Why You Don't Need a Cofounder: Danielle Duboise, Sakara Life

0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the Female Founder World Podcast. I'm Jasmine, the host of the show and the creator of the Female Founder World Universe. Today, I've got Danielle, the co-founder of Saqqara on the show. You are now entering Female Founder World with your host, Jasmine Garnsworthy. Welcome. Thanks for having me. For people that don't know what Saqqara is, what are you building? So we are a wellness company anchored in food and plants as medicine, and we help give people the tools to transform their health. Amazing. and let's go right back to the beginning I think you started this what in 2012 2011 2012 okay where did the idea come from uh it was born out of necessity and need I started it with my best friend whom I've known since seventh grade and we both hit our respective rock bottoms and we were just really lucky we hit rock bottom together but for different reasons so um I'd been dieting since at a very young age.

0:58I'd studied pre-med and then interned in a hospital for a long time. And I was diagnosed with IBS around the time I was interning in a hospital and I was seeing patients with late stage lifestyle diseases. And I just had this epiphany that I was on my own path to, you know, a late stage lifestyle disease. Like I think a lot of functional medicine doctors would categorize even IBS as a lifestyle disease. And I just had this aha moment of, five years of training and I had no idea how to take care of myself or my own issues. I'd never studied nutrition in my five years of pre-med training. That's wild.

1:36Yeah, it's wild. And Whitney, my co-founder, had been suffering from really bad cystic acne since we were about 12, had done rounds and rounds of antibiotics, Accutane, lasers, nothing worked. and we were both just really desperate for a change. And so I was really lucky at the time. I switched my track to nutrition and it was at the kind of moment of when the discussion and the literature around the microbiome was coming out and understanding the importance of our microbes. And so really understanding how to eat for a healthy gut. So we decided to just take care of each other and use the science of a whole food plant-rich diet and cook for each other.

2:21And we were like, let's do this together for three months. You know, some days I would cook, some days she would cook, but we really dedicated ourselves to what are now the Sikara nutrition pillars around getting enough whole food protein, whole food fats, getting enough greens, eating the rainbow, you know, things that are like make sense, but are really hard to do for yourself unless you plan out every single meal. And our lives transformed so quickly. It was just a matter of weeks before we both really realized, you know, this is life-changing food. And for the first time after a lifetime of dieting, I started to feel really good in my body and realized I thought my best body came from deprivation and counting calories, but it actually came from nourishing myself.

3:07And same for Whitney. It was, you know, everybody wanted to tell her what not to eat, but nobody was telling her what to eat for healthy skin or what to do for healthy skin. And so we just thought, you know, there must be someone else out there who's having some version of our issues and wants to eat really well, wants to sit in the driver's seat of their health, but either doesn't know how or doesn't have the time to cook in order to do it. Amazing. I've used Sakara like multiple times throughout my life. Like your products are amazing. Yeah, they're incredible. I love the story about how you got the money to like get this thing off the ground.

3:40Can you tell us that? Because now you've built this incredible, huge business and it was such a like lean, humble start. Sweet starting. Yeah. It's, you know, it's, it's a, it's a sweet story now, but it was really hard when you're like living through it. Yeah. We didn't, you know, neither of us came from, you know, money. So we raised$700 by throwing a dinner party for friends and we charged our friends to come. And at the end of the night, we had$700 and we used that to make our own website, to print some marketing cards. And that was really how we started. And at the time it was like one of those websites where it was like basically a brochure online.

4:21Like you couldn't order because, you know, at the time we didn't have things like Shopify. Exactly. This is what people need to know. It was very different to start a business in 2012. $700 now would go a lot further. It would go a lot further. Yeah. And so, you know people would have to email us to order and then we'd sell you like this send you a PayPal invoice yeah it was like I think we counted at one point it was like seven or eighty bills before we got cash in our bank account from a client amazing um so yeah so that's really how we started with that seven hundred dollars and then we turned it into a few million of revenue over the course of a couple of years before we raised funds incredible and then um in 2016 you raised your series a which was just under 5 million yeah so um yeah one thing i don't think people talk about enough is like there's so many options around raising money so early on that was our first like series funding we did but we did a what they call friends and family but it's a misnomer because it doesn't have to be friends or family yeah um but we did a convertible note of like 800k um which then yeah got us to many millions in revenue before we really did a much bigger round, which was still small of only 5 million.

5:33At the time it felt big. But when you look across the kind of landscape of venture funds, it's like people in meal delivery, which we don't think of ourselves as like direct meal delivery. But if you look at that, they were raising 30, 40,$80 million. And to this day, we've still only raised 20. So yeah, I talk a lot about telling people, think of a business model that works so that you don't have to rely on someone else's business model, which is an investor's. Yeah, that's such good advice. I want to stay in these like early days for a while because I'm really curious about some of the things that you did to get traction.

6:12And I think like not all of it is going to be necessarily applicable to today. Yeah. But I think there's still like going to be some really interesting nuggets that we can like pull out from that. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's a couple, there's lots of that's the same, but there are some things that are different, like press really mattered back then and now it's kind of just table stakes like you need to be in the press conversation but it's very rare to get a press pizza it's going to completely change your business yeah um maybe the kardashians posting about something might change your business but it's still going to be probably a spike and not like something you know it's the virality it's like it can affect your business in the moment but probably not for the long run yeah um where early on we got some really big press and like early early early goop when it was actually Gwyneth writing it, early, early Daily Candy, which some of your listeners probably don't even know what that is.

7:03And it put us on the map in a subset of women in Manhattan who were like the movers and shakers. And so once we got in with them, it was like we were their go-to for, you know, cleansing, detoxing, transforming their lives and their health. And then, you know, I think what is the same today is making, figuring out your product promise and always delivering on that so that your clients and your customers can really trust you, whatever your product promises. And then when you don't deliver, using customer service to engage and make a relationship. Like We had, I mean, you guys can imagine, I am delivering organic, fresh food that's supposed to change your life and taste delicious.

7:55Like, I don't know, like, what's harder, honestly. Sometimes Whitney and I would joke, it's like, why didn't we just start a sweater company? You could just, like, put it in the box, ship it. We're delivering fresh food that's supposed to look beautiful and change your life and taste delicious. And that's really hard. And so you can imagine, you know, our customer service, it's like we get people who are angry. their shipment didn't come on time or the box was smashed or what, you name it, we've gone through it. And we always looked at those as opportunities to take responsibility, to make a relationship with the client.

8:29And so many of those clients who had some of the biggest issues early on are still with us today because we humanized it. We took responsibility. And I think customer service in general is something that is really kind of undervalued in the entrepreneurial landscape because especially nowadays you can like AI it, you can use tech to solve problems. But when you get to talk to people and people who care, it's a game changer. That's a really interesting perspective. And I don't think like a bunch of people have spoken about that on the show before. I'm curious about like, okay, someone wants to think that's an amazing idea how do you how do you build that into your business like what are the really hard processes the hires like how does that work well it's really hard for so many reasons like again and again I remember Whitney and I would hear from you know our COO or whomever it's like that's not scalable that's not scalable to have you know we at first when we started we had like a registered nurse as like the head of our CS team and everyone were it was health coaches underneath her.

9:35And, you know, that was the way it was for a long time. But then you have, you know, health coaches answering tickets about like, where's my delivery? And so you really have to learn how to tier your tickets really well. We call them tickets, but like tier your inquiries really well. I'd say one of the biggest kind of unlocks for us was finding customer service people who were people people. Like I think you can find customer service people who have more of an ops mind. But if you can, you know, having a registered nurse as the head of our CS department was pretty game changing for us because like who takes care of people better than nurses?

10:15Who has to care more than nurses? And so she just brought this like care and tenderness and humanity to every kind of interaction and would train people that way. And then I think, you know one thing that was really obvious to us when we started the company were our values but it took us a long time to put them on paper so I always tell people like even though it seems obvious to you put your values on paper like think of your top four to five values and the things that make your company different they're not like we all have a lot of values right like honesty but it's like the things that differentiate your company like for instance one of ours at Sakara is joy.

10:56Like we want your transformation to be one that's joyful. We want your interactions with our customer service to be one that is joyful. And that I was really surprised that once we wrote it down on paper and could share it, how it infiltrated how everyone acted. Interesting. And kind of like the lens people use to do their work. That's really interesting. I'm also curious so um you and uh your co-founder Whitney have a podcast that does really well yeah I love that you just got this side hustle now which is so crazy it's just like why not throw like a media business in there as well you also have a best-selling book yeah what was behind the decision in adding these elements into your business and because that's like a really big time commitment yeah and some people would be like oh that would be a distraction but for you obviously it's like help support the business in some way because if you continue to do it talk me through like the thought process and like what the payoff has been yeah I can't say like strategically as CEOs it was like the best decision with our time but as like a brand it If you think about what we do and everybody's business is different, of course, but our business takes a lot of education.

12:19And even though people think now like they know what's good for them or how to eat, you can imagine in 2011, nobody even knew what plant-based meant. and so we're coming to market with this product that is this you know beautiful delicious plant-based meal coming to your door at a time where people only really had pizza delivered and so how do you help people understand that this is important that this can change your life and then the science behind it and also what we call um like the spirituality behind it is like, why am I choosing this food on my plate versus whatever it is, French fries and red wine, which is of course something I do sometimes, but you know, like why?

13:08And how every time you sit down to eat, you are deciding how worthy you are to feel good enough in your body every single time. And the French fries and red wine can absolutely be part of that. That's our joy factor. That's why it's one of our values. But to understand that your plate is a representation of how much you love yourself. And so we realized it's like, it's so much education that you can never really get into an ad. You can never really get enough into an email. And so really having multiple touch points that people can discover what Sakara is actually about because the food is just the tool.

13:42It's not the thing. The thing is helping you decide that you are ready to sit in the driver's seat of your health. That's a really interesting perspective. I'm also curious about, so like now you're running this company that is of a much different size to what we're talking about back in like 2012 2013 when you're getting started and in the beginning you can kind of like have a press hit and see the direct impact to the business but I imagine now your marketing and programming is this like beast that's like really got so many layers to it what are some of the like pillars to that? How do you like build out and scale a marketing engine for like a company at the size where you are now?

14:28What does that look like? Well, it's a very different world post COVID and post iOS changes where, you know, you cannot target like you once could. With paid ads. With paid ads. Yeah. With paid marketing and digital marketing. Um, so, and in all honesty, I think that leading up to COVID, every business just got too reliant on paid digital marketing. And so even though it's been this big learning curve, I'm really grateful for those changes because it's brought us back to our roots, which is, you know, really taking care of the clients that you have and thinking about growth as like outward momentum from your client base versus like trying to get 17 touch points before a checkout.

15:15I think people are really fatigued with, you know, being marketed to. Yeah. And so how do you instead just focus on making the best product and like letting your clients, your ambassadors, your influencers really speak for you? So I think it depends on the product. But I'd say one thing that is at the forefront of what we're doing right now is making sure our retention numbers like outperform anything we've ever done in the history of Sakara, even though our retention is really high as it is. It's just like, what does it mean to make sure that every client that comes to us looking for a result, a transformation, comes back when they're ready to do it again?

15:59And I think that in the world over the past decade where, you know, VCs are funding hyper growth companies that are basically paying their clients to, you know, consume their product, whether it's Uber or, you know, Blue Apron, etc. It's like there was just this time where VCs were funding me basically paying Meta to get a client and that client was paying less than what I was paying Meta. And luckily that never happened at Saqqara. But I think it changed the way a lot of companies were thinking about what hyper growth meant and really kind of focusing on hyper growth instead of sustainable healthy growth.

16:42because if your base is full of people who tried you for a fraction of what they probably should have tried you for then when you start charging what you should which I've seen happen in Uber like we've all seen it you know it went from the early days of where it was like seven bucks to go I miss my VC funded Uber rise anywhere in Manhattan to now it's like 23 and Uber is one of those things where you know what it changed our life enough that oh some of us are willing to pay that difference but I would say that's very rare and so just focusing on getting a client base that's going to stick around I think is the best business model you can have.

17:19Yeah I feel like it's super interesting what you're saying because I think that that messaging around hyper growth and like growth at all costs actually filtered down it was like the dominant messaging in all business and so I feel like even people that didn't have VC backing were kind of thinking that they were meant to just like acquire all of these customers at any cost and it's kind of like that's not the trajectory that you're on at all and I feel like it's taken like quite a long time to like undo that and now we've got this reckoning happening where people kind of realize oh businesses are meant to make money yes yeah oh yeah and you know I'm so grateful that that's in our DNA because we didn't raise money for so many years that we like had to create a business model that worked where I really feel for founders who like had an idea, raised a bunch of money, went out and did it and now are like, shit, I'm on this like, you know, it's like I need more money in order to keep building this business because they never were forced to build a business model that worked out more fundraising.

18:19When you think about some of the milestones in building Saqqara that you're proud of or you're excited by as they happened, like what were some of those moments along the way so far? Well, you know, when we started, we were regional, we were like New York City, and then we started delivering to Boston, to DC, but there was a moment where we unlocked nationwide shipping. That was huge. That must have been so hard to do. It was operationally insanity. I mean, even to this day, like our, we, one of the other milestones is building out our own custom production facility that's like 100 ,000 square feet.

18:58It's huge and beautiful and state-of-the-art. And that was another milestone. But even to this day when I go, I'm like, how is this happening? It's just like people that love to work out those kinds of operational problems, I just respect them so much. I mean, our ops team that's making the food, it's like they are sourcing the highest quality foods on the planet, dealing with farmers who only talk on the phone. It's really hard work. And then you get it to the facility and you have to wash everything. You have to cut everything. And that all has to happen in a refrigerated room. So you have these people who are coming to work at 30 degrees outside in New York City in the winter, walking into a 30 degree room and work all day, or you have the hot, hot kitchen where all the cooking's happening and you're walking out from like today, an 85 degree day, walking into an 85 degree kitchen.

19:53So God bless those people. I'm so grateful for our chefs and our production staff that do this work with so much love because it is a laborious career move, but they recognize the impact that their work has on people's lives. And so they come to it with so much heart, which I'm very grateful for. Are there any other milestones that you think of? Like those are huge ones. Is there anything else along the way that you just thought like, wow, I can't believe we're heal? I mean, you know, having a bestselling cookbook was a big one for sure. You know, you can get as an entrepreneur, you can get really like you're in your own world and you're like, I don't know if anyone cares.

20:33And then to have that kind of confirmation, it just, it, it bursts your bubble a little, but only for a moment because most entrepreneurs are like, oh, yay. And then their heads like back down. So probably not as, as much celebrating as we should have done even still to this day. But, you know, those were big milestones. There were big milestones where, I don't even remember when they happened, but they were slow. And it was like, we would do events and Whitney and I would be cooking it. We'd be getting the groceries. We'd be sitting at the table hosting. We'd be figuring out what we were wearing.

21:06We'd be, and then like now, you know, I just show up to our dinners and somebody has like helped me order what I'm aware and like our chefs make the food and it's just so beautiful and so professional and even still at those dinners when I watch my team do their thing and it comes together so beautifully I'm like I those are moments where I'm just like I'm wow those feel like really big milestones I'd love to know you know looking at your story from from how you came into the business and and where it is now some of the things that you've done to like up level as a leader and you're you're co-ceos now you have a new ceo but you and whitney were both co-ceos for most of the business like how do you grow into the role that the business deserves it's there's no playbook yeah and uh to go from being two founders like delivering food on your bicycles and making food in like a rental kitchen to a few hundred employees and an executive suite.

22:12Like there's just no playbook. Um, so I think the thing as I, I do feel very lucky to have had Whitney and have a co-founder though. I do recommend, I don't think most people should have a co-founder. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah. I just, I think Whitney and I, our relationship is very particular and I feel very lucky because I know it's special that we're still best friends. We communicate extremely well. Our friendship is always more important than Saqqara. Like we've had to, like it just, it worked. And I know very few co-founders who really, really just work. And there's always something that you kind of sacrifice in the relationship along the way.

22:57And so I tell people now, like hire your co-founder, make them GM, make them COO. you can give them the co-founder title if you want, but you construct things so that you're in charge. Because I find most people want somebody to get in the trenches with, but that's not why you should have a co-founder. And if you're the one with the idea, it's going to be really hard to find a co-founder who's going to come into your idea and you're not going to feel like, oh, but it was my idea. Sakara was not my idea. It was not Whitney's idea. It was our idea. and so I think that birthed a really healthy working relationship.

23:34But yeah, I usually think most people should hire someone that's going to get in the trenches with them. So and in terms of up-leveling as a leader, you know, I had Whitney. I'm really grateful that. So like when you're upset or you talk something through, you know, she and I are always on each other's team. So I'm grateful for that. So having somebody that you can like just be really honest with and talk things through before you talk it through to your COO or whomever you're talking to. But then I think really never taking anything personally. Like that is something that I think is so important because when you take something personally, it literally intercepts communication.

24:16It's no longer about the thing that is actually the issue at hand. It's like your feelings on the issue the other person's feelings on the issue it's personal now and so it also keeps people from giving you feedback yeah and when you don't take things personally and you get more feedback that's how you get to get better so creating an environment where it's safe to give feedback and to be really honest we have a lot of brands in the community who are kind of at like they're at this point where they have they have some traction they feel like their product is hitting and they've got that fit and they're trying to figure out how to take things to the next level what would be like based on your experience and your own you know learnings doing this like what is the advice you have to someone who's like at that point and define like what up level means like increase sales yeah increase sales they want yeah they want they want a business that's bigger I think that thinking through, you know, our first hire was someone who, you know, is obviously so scary to make your first hire.

25:28Like we weren't even paying ourselves. So we're like, oh, we're going to be in charge of somebody's livelihood. But we made it very clear that like their job was sales. And so I think finding people who can, we call it wearing the chicken suit. It's like you literally you find your versions of going out on the street and holding up like the sandwich sign and you have no ego about it. Like the amount of like tasting tables I did, the amount of, you know, I'd go to other events and hand out my card, the amount of, you know, just like showing up and being out there. I think especially in this time when we have social media is really kind of underestimated, undervalued.

26:15but going out there and being your own salesperson and hiring other people to do the same. Obviously, there's different kinds of salespeople. You can have somebody who, like I said, might help oversee your customer service and figure out how to really make that a sales channel. It could be somebody who is going to build an ambassador program. But think about hiring people that actually build business and then solve infrastructure. So then solve HR, solve your your ops team solve. But I think a lot of people want things to be perfect before then they go out and get sales. And I think that really slows things down.

26:52Obviously, you have to make sure you can fulfill orders. But there were just so many times where Whitney and I had to hop in the kitchen because we'd gone out and done more sales than our kitchen team could handle. So she and I are in there helping. So just being willing to do anything. I think people, especially entrepreneurs to stay have kind of been fooled into thinking with a couple clicks of a button. Yeah. You can double your business. It's never going to be that easy. And if it is, you should be worried that it's not going to last for very long. Yeah. That's such good advice. Danielle, the last question that I ask everyone who comes on the show is for a resource recommendation.

27:28It could be a book, another podcast, like a habit that you have, something that's been helping you as you've been building Saqqara that you think other people should check out. Yeah. I really like the book mindset, which is about having like growth mindset kind of mentality where problems and obstacles are seen as opportunities. So, you know, I think especially as entrepreneurs, you can look at problems and just be really overwhelmed. Yeah. But looking at them as opportunities, like for instance, when a client's really mad, we turned it into an opportunity to really get close to that person to say, Hey, give me your feedback here.

28:05I want to understand this or come to this event, be my guest. Like finding those opportunities and the obstacles has made all the difference for us. One other thing I like to talk about is this idea of being an entrepreneur. I think being an entrepreneur is so lovely, but also I think it's idolized a little bit more than it should be. And maybe all the hardships are underrepresented. And so if you have the entrepreneurial bug, but you're not really sure what you wanna do or you don't have your idea or you need some time, like be an entrepreneur. Find a business you love or you believe in and build business within a business.

28:45I mean, Sakara would not be here without the entrepreneurs. That's great advice. Amazing. Thank you so much for your time. It has been incredible hearing your story. Congrats on everything that you guys have built. Thank you so much and you too. Amazing. Quick shout out to all of our Business Bestie subscribers. If you are loving this show and you are building a consumer, CPG or e-commerce business, or you're about to build one, this membership will give you access to the people experiences and the tools that you really need to build your dream business. Head to femalefounderworld.com forward slash subscriber for more.