How we started a gentle start-up with friends
Ten months ago, the first rumblings of Cheese Cartel started in earnest when we picked our name. Since then, we’ve sold over a thousand pieces of cheese to hundreds of people. Along the way, we’ve had a lot of friends and family give us That Look. The look of “how did you start ANOTHER thing?”. We know. We’re all busy people, in both our work and personal lives. Starting Cheese Cartel really made sense to us though, and we’d like to share how it started, why it started, and some of our early lessons around starting a company you love, with friends you love. — Lani, Anna, Silvia, Jade & Hugh
How it all began
Five years ago, Lani, then the CEO of Thankyou Payroll, sent an email to a few female founders she knew (or knew of) to ask if they’d like to get together for a “Ladies Weekend of Learning”. Silvia, from Enspiral, and Anna, from PledgeMe, were both interested. They joined a few other women for that very first female founders weekend, held the same weekend as the 2014 elections.
This group has been meeting every four months since, with women joining along the way, including Jade, co-founder of Curative amongst other things. It’s been the base for a lot of development both personally and professionally and we’ve written about the format before. One core part of our group building culture has always been cheese based. Every weekend started with a round of our GLADs, and beautiful platters of cheese brought by different women. We constantly wanted to try new cheeses (even our resident vegan), but we were pretty time poor and finding interesting new cheeses was always a challenge.
In July last year, Lani, her partner Hugh, and Anna, with a wider group of friends, were drinking delicious Pinot Noir outside of Cromwell. We discussed our love of cheese, and continued the running joke that we should start a cheese company one day. We were throwing around ideas for names, and after noting the general addiction to cheese, decided we should really start a Cartel. A Cheese Cartel. When we found out we could buy the .com, we did so immediately on Anna’s phone, and set our friends son, Max, to work creating a Pacman-esque cheese logo.
Meanwhile, Silvia was up a mountain making cheese as part of her work sabbatical, but was messaged with the name, and loved the idea. Originally we thought we’d make our own cheese, but after Silvia’s stint separating curds and whey in the Swiss Alps, we decided that maybe making wasn’t our forte.
A few months later, the four of us (Anna, Silvia, Hugh and Lani) spent a weekend in the Wairarapa trying cheese and meeting some cheese makers, and decided that that might be where we made our impact. Supporting artisan cheesemakers to sell their produce and tell their stories.
Jade got involved after a trip to Wellington. Over drinks after work, she heard about what we were doing, and during the trip to drop her off at the airport we sold her on joining the fun. She had the design skills that we needed, as well as a love of cheese, and took the brief to get going on an initial design based on Max’s original Pacman.
To validate the idea, we launched a crowdfunding campaign. Before hitting go, the five of us spent a weekend together and organised a photo shoot with Silvia’s dad. Over that weekend, we developed our plan for the next few months, and set our goal for the crowdfunding. We decided we’d only launch the Cartel if we had 100 people sign up….
As individuals with busy lives and lots on the go, we all naturally have momentum. Sh*t gets done. We managed to raise over $20,000 in our crowdfunding campaign, and since then have sent 100s of boxes of cheese around the country.
So far, the Cheese Cartel is working. We’re having a positive impact on the cheesemakers we work with, we’re providing people with products and experiences that they genuinely enjoy and for us — it’s fun.
“Just so you know, we had a group of people arrive at our deli on Sunday for a cheese tasting, and to purchase some cheese. They are customers of your cheese boxes, and just love the products they receive from you, and particularly love our cheeses, so came down to see us!! Very exciting! Thank you very much!!” Emailed received on the 20th of May from an excited cheese producer.
Why do we think it’s working?
- It’s a high trust environment — four of us have been in a female founders group for five years. And the other founder married into the group. By working together, we’re strengthening our existing relationships. We know that working in a start-up with friends isn’t always easy, so we’re bringing honesty and focus on communication, into everything we do.
- It’s something we love — eating cheese! Hanging out with each other! Creating things. And it means we can stay connected, even if we’re all in different stages of our lives. Our founders are expanding their main companies internationally, having babies, just had babies, starting corporate life, and exiting their start ups.
- We’ve got experience — We’ve all been in startups where it’s not easy, and we can bring our learnings. It’s nice to use our various skills in a tangible easy way.
- It’s a side hustle — we’re clear this isn’t any of our main jobs, but we’re all dedicating some time to it. Despite being busy, we’re also being clear that we need to create some space and invest some time to make something bigger than any of us could make alone. We do a weekly meeting to check in as needed, and really run the business through Facebook Messenger. We’re fitting work in the gaps, or seeing where it complements things that are already happening.
For example, Lani and Anna were both finalists for the Women of Influence Awards, so we decided to combine dressing up for that event with a photoshoot. Anna did an event brief, and found a fabulous photographer. Silvia and Hugh came as plus ones, Jade joined in, and we all frocked (and suited) up to posed with yummy cheese.
Early lessons from the Cartel
1) We’re all busy, but we can all create and invest time in people and projects that we really care about. How? We’re trying to get better at focussed time and sprints, rather than faffing about. For example, every week we try to find 2–3 hours to spend on Cheese Cartel related work, and every few months we come together for a weekend to just get through work that needs to happen:
- The first weekend was devoted to tasting cheese and formulating our model.
- The second weekend was devoted to our crowdfunding campaign.
- The third weekend was devoted to the basic set-up and first cheese delivery.
- The fourth weekend was a retrospective and time to plan marketing.
The time isn’t always evenly allocated, but we’re trying to get better at making that visible, and getting some funds to pay for the work that just needs to happen. We do all our main team comms through Facebook Messenger, which Jade still can’t get over as being a way to run a business.
2) Structure the work — We have discrete work, that flows on from each other. Eg.
- Silvia orders the cheese
- Lani writes the stories & does instagram
- Jade does the design
- Anna communicates to Cartel-ians
- Hugh manages the logistics of sending
- Anyone who is at home in Pukerua Bay does the packing
We haven’t streamlined everything, but we are getting better at just spending devoted time on this when we can.
3) Care about what you’re doing and create a business that creates benefit even when pre-profit — We truly believe this work is meaningful — helping to connect farmers & producers to people that love their product. We’re not in it to make heaps of money. We’re in it to eat heaps of cheese and make a positive impact (while also ensuring the bills are paid). We are focused on a business that is strengthening relationships, doing work in the wider community, and creating impact from the very beginning. We’re bringing in skills that the sector has struggled with previously (technology and marketing).
4) Have a business model that is immediately recurring. Hustle is less hustle when you have your basics covered. We have a recurring business model with low start-up costs and an almost guaranteed market. So although we won’t see a profit immediately, and our time is not covered right now, we immediately covered the expenses.
5) Communicate honestly. We can choose to step back or step in. One of our group was feeling guilty that she wasn’t doing the work she felt was needed. She flagged and named it. We discussed it during our weekend away and decided to employ someone part-time to do the base level admin. In order to keep enjoying it, we need to bring someone in to do the basic bits, so we can focus on the work we do well.
We’re not aiming to “kill it”. We’re aiming to make a positive impact, with a more gentle approach to start-ups. This is purposefully not full time. We want to be profitable, we want to eat good cheese, and we want to bring new customers to artisan cheesemakers that care about their animals and the environment. We don’t want to create a start-up that externalises costs on ourselves or the environment. We want to ensure we focus on wellbeing for everyone in the system.
And we never want to eat bad cheese at our Female Founders retreat again.
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Want a box of yummy cheese sent to your door every month? Join the Cartel! Get your order in by the last day of the month, here: https://www.cheesecartel.com/our-deals
