Joey Zwillinger: From $4.1BN to $142M Market Cap;Why Public Markets Have Written Allbirds Off |E1078

(instrumental music plays) The company went public at 3.75 billion. Today, it's sitting at 127. What happened to cause that?

I, I would say it's a combination of the market is a bit of an abstract concept. A large part of it is just algorithms. When we get momentum, there is gonna be people who will fully understand where we're heading. People love innovation and they're always willing to try, and they love to figure out something that's gonna do something new for them. I think the consumer is in a more delicate and fragile situation than people understand. It's gonna be more difficult and there's gonna be less spending than people think in the coming six months.

When do you think you'll be profitable?

Um...

Joey, I am so excited for this. You know I've been a Allbirds fan for a long time, so thank you so much for joining me today.

I've been a fan of your show and also just what you do in life, and the platform to invest, the platform to, uh, learn through you with, uh, really interesting people, so I'm pretty delighted to be back on the show.

Well, you are far too kind and flattery will get you everywhere, by the way.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Um, I, I wanna start with just the context, which is, you know, we see the incredible Allbirds brand today. What was the founding aha moment for you with Allbirds and you committing 10 years plus of your life to this business?

I'll try to do justice to why Tim and I started this brand together, uh, in a really brief time, but we come from very different backgrounds. So, Tim Brown's my co-founder. He was a professional athlete, but he happened to have a design background. He's from New Zealand. He became the captain of the New Zealand national soccer team all the way through the 2010 World Cup, so obviously quite, quite good at his trade, and was sponsored by the big sportswear companies during that time. And, and you know, just like most entrepreneurial journeys, it starts with, uh, with, with a moment where there's a problem out there that's not being solved for you individually, and he certainly had that, and left wanting something. And it was around these gigantic logos on the side of his shoes. It was around the fact that the world had casualized and the footwear industry just really hadn't kept up with it. So, he had this really unique and intuitive sense for the consumer, for the industry, and, and wanted to do something. He ended up throwing a Kickstarter up to like get it out of his system frankly, and that was in 2014. Uh, I was one of the first customers of that Kickstarter because our wives happened to be, uh, really close friends and were roommates in college. Uh, and as all good things happen in life, it's through the people who support you. Uh, and, and our wives are, are certainly, uh, n- no, uh, no exception to that rule. At the time though, what I was doing, I, I had caught the itch to use entrepreneurship for the benefit of the environment and, and the dynamic nature of the private sector in general, I knew could make a profound impact on the problem of our species, the existential threat that we all face. And, um, that is more true today than it ever has been. And, and it certainly was in my mind back in, in 2016 when Tim and I launched Allbirds. With that itch, I took that and, and for the better part of a decade was working at a biotechnology company. It was called Solazyme. And we manipulated microalgae to eat low carbon intensity inputs. We used, we used the waste streams from sugar cane processing, and we would, through that manipulation of the microalgae, we would enable this, this microbe to multiply and grow and produce any kind of replacement for petroleum. And so I led the petrochemical replacement area, which is kind of green chemicals, uh, and, and would go out and talk to brands around the world, talk to other businesses about the idea that you could replace what you use today, have a higher performance, and no carbon impact on the world. And it was like breathtaking, like, "Yes, of course we want that." And then all of a sudden it was three conversations later it's like, "You know what? We actually just need margin. Can you make this plastic stuff just, and make it cheaper?" And so it was a Sisyphean exercise for me where I, I realized that while the technology existed, the consumers wanted it, it was, it, this no compromise offering was there for the taking and brands could not position it correctly. And so Tim and I came together and saw that one plus one could equal three. We could blend his, his design and instinctual, uh, sense for the consumer with, with my material science background and, and experience in entrepreneurship, and we decided that this was a worthwhile endeavor for leadership, for business, and, and for a legacy that we thought our, our grandkids would be proud of.