20 Burst results for "Tristan Walker"
The Glossy Beauty Podcast
"tristan walker" Discussed on The Glossy Beauty Podcast
"Now, you think about some of those beliefs. It's not as consumer. It's more kind of community led, and it just guides some of our kind of community outreach efforts. So yes, we sell shave being products and shaving creams and skin care products and body products, et cetera. But also, you know, when we think about mental health support for the community, we get involved. A number of years ago, we partnered with the mental health app headspace, right? To offer a kind of free memberships to our community, right? Around the time when we were having this reckoning around what it means to be black in this country, right? And the amount of burden pressure that kind of we have to show up in the world with, right? Around that same time, when COVID was kicking off, you know, a lot of students had to kind of work from home, right? So we partnered with urban prep academies in Chicago. To offer kind of laptops for students that were in need, right? You think about remote learning, right? There are disparities of outcomes for students of color who might not have access to these technologies, right? So while bevel, for example, is a personal care company. We also have to think about the care of our community in a way that's truly authentic. And as I talk about that kind of brand led force for good work, this is exactly what I mean. Bevel really started as this ESG native entity, right? That sold things. Now, you mentioned the laptop outreach like that was in 2020 a student started working remotely. I am curious, have you thought of any significant changes since March of 2020 in terms of how you want walker and code to show up for its communities and end users? No, we haven't changed because we do this since we started. Bevel has always really been good at doing three things you need to do well. First, acknowledgment. Acknowledgment of what it means to show up as a black man or woman or other, frankly, in society, right? And really shiny lights on those experiences, authentically. Second, once we've acknowledged, I think we've been uniquely good at modeling the way. Double and walker company operates off a set of values that really guide our decision making. I mentioned some of our core beliefs, but there are some values that we have courage, inspiration, respect, judgment, while this is loyalty. That make us question the things that we do, but also provide space and room and language for our consumers and community to hold this accountable. And once we've acknowledged what we've modeled away, only then can we actually act and provide space to do things like the kind of mental health support or the laptops or urban prep academies or most recently is kind of wonderful anti recidivism kind of campaign and pledge that we've been able to bring to the community. So there's been no changes because we have operated this way as the default state. For the company. Since you mentioned also modeling that way forward since the very beginning, you know, it's been nearly a decade since bevel first launched..
The Glossy Beauty Podcast
"tristan walker" Discussed on The Glossy Beauty Podcast
"I moved that I felt in 2008 in Silicon Valley when I moved there. The only difference, at least for Atlanta, is that it's in every industry and not just tech alone. And I'm pretty sure that I am not the only person who feels that about Atlanta. Yeah, you had said something interesting in another interview that business had been technology led for the last decade. You believe moving forward, it will be more culture led. What exactly do you mean by this? I'll give you an example. Facebook was founded in the year 2004, right? Let's assume that it was founded in the year 2040. With folks who call it the majority of this country, would it be Spanish language first English first? Oh, that's a good that's a good question. Now, I'm pretty sure that folks at the top there are too busy to have to think about this, but I think that that's a mistake. And I could totally see in 20 years time the folks that aren't thinking about these things are going to be around. The world is changing. You have dedicated my life. Frankly, to three themes of the world that I think are colliding and the perfect time. And I think that these are the most important themes that I will focus on, but I think other folks need to as well. First is the demographic shift in this country and the cultural influence of people of color within it. Second, technology and its impact on not only businesses but also met back to this demographic shift. How do we equip these curators of cool? With the tools they need to spread that cool. And then lastly, I love great brands, right? Because I think the best brands could really be a force for good in the world. And everything that I've done over the past decade and God will in the next 5 decades are really in full embrace of those three themes. And I have yet to hear anyone rebut that point of view. And I really think about this audience, especially the one that we serve at double walker company, folks of color being the least served, but most economically significant consumer population in American history. So if you map it back to that Facebook example, that's the bet that I am willing to make and I think culture is the future. So tell me a little bit more specifically about how you're taking this three major insights and kind of translating them or at least turning them into actionable efforts from bevel because I know that there has been some interesting community outrage, especially around activism and mental health, but tell me a little bit more. What are some core examples of how you're taking that and putting it into these brands? Yeah, so when I think about bevel, for example, and this isn't something that we're just starting at 2022, this is from when we started the company in 2013. But bevel has a few core beliefs, right? That guide every single thing that we do. First, we want to prioritize the needs of black consumers first, right? Second, we really believe that consumer centricity requires a problem solution approach. We only make things that solve this core group's problems, right? If you think about bevel, it's a kind of perfect example of that. I think we are a brand that wants to transcend race and nationality, right? We believe that we're working with the consumer group that inspires that is truly generational in nature and really appreciates the successes in the trials that folks that have come before us have given us, right?.
How I Built This
"tristan walker" Discussed on How I Built This
"All right, so you guys are steadily growing. You've got this growing product line. You're starting to gain momentum, things are exciting. And you sell the company. Yeah. It's 2000. In 2018, Procter & Gamble buys the company out for an undisclosed amount of money. Now, my read of this, I think a lot of people hear that and think, okay, that's your exit. And you walk away and you're swimming in cash and goodbye and but that's actually not what it was. Why did you sell it to Procter & Gamble when you were gaining momentum? Yeah. 2018 was a crazy year. Couldn't raise money. You could not raise money. Did not raise money. Because they just didn't believe in. It was the most potential. I think you started to get into a weird vicious cycle when you're raising money. If there's one investor who's unwilling to kind of give you the money, other investors are willing to do it. And if you're not raising the money, you can't spend as much on innovation and marketing anymore, which makes it harder to raise money. You get into this really weird cycle as a result of that, also in 2018, we had to lose some really wonderful folks in the layoffs. Because the company needed to thrive. And this is all happening as revenues are still kind of like growing. It's like this weird thing. Anyway, and at the beginning of the year, we started to get a ton of interest from all the CPGs. The big companies that Unilever and Johnson Johnson, whoever they were. I can't see. You can't say it right now. But a lot of the big companies and you realize, if you're starting to have these chats, you better be serious about it, 'cause it's gonna take a lot of time away, right? Yeah. So we came to the conclusion, all right. We're in this world. We can't raise money. We have this 150 year vision. We want to serve this audience continue to kind of do what we can. But in a way that's kind of Uber competitive. In September, August September of last year, Procter and Campbell came knocking on the door. And we realized very quickly our values aligned. Procter & Gamble reaches 5 billion people every single day, 5 billion people around the world use their products every single day. The majority of whom of people of color. They came to us and said, Tristan, we believe in what you're doing, the way you touch these consumers the way you speak to them is unique. It's authentic. We still want you to be an independent company. We will not touch you. But get to leverage our access to 5 billion people, billions of dollars of research and development to do what you do. Right? And fast forward a few months later, we closed the deal. It only makes me now think about the things that I have to do every day. I no longer have to worry about going out and raising money, being distracted by that. Because they will invest back into the company. Correct. Procter & Gamble has been doing this for a 180 years. The thing that is really, really important for me is that we are set up in a position to maximize our ability to serve. Procter & Gamble set us up to do that. And that's really all that I care about. I'm interested because in the beginning of our conversation, you talked about your goal in life was to become wealthy. It sounds like that was changing because you could have kept the company and grown it and maybe become a billionaire. But it sounds like that ceased to be your that's right. It wasn't about being wealthy. Yeah, no, I mean, that changed very quickly when I had my first son I have two sons now. And my kind of definition of ambition changed. That moment when I took my son the target and he said, dad made me think about the world in a different way. And kind of the goal that I have now. I reflected back on this when I was 20 years old, and I think, all right, when I was 30, what did I want? The house, right? The wonderful wife, the children. I don't need anything else anymore, right? This idea of more money won't get me anywhere. The thing that I care most about is being virtuous human, a virtuous person, so that my sons know how to live this world virtuously, right? That matters. When you, oh, and one other thing I should say, just so folks know, you talked about this idea of not really being an exit, what the movement means. Procter & Gamble has been around for a 180 years, and I'm the first black CEO in the company's history. The amount of impact that that means for the world and what we can do in the investment in that is very, very important. When you were acquired by Procter & Gamble, you also told them, by the way, I'm moving this company from Silicon Valley, and I want to run it in Atlanta, Georgia, which is where you are now based. Yeah. So tell me the story. Why? Yeah. Atlanta, I think, is the most important city in the country right now. It has one of the fastest growing economies in the country. You think about diversity, particularly upward mobility of black folks in the country. I'm reasoning to black boys in this country. And their ability to see upwardly mobile black folks matters to me. And my son, and we lived in Palo Alto for some time. He had wonderful education, right, with no diversity. And that really started to impact me. Walker and company needs to be in Atlanta. Most of our customers are there, our highest revenues are there. Culture happens there. It is the city and they've embraced us with wonderful open arms. And Procter & Gamble has been incredibly supportive of our moving there, which is wonderful. We can do a whole conversation about black tech leaders in Atlanta, an entrepreneur's, how what is your vision? How put this into context? How big do you want this thing to be? What do you want walker and company to be in ten years from now? 20 years from now. Yeah. When we started this chat, we talked a little bit about Hotchkiss, rockefellers, and Fords. And again, like, I saw that there was purpose in name, right? Proctor, gamble. A lot of people ask, well, why'd you put your name on it? That's kind of selfish. And I think I did it because there's an accountability there, right? And I want that accountability to this walker name to mean something. To mean something for an audience that deserves to be served as first class citizens. So what's my goal in the next ten to 20 years and to be put in the position where I can ask that question of myself again for the company. This is a company that needs to be around a 150 years from now. I want this to outlive me. And I will be around for as long as that takes. You want in a 150 years for people to say, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, walker and company. I want people to say Procter & Gamble walker and company. Tristan, when you reflect on your journey, how much of all of this do you attribute to your intelligence and your hard work and how much do you think it was just luck? It's faith. I've learned 2018 was a trying year. I don't know if I told you this. It was the first time that I realized that good seasons end in bad seasons end..
How I Built This
"tristan walker" Discussed on How I Built This
"Edmonds, we drive it like it is. Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm guy Roz. So it's 2013, and after 8 months of trying to raise money, Tristan finally gets a handful of investors to invest in his idea for bevel, a new subscription razor company primarily for African American men. He's got about two and a half $1 million, a preliminary design for a razor. And some ideas for the shaving products to go with it. So you have the seed money, where do you go next? Where do you get the manufactured? Who do you call? So I had to pay him $10,000. The design firm $10,000 again. Now I own the razor. And then as far as the soft goods manufacturer, we started manufacturing. With that company, yeah, we went through for each of the products, four or 5 different kind of prototypes until we got to something that we were excited about. Tristan, how did you know about, I mean, you know, how did you know what ingredients to use Shea butter or cocoa butter? I don't know, how did you? So a couple of things. Number one, you relied on the experts, right? So that's actual scientists. That's right. And then my own experience. I'm a black man who needs to deal with these issues. Who knows that there are certain ingredients to help ameliorate these issues for us. So include those things, Shea butters, the tea tree oils, the salicylic acid, the witch, like all that stuff. Things soften skin. And the wonderful thing about what we have built is that we've just developed things that solve problems. And it's not rocket science. We just package it together in a way that's delightful and works. We haven't kind of traveled around the world to find that ingredient that's like in the earth, right? We like put into the bottle. No, these things exist. We've packaged it in a way that is proprietary to the needs of the audience that we serve, and we've continued to do that for the past 6 years. And so for people who are familiar with the blade, just describe what it looks like. Yeah, so a double edged safety razor is think about this kind of single blade that has kind of two different sides. It's very, very sharp, right? So you take this single blade, how is it within a safe head? That's why they call it a safety razor. So there's two different plates, one up top, one at the bottom. Right. You squeeze it together, blades in the middle, and you touch a handle to it. And now you can shave. And you shave straight down to 30° angle. 30° angle. That's right. So that actually started the mass market shaving industry back in 1904, 1905. There's this guy. That was king Gillette. That was a razor's work. That's right. That's right. That's what raises were. That's what Razer is still are today if you find them and use them. But efficacious enough. So attaching a handle to a head and shaving with it, we know it now today is just razors. It's just the amount of blades that you bring along with it. I read that you were really interested in the whole unboxing experience, right? Like when you get an iPhone, it's so beautiful. It's simple. You just pop off the top, you open it up, no instruction book. It's seamless. It's clean. What was that sort of your idea of what you wanted that lady? Oh, I wasted a lot of money on packaging, boy. Look, if we were going to deliver an experience to folks who have not been treated well, we have to wow them with that experience. We went through like ten, 12 different prototypes of the amount of suction that comes up when people lift the top box from the bottom. It matters. When folks kind of lift it up and it takes that kind of two and a half seconds lift up and they see this beautiful razor underneath. That's something that they deserve. And those tend to 12 prototypes had to happen. What do you remember when you got the first shipment and you saw this idea in your head? In boxes. The first shipment actually froze on a truck because we were doing the manufacturing and December. And he was fulfillment in Oklahoma. That sort of thing. And a few of the trucks actually had things freeze on it. So before we kind of shit, we had to do another batch run in order to deliver it to customers. This was going to be a subscription model from the very beginning subscription in the beginning. That was the thing that actually got me to get the funding that I needed. Because a lot of these VCs were subscription subscription subscription. And what was like Harry's and Dollar Shave Club? Well, were they out in the world at that point? I believe dollar shave clubs and in the world at that point, Harry's launched a little bit before we did. And so there was this sort of sense. You're saying there was a sense among VCs or there was excitement around a subscription model or commerce. This was like warby Parker days, bonobos, that sort of thing. So fortunately, we had good timing, because that kind of fell out of favor very quickly. But we started with subscription, and the subscription model worked for us. Because we wanted to build that habit, right? You got to keep shaving and we had this promise. We had this clinically proven solution that would work if you use our product for the first four weeks. So it was naturally lended itself to subscription. All right, so you've got all of these boxes made. And it was the Razer. It was going to be a system, right? Razor, shaving cream, oil, a brush. That's right. But you had $2 million. How do you get the word out? No marketing budget. So funny enough, when you build something that works, people talk about it. That first moment of truth, when you don't wake up with raise the bumps on your face, you're going to talk about it. Even today, well over half of our customers organically. A friend is like, you've got to try this razor. Well, I mean, now it Nas is wrapped about it and stuff. You know, that helps. But before we didn't ask him to do it. But before we talk about the fade and the blade. Yeah, that's right. How did you get? I mean, okay, day one, you got to sell the products. You got a website. How do you get people to start buying it? So I've been fortunate, particularly for my four square days. Because we did so well and had a whole bunch of publicity, that sort of thing. I was building relationships with journalists from way back when. So you had a little bit of a network. Yeah, and like the thing walker companies had a ton of press that were very, very thankful for. But I was speaking to the gentleman who's written a number of articles about us around why is it that we've gotten so much press and he said, you know what Tristan, you don't treat journalist transactionally. You know, like you build relationships with them. So by the time you're actually working on things, they want to talk about it. So we've launched with a whole bunch of folks that were willing to talk about it. It was a time when we were talking about diversity and technology, right? So not only did I have this new company that had raised money, I had my not for profit that was thriving at the time. And you're not for profit, we should mention it was a code 2040, it was nonprofit to help train black and LatinX coders to get internships into Silicon Valley. Get them full time off for his mentorship and that sort of thing. And that's continued to thrive. So you had some attention from that. We.
How I Built This
"tristan walker" Discussed on How I Built This
"Underserved. Like was that what you wanted? I had the graph, it was up to the right. I had the kind of beautiful inspiration and all that stuff. Look, VCs say they want founders that they've worked with in the past that have pedigree and experience with the blue ocean opportunities like check, check, check, check, check. And folks are turning this down. This is what I'm curious about. You're going there. You're showing them the numbers. You're saying, this is a, you know, there's a $1 trillion or whatever, however, much money there is. When it comes to consumers of color in the United States, this is a market where African American man particularly are spend women are spending more money than any other group in the country. And VCs were saying what? To you? Raise a bone's not a problem. Go figure. Literally, I had one BC who was like, oh yeah, is this like that Chris Rock movie with good hair? No, but I mean, I'm curious. You would sit with VCs and presumably most of them were man Muslim or white man. That's right. And people are saying, this is not something I've ever heard of as a problem. Yeah, they just didn't want it to be a problem. I mean, and it wasn't only the white man who was like folks of color too. And we pitched, gosh. 50, 60 VCs. Silicon Valley, particularly venture capitalists who are investors who've never operated before almost have this really interesting kind of worldview that they're always right. But you also have to realize it's their job to be wrong 90% of the time. And I had to realize that very, very quickly. Maybe it was the case that they just haven't caught up to the concept yet, but they will. We spoke to 60 of them. They were another 60 behind that. We were going to figure it out. Would you get irritated during pitch meetings? Oh, all the time. I mean, like those Chris Rock comments, used to piss me off. But I knew every time they were saying no, I knew that bad idea was good as hell. What was it? It was because intuition? No, I just knew if they were turning them down. They're not going to fund anybody else that was trying to do this. If anybody else, if anybody else was qualified to do this, it was me. We didn't have any competition and still don't. Yeah. You know, it gets to some point where even if folks wanted to go and pitch this idea, they'd say, well, let's see if Tristan's works first. And by then, it's too late. I'm curious for people who have straight hair, right? Most of them, most men of straight hair don't think about shaming the shave and then they go to work and whatever. Were you sort of trying to explain to investors like, this is a really big issue. This is like something that black men men of color don't talk about, but is sort of painful. I mean, I think there's even bigger. This is me, my trying to explain to people that people are different. You know? And that wasn't even registering. You know, if you can't even level set there, you know, you're going to have a pretty steep uphill battle. When we come back in just a moment, how Tristan walker finally launched his shaving subscription box and eventually got his products into retail stores. And how that led to maybe the most transcendent moment ever experienced by anyone in a target. Stay with us, I'm guy Roz and you're listening to how I built this from NPR. Support for NPR and the following message come from avalara, a pioneer in sales tax automation, since 2004, avalara has been providing cloud based sales tax solutions for businesses of all sizes, and with more than 1000 signed partner integrations, avalara likely integrates with the ERP and ecommerce systems you use today. Find out how your business can save time and reduce risk at AV AL ARA dot com slash NPR. Avalara, tax compliance, done right. This message comes from NPR sponsor Edmunds, the Edmunds homepage has car rankings compiled by their review editors. From there, shoppers can pick top ranked vehicles and do a side by side comparison by clicking on the compare box. Car shopping can be overwhelming. Edmunds is here to help visit EDM DS dot com and click on Edmund's best car rankings to research and compare vehicles..
How I Built This
"tristan walker" Discussed on How I Built This
"The business insurance experts hey people, this is Emma joy, the host of the new Wednesday show everyone and their mom, from your Friends at wait wait, don't tell me podcast. It's a great place to take a break from the news and check out what everyone else is talking about. For example, this week is romantic monkeys. I know, but trust me. Check out everyone and their mom. Every Wednesday in the wait wait, don't tell me podcast feed. Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm guy rose. So it's early 2013 and Tristan walker has this idea for a new razor designed specifically for black men. And he goes to his current boss, venture capitalist Ben Horowitz to ask him what he thinks about it. So when you, when you have this idea, you go to band and what was his response? In fact, been really wanted me to do the hair extensions I did. And at that point, at that point, I knew he was in because he understood an insight. That folks were unwilling to down the rest of sandhill road. So by the time I came to him with the shaving idea, then he was really into it because he was like, that you. Like, you've got it. And you have a uniqueness here. That can help you accelerate, let us help you in that vision. All right, so you've got sort of sign off from Ben, and you've got to start to look for money to pursue this idea. And just to get a sense of where you were, was the initial idea to just start with a razor or was it to start with a whole ecosystem of products? Yeah, so came up with the idea of January. My 9th month was April, so I knew I had to hurry up. And that's when I was thinking about starting to go out and raise money. So my thought was, all right, I had this razor, I also had kind of set of other products. There is kind of the blades driving oil shave cream. And did you create a prototype at that point? So it's a great question. Two things here. There's the razor and the design for the razor. Then there's the products that go into the bottle, and then there's the design for the bottle. Each of which had to kind of coalesce before I actually started pitching. You needed some seed money for that. Correct. So it's a cart before the horse kind of thing. In order to kind of start what we did, you need like $2 million to do it, right? But I knew that there are things that I can do to get that $2 million to do it. The first was on the razor design. I actually found some folks who were ex IDO, wonderful, brilliant, brilliant folks. My pitch to them and their pitch to me was as follows, Tristan, for this razor, we can do it. We will design 6 types of razors that you can select from. If you decide to choose one, you just need to pay us $10,000 to do it. But if you don't, then we just get to keep these designs. So I was like, okay, let me have these designs. I could put it in my pitch deck, right? And if I raise the money, you'll get your $10,000. Then for the kind of oils and creams that go into the bottle, there was a website that actually had a list of all the private label manufacturers in the country. I click on the link, I point my finger out to the screen, and I find cosmetic specialty labs in Lawton, Oklahoma. I call them up. And I say, I'm thinking about starting this concept. I think it's going to be great. I could potentially have the backing of all these kind of VCs. This is a company that made like lotions and shaving creams and things like that. Okay. They did it for small companies and some big as well. Right. And she said, great. I can get you these samples for free. Let me make you some samples for free. I didn't have to pay for any samples. Now, that never happens. Never happens. So by the time the end of April comes, I have designs for razor, like a hard good. I have formulations for the soft goods that I need, and then one of my best buddies, he's one of the best package design, nerds on the planet. He helped me with some initial designs for what bevel could be. But this was all on paper. You didn't have any physical prototypes yet. Correct. But that would allow you to make the pitch deck to show what it could look like. Kind of. The pitch deck actually. I remember the very first pitch deck, which was a PowerPoint of graduated to keynote. But we had a PowerPoint of clip art because I didn't have. The thing, I remember being so embarrassed, so I had like this 15 slide pitch deck that just sold the hope in the dream. And I mean, at this point, this is like 2013, I guess. Was this a thing, the first thing since, I don't know, you graduated college and then really got you excited that you thought this thing could have legs. It was the first time I realized that I saw something that people like other people didn't. They didn't see. Now, I had some of that for like four square, but it was the first time that somebody came to me that I actually had a comparative advantage based on my just being, right? Like 15 years of experience of trying those terrible products, right? And I knew that I can compete here with some of the best venture capital firms on the planet. All right, so at this point, before you even have a prototype, right, what was your sort of value proposition? Because there were products on the market for razor bumps. And you could get shaving cream that was designed to ameliorate that issue, but what was the problem with those products in your view? Here's my pitch. I would walk people through this story. I always have to go to a retail store. At that retail store, you have il 15. Il 15, if you look up, it says ethnic beauty aisle. The ethnic beauty aisle is always next dial 14, which is beauty aisle. It's never made any sense to me. I have to walk down that aisle in the ethnicity aisle, which is never really a dial because this shelf. And then there are products and packages that are dirty. With kind of old folks in it from the 70s with Jerry curls on it. And this packaging has not changed. So here's what's really, really interesting. This is exactly what I tell people. I walk them through this whole story in the VCs laugh. And the first slide that I show them are photos of those packaging. They all shut down. Right? Because it hasn't changed. I don't Photoshop those things. Now, what's the pitch? Folks of color spend more money in every single health and beauty category than anyone else. Folks of color, especially when you consider black folks. One of them. The most culturally influential demographic group on the planet. When we think about folks of color, not only will be the majority of this country in 2030 years, we are the majority of the world, right? So if you're a VC, why wouldn't you invest in that? And it wasn't until they started to push back that I realized, um, they just don't get it. I have their thoughts, right? And that's just a testament to complacency. And I can compete when there's complacency. Just to understand, I mean, essentially, what you were saying was, look, there is an opportunity here to create really great, beautiful products for a market that just is totally.
How I Built This
"tristan walker" Discussed on How I Built This
"Because this is terrible. So I wanted to learn how to do it. Look, I'm not thinking about a business idea at all. I just wanted to solve it. You just wanted to. And you didn't want to get razor bumps. I did not want to get raised in bombs. It's not a good look. And the entire market for razors in the United States had been two, three, four blades, right? Because that was seen as it was all about a close shave. That's right. But not everybody needs that. I realize that our kind of trying to get the closest shave possible caused the issue. And I said, all right, if I can do this, and combine it with kind of products to help ameliorate this issue for people who look like me, I know that 80% of people who look like me men and women have this issue, I know 30% of people who don't look like me have this issue, it's the worst. And I remember walking in, this is a specialty retail store. It's like one of those art of shaving or script. I did this a couple of times in different cities, just to test it. I go to the sales person and I'd say, you know, I've had to deal with this issue related to raising on my entire life. What should I use? Now, these salespeople are totally incentivized to take me to the on brand like multi blade razor with a nice handle. They're expensive. Costs a $150 and all that stuff. And none of the stores did they do that. They've always taken me to use what they recommend, which are these off brand, single blade double edged safety razors that your grandfather and grandfather's grandfather used to use, right? It's like, okay, let me try it. Took it home, used it, no raise above my face. And that got me to try to understand why that was actually the case. And I'm not going to belabor the point too much, but it turns out that a single blade cuts the hair level with the skin, not beneath. If I have curly hair and I have blades cutting the hair beneath my skin, it grows into your skin gross. And it's one clean cut. So there's no pulling or tugging or anything like that. So this solution has existed for the past hundred years. Just no one had the incentive to sell it because there is no more patent protection on it. And that's when I knew I had something. And this was around the time when a lot of the ecommerce companies started to pop up. I was listening to their pitches. I understood the types of companies that got funded and the types that didn't. And it was just great timing to start something like this. And to go back to the kind of Ben Harris thing, who else in the world was uniquely positioned to share that story to venture capitalists, to raise the money to do this, to build a health and beauty products company for the majority of the world. I couldn't think of anybody else who was able to do that. So when you talked about this idea, the Friends of yours, who had similar issues, were they like, this is exactly what I've been waiting for. I need this. I didn't have to talk to him. I had to give him a safety razor. They shaved and then get razor bumps the following day. This is like a first moment of truth thing that when folks woke up, the following day and didn't have to have this issue, that's transformative. My first internship on Wall Street, you're told you got to shave every day. I remember being mortified. I was on the trading floor. I opened the doors and as a gentleman got up. I can't curse. I like kickers. He said, take that bleep off your face. Wow. And I was like, okay..
How I Built This
"tristan walker" Discussed on How I Built This
"It has the word business in it, and I go to business school, so it makes a lot of sense. And how many people, by the way, how many people worked at four squares? There were two and a half. There was Dennis naveen, they were cofounders and then Harry, who was leading engineering, but he wasn't quite full time yet, but I guess theoretically. So he gives you a challenge, signed 30 businesses up by the end of the week. And we'll see what we can do. And what happened? Signed up. 300, 400 or something like that? Wow. So you end up going to work for four square after you after you graduated from? Nope. Is actually in between my first and second year of business school. So I worked full-time at four square during my second year in school. And Foursquare gave me a gift. Because I was so early there, I felt as it was as much as my company is everybody. It was a family there. We were doing something completely different. We had folks like Facebook trying to come after us. And I felt that was energy. I loved it. And I felt like my work wasn't done. So Dennis was kind enough to let me work on the West Coast. After I graduated, he didn't ask me to come to New York. He was like, yeah, you can stay out west. The company was growing. That I had to learn too, right? And through that process, and not only kind of growing the business, what does it look like to go from two employees to a 150 to raise tens of millions of dollars to build something uniquely authentic, it was an education that I wouldn't have gotten along. So you were there. I think three and a half, almost four years. Three years, three years. So you decide that's what its course, and I'm gonna do the next thing. And it turns out that you either met or you knew Ben Horowitz, the one of the partners of andreessen Horowitz, and he convinced you to become an entrepreneur in residence there. How did that happen? How did you meet? Yeah, so when it's been our routines on the board, a Foursquare. So they were one of four squares largest investors. I had known Ben not very intimately. Kind of as board member in a new of the work that I did. So when I told Dennis that I was leaving the company, Dennis reached out to the board, told them that I was leaving and then Ben reached out to me a day or two later. He said Tristan, I get it, right? I understand. You should not be an entrepreneur in residence. And he gave me the reasons why. And he said, but if you're going to be an entrepreneur resident, you should do it with us. And what were you going to do as entrepreneur residents basically come up with ideas and pitch ideas to them and in theory they would fund those ideas? Yeah, so as I think about the job, it's one of the craziest jobs in the world. You get paid to think of ideas all day. He said, come spend 6 to 9 months with us to figure this out. And I was like, I'm going to spend all 9 months to figure this out. Being an entrepreneur, it's interesting because I've never met one who's enjoyed it. Huh. That's myself included. But it's spending a lot of time to think about things in an inauthentic way. Right. The lesson that I learned and Ben taught me a lot, he's like Tristan, you got to understand that you need to do the thing that you fundamentally believe that you are the best person in the world to do, right? When you have a unique proposition, given your story to solve that problem. So again, if you're doing something that's inauthentic, this is hard enough, right? You can't do that. And it took me 7 months to realize that I needed to do the thing that I felt that I was uniquely positioned to do. You were basically trying to come up with an idea that you thought they would back. Well, I was trying to come up with a good idea. Yeah. And the lesson that I've learned and Ben, I have to thank him for this. He said, Tristan, usually what looks like good ideas or bad ideas. And usually it looks like bad idea is a good idea. The problem with good ideas is that everybody tries to do them. And as a result of it, there's so many people working on the same things. There's no value to be created. Like Airbnb was a bad idea. Folks actually renting out rooms to strangers. That's a terrible idea. But they've created tens of billions of dollars in value to do it. It's those ideas that actually create the value. And were you thinking at that time tech tech tech as you were in Silicon Valley? Was that where your head was? I was trying to do the thing that I felt was the most ambitious that would make the folks who supported me proud of what I was doing. Right. As opposed to doing the thing that I was uniquely positioned. Let me ask you both. I mean, you come up with a bunch of different ideas. I think one was like a hair extension order idea. I still think that's a great idea. You guys should take it. Direct to consumer hair extensions, right? So at some point, you come up with this idea for, sorry, it's a good idea. Or a bad idea, but yeah, you did it. So at some point, you come up with this idea for a razor, just first of all, before you tell me how you pitched it, how did the idea come to you? This is the first idea that came to me actually. And it was the culmination of 15 years of experience. When I went to boarding school for high school, he was in Lakeville Connecticut. There's no retailer nearby. If you went, if I had the shave, you get the peach fuzz on your face, right? It's like, oh, it's the Rite of passage time. And I'll never forget. I went to, I believe there's like a CVS type store in the area. And you pick up your multi blade razor with the shave gel because I didn't have a father at home to teach me how to shave. My brother didn't shave, that sort of thing. Took it home to the dorm shaved, woke up the following morning, my face completely broken out and raised them up. I was like, what is this? I'm never shaving ever. That was the last time I had shaved until I started double. So what did I use? I used for 15 years. This thing for folks who are not familiar with it called the depilatory cream, which is like a chemical. It's gross. So folks who aren't familiar with it, a lot of women are familiar with it because it's there. Yeah. Yeah, see? But a lot of black men are too, because that's all we're able to use. So depilatory creams is cream, it's thick. You put it on your face, it sits for 6 to 8 minutes, and you just wipe it off in the hair. It dissolves. It dissolves it. Which is crazy. Right? One of the most interesting things is if you actually read the back of the pack, the caution statement says, do not use this two days in a row. Right? It's something that smells it burns your face. It discolors your skin, but there is no other option. And in January of 2013, I remember being fed up. My wife is fed up. I said I've had to do this for 15 years. I want to shave..
How I Built This
"tristan walker" Discussed on How I Built This
"From NPR, it's how I built this. A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements, they built. And guy raz and on the show today, how a lifetime of shaving with products that irritated his skin inspired Tristan walker to build a better shaving and beauty brand for men and women of color. Walker and company. So what are the guiding principles of creativity? Is that some of the very best ideas? Come out of sheer frustration. Products like honest tea or clif bar were all birds or Dyson. These all came about because their founders couldn't find the beverages or energy bars or shoes or vacuum cleaners that they wanted. So they invented them. But in the case of Tristan walker, I think it's safe to say that he didn't just start from a place of mild frustration. He actually started from a place of being fed up. Even angry, because for most of his life, he had felt completely ignored, totally overlooked whenever he walked into the shaving aisle of a drug store. Virtually all the big shaving brands were making products that worked well on men with relatively straight hair. But Tristan couldn't find a high quality razor that worked on his curly facial hair without leaving razor bumps all over his neck and jawline. And he knew that like him, many African American men were dealing with the exact same problem. So he decided to design bevel, a shaving system with a simple, single blade razor that was easy on his face. And he wanted everything about the product to look and feel great, not like the dusty boxes of shaving products for African American men that always seemed to be on the bottom shelves of the drugstore, and his ambition to build a black owned and lead consumer brand as big as Johnson & Johnson or Procter & Gamble. But of course, when he first tried to raise money from all those VC firms on sandhill road in Silicon Valley, he got a lot of nose. But eventually, he was able to launch his company with the Razer, some shaving cream, a bit of oil, and a brush. And over the past 5 years, his brand has grown to include more than 30 specialized hair and beauty products for men and women, which are now sold in lots of big retailers across the country. A few weeks ago, Tristan sat down to tell me how he did it. In front of a live audience at the Lincoln theater, in Washington, D.C.. Thank you. This is like Tristan walker central. I'll take it. So let's start at the beginning. Tell me about your childhood. You grew up in Queens. The way I like to describe it is I had a bit of the rose that grew from concrete story. I grew up in Queens, New York, projects, welfare, bounce of homelessness, that sort of stuff, right? And I realized very early, I had one goal in life. And as a kid as wealthy as possible as quickly as possible. I realized three ways to do it. The first was to be an actor and an athlete. That didn't work. The second was to work on Wall Street. That didn't work. And the last entrepreneurship and thank goodness I came to that realization. We were little boy, your dad died. He was killed. He was killed. And you grew up with an older brother and your mom. What did your mom do? For work. So my mom worked three jobs, mainly New York City housing authority and administrative assistant. She spent some time working for Time Warner cable. And she did some retail, all at the same time within 7 days. I don't know how she did it. She did it, thank goodness for her. It was not easy, but she persevered as a result of, I think, her perseverance. I had to get fortune to be first graduate college in my family. And she really of course actually. What do you remember about your neighborhood growing up as a kid? Was it, I mean, I don't know, what did you do? Did you, you know, it's funny. I didn't do much because I couldn't do much. My father was killed when I was three years old. I don't remember too much about him other than the fact that he was killed when I was three years old. Which is a little bit telling to kind of the type of environment that I did grow up in. So I lived probably the first 6, 7 years of my life in Jamaica, queens, New York, 40 projects. And the time I turned around 7 years old, we moved to flushing queens to another project, kind of development. And it was much of the same, right? And my mother was like, you're going to be the one, you're not going to go through this stuff. So it's very disciplined. Stay home, get your studies done. You're not going outside. When I snuck outside, she caught me, I got in a lot of trouble. But that was really kind of my life. Get to school, get home, do your work, repeat. Wow. And that discipline actually kind of got me to where I am now. Easy for you, as a kid? Yeah. You a good student. I was a good student. Because of the discipline that was inspired in me, I always excelled. I tended to be at least up until high school anyway. At or near the top of my class. And I kind of slowed down when I say that stuff because by the time I got to high school, I realized I didn't even know what a verb was. I went through this entire kind of time all the way up until my high school years doing really, really well. And some of my class, not even knowing what the verb now, and that sort of thing was. As a teenager, you ended up going to this really elite private boarding school Hotchkiss in Connecticut. Shut up. So the way I like to describe Hotchkiss is is the first time I got to see how the other half lived. I went to school literally with rockefellers. Ford's, right? And I learned a couple things first, name, mattered. To being wealthy, wasn't the same as being rich. And the last and probably the most important was I can compete with each and every one of them. While. I didn't know what a verb was, I learned. And by the end of my four years there, on a roll, that sort of thing. It was a absolutely just wonderful experience for me. But transformative in a little bit different from how I grew up. Was it, I mean, was the transition for you when you got there? Because you were like 14 years old. Yes, I've been living away from home since I was 13, 14 years old. And were the first few months that hard for you? Academically, yes? We get to the school and I realize I don't even have a computer. And all of my other classmates had computers that sort of thing. And I went to, I believe it was the English professor who was my adviser at the time. And I remember he took me to like this basement and where all the used textbooks are. And then there was this old compact presario computer. That we had to haul out and take it to my room. So academically, it was very tough because I wasn't equipped with the tools to compete. But over the years, that kind of accelerated in one way. So you finish Hotchkiss, you go to stony brook.
From Scratch
"tristan walker" Discussed on From Scratch
"At eight thirty at night in your bed on the tenth floor hearing gunshots outside of your your home right. You know. I know what it's like not being allowed to go across the street to the park out of fear that something would happen right That's that's a life that i had to grow up and still kind of excel in and if anything cleans Probably more than any other place. I've ever lived really taught me this value of you know being not only diligent but just working harder than anyone else. I think you tweeted this. You're famous for your tweets. One of them. I like was trials. You go through the blessings you receive. Are the exact same thing as best advice ever gotten Tyler perry writer producer actor gave me that advice tyler. Perry's a fascinating entrepreneur. You know he was homeless for some period of his life. Now is one of the highest paid Folks in hollywood and what he meant by. That is those. Trials are just lessons right nara blessings in those lessons at night. I'm not know about you interesting A bit of an open book all on twitter i am. I'm always willing to answer any question for straight with folks. What might you not know about me. I don't know probably going to be the most least interesting part of your interview. Your wife answer that Oh there's probably one way she answered a lot of people think that i'm probably the most like social extroverted person out there incredible introvert. I'm an incredible introvert. What do you mean by that. Like i get all of my energy and just like time just being loan in doing work myself for just hanging out with my wife. All i like spending time with my wife and my son watching reality television after a long day at work like i love that stuff right. What is bette doing now. She's retired now. Your mom is. She's retired now. She still in queens and It she's still. She's not living in the latimer project anymore. she still is. Yeah and i'm you know. This is why you know we'd go back earlier in the interview. This whole aspiration and around like wealth and that sort of thing like why And you know the you know one of the best lessons that you learned about this gentleman who said tristen anyone to think about spending your first thirty or life learning the second thirty of your life. Earning the last third returning and he said all too often a lot of people trying to put the return thing before the earn thing which prevents them from scaling their impact. The way i kind of think about my life right now. How can i shorten the earn things so i can maximize the return. That's only with like twenty forty but it's setting my mom up and giving her everything that she liked deserves. And i i wish. And i have every desire in the world to do that. And that is one of my just man. Like it's it's hard for me to just really articulate but it drives me every single day to do in. My family is deserving of all that you mean you want her to have a home. Outside of the yeah. I wouldn't get her out. And i will get her out by any means necessary. I'm on a mission. Thanks very much for joining us. My guests has been tristen walker founder of walker and company bands. I'm jessica harris. this is from.
From Scratch
"tristan walker" Discussed on From Scratch
"It's one thing that can't control and that scares me no end. I'm jessica harris. You're listening to from scratch. My guest is tristan. Walker founder of walker and company brands a company that makes products tailored to the unique needs of the black and latino population. What are some other ideas that you had that you were flirting with before. Starting this specific company because you had a bunch of them know. I spent nine months at recent our thinking about You know the most ambitious thing that i could build. i wanted to build a bank For underserved communities the unbagged under banked. I wanted to fix trucking. In the country in freight i thought about an idea to fix childhood obesity. Only to realize in those first seven months. I wasn't gonna be the best person in the world. Is all those problems and one advice that i would get a one bit of advice to get from Ben horowitz tristan. Like what is the thing that you fundamentally feel that you'd be the best person world to solve. Do remember like the day you were like. Oh i have an idea absolutely For about fourteen years prior to my starting bubble couldn't use razors and you know electric trimmers. Weren't that great for me. And i used to cream. What's that so like nair right. Like i didn't use narrate self but like it's the type of dilatory came you. Let it sit on your face for six to eight minutes. You don't need a razor. wipe it off in. Your hair's gone now just the thought about that. It's pretty crazy right like how's it even possible because a lot of those products contain hazardous harsh chemicals that can burn your skin You know it smells terribly among other things. And you know i had my last Kind of purchase of those things. And i just got incredibly frustrated and i started asking the question. Why hasn't this been solved for folks. And i remember speaking to an old retired consumer packaged goods executive. Ask him that same question and he said something. A bit facetiously. Ace attrition guliga photos of black men hundred hundred fifty years ago. None of them had razor on their faces. And i thought i was like Let me look into this. I remember going to flicker and entering generic search terms like black men and nineteen twenties harlem renaissance. I went through twelve hundred photos. I didn't not find one photo of elected about space and at that point i said wow. There's something going on here. Why is this the case. They all shaved their all cleanly even right but we can't use multi raises and they didn't exist back then. So what are they use. And that sent me down. This path. Really understanding You know developing away that everyone used to shave which is in our opinion. The best way to shake. Isn't it interesting like you're basically going back to the basics which is just a single rate. That's it simple as that And away i think about it right now is In twenty thirty years is gonna be a lot more curly-haired folks in this country. What are they going to be using. You are also the founder of code twenty forty which is a nonprofit. it's an organization that helps people of color get internships at silicon valley startups. And you work with laura Wiedeman powers who's the ceo. Tell me a little bit about that. So so i laura Was a classmate of mine and business school one of the most impressive folks that i know in co twenty forty man was really founded To ensure that more folks don't make the same mistake. I did realizing that. Silicon valley exists too late. I realized that. When i was twenty four had i realized the potential valley when i was fourteen. Sixteen eighteen Perhaps my career trajectory of be markedly different right now. Why is it called twenty forty. Who's in twenty forty. That's when the majority minority flip happens. Where folks that color start to become the majority of this country. I wanna talk about like what the current state of the world. Silicon valley world is So google has close to fifty thousand employees. One percent of the technology workers black same at facebook one percent and by the way right now blacks are thirteen to fifteen percent of. Why is this number so low. So there's i think there's a couple of ways to kind of unpack that question. I think i. They're still implicit bias in the interview process. You know our co- twenty forty fellows. We have a ninety plus percent fulltime off rate. These stellar engineers. And i remember like one of our first. Few summers nude have fellows go and interview for full-time positions and a lot of them weren't getting offer. Some a lot of the larger technology companies and we started to wonder why and we started to realize that a lot of those fellows were suffering in the interview process with the whiteboard interviews So you're asked Kind of engineering kind of problem or logic kind of question you have to go to the whiteboard in kinda right out your your thinking around how you answer it. None of these kids were exposed to that kind of interviewing co twenty forty. We try and think about things that can help. Kind of mitigate that implicit bias not only companies but also the help students get around that as well. I wanna talk about queens. Yeah let's do it do it. How did it influence you. What's special about queens. Yeah well. I think it's also important to really understand kind of where. I grew up in queens. So i was born in south jamaica queens Forty projects Six years old. Move the flushing queens. Latimer projects. Newest latimer So he helps Thomas edison film of the light bulb in one of the kind of earliest like black scientists really really stellar stellar stellar man So a lot of my upbringing was in the projects right. I think that's important context as well right. It taught me a lot about grit resilience and how important it was. Do good taught me the importance of loyalty courage. Right what are some you know all these big words but like bring it down from ten thousand feet. What life was like daily without with a mom. Who's working at time warner cable. I mean look. I mean i know what it's like to take a food stamp and buy your food store right. I know what it's like.
From Scratch
"tristan walker" Discussed on From Scratch
"Let out a. he'd scream sigh of relief and just appreciated the blessing moment that people who are accepted get calls. I knew it was a thing. I didn't know when it would happen So and it happened that around like seven eight in the morning and they're based on the west coast so there's no way that would have thought Been awake around three or four in the morning. Did you also apply to other program. I applied to Yeah i tend to be fairly kind of like One track mind. When i'm really focused like that and at the time i said you know stanford's about this entrepreneurship thing is interesting to me and also wanna far away literally and figuratively as possible from wall street. So you're married at the time to moi. So how old were you when you got married. Twenty three years old. How do you know her Sushi and i went to university together Last semester university. Studying abroad in london. And she and i had kind of a lot of mutual friends. It's never met each other during my entire time at stony brook and their forget she. I'm when i was in london. Facebook had like that poke feature like she poked me and like started our friendship and became best friends very quickly Through our mutual connections. And when i got back We became even closer friends a month later. We were dating in a year later. We engaged. what does she do She's a teacher Seventh grade humanities out in palo alto now so you make your way to stanford business school. Yeah yeah no it's You know for me. I knew that was the place i wanted to live. Palo alto bay area. There's an energy in a richness in this whole innovation economy. They got me excited. And you're learning about this richness and innovation just through reading because you had never been to the west coast. Eat not even through my reading. I mean i thought. Silicon valley was a place where semiconductors got made. It wasn't until i got Out for august. The two thousand and eight. I saw other twenty four year olds not only making millions of dollars but fundamentally changing the world and i say how did i not know about this place. That's a problem. And i did everything i could to kind of really ingrain myself in the culture there. You landed an internship at twitter for the summer so my first year in business school we had just started a new curriculum at stanford. Actually in in your first quarter You are not allowed to like work. Anywhere you got focus on your studies they Kinda stack ranked all of the Like the most of the core curriculum in the first year ambit- stubborn and i decided work fulltime anyway. So that fall into spring. I worked full time as an internet twitter as well. What was that like. It was amazing. It was a time when they're only twenty people at the company. Job interesting yeah So in order to get that job you know that starts to become like an access thing. So i said nor to get here. I'm going to have to figure out who's one degree separated from. These folks are reach out. Twenty different folks. The last person gentleman david horn keys. A partner at august capital but also a professor at stanford a reach out to him and asked him like. What would it take to get that internship. He asked me two questions. He said number one tristen. Do you have ideas for the company. That sure i do have ideas for everything in. Are you willing work for free. And i said yes. He's like all right. Give me a resume. Two days later. I got an email from folks over at twitter calling me for an interview and the following week on an internship. And now you got your your your first fulltime job at four squares also kind of interesting. How did that happen. Same way as twitter in so much is four squares really changing my life. It was it was the only thing that would get me out of bed to go the gym more And there was something in that. That was really interesting. Yeah so at four square. We would Kind offer up these incentives to get folks to do things explore their cities a little bit more differently so we had this thing called the gym rat badge. If you checking out a gym more than ten times you unlock this badge. And i'd be four check ins away and i'd wake up on a rainy day and go to the gym. Just can get it around that time. I emailed the founders. I found their emails on the internet. Debts eighty emailed them eight times. The eighth i'm dennis replied back. He said verbatim. You know what. I just may take you up on some of this. Are you ever new york dense I was in la at the time. And i remember looking at my wife and saying hey what should i do like this guy after eight emails finally got back to me a couple of minutes later i replied back said. Actually you know what i was planning on being new york tomorrow at booked my flight. That night flew out. The following day hung out with them for a week. And a month later i was renting business development for the company booked your flight specifically for him that he was so crazy. You can ask them to this day. I walked up. We were at thirty six cooper square. We are on the fifth floor. And i walked in and it was just denison the wien and harry. I lead engineer at the time and dennis turned around looked at me completely surprised because they didn't think i was gonna come and just like walked over to an empty seat. Sat down and got to work you. You mentioned flying back to new york and flying to palo alto Just before we started recording. You mentioned that you were on the red eye from san francisco this morning in that you are scared of flying fear in the world when i travel it. Sucks do you remember. I flare to all my. I used to like flying a lot actually And it wasn't until actually got the business school that i started hating it and their two flights in particular they're really completely changed and one was flying from new york to los angeles. And when you fly in you see buildings on each side as you approach and runway and once you see those buildings the plane looks like it's going faster and it just terrified me. And then the second time he goes my birthday in two thousand and nine. And i remember so vividly because it was the first time i bought myself. Noise cancelling headphones and it was beat by drain. And my wife and our flying from l. a. to seattle and it was the first time i actually experienced airplane like dropping in the sky for a few seconds and i was so terrified listening to music on my noise cancelling headphones i let out the biggest scream but i couldn't hear it because ahead and noise cancelling headphones and i grabbed my wife's leg so tight and she had like these marks on it and i was like oh i feel so bad but i really knew i messed up Because not only was she laughing at me. Everyone else on. The plane was laughing at me. But i was terrified and still to this day. Those two flights have complete kind of changed me and i traveled quite a bit. It's striking to me. The intensity of your fear even though doesn't keep you from flying because it seems like you're afraid of very little i mean it's well it's one thing that can't control and that scares me no end. I'm jessica harris. You're listening to from scratch. My guest is tristan. Walker founder of.
From Scratch
"tristan walker" Discussed on From Scratch
"Firm andriessen horowitz. You're from queens. New york and i must say so. Am i and i wanna talk about your background. Your mother is betty was she like what is she like. My mom is one of the greatest woman. I know And she taught me really the virtual hard work you know. There's a woman who had to raise three children by herself. Working two three jobs at a time. Two three jobs that was she was working for the new york housing. And the governor warner cable administrative type. Work and i you know. I truly indebted to her and what she's done to us In support of me. Now your dad died when you were four years old. I was killed and to this day You know. I haven't even asked my mom. How still have these lingering memories of and how much i love them etc and. I never wanted to taint that image. You don't want to kind of get that full story because you almost can inevitably guess where that leads And i just never wanted to take a picture of. Are you getting closer to wanting to know i will I most likely would want to particularly now that i have my own son. You had a brother named sean. Who was fourteen years older than you and it seemed like he was a pretty prominent part of your upbringing. No i mean a world where i didn't really have a father raise me Sean took place for me your mom. Because she worked laid our sh she enrolled you at the boys club of new york which is basically like an after school program. Seventy five cents changed my life absolutely. Yeah go to the boys club in new york. Play for their basketball team You know you have ping pong pool all that jazz. Seventy five cents a day. Or something is seventy five cents a year. When i was when i was growing up. Yeah it was crazy. And i like to say it was the greatest. Roi investment my mom ever made Through the boys club in new york able to get a full ride to the hotchkiss school because there happened to be this one coach. Who said i hear. You're straight a student and a great basketball player. Why don't you take the sat's apply to prep schools. What he no. I got i got in. I got into a school out in santa barbara. And then they got in the hotchkiss guys name. His name is anthony blake. Anthony was in my wedding. He's still a mentor of mine. I am very thankful for everything that he has done for me. They changed my life. So you end up at hotchkiss which is in lakeville connecticut. Tell me about the differences you saw. I like to describe it as you know. Finally observing how the other half lived right. Yeah i got to go to school with rockefellers and fords and is my first View into what wealth was. I really didn't have any experience with that. Other than what i saw on television And i knew right away. I was ill prepared for it. I didn't know what a verb was when i was a freshman there And then only a short period of time to realize. I can compete with them just as well as i can. Compete with anyone else when you said that you saw what wealth was. What was your emotional reaction was like. Wow this is amazing. I wanna be a part of it or was it like isn't fair like what. What was the emotional sancha. Thanks i i thought immediately. I wanted to be a part of this Much in the same way that i went to school with the rockefellers fords. I wanted my last name. The means something. I had one goal in life at the time has get as wealthy possibles quickly as possible. I realized that there are only a couple ways to do it. Stony brook graduated three years And fortunately top of the class and had the opportunity to get a front office role in like i mean every ambition to be a wall street trader and retire young. Make all this money maker. Mom proud only to realize i hated it so you got to wall street. You hated it from day. One as a time employees hated they won. You continue doing it because we thought it was your way out good job painted. By what other jobs did you have growing up. oh man Clean toilets as my first job at a summer camp in new jersey. The boys club in new york. Actually when i was fifteen sixteen i was a camp counselor the following summer an enduring university. I started my first internship. Lehman brothers in the back office operations in jersey city and halfway through that summer found my way into the front office in new york. And then i just had trading internships ever since and the crash of two thousand eight kind saved you because well you tell me but is that one of the reasons why you decide to go to business. Schools knew what was interesting So i left morgan in january. Two thousand eight actually leave. I got fired right and this is before the recession hit. I believe it was like september october of that year. Well at the time. My manager. And i only had one manager and i was his only report About four or five months prior he was let go So i was just meandering around and kind of looking for that mentorship. They couldn't provide it at the time. And i remember it being so devastating because it was about a week or two. Before i was hearing back from stanford i hadn't received a bonus at all my wife and i had just bought an apartment in queens and we're renovating it right. There is kind of one. The two weeks of extreme anxiety angst and fortunately i was able to get in stanford You know is able to get my bonus and everything all worked up. Remember receiving word from stanford. Yeah oh yeah one hundred percent in his early morning. You know derek bolton who is the head of admissions and he calls every student that gets admitted Personally and gets on the phone. And i wasn't expecting this at all. I'm thinking i'm having a conversation for about a minute minute and a half with him as if he were the jp morgan managing director. And i'm like what's going to happen. Like am i gonna get the bonus or not in a minute and a half indirect bolton's like tristen. You do know this is derek. And at that moment i let out a. he'd scream sigh of relief and just appreciated the blessing moment that people who are accepted get calls. I knew it was a thing..
From Scratch
"tristan walker" Discussed on From Scratch
"Tristan was the first african american entrepreneur in residence at the venture capital firm increase in hurwitz. He was formerly the director of business development at the location based check in app foursquare and also had an internship stint at twitter. He was a trader on wall street. Lehman brothers and j p morgan for a couple of years before the crash in two thousand eight. he is also the founder of code. Twenty forty a program that connects black and latino coders with silicon valley startups for summer. Internships tristan is a graduate of hotchkiss high school stony brook university and stanford business school. He is originally from queens new york. Welcome so before we get started on your past. I just want to know what are the unique needs of people of color and when we say people of color by the way are we talking about. Blacks latinos asians or just black latino asian consumers the majority of the world You know funny enough. You know we're tackling what we believe to be very significant opportunity when we think about people of color they're kind of multitude of problems that have gone unsolved You think about things like shaving rotation or problem that up to eighty percent of black men and women have in thirty percent of everyone else we think about things related to hyper pigmentation. Even things is profound is the prevalence of miscarriage in the community You know just really profound issues In the health and beauty space for folks of color that have gone unsolved and we want to solve those problems. Why does a regular razor blade caused bumster irritation on the skip so a lot of You know folks of color like myself. I have curly hair. And i can't use a lot of the multi blade razors that exists in the market today because they cut the hair beneath my skin And if i have curly hair. What's that going into. Just grow right back into my skin causing issues related to raise her bones ingrown hairs etc. It saps my confidence among other things. And when did it occur to you finally to say you know what i want to address this so when when i really I realize how much issues later. Shaving your patients that my confidence was my first internship. Wall street actually the trading floor internship. They'll never forget this moment. This gentleman a traitor. Who stood up looked at me in the face and he said young men take that crap off your face right in front of all the other insurance and i felt. Wow no number one. Yes you're a jerk but outside of that I remember being mortified. By the fact that. I couldn't even think of which products that could use to help. Fix the condition without exacerbating it and by crap. What did he mean paramount face. You mentioned miscarriages. What what what is miscarriages have to do with women of color actually miscarry at a much higher rate than Women who are not women of color my wife back in december two thousand thirteen actually had a miscarriage. It was one of the hardest things that we ever had to deal with And in doing the research. I started to understand that i think some twenty percent of all pregnancies in miscarriage before women of color percentages way higher. And there's very limited research suggests the why But recently there's some compelling research that can draw a straight line between types of chemical relaxers won't putting their hair and the prevalence of uterine fibroids rights which leads to potential infertility miscarriage. This is a problem And i think you know companies just really need to be thoughtful about every person's physiological makeup and deliver a suite of products that can be incredibly vacation suit their needs and in the right way. You know we talk about these incumbent companies kind of not being well educated in understanding the the black and the people of color market and it was also the case really with your investors when you were looking for venture capital it was not as obvious to your investors. Can you talk about some stories and issues that you encountered on. I give you a clear one that just illuminates this point My very first pitch. I remember was on like slide. Fourteen and i had the bebel shaving system Next to the proactiv acne system. The point that i was trying to make was. You really can't think about bevill as like belleville versus multi blade razors much in the same way that you can't think about proactive versus neutrogena. Right for proactive. You can go spend thirty dollars. A month for the system to help eliminate the acne issue or he can go pay seven dollars for neutrogena bottle so we take that system approach. And i'll never forget this moment. She she looked at me and she said kristen. I'm not sure issues related to Shaving your tation razor bumps etc have his big societal impacts in in your solving issues related to acne which point i thought i understand why you might be saying it but all you had to do after the meeting was on the phone ten black men. Nine of them would have said that. This is a terrible issue that we have to deal with so the thing i think was incredibly disappointing and we still get this. Today is a lot of investors lack of willingness to acquire the context. Understand what we're doing. And you know what i learned that experiences that it had nothing to do with the perceived belief that my idea was bad it was just the laziness in their willingness to acquire that context. What other examples are there of. Just people saying well. I don't think it's a big enough market. Or i mean well. We we still get that today. I mean i can't tell you how many journalists talk about how we're tackling a niche market. And i'm like well it's the majority of the world you can consider. That has an issue as you want to. And that's great. We don't believe that to be the case. Where some of the investors who really helped to give credibility whether it was on the institutional front or or individuals one of my largest investors in recent horowitz. They've been a part of pretty much every startup. That i've been a of twitter foursquare and now walker and yeah folks like nazda hip hop artist. He was my first investor. How did you gnaws connect for example. Well first of all queens nods from queens as well has strong relationship With injuries and horowitz And it was interesting pitch. After two minutes he got it. And what's interesting We have quite a few celebrities or investors in the company and it it's less the function of being investors. Because they just wanna get on the hot kind of technology investment thing in more the fact that they walk down the same miles. I do Extremely about you're talking about magic johnson. Johnson john legend Harrison barnes andrea. Who you're they're walking down those aisles. They understand that they're still getting treated like second-class citizens when you were launching their product. What do you think was most effective in getting people to buy a sixty dollar starter kit and a monthly of thirty dollars for service. The thing that i think is interesting to understand about our first brand devil is that it's solving a problem. That's been around for a hundred years and nobody solved so you got to really understand experience. This moment of truth. We shave with bebel. You wake up the following morning and he didn't break out like that is a moment and that is a moment that folks are willing to share and also i think a really big testament to why over ninety eight percent of our customers. Buy from us every month. How did you get those customers..
How I Built This
"tristan walker" Discussed on How I Built This
"Hey welcome back to how. I built this guy rise so as part of the innovation panel at a virtual high built the summit back in may i spoke with tristen walker of walker and company perry chen of kickstarter and palkot. Kia of class pass. And here's more of that conversation. Perry unlike trusted and pile. I could describe you more as an accidental entrepreneur. Is that fair. i'll take it right. I mean tristen and pile. We're going to start businesses. They were thinking of ideas. Something was going to happen. You were a musician. I mean that was your focus but this kind of came into your mind because you had to solve this problem for yourself right did but were you thinking about other business ideas before you came. Came upon kickstarter. No i mean. I tend to have a lot of ideas. I'm sure everybody who you meet. God does but they'd be everywhere you know it'd be like oh doc documentary film idea. That's this that's a that so you know it was all over the place and not typically businesses at all so. I don't really recall any other ones. That really were things that i had kept around as as ideas. So you're right. And i think in a way probably gave me more confidence because you know. This is not something that i gravitate to doing. I'm not i don't. It's not an idea i had for myself was to start a business and so in a way. Probably a wasn't forcing anything like we all have talked to a lot of people that that are. Starting things are interested in starting things and those conversations about is this the right idea ed and and i've seen that struggle from from the other side of of sitting across for people like that. I wonder sometimes that not that people don't ask themselves that question when they go on to have successful businesses but there is a level of question with that sometimes which leads me to think that this is probably not your idea because sometimes the way people are questioning it shows their own lack of belief in it and sometimes it's a clever idea but sometimes a clever idea is not. It's not the right idea. And it's hard for people to let go of things that are clever because you know you can often get patted on the back for a clever idea and it works really well and conversation but if you don't have a deep connection to it as the entrepreneur usually the connection to the cleverness of it it's going to be hard to persevere through all the trials and tribulations that you're gonna need to go through to to get the other side. I don't think he's accidental. That all i know hindsight's twenty twenty on a bit but this was not my first passion. This is my last fashion. You know you'll pile of the dance. I wanted to play basketball right. You'll perry one of the digit. I wanted to dj too. So we gotta but. But i think we the kind of wonderful binding fact about the three of us is that the idea came to us at the right time at the right moment. And i think that there's a beauty and purity in that right like it came authentically and we didn't force ourselves on so i don't think it was accidental at all. We just did it at different paces. But you have to do the you have to do. The work of interrogating yourself interrogating everything around you to come up with the idea i mean. That's it's like you know. Mining for tiny sliver of gold at. It could take years to find that bit of golden. You you have to. I i mean you. You said that you wasted time but you didn't. You had to go through that one. Got live and keep your eyes open right. That's number one. And then the only other requirement is app courage. You know like perry was working at restaurants and still making it happen right. Foul still dancing. It's all right. You got to have the courage and you got to pay attention courage. Great point you know. Maybe it's the same thing. But i maybe the way i've always thought about is kind of risk tolerance i suppose and that delusion i think i think to which which i think is common artists as well you kind of just like the. There's an idea or something anything. Where you're conceiving something doesn't exist that you have to bring it to life and it's not so easy there is delusion that takes over that i think is important in a way to carry you through it philosophical question for all us a broad question which is how important is it for the idea to be completely new totally innovative or or can it just be a slight a slightly elegant tweak is is as i was describing earlier. I mean if somebody's coming up with something does it have to be something totally completely new. Is that even possible. I don't think it's a requirement of try building to have newness try building just requires soul. It requires values alignment mean our innovation existed hundred years ago. I don't think newness matters in fact it's like that that couple in the midwest running in each rack business for the local community that everyone calls on the like. That's tried building. And you could build something really successfully for that. And i think the thing that matters most is. How big do you want it to be because not everybody wants to be that big and that's really important nuance. It needs to be respected. Newness is not necessary. Soule's yeah. I think it's not necessarily about newness but it's about having a unique perspective froehlich. I think there has to be something. You're you're looking to improve riot or maybe the world changed and something that worked before isn't working anymore but you need to add a new perspective to it because at the end of the day and i even think about this with class actually not a fitness prison at all and there were a lot of fitness products in the market. That were actually speaking to the one percent of people who already did fitness. And i realized. I wanted to go and talk to the ninety nine percent of people who are like me and who are scared to walk into a spin glass because they didn't know how to clip on their boots and that was a full other market so to me it was actually about the unique perspective of saying wait. There's a different customer here. That actually doesn't know how to get out of the cruises market and get into it and we massively grow it entire industry customers would go there so i think it's really about honing in onto something not different. It's interesting question and the first thing that came to my mind is just you know i think it also depends what what the entrepreneur wants you know. I mean i think certainly we've seen businesses be successful. That are just small small but important changes or even the same business but just in a different market. You're in a different region here. Different country the success full business may not relying it but a successful business also relies on the entrepreneur being immersed and enjoying their job through long slogs as well. So yeah i i i. I think it's two ways of looking at one of the things that i know a lot of people because i've been bouncing around to the to these networking sessions that we do earlier in the day and hearing people's ideas and you know one of the challenges as you all as you all experienced when he started out when you when you put something out into the world that is slightly different or innovative or unfamiliar. It's explaining it to people helping them understand why the world needs this. How are you all able to navigate that because that can be really frustrating. I mean you repeating the same story. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. You know. it's interesting for class pass perspective like.
How I Built This
"tristan walker" Discussed on How I Built This
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How I Built This
"tristan walker" Discussed on How I Built This
"Dot com because it wise and we take learning personally. Hey everyone guy here. Welcome to a very special edition of how i built this so you might have heard that back in. May we held our first ever live. Virtual how i built the summit most the time we do it in person but for obvious reasons we had to virtual this year but still more than three thousand people from around the world attended and this summer were releasing some of our conversations from the summit. Here on the podcast. Today we've got one of those conversations. It was a panel discussion on innovation with three incredible founders. All of whom have been on how. I built this in the past. So you're going to hear from pile of class. Pass tristen walker walker and company and perry chen of kickstarter. We started off by talking about how each of them came to their ideas. And before perry. Chen launched kickstarter. He actually had no intention of starting a business. I wasn't coming from entrepreneurship. And i wasn't working in business at all. I was di jiang working on electronic music. And you know. I had this idea and it wasn't my field. It's just an idea. And so you assume you know there's probably something wrong here and it's a kind of prompt comes up a lot like funding so every project. I'd have i'd be like where. Can i get money for this. And so every time we would come up it would be like. Why doesn't this thing exists. Yeah and i'm usually pretty good with those things like you know. In a couple of days it will come to me. And i'm like of course and that just never happened. And so i just never let go in a way where it never let go of me. I kept feeling like this should exist ethic. That's kind of maybe the best way to say this should exist and maybe trista navy. That's what you were feeling as well with your project at certain point you kind of just feel like well. Maybe i need to make this happen for this to exist. I felt disrespected. And i felt we all deserve to be respected not only as people but also as consumer What should exist. Respect for me was respects in my retail experience when i walked on is respect to have advocation products. That do what you say. They're going to do. It's respect in terms of how we kind of build a company in a brand and the people that are employed within it. As for me you know started as a frustration. I felt disrespected. And the result of those who things may be recognized should and we went right after. I think that's a really important point. I because we don't often talk about anger or frustration frustration. We talk about but about anger or feeling disrespected as an engine for creativity as an engine for innovation. It can actually be a hugely powerful catalyst. Right isn't that what founders do. Our job is to solve problems right. It's i always think about that like it's the first question. I asked entrepreneur when they're telling me about their product of what problem in the world. Are you solving right. Because that's usually that means that there's not a solution that exists today there needs to be a new blueprint for it. Yes at everybody on the panel today is talking about having started something. That is a problem that we're facing right in front of them and that versus the what tweens want right now is definitely the way to go and it's much more likely to be successful if you're solving a problem that you have so you know when you're really solving it you don't have to focus group at pilot i want to. I want to ask you about the inspiration. One of the inspirations behind class. Remember in the podcast. You talked about the inspired by brands. Like open table and And zach doc which is a platform that connects patients to doctors in. Your innovation was essentially taking a version of that concept and applying it to health and fitness right so class has started because of my passion for dance right and i was always going to classes. I was always finding a way in my busy schedule. Like most people. I had a job. I felt like i was responsible to take after college and i had to kind of go and do the normal thing but i wanted to keep dancing. I was that person who is always looking for classes to fit between my lunch break or fit after work and one day for me. I hit that moment where i realized that technology could really solve this and i was really inspired by companies. That had sort of already done this. Offline to online model right so things like sock open. Tables seamless web and this was ten years ago. So i feel like there's so many more now in the breadth of this But at the time. I remember looking at those companies and realizing not hey. Why couldn't i do this or the classes you know. It's a very similar model where people need to go and do something. It was inefficient. People need a book appointments. And if we can solve this via technology. I quickly thought that because this works in another industry it would work in mind but i was very easily proven wrong. You know i remember perry. I remember one of the things that was unusual. Certainly when you started out was given the kickstarter is essentially technology company. Took you long time. I mean comparatively long time to stand up and i remember you describing like almost three years to get it up and running and there were moments. Were weren't sure whether it was going to work. And just this long long slog. And i remember you told me during that time you and your co-founders made every mistake in the book. Tell me about some of those mistakes that you made and and what. What did you learn from those mistakes. I have never worked at a company period. I was to work. Living a musicians lifestyle in new orleans and so i didn't know at all period to talk so i spent so much time it kinda vacuum on my own conceptualizing it. By the time. I was able to find people that could help program at do things like that. It had been incubating in my brain for so long so long that the web had changed to where with the initial idea app and it was before youtube. So i was like. I didn't even think i was like there won't be a video that it'd be just an image by the time we actually got years later. So we're actually building it. Youtube it up and i'm like okay great so now it's video pile. I mean it took a few years to get the product right but but to to make the business model work but unlike perry i mean you were iterating this in real time while customers were actually using your products. You were testing it out. It wasn't quite right. Go through several iterations but you were learning what wasn't working in real time rate. Yeah i mean actually speaking about your starting journey. I feel like that was the exact thing that happened to is. I mean the first product we built. We spent half a million dollars building it a year in the making. We actually got into this huge incubators so we thought it was going to work. I always think back to like the mistakes we made in one of the things. I was now in so wary of in something i call it false signals of success. Which are things like. You can have funding or press or followers and let that still does not mean anyone is going to use your product and i think for me when i think about that moment when we launched a no one went to class think that was really part breaking but i.
How I Built This
Payal Kadakia, Tristan Walker, and Perry Chen on Innovation
"I wasn't coming from entrepreneurship. And i wasn't working in business at all. I was di jiang working on electronic music. And you know. I had this idea and it wasn't my field. It's just an idea. And so you assume you know there's probably something wrong here and it's a kind of prompt comes up a lot like funding so every project. I'd have i'd be like where. Can i get money for this. And so every time we would come up it would be like. Why doesn't this thing exists. Yeah and i'm usually pretty good with those things like you know. In a couple of days it will come to me. And i'm like of course and that just never happened. And so i just never let go in a way where it never let go of me. I kept feeling like this should exist ethic. That's kind of maybe the best way to say this should exist and maybe trista navy. That's what you were feeling as well with your project at certain point you kind of just feel like well. Maybe i need to make this happen for this to exist. I felt disrespected. And i felt we all deserve to be respected not only as people but also as consumer What should exist. Respect for me was respects in my retail experience when i walked on is respect to have advocation products. That do what you say. They're going to do. It's respect in terms of how we kind of build a company in a brand and the people that are employed within it. As for me you know started as a frustration. I felt disrespected. And the result of those who things may be recognized should and we went right after.
How I Built This
Tristan Walker's Winding Journey to Walker & Co.
"I got laid off in January of two thousand eight. I was applying to Stanford for business school. I applied there in the fall. All of that year and fast forward I started Stanford September of two thousand and eight crash happens a month later. Wow so you get to Stanford and from what I've read like you didn't really have a sense of what Silicon Valley was and what the tech world was any of that at all so so what what did you like. What was your impression? We got there so at Stanford I got there is two thousand and eight. I was twenty four years old and very quickly I knew as where I needed to be primarily because I saw the twenty four year olds not only making millions of dollars but fundamentally changed in the world and like how come I had no idea about this place. Seriously thought Silicon Valley was a place where semiconductors got made right. That's it that's it. This was before kind of you. Know facebook became what it did witter mujber all that stuff right in foursquare. I say wow I can participate in this and I started to have that kind of hotchkiss moment again right yeah. This is something new but I can you do while you are a student at Stanford you start to reach at a four square league. I mean what what what's the story like what what is foursquare at the time foursquare location based at at ten thousand users at the time. It was getting me explore. My the city is getting me to do things that I didn't WanNa. Do Give me the gym more like how is this thing actually inspiring me and changing my behavior I and I said wow like I. I want to figure this out found. The founders emails on the Internet is the classic story emailed Dennis Crowley the CEO founder eight times and the eighth time he might be back and never forget this. He said he said after all these ideas as I share with them you know what Karma I just may take you up on some of this period. Are you ever in New York question-mark Dan's my wife and I were watching lost binging on loss at the time I remember this very vividly in liver and it look like what should I do in five minutes later I said actually yes. I was planning on being in New York tomorrow. So I booked my flight. That night flew out the following morning. Show at the office and you're like I'm here and what happened. I was thirty six Cooper Square. We were on the fifth floor. They surprised to see you. I opened the door for Dennis was facing the back he turned around and he looked at me. Surprise as if like I wasn't actually going to come and here's this awkward moment like what does he do now and it so happened that there were like two empty desks there. He's like yeah go over there over there and throughout the day I mean he had a meeting yeah couple of meetings and then when he's done with came over he's like all right. So what do you want to do and I was like. I don't know and send him some ideas over email around kind of signing up retailers merchants that sort of thing anyone who's familiar with foursquare very small business focused. We wanted to get merchants on the platform orm to start engaging with their customer. I'll tell you what sign up thirty merchants by the end of the week and get a job and and he's like what do you want your title to be as like a business development because as we're business in it and I go to business school so it makes a lot of sense and how many people by the way how many people worked at four square there are two and a half Dennis Navene they were co founders and then Harry who is leading engineering but he wasn't quite fulltime but I guess US theoretically so he's he gives you challenge signed thirty businesses up by the end of the week and we'll see if we can do and what happened signed up three hundred four hundred. Oh Wow so you end up going to work four square after you after you graduated from Nope is actually in between my first and second year business school so I work fulltime foursquare during my second year school and four square gave me a gift you know because I was so early I felt as it was as much as my company is. Everybody is a family. They were doing something completely different. You know we had folks like facebook trying to come after us and that felt that was energy. I loved it and I felt like my work wasn't done so new. Dentists was kind enough to let me work on the West Coast to allow me to get a platform for people to know who I was after I graduated. He didn't ask me to come to New York. He's like you can stay on the company was growing yeah. There's a lot that I had to learn to write and through that process in not only kind of kind of growing the business. What does it look like to go from two employees one hundred fifty to raise tens of millions of dollars to build something uniquely authentic? It was an education that I wouldn't have gotten alone so you were there three and a half almost four years three years so you decide that's roads course and I'm going to do the next thing and it turns out that you either met or you knew Ben Horowitz the one of the partners of injuries in Orleans and he convinced you to become an entrepreneur residents there. How did that happen? How did you meet yes so when it's on the board of four squares they were the four squares largest investors? I known been not very intimately which is kind of as board member in new of the work that I did. I'm so when I told Dennis that I was leaving the company Dennis reach us on the board told them I was leaving and then Ben reach out to me a day or two later he said Tristan I get it right. I understand and you should not be an entrepreneur in residence reasons why and he said but if you're going to be an entrepreneur resonated with us and what were you going to do entrepreneur residence basically come up with ideas and and pitch ideas to them in theory they would fund those ideas so in as I think about the job is one of the craziest jobs in the world you get paid to think of ideas all day. He said comes to spend six nine months with us to figure this out and I was like I'm gonNA spend all nine months to figure this out residents. It's interesting because I've never met one who's enjoyed myself included but it spending a lotta a lot of time to think about things in an authentic way right you know the lesson I learned in Ben Taught me a lot. He's like tristen. You got to understand that you need to do the thing that you fundamentally believe that you are the best person in the world to do right. We have a unique proposition giving your story to solve that problem again. If you're doing something that's like inauthentic. This is hard enough right. You can't do
How I Built This
"So what are the guiding principles of creativity is that some of you very best ideas. Come out of sheer frustration products like honest tea or cliff bar olders dyson these all came about because their founders couldn't find the beverages or energy bars or shoes or or vacuum cleaners that they wanted so they invented them but in the case of Tristan Walker. I think it's safe to say that he didn't just start from a place of mild frustration. He actually started from a place of being fed up even angry because for most of his life he had felt completely league ignored totally overlooked whenever he walked into the shaving. I'll drugstore virtually all the big shaving brands were making products that worked well on men with relatively straight hair but tristen couldn't find a high quality razor that worked on his curly facial hair without leaving razor bumps olivarez neck Kajol line and he knew that like him many African American men were dealing with the exact same problem so he decided to design bevill a shaving system with a simple single blade razor that was easy on his face and he wanted everything about the product to look and feel great not like the dusty boxes of shaving products for African American men that we seem to be on the bottom shelves at the drugstore and his ambition to build a black owned and led consumer Marand as big as Johnson Johnson or proctor and gamble but of course when I tried to raise money from all those VC firms on sand hill road in Silicon Valley and he got a lot of knows but eventually he was able to launch his company with a razor some shaving cream but of oil and brush and over the past five years his brand has grown to include more than thirty specialized hair and beauty products for men and women which are now sold and lots of big retailers lers across the country a few weeks ago. Tristan sat down to tell me how he did it in front of a live audience at the Lincoln Theater in Washington. DC tristen Walker Central. I'll take it so let's start. Let's start at the beginning. Tell me about about out your childhood knew you grew up in Queens where I like to describe. It is a bit of the Rosa grew from concrete story. I grew up in Queens New York projects. It's Welfare Bouts of homelessness that sort of stuff right and I realized very early at one goal in life and as as wealthy as possible as quickly as possible Salaam. I realized three ways to do it. I was to be an actor athlete that didn't work second second was to work on Wall Street that didn't work in the last entrepreneurship and then thank goodness. I came to that realization. We were a little boy. A A your dad died. He was killed killed and you grew up with an older brother and your mom. What did your mom do yet for work so oh my mom worked three jobs mainly New York City Housing Authority Administrative Assistant? She spent some time working for Time Warner Cable and she did some retail all at the same time within seven days. I don't know how she did it. She did it. Thank goodness for her. It was not easy but she persevered and as a result of I think her perseverance good fortune beam I graduate college in my family and she she really in what what do you remember about like your neighborhood growing up as a kid I mean would did you do. Did you add in do much because I couldn't do much like my father was killed. When I was three years old? I don't remember too much about him other than the fact that he was killed when I was three years old which is a little bit telling to Kinda type of environment that I did grow up in so you know I lived probably the first six seven years of my life live in Jamaica Queens New York forty projects in the time I turned around seven years old. We moved to flushing Queens. Another project can development and it was much of the same right. My mother was like you're going to be the one you're not gonNa go through this stuff very disciplined. Stay home. Get Your studies and you're not going outside. When I snuck snuck outside? She caught me. I got in a lot of trouble but that was really kind of my life right. Get to school get home. Do you work repeat and you know that discipline actually Kinda got me to wearing them. Now school easy for you has a kid yeah. I was a good student because the discipline that was inspired me I always excelled right. I tended to be at least up until high school anyway at or near the top of my class you know and I kinda slow down when I say that stuff because by the time I got to high school. I realized I didn't even know what a verb was right. I wouldn't do this entire time. All the way up until my high school years doing really really well at the top of my class not even knowing what verb now and that sort of thing was as a teenager you ended up going to this really elite private boarding school hotchkiss in Connecticut the way I like to describe posh kisses is the first time I got to see how the other half lived. I went to school literally rockefellers Ford's right and I learned a couple of things first name mattered to being wealthy wasn't same as being rich and the last and probably the most important was I can compete with each and every one of them while while while I didn't know Oh what a verb was I learned and by the end of my four years they're you know on a roll like that. Sort of thing you know is then absolutely just wonderful experience for me but transformative in a little bit different from how I grew up was it was the transition for you when you got there because you were like fourteen years old. I've been living away from home since I was thirteen fourteen years old and were the first few months at hard for you. academically we get to the school and I realize I don't even have a computer and you know all of my other classmates had computers that sort of thing and I went to leave as the English professor who is my adviser at the time and I remember he took me to this basement. We're all used textbooks are and then he was old compaq like Presidio L. Computer that we had the like hall out and take it to my room so academically. It was very tough because I wasn't equipped with the tools to compete but over the years accelerating so you fish you go to Stony Brook University New York to study economics. Most most students don't necessarily know what they're gonNa do but did you have a sense of what you want to pursue their and what you thought you would do after I mean I was always thinking about the after I wanted to get wealthy yeah I was pretty singular in that help very singular in that hope and overtime that's kind of morphed and changed and the things that are important Ed Morrison changed but I knew I was very very very focused on how to get there and Wall Street was the next greatest option. All this silicon valley stuff at new idea about my world was New England so you're thinking do this degree and I'll go into finance plows e- economics is the closest degree we had at Stony Brook again to Wall Street Okay and in between my first and second year of university I got an internship and Lehman Brothers back office halfway through I I said I want to try some of this front office stuff so I left that enjoined trading desk at the time just observing so when you graduate so you you went actually went to work for Leman and then as a traitor and then everything and eventually JP Morgan in that time at that time time period. Did you still think this is what I should be doing. This is my sort of path to the worst years of my life. This is two thousand and five when I joined the company and as a traitor. Your job is to make money