We reach out to people who are Instagramming photos of healthy smoothies or doing sport. I don’t know of any other medium we can do that in.
From day one we wanted to ship to anywhere in the world. We removed limitations and just learnt how to ship to some of the more difficult countries. It took weeks for us to work out how to ship into Russia.
We self-funded to begin with and we are still entirely self-funded. We have been approached by some really fantastic potential partners. If we have discussions it has to be about people that can really add value to our business.
We want to be innovative as a brand but we need to have a size of business now which is traditional and can scale.
We have a very small and young team and the hard thing is finding the right people. In a small team, one sour grape can spoil the bunch.
Finding people aligned with the culture is our number one characteristic we look for when recruiting.
Startups are very chaotic. You have to be open to change. People who are used to a very organised business can find this overwhelming. You need to be opportunistic in a startup. If something comes along you need to be willing and able to pivot.
We spend a lot of time on culture internally. We spend an hour every Monday sharing gratitude and watching motivational videos.
We have unlimited annual leave. I know Richard Branson has got a lot of attention for doing that but we have had that pretty much from the beginning.
We also have team bonding events, we will go out and do a yoga class together.
We do a lot of coaching with our staff about enabling your peers to shine and supporting each other. It’s a very collaborative environment.
We try to break down that tall poppy syndrome and make it a positive place to work.
In the next couple of years we want to have distribution centres in the United States, Asia and the United Kingdom.
We do want to disrupt the industry a little.
Cara Waters is a former SmartCompany editor. Previously, Cara was a senior reporter for the Financial Times’ website and worked for The Sunday Times in London.
