Michael Marmo Of Curbwaste: Five Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became a Founder

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Our mission is to get people to better understand their waste in a more tangible and accountable way. I think the best movement I can provide to the world is twofold. First, I want the world to recognize those who pick up their trash. It’s an extremely difficult and dangerous business and all those who perform this job deserve praise and respect. Second, I want to facilitate better decisions through data and foster a new era of sustainable change. The younger generations want to know and understand more about where their waste is going and that is important. We want to be the conduit.

As a part of our series about “Five Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became a Founder”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Michael Marmo.

With over 15 years of experience in the waste industry, Mike Marmo set out to make sure every waste hauler and facility has the ability to modernize their business. Mike began his waste career in a transfer station and eventually started his own tech-enhanced waste hauling company, Curbside, based in New York City. He sold in 2021 to focus on building out CurbWaste and Weighworks, which are SaaS products servicing the waste hauling and recycling industry.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I spent most of my life focused on baseball. When that dream was over, I felt lost on what to do next. I started my working career in media, specifically in advertising, but I recognized early on that it wasn’t a path I wanted to continue down, so I took a job at a transfer station as a placeholder while I tried to figure things out. The waste industry ended up being an outlet I was really interested in, and what was supposed to be a 6-month part-time job turned into a 4-year job. It was there that I learned about the business and eventually started my own waste company, Curbside. We started to build technology as a way to differentiate ourselves from our competition and it slowly began to evolve. Covid-19 shutdowns are what propelled us into thinking about SaaS and led us to create the CurbWaste brand. I decided to fully focus on the technology in mid-2021 and have been working with haulers around the country ever since.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?

Covid-19 shutdowns were extremely hard, but they also led me to think outside of my comfort zone. Our hauling business was really gaining momentum pre-Covid. When New York City shut down, we lost 3 months of revenue. In this case, however, opportunity presented itself in the form of people in my network being interested in our platform. We were able to run our business on a completely remote basis because of the platform we had built and people wanted to use it. I did everything in my power during that time to be able to keep all my employees and focus on the technology. We were able to do that thanks to lending options afforded to us and the relationships we had built with our clients.

Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

Baseball was my entire life and focus for a very long time. It’s a game of failure. You fail way more than you succeed. I attribute a lot of my resilience to playing that game. It teaches you not to get too high when you’re doing well or too low when you’re struggling. It’s as much a mental game as it is a physical one, and you need to have the right mindset every single day. I try to live in the moment and not let too much get in so I can focus on executing on what’s in front of me. I just try to make a little step forward every single day so we keep progressing in a positive direction.

So, how are things going today? How did grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?

I wouldn’t consider us successful just yet! We have a lot more to do, but there’s no doubt that things are moving in the right direction. My main objective is to make sure our subscribers are happy day in and day out, so that’s where most of my focus is. I think our customers feel that as well. We can deal with all the ups and downs because we actually care about their success. Ultimately, their success is our success, so we are extremely invested in that. I think it’s easy to deal with things not going well one day if you care that deeply about your customer’s business.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

We have made more mistakes than I like to remember. I think the funniest one we made overall in the beginning was thinking we knew what the customer wanted because we ran a waste company. It has its advantages, but we learned quickly that we don’t know anything. We assumed our target market would love everything we put out, and the feedback didn’t indicate that. I learned to take some more time speaking to our customers and really digging down into what they want and what would make this product a success in their minds. Mistakes are a part of the journey and without them you will never learn. We welcome those experiences every day because they ultimately make the product better.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

I truly believe our biggest differentiator is that we care more than anybody else. We take our industry knowledge and apply it in a very tangible way. We signed up one customer who was very excited to start using our program, but when we got to the implementation portion of the onboarding process, we realized that their data and information was so disorganized that we couldn’t get the same answer from anybody. Our approach was to embed ourselves in the business and go so far as to try and fundamentally change the way they think about their operations. We spent months combing through everything we could and talking to all the key personas, even working out of their offices until it was resolved. We are excited to finally go live with them in April and we will both be better for it.

Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?

Startup culture can be very hard and lonely. I didn’t realize that because you hear about all the success stories out there and only see the end result, not how they got there and what challenges they faced. Starting a company is extremely difficult and it’s easy to get caught up in the work. I had a two-year-old and a 3-month-old when we started CurbWaste and it was — and still is — extremely difficult to balance work and personal life. The work requires my full attention and commitment, but I try to carve out portions of the day that I solely focus on family and health. It’s also important to trust your employees to do what you hired them to do. We have put together a great team that is on the same page so it’s easy to step away for a little and take a mental break.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

On a personal level, I attribute my drive to my parents. I grew up in an entrepreneurial family so that’s all I really knew. My grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles were all self-employed. I’ve always known I wanted to go that route because I was attracted to the idea of creating something from nothing. Professionally, I’m extremely grateful to my network in the waste industry. I was fortunate enough to get close to several people who had similar dreams and aspirations and to truly thrive within that network. They were the ones who really showed me the industry and how everything works and believed in what we were trying to accomplish. A lot of them were our early customers and continue to play a major role in the product development.

I was extremely fortunate to convince Mucker Capital, and specifically Will Hsu, to believe in us and be our lead investor early on. I have learned so much from Will in such a short time. Raising money can be a worrisome proposition and you never truly know what kind of partner they will be. Will has been nothing but supportive and has played a huge role in our progress to date.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I am still on a mission to bring something special to the world and hope that our software can be the conduit to change in the industry. The waste industry is such a crucial part of society. It’s my hope that the platform will provide more transparency to what is going on in the market and allow the world to make better and more sustainable decisions.

Can you share a few ideas or stories from your experience about how to successfully ride the emotional highs & lows of being a founder”?

You’re only as good as those you surround yourself with. I’m fortunate that I can rely on my wife or friends to chat about all the things that are going well or poorly. I think having that outlet where you can discuss situations without judgment is incredibly helpful. On top of that, I make sure to do the things I enjoy without distraction. I try to work out daily or play golf when I can. It’s important to have hobbies outside of work so you can disconnect. When I travel, I make sure to try something new or local to that area to better understand it. These little things help to reset my mind and keep me balanced.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Our mission is to get people to better understand their waste in a more tangible and accountable way. I think the best movement I can provide to the world is twofold. First, I want the world to recognize those who pick up their trash. It’s an extremely difficult and dangerous business and all those who perform this job deserve praise and respect. Second, I want to facilitate better decisions through data and foster a new era of sustainable change. The younger generations want to know and understand more about where their waste is going and that is important. We want to be the conduit.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can keep up to date on our product at www.curbwaste.com or follow us on linkedin.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.