Climate change ‘codeswitching’ for business, with Planet FWD’s Julia Collins

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1:17When I first came to Silicon Valley, it was very clear that I was a fish out of water. on many levels. I showed up in like Diane von Furstenberg dresses when everyone else was wearing hoodies. But of course, also I was this sort of very feminine presenting woman and black woman. And when I first got to Silicon Valley, I really tried to pattern match. I tried to listen to the podcast other people listened to. I tried to emulate them. It was a total failure. It didn't work in any way. You weren't being you. I wasn't being me. Julia Collins is a serial entrepreneur who has thrived at the intersection of tech and food.

1:56Her latest venture, Planet Forward, is a B2B platform focused on fighting climate change. As she embarked on this phase of her entrepreneurial journey, Julia realized that standing out was better than fitting in. And I think once I realized that, I started to also have a better mindset because I thought being different is actually my superpower. And I stopped second guessing myself as soon as I stopped trying to pattern match on other people's success. This week on the show, Julia shares hard won lessons from the failed unicorn she co-founded. Hint, it involved robots and pizza. and how in her new business, she's scaling solutions to climate change that are also good for her clients' bottom lines.

2:45You've got to have incredible talent at every position. It's like this huge push. There are fires burning when you're going out. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to, this is totally going to be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Working as a three-bedroom apartment. Stuff that just seems absolutely nut balls. Ten years later, we're like, well, that's just how you do it. We have a faith just how you do it. This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host. Julia Collins has always wanted a career that gave her a chance to serve people while solving big problems.

3:31We started by talking about the scale journey she's in the midst of with her latest company, Planet Forward. Julia, welcome to Masters of Scale. It's so good to be here. I've been so excited about this conversation because there's a lot for us to talk about. I want to start with what you're doing now. Can you tell us about Planet Forward? Absolutely. So Planet Forward was founded with a really simple mission, which was to tackle climate change by decarbonizing the global greenhouse gas emissions that come from our consumer products. Okay. Can I just pause you right there? What does it mean to decarbonize it?

4:08Right. So as you know, climate change is caused primarily by an excess of greenhouse gas emissions coming from just about every part of life. What we eat, what we wear, how we travel, AI. But what is true is that we can actually reduce the greenhouse gases emissions related to all of those things. And we call that decarbonization. It is the opposite of emitting too much greenhouse gas. It is the act of reducing the greenhouse gases that are emitted by all of our daily activities. And what's an example of how a company does that? Yeah. So say, for example, you're a large food company. Because let me tell you something.

4:45Most people don't think about food when they think about climate change. Right, right. We hear about cows and their contribution, but beyond that, not much. But beyond that, not much. It's not just the cows. And some people would even say, it's not the cow, it's the how. Okay. Yeah, it is what you're feeding the cows. It's the fact that you are slashing down forests to graze the cows. So if you're a large food company, your footprint collectively around the supply chain of all of these goods is about 90 % of your overall company footprint. So if you're a large food company, the best thing that you can do is to look at that 90 % coming from your supply chain and look for ways to make smart trades and swaps to reduce the impact.

5:31For example, you might choose renewable energy at one of your manufacturing processes. You might switch from a conventional ingredient to an organic ingredient. We did this with one food company, and they were able to reduce their emissions just by making smart swaps in their supply chain by 30 percent. Wow. Which is a huge number when you think about how much we need to reduce and how quickly. When you describe that, it sounds like you're a consultant and you're helping them figure it out. But you're not a consulting company, at least not at your core, right? Right. You're a software company.

6:02We're a software company. So I'll tell you about a company that I love to talk about, which is called Just Salad. They're a fantastic salad company. They've become a really big business operating across the country. Working with Just Salad, what we did was use artificial intelligence to analyze their supply chain. So not doing this in spreadsheets, but really using artificial intelligence to essentially create a digital twin of that company's supply chain. showing them where their greenhouse gas emissions were coming from all the way from the field to the fork. How much is coming from the growing of the ingredient versus the processing, versus the distribution, the consumer use, even the end of life?

6:45Is it composted? Is it landfilled? And as you could imagine, that kind of very detailed fine work is hard to do manually. It's hard to do for just salad. It's hard to do for Unilever. It's hard to do for every company with a large and complex supply chain. That's what makes it such a perfect problem for machine learning in particular. Yeah, it sounds like an incredible use of AI, but where I get stuck on the logical leap, and this is why I love this job because I get to ask dumb questions of smart people. It's not like you can just say, upload your supply chain and we'll analyze it, right? So how does it actually work?

7:20How do you do it? There's so much information that lives in the financial transactions of a company. Imagine, for example, that we could get receipts from every single purchase that you've made over a given time period. What you bought, how much it weighed, where you bought it from. Then we can do all of this inference around that data point. And we can even work with external partners to do some additional assurance around those data points. But so much information coming into our solution comes actually from the purchasing records of companies. Have you heard of the word cradle to grave? Yes.

7:52Right? So cradle to grave is the system boundary of a life cycle assessment. It tells you from the very beginning of that product all the way to end of its life what the impacts are. The big innovation at Planet Forward is we've now done tens of thousands of these life cycle assessments, but we've stored not just those life cycle assessments. we've disaggregated all of the building blocks, labeled and trained those building blocks to be able to create new life cycle assessments using algorithms. And this is one of the big innovations at Planet Forward. We think it's a fantastic use of AI to help save the planet.

8:30There's no silver bullet. We have to work on other sectors, but decarbonizing the consumer products industry would really give us a fighting chance. I mean, this is a really big swing. Where did this idea come from? Oh my gosh. You know, for me, I've always been really interested in food and food systems. It goes all the way back to my grandparents who had roots in the deep South, you know, and were scientists while they were dentists who moved from the deep South to San Francisco to start their dental practice. What brought them to San Francisco? The great migration, as you know, was this time when millions of black people moved from the South to the North to take advantage of new economic opportunities, many of them around wartime industries.

9:08But this was also a time when those Northern cities were segregated. And so they didn't have dentists or doctors that could serve all people, including black people. So my grandparents moved to the Bay Area to be a part of that class of people that built practices for everyone, everyone of every race. But the reason why my story about Planet Forward begins with them was they really moved to the Bay Area to be of service, right? They were trained as dentists, but they moved to San Francisco to be of service. And so I have always had this passion for serving people. So why is this related to your question?

9:42What better way to serve people right now than to create operationally sound, scalable solutions to address climate change? There are so many ways to have an impact, but for me, I cannot think of anything I would rather be doing with my life right now. Were your grandparents influential figures for you growing up? They were incredibly influential figures for me growing up. How did they show up for you? How did that manifest? Let's take my grandpa. So my grandpa used to wear a button. He would wear a little button that said, serve people, you know, and it was a homemade button. And when the button would wear down, he'd make another button.

10:20And it said the same thing, serve people. He was this incredible man, strapping man, six foot four, beautiful man. And he worked with so much humility, despite the fact that he had incredible academic training, that he was really talented in his field. He just worked so hard for the people who came to his practice. Sometimes people didn't have money to pay him and it didn't matter. He was about serving people. And so I think seeing someone who was absolutely the best in his field, but who never lost his humility and never lost that focus on taking care of others was hugely influential for me. This is also a man who could eat a whole apple pie in a sitting.

11:02When did you start Planet Forward? Started Planet Forward in 2019, but it looked a lot different than it looks now. How so? When we started Planet Forward, we always had this vision for using the power of food and other consumer products to tackle climate change. Now that looks like a software company. But in the beginning, it actually was a snack company. The first product that we built was a brand. And the idea was, before we go and build software solutions and put them in the hands of other food brands, maybe we should understand what it actually is to be a food brand. We knew that we could build a set of products that could really create a category around, let's call it, climate-friendly consumer.

11:45and we knew that there would be some enabling technology that needed to exist to make that happen. How did we know that? Because we couldn't find what we needed. I didn't know that I was going to build a B2B software platform that worked with companies like Amazon on decarbonization. I didn't know quite that, but I knew that there was always a something else, some kind of enabling technology. Initially, Jeff, I actually thought it would be a marketplace. a marketplace for procuring more sustainable goods and services to build your products. Only it's hard to build marketplace businesses. Nothing is easy.

12:24Nothing is easy. Nothing is easy. So what was the product that you built? It was a cracker company called Moonshot, which we sold to Patagonia two years ago, which was a wonderful experience. And I still eat them under the Patagonia brand. What was different about them was we did everything we could to minimize the greenhouse gas emissions related to making the product. That's not a very sexy consumer positioning. Well. So we had to think about what was the right positioning for the product. We named it Moonshot so it would have this feeling of like uplift and you're fighting for something and you're taking a chance.

12:59They were delicious. They were beautifully packaged. But underneath the surface, we were shortening supply chains. We were sourcing from farmers who were practicing regenerative and organic agriculture. We were using renewable energy. We were lightweighting packaging. And we were measuring all of that. The measurement of it is what became the foundation of the Planet Forward platform. What was the inflection point where you said, oh, wait a second. We actually should be building a B2B software company to serve massive and a massive range of companies to lower their carbon footprint? You know, I don't know that there was one specific day when I like smacked my palm to my head and said, oh my gosh, there's a bigger opportunity.

13:41But it was really just the culmination of so many times realizing that the tools that consumer brands needed to build climate positive companies just didn't exist. Or they existed if you had$100 ,000 to pay a consultant. And I have this like impatient optimism. Like, yes, we can get this done. but only if we work around the clock. And I felt so impatient that it seemed like somebody's got to solve this, you know, and it probably should be us. I mean, I love that framing of impatient optimism. I feel like that's something that entrepreneurs across the board share, right? Especially mission-driven.

14:21So had you raised money for what almost sounds like a different version of the company that was making Moonshot? We had. And how did you go about raising money for that? And then how did you go tell your investors actually were doing something totally different here. So what the early investors were betting on, I think when they bet on Planet Forward V1 with Moonshot as the first product is, Julia has a vision for something bigger and she's impatiently optimistic and incredibly driven. And we think there's gonna be a bigger opportunity here. That was sort of like the pre-seed and seed thesis. I think it was a big bet on me and it was a big bet on, well, the magnitude of this problem is so large, climate change.

15:00and consumer products related climate change, that there's probably more business to build here than the snack brand. The tricky thing was really going from the seed to the A. And that was a hard pivot. Why is that? We still had Moonshot. And Moonshot was growing like a hockey stick. It was like that classic hockey stick growth. But it was growing as a CPG business. So it was growing with CPG margins and CPG operating complexity, which is, I think, a great, super investable business. But the investors who wanted to look at Planet Forward as a software company are looking at a much different profile.

15:36They want 80 % margins. They want massive margins. They want SaaS economics. Yeah, SaaS economics, triple, triple, triple, double, double unicorn. And we knew that we could get there with the software platform, but the hard thing was holding those two businesses together. I don't have a magic answer for how we got it done. I can only say that we were fortunate to have investors like Acre Ventures, like Congruent Ventures, who co-led that round, who really believed in the larger opportunity and who trusted me that I would figure out the best value-creating way to spin the two businesses off. There was also a bit of luck.

16:15Still ahead, lessons learned from a failed unicorn tech company, which involves the robots and the pizza.

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17:21And here's the best part. Join AWS Activate today and you could score up to$100 ,000 in AWS credits tailored to your stage and network. Go to aws.amazon.com slash activate and start building. Expanding your business in the U.S. can feel like a maze. Every state has its own payroll, benefits, and compliance rules, which can pull your focus away from growth. That's why founders use Deal. Deal is the professional employer organization, or PEO, that gives you a dedicated HR expert plus Fortune 500 level benefits for your team. The National Association of PEOs says businesses can grow twice as fast if they use one.

18:04So if you're scaling, make it simple with Deal. Go to deel.com slash MOS and get up to three months free. Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and more on the Masters of Scale YouTube channel. Long before Julia Collins founded a snack brand turned tech platform, she started her career working in the food business. I always wanted to be in food. What? I just have always felt most at home when I'm eating or with people. I'm like the person who will read a cookbook at the beach or like go to the grocery store just to watch people shop. I am obsessed with food and food culture.

18:51Anytime I had like two nickels to rub together, I'm like buying a plane ticket to go see the hot new chef. Oh, wow. Like I just always loved it. But my grandpa, who, as you know, was really influential in my life, was like, you can do anything except for just don't go into food. Because why? He said to me one time, you want to go into food, you might as well just go pick cotton. Oh, my. Because coming up, when he came up, those were the jobs that you could have as a black person. And so he associated me being in food with his sort of roots in sharecropping. That was the association that he had.

19:28Wow. I think also, you know, for anybody who's got this story, if you're an immigrant, if you are somebody who came from a humble background, if you are a person of color, the grownups who raise you really try to keep you safe. Of course, all parents try to keep their children safe. But I think it's doubly true if your parents have some of that intergenerational trauma or your grandparents have some of that intergenerational trauma around that lived experience. And so I think he also was like, please just be a doctor. If you can't be a doctor, be a lawyer. If you can't be a lawyer, can you please be an engineer?

20:04So I like went off to Harvard to study biomedical engineering because then maybe grandpa would be happy. But I just, it wasn't what I wanted. I really wanted to be in food. So I went back to him after I graduated from Harvard and he said, again, grandpa, I really, really want to be in food. And he said, again, please don't. Whatever you do, don't go into food. And I was like, okay, what if I get another degree? He's like, yes, if you get another degree, then I think you'll be fine. So what are you going to get? Are you going to get an MBA? And I said, okay, I'll get an MBA. He said, if you go to Harvard or Stanford, only those two, Jeff.

20:42Only those two. Then grandpa will pay for half of it. Grandpa had high standards. So that is what we did. You ended up at Stanford. I ended up at Stanford. And then finally, you know, I was like, I got a job as an intern for the most luminary, the best of the best of the best in food. His name is Danny Meyer. I think I've made it, Grandpa. And he was like, okay, baby doll, okay. But what I do think is when he passed away, he knew that I had found my thing. And he knew that my thing was about serving people. And I think that felt really good for both of us. That carries on his legacy. Exactly. What did you learn working with Danny?

21:25First of all, Danny is everything that he appears to be. So one of the things that I learned about Danny was to walk your talk. I really learned from Danny Meyer to walk your talk in all interactions. If you are going to be someone who believes that culture is the key to success, that has to flow through consistently the way you show up in every interaction. And I've known Danny for decades now, and it always does. And to a person, I don't think you'll find a person on the planet who doesn't say the same. So I really learned from Danny the power of walking your talk. I think I also learned from Danny, like now we sort of take for granted that culture is, you know, a key competency of an organization.

22:10But I learned that when I read Setting the Table. And then that was really - His iconic book. His iconic book, which they teach at business school. Yeah. You know, it's not just for the hospitality industry. It's for all businesses. So for a lot of people, you know, you have a dream of working in food. You have a passion for the category. You're now working for Danny Meyer. You're there. It's, you know, you're aspiring to be the Olympics. You made it. Right. But you decided to leave and go start a company. I know. Okay. So this is a very simple calculation. So I'm working for Danny Meyer, which is just my dream.

22:43I wouldn't have cared what the job were as long as it were in his organization. I would have stacked books, washed dishes. It didn't matter. But when I looked to my left and my right, there were a sea of other incredibly talented people who all had more experience. I just thought to myself, it's going to take a really long time to be an owner. It's going to take a really long time to be an owner. And there's a sea of people who are frankly more qualified than me to take that next spot. And I just didn't feel that I had the patience. And so I knew that I could work within Union Square Hospitality Group for a number of years and gain some really good core skills.

23:26And then I just had to go out on my own. Yeah. So how did Mexique come to be? I was set up on a friend date with these two incredible guys, Thomas and Dave. They had built a food truck called Mexique. It was the most successful food truck. This was like when the food truck thing was really happening in New York City. When you would like go on Twitter, not X, Twitter. And you would tweet where your food truck was. And you'd pull up and you'd have a line around the block. And then the cops would shut you down. So it was like, it was the place. You know, I was working in restaurants, which was cool.

23:58But food trucks was like 10 times cooler. I mean, this is the movie Chef right here. This is. Totally. And Tom and Dave were also just like intrinsically cool. And they needed somebody really to build some business discipline. And so I agreed to do a little side project for them. And you know how these things go. That side project turned into, you know, years of working together. It's a story that you do see over and over again where you have people who are more on the creative side who just desperately need a business partner who's got the structure and can handle the legal, the finance, etc.

24:30And it sounds like it was a really nice marriage of skills and passion. And that is my passion. I love the structure of the business. That is actually what gets me excited. is like really building in margin and like all of the financial tweaking that you can do to a business in the early stage so that when you're scaling, you're scaling a healthy business. People think that's crazy. They're like, wouldn't you rather be the one doing the creative things? But I think building businesses is incredibly creative. I actually consider myself to be a creative. It's just that my medium is business building.

25:07It also takes a certain creativity and skill set to be a thinker who can put those things together and work with people who are deeply creative and don't have that part. I mean, there's almost a translation that has to happen in there for most people. If you can speak both, you can kind of make magic happen. I think it is magic. It's like peanut butter and jelly. If you have the data person alone, they're just dry. They're substantive, but they're dry. And if you have the storyteller alone, it's just jelly sandwich. which it's sweet, but it leaves you hollow. You have to put the two together. So, I mean, you stepped into this role at Mexique.