innocent discussion
Last week the College welcomed back Jon Wright (1991) and Richard Reed (1991), two of the three founders of innocent drinks, to tell students the story of their success. The panel discussion was chaired by entrepreneurial investor Julian Mash (1980) and took place in the Old Divinity School, with many budding Johnian entrepreneurs attending.
The President of the Johnian Entrepreneurs Club, Attila Kaplan, summarises the event below and shares what he took away from it.
When I first heard that innocent was founded by Johnians, I was fascinated. It is inspiring that such a successful company is led by people from our College and exciting that its success was built on something as seemingly mundane as smoothies. You can therefore understand my enthusiasm when I heard that the founders were coming to talk in College.
Jon and Richard (two of the three founders) were unfortunately held up on their train journey to Cambridge, so Julian Mash (Chair) and Sam Cohen (Entrepreneur in Residence) heroically entertained the audience for an hour by discussing their ideas on what it means to be an Entrepreneur. This proved a fitting introduction to the evening, and when the main guests arrived I was eager to learn more.
Jon and Richard talked through the challenges, solutions and successes of innocent, and there were two points in particular that stood out to me:
‘We didn’t know where we wanted the company to go … We just wanted to spend time with our mates, and starting a company seemed to be the best way of doing that.’
I knew that a business being all about the people was a powerful idea, but I had never considered getting the team together before figuring out what the company was supposed to do. Be it selling self-filling bathtubs, as they once considered, or healthy smoothies, their main motivation was simply to start a business together. It was inspirational to hear that founding a company to spend more time with the people you like could be a viable approach – and, given that all three of them met at College, I’ve begun to wonder whether my friends here might become business partners too someday…
‘It is possible to have a successful business that works ethically.’
When innocent started about 20 years ago, the concept of ‘social enterprise’ didn’t really exist. Jon and Richard spoke about their early troubles convincing people that their company could be successful while dedicating 60% of their profits to charity, especially since they were competing with companies that have all their profits available to spend. Luckily, it turns out that consumers do value ethical engagement and nowadays it is standard for many companies to have some kind of social enterprise arm.
The discussion left me impressed with how light-heartedly they had approached business. From starting the company between the three of them to leading one of the largest beverage companies in Europe, their relationship stayed the same: they were still ‘a bunch of friends looking for an excuse to spend time together’.
If you’re interested in entrepreneurship, please do get in touch with the Development Office so we can keep you updated on future events: development@joh.cam.ac.uk.
Photography: Nordin Catic
