating Frecious and we couldn’t do that. Those are – it’s not like I can call these people I had a loose relationship with and say, “Oh! Three months later. Oh! Now, I’m ready for you to give my stuff to Gwyneth and to Arnold.” We lost the ability to promote the campaign overnight and lost a lot of money. I had to ship the packaging back and fight, and I really thought, that was one of the times I think that was the hardest because it was 10:00 PM. I had to make a really quick call, a really quick judgment call, but we did it nonetheless.

[00:34:34] M: Well, you seem really happy right now. At least you – you know optimism. Yeah, I’m always impressed by this strength of founders, like the world is almost over and they come back somehow. I bet it was really hard.

[00:34:52] J: Well, I got to know. It’s like a cliffhanger right now. What happened? I don’t know the end of the story. Tell me.

[00:34:57] ND: I mean, we promoted the campaign without products, and without celebrities taking photos of the products. It was much harder. We couldn’t invite a few celebrities to join us. This is a really smart move that my designer thought of, because she’s 25 and always on Instagram. We invited some of the influencers to donate products with us. To Laura Harrier for example who is an actress, who is very much in passion. She was coming up with her – the TV show Hollywood and she’s the [inaudible 00:35:32] model of the moment and she was also handing out Frecious in Skid Row with us the same day, which was pretty.

We used that in a way, but it was really though. We hoped to raise more and we didn’t raise as much. My packaging supplier was really disappointing. He gave us some credit for the next order and he replaced the packaging at least, but replacing the packaging, it took three months. We had a lot of delay, but we survived. I have a big credit if he’ll honor through my next packaging order whenever I choose to place it.

[00:36:15] J: That is so stressful. I’m still – my heart rate hasn’t come down yet. That’s incredible.

[00:36:25] NG: Yeah, I had to count because I decided to make a – because you know, I needed to ground my decision in some kind of rational metric. I decided to take a random sample of each box and there were – I brought all the boxes over from production to my house. There were like 50 large boxes in my living room. I was filling a random sample of ten in each box with water and then squeezing to see if the water is [inaudible 00:36:50] bloody, it was awful.

I think we don’t realize in our society that manufacturing goods, all the goods that we have around us, someone made them. Someone crafted them. Even if it’s Home Depot or whatever, a huge chain is now selling fake or Monet paintings. Someone is physically painting 30 fake Monets in some corner of the world in a factory. We kind of take all of that for granted, but when you still have to move physical things and handle them and make further their phase and that they are [inaudible 00:37:31]. It’s still as hard as it was back when Ford did it.

[00:37:37] M: Yes.

[00:37:37] J: It’s amazing. I mean, I love –

[00:37:39] NG: My next startup will be socks.

[00:37:41] M: That proves my point that founders, everything they did is really hard and the next thing is super easy. But no, you’re right. I think this manufacturing, it’s always a challenge, especially when you’re – well, you’re not afraid because it seems like you’ve been in many countries, done business with all continents, which is something interesting as a family.

[00:38:07] NG: But I really believe manufacturing is important, because no matter what it is, we know the ways, the trash that we’re producing because we’re producing low-quality good and that’s cheap as possible. I think manufacturing is something we should talk a lot about, whether it’s food or any other types of product, because it’s happening whether we realize it or not.

[00:38:33] J: I feel it would be a breach of responsibility if I didn’t ask you about this. Because just given the pre-text of the conversation, right? You know, Noemie, I have four daughters who I want to learn to be a great dad to and to cultivate their curiosity, and creativity and all that stuff. You mentioned the environment in your previous employer being toxic and there being comments that were inappropriate. It breaks my heart to even think about that happening to one of my daughters. How did you work through that and how did you – as far as I can, I’d love to learn from that experience, whatever you’re willing to share.

[00:39:11] NG: I don’t know if it’s cultural, but to me it was never traumatic. It was annoying. It was frustrating. It was – it felt unfair because I really care, because I am ambitious and I care about my work, and I work really hard and I felt like I wasn’t getting some of the recognition or the respect. I addressed it more as a rational problem and not at all – I think maybe it did affect me in other ways, right? Maybe emotionally or maybe, I don’t know, psychologic and culturally. But there were a few instances that I think I might have mentioned that I was in charge of my first, I was in charge for six months with the investment strategy for Eastern Europe and I spent some three months on the road. I spent a month and a half in [inaudible 00:40:09], which is in the middle of Poland. It’s like an industrial town where we had the largest factory in the system. The company has around 52 factories, and that was the largest, most productive. I spent another month or so in Chekhov outside of Moscow, which was not fun.

I really did the work and I prepared for the board meeting with my investment plan and a specific ask for the board. The morning of the meeting, the presentation was taken away from me and the CEO said, “You look much too young. You’ve done great work, but you look much too young, plus you’re a girl. The board won’t take us seriously, so we’ve decided that the SVP of the region will present the work.” The SVP of the region didn’t do the work, so I felt like in so many ways, it was. That was the first instance and it was quite early in my employment there. I was so shocked because I came from the US and where there’s at least much more effort stored meritocracy, I think, especially at BCG. I couldn’t say anything I – they asked me during the board meeting if I had anything to add and my throat was like broken, and because I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, I would cry. That would be the worst. You don’t want to act like a girl in front of a bunch of guys.

There were a few other instances where I realized the investment manager for the other portfolio company who had been hired, who had the same work experience I had, but I was younger because I finished college younger, whatever, I worked younger was paid a lot more or people talked about why I got the job. There were a few little things, but each time, I never added them up until after the fact. Each time I address them specifically. I couldn’t do anything about the Eastern European strategy. I let that go, but I was much more aggressive in the future about negotiating from the get-go who would be presenting, who would be in charge, who would be calling the [inaudible 00:42:21], who would be responsible for the budget. I did confront, not my boss but the person who had made the hiring decision on the other investment manager and I said, they should rectify it.

It helped; my dad was a great [inaudible 00:42:36]. He’s now on board, but he’s a great leader and he spends a lot of time in corporate America. He was a great advisor to me. I read a lot of books like Hardball for Women. Whatever I found, it wasn’t even like a specific recommendation and learn some codes. Then I just soft caring. It’s funny, even when I did raise money, I noticed that it’s – when I’m most arrogant. I don’t think I’m an arrogant person, but I think if you compare a very – the cliché of the masculine behavior and feminine behavior, especially in instances like advocating for themselves, raising money, asking for a raise. Women tend to be much more deferential and that’s how I am and I give authority and respect to people who have been in positions longer.

Whereas, men have no problem and I saw it in that other investment manager. He had no problem coming out of nowhere and saying, “I am more fit and I will do this.” In the end, he could perform, he was let go. But he had no problem just claiming. I tried a little to observe and to test it out. It’s always serves me but I wouldn’t say that I’m now able to do this on an ongoing basis. Maybe I’m more observant. For your daughters, I would just encourage them to experiment because for me, it wasn’t until I was in the situation, until I experience all of the feelings, and all of the frustrations that I really decided to do something about it. I guess I was lucky that it wasn’t anything too bad that really – it wasn’t a trauma that I think that that’s the risk, that then you’re not able to really come back and use that experience for your interest, for your betterment. Yes, encourage them to experiment and support them.

[00:44:37] J: I love that. I love that idea of trying things on and seeing what’s the impact of behaving in a different way, how does that affect people’s perceptions and almost treating it in a sense like a game. And that, I can try on a number of hats. I mean, we have – they are all wearing beards right now. They love costume time. It’s like trying different ways of approaching this interaction and see what happens.

[00:44:59] NG: It’s exactly a game, but I’ve only been successful at it when I really was so disengaged, when I didn’t care. For example, when I told them I would leave because I was already – I told them I would leave. They asked me to stay, so I said I’ll stay six more months, but I’ll start working on Frecious now. They said, “Fine.” The whole time, they try to give me jobs to take, but I was checked out. I didn’t want to work in that environment anymore, so I didn’t care. That’s when I was most experimental. I said things that I would never say. Like the CEO said, “We think that you should join the business and be in charge of our strategic customers,” which represented a huge portion of the total revenue. It was really a huge position. Or they said, “You should go run Asia.”

That only came at the end because initially, they said things like co-pilot or lead, but I had learned that lead doesn’t mean – and I was like, “What’s the title?” I said, we’ve worked together for two and a half years. I’m not co-piloting anything. Those words, I remember hearing them come out of my mouth and kind of having an experience, an out-of-body experience. Like, “Oh, I’m saying those” and guess what, it worked. I said, “I’m not co-piloting anything.” He said, “Great. You can run the division.” That’s actually I think all he wanted. But the problem is, those are masculine codes. Like maybe he needed to see me do this to trust that I would have the ability, the power, the willingness. But a woman doesn’t need to see that, because he doesn’t know where to give you a chance. That’s the hard thing for us, and said, we have to evolve in a world that’s built around you.

[00:46:52] J: I feel like you’re teaching me what masculinity really is. I’m thinking, “I would never say that.” I need to experience that with more masculine codes I think.

[00:47:03] NG: Go to Switzerland. It’s very old-fashioned.

[00:47:08] J: That’s incredible. That’s incredible. Noemie, we’re coming to the end of time and I want to be mindful of your time. This is the highlight of my week getting to do this. I could go on for another hour. But if we’re able to hear this in some format and folks want to find you, where can they find you on the internet or on social media? What are the details?

[00:47:26] NG: I’m on Twitter @noedelfa. Frecious is on Instagram that’s @eatfrecious. [Inaudible 00:47:37].

[00:47:40] M: I’m buying a couple of them, so let’s try them out.

[00:47:43] NG: Great.

[00:47:44] M: And have them for lunch. You can have very boring lunches at home if don’t experiment.

[00:47:49] J: Right. At the very least, it will invigorate the lunch doldrums.

[00:47:54] NG: Yes. 

[00:47:55] J: Thank you, Noemie for taking the time.

[00:47:56] NG: Thank you.

[00:47:57] M: Noemie, thank you so much. This was awesome.

[00:48:01] NG: I’m glad it was.

[END]