Episode #236: Stuart Landesberg, Grove Collaborative, “I Believe Deeply That Having A Truly Mission Driven Business Is A Sustainable Competitive Advantage”
Guest: Stuart Landesberg is the Co-Founder & CEO of Grove Collaborative, the leading digital-first brand & ecommerce platform for natural home and personal care products. Stu has long been passionate about sustainability. He began building the company that became Grove when he saw how far too few families really had access to healthy, sustainable home products through traditional retail channels. Grove is a certified B Corp, and now serves hundreds of thousands of households in the U.S. every month. Stu was previously with TPG Growth, where he was involved in more than $400 million in consumer and technology investments.
Date Recorded: 6/24/2020
Run-Time: 57:58
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Summary: In episode 236 we welcome our guest, Stuart Landesberg, founder and CEO of Grove Collaborative. In today’s episode, we’re talking about building a mission-driven business around delivering sustainable home essentials.
We discuss launching Grove on two long term trends, conventional vs. natural products, and the transition from offline to online models. We walk through the highs and lows of operating a company with little capital early-on, and the deep insights our guest gleaned from taking the time to perform simple user tests. We talk about the freedom an online-platform offers when it comes to innovation, and Grove’s goal of becoming plastic free by 2025.
We cover why Grove pursued status as a B-corp, and the opinion that a truly mission-driven business can have a sustainable competitive advantage. As we wind down we talk about the challenges Grove has navigated during COVID, and the jump they had on taking precautions in the early days of the pandemic.
All this and more in episode 236 with Stuart Landesberg.
Links from the Episode:
- 0:40 – Intro (grove.co/meb for special offer)
- 2:07 – Welcome to our guest, Stuart Landesberg
- 4:00 – Origination of the idea for grove
- 5:54 – State of the market when Grove was launched
- 8:19 – First iteration of the company
- 14:57 – What drives interest in Grove’s products
- 17:52 – Biggest selling lines
- 18:45 – Approach to plastic
- 22:15 – Other players in the space moving away from plastic
- 23:56 – B Corp
- 26:30 – Raising money for Grove
- 33:00 – The inflection point
- 37:16 – Importance of good people
- 38:31 – How social media’s growth helped fuel Grove’s growth
- 41:50 – Impact of COVID on the business
- 47:12 – Outlook for the company over the next 3 years
- 50:04 – Pie in the sky ambitions
- 51:26 – Favorite product in the lineup
- 52:46 – Most memorable moment in the Grove journey
- 55:05 – Most memorable investment
- 57:05 – Learn more at grove.co and search for Grove in the app store
Transcript of Episode 236:
Coming soon.
