Interview with Grove Co-Founder Stu Landesberg

The interview with Grove Co-Founder, Stu Landesberg (pictured) was conducted by Volition Content Associate Alan Soclof

Alan Soclof: First and foremost, congratulations on announcing the capital raise! What would you say makes you excited about working with Volition Capital?

Stu Landesberg: Thank you Alan! I am so excited about the raise and to be working with Volition. There are two key reasons that come to mind with my excitement for this deal. 

First, I think that Grove is in a really great place. Not too long ago, we were a high-burn company and now, as we just reported in the last quarter, we are operating close to breakeven. This moment creates the opportunity to pause and look forward to an exciting chapter ahead. 

Second, we have always been fortunate to have great people around the table – team members, customers, and shareholders / investors. The partnership with Volition Capital, which I very much view as a partnership and not just a cash infusion, excites me because we have so much to learn from the experience that Volition has as partners to other great companies. 

Chewy is obviously the first one that comes to mind, and I think that Grove is at its best when we are being customer-centric like Chewy does so well. Our Grove Guides, which is what we call our customer support agents, strive to be like the legendary customer support team at Chewy. How do you turn incredible customer centricity and customer delight into a business flywheel like Chewy has? We look forward to pushing ourselves on this question with Volition by our side. 

I also quickly wanted to point out that I love Volition’s commitment to transformation and capital-efficient growth, and I am specifically looking forward to partnering with Larry on that.

AS: How do you reflect on the past couple of years for Grove and what makes you confident for this next chapter?

SL: The past couple of years have been very interesting for Grove. While COIVD created extraordinarily challenging times for so many people and families, from a business perspective it created a huge tailwind for Grove. 

That said, coming out of COVID, we, like many other companies, miscalculated what the COVID trends would mean for us in the long term. We were unprepared when people started going back to stores and returned to the old ways of doing things. I would specifically say that I have learned more doing the humbling work of right-sizing the business over the last year – a challenging endeavor even if worthwhile – and seriously decreasing our burn than the nearly decade prior of meaningful top-line growth. 

I am excited to have a team internally that is super focused that has done work beyond our own expectations to drive not just good business performance but enhancements for our customers.

AS: What originally inspired you to start Grove, and what gives you the palpable energy and desire to continue on your mission over a decade later? 

SL: Some kids grow up wanting to be astronauts or firefighters, but my dream was always to be CEO of the largest company in the world, more specifically the company that my 10-year-old self identified as the largest company in the world: Seventh Generation. 

While my family would have one or two SKUs of Coke products in our house, if you opened our closet door, you would see 100 Seventh Generation SKUs which obviously meant it had to be the biggest company in the world right? I grew up with the passion for sustainability, and I also have always had a fascination with the category and it’s omnipresence in our homes. When I started the company, there were two key insights: 

One was that the importance of natural sustainable products is only going to grow. The transition in this category is inevitable. If you look at the world globally there is something like 1 trillion pounds of plastic waste, half of that comes from single-use package plastic and half of that comes from CPG products. It is incredible in our category how much forever garbage we create for things that we will use once. 

The second came from my time at TPG Capital, I covered the consumer and retail space. I, therefore, worked directly with brands, grocers as well as internet businesses. I saw firsthand that while the majority of people prefer conscientious products, sustainable products still had a very low market share. I recognized early that there was an opportunity to use the internet to connect people with products that are in line with their value system. 

I still see a massive opportunity today for there to be a sustainability-conscious CPG company to succeed in this space that delivers for customers as well as general society. I could not be more excited about continuing to pursue this opportunity and leading Grove on the trajectory that it is on. 

AS: This was great. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to talking again soon. 

SL: You too Alan. Thank you. Talk soon. 

-The Volition Press

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