Developing a Successful Food Line with Rosa Li, CEO and Founder of Wildwonder
Creating a successful food line requires a lot of planning and preparation. You need to think about what you will sell, how you will market your products, and how you will get customers to buy them. Here’s how Rosa Li did it!
Rosa Li was a private equity and venture investor at Warburg Pincus and is now a successful food line entrepreneur. Rosa’s entrepreneurial journey also led her to ABC’s reality TV show Shark Tank and secured a partnership with the co-founder and CEO of DoorDash, Tony Xu.
Founder Rosa Li started Wildwonder in 2020 to reimagine the healing drinks of her heritage. As a child, Rosa Li was inspired by her grandma’s herbal tonics to make a delicious Wildwonder beverage that combines heritage-inspired herbal knowledge with gut-healing elements. Wildwonder is the first drink to combine probiotics (beneficial gut microbes) and prebiotic plant fiber (the food that probiotics need to thrive).
Learn more about Rosa Li:
Visit her website 👉🏻 www.drinkwildwonder.com
Getting to know Rosa Li of Wildwonder
Steven Chan: Welcome, everyone. My name is Steven Chan. I am one of the co-hosts of the Imagine Talks podcast: Achieving Success, Overcoming Obstacles, and Social Impact. We’re here today with Rosa Li, founder, and CEO of Wild Wonder. It is so good to have you here with us.
Rosa Li: Thank you for having me, Steve.
Steven Chan: Now you have been with speaking at Imagine Talks, and we’ve heard about your career and all the amazing things you’re doing. We’d like to get into some of the nuts and bolts of how you’ve decided to do things with your work life. And one of the things that you have done in the past was you were at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, right?
Rosa Li: Yeah.
How do you set yourself up for success?
Steven Chan: And I imagine you’ve had so many different opportunities presented to you, then how did you end up choosing the opportunities and pursuing particular things? And how did you end up setting yourself up for success?
Rosa Li: Yeah. Honestly, after business school, I was pretty lost. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Even though I felt like there were opportunities. There were just so many things I wanted to try. And it’s almost like options — if we have so many options — you’re just paralyzed by them.
So I ended up going on this journey to explore different geographies, different job options, different products to work on. I went all over Asia. I actually thought, “Hey, e-commerce is really growing. Maybe I wanted to be in Southeast Asia.” I worked with a number of startups there, helped a friend’s company launched in Southeast Asia.
And then I thought to myself, “I am Chinese, I know how to speak Mandarin.” So maybe I should be in China because I actually know the culture and the language better. [I] worked with a friend to also launch a business there and ended up realizing, “Okay, I don’t want to be here long term, so I should be in the market where I want to build my business.”
[It’s a] very roundabout the way of figuring out what I really want to work on. I just wanted to go explore. And obviously, there was the option of going back to finance, going back to private equity investing, which is obviously a good job option. I really enjoyed it. It was very intellectually challenging. And obviously, money is always good.
Steven Chan: Yeah.
Developing a business that you are passionate about
Rosa Li: But I wanted to work on something I’m personally passionate about. I wanted to have that connection to heritage. So there’s more meaning in whatever product I work on ended up coming back here and starting my first tea business. My first business — which is selling loose leaf tea — it’s an e-commerce business. I did that for about a year and then learned a lot of things. And that was really the start of Wildwonder, because a lot of people were drinking — the culture here is more of a coffee culture, not a tea culture.
And the way that people consume tea is very different than the way people consume tea in Asia or the way that my grandma used to brew tea for me. Convenience is really big and we’re all lazy, right? We want everything handed to us.
When I was brewing these teas and servicing all these big corporate offices — health-conscious companies like Google and Facebook, they were just telling me, “Hey, love your product, but we’re not going to sit around and brew tea all day long. So can you basically pre-brew them and bring them in dispensers?”
And I was just like, “Well, that’s not really scalable. So why don’t I package it in a way? So it’s a very convenient format.” And that’s basically the start of a ready-to-drink beverage that offers all the health benefits that I wanted the world to enjoy.
Steven Chan: So you were listening, you were listening to your customers. And was that how you ended up pivoting from Rosa Li tea?
Iterating business products to create a successful food line
Rosa Li: That was kind of the iteration. The first iteration was a format that is just not convenient enough. And obviously, there’s been a lot of iterations of my product. That’s something that I’ve learned in building something. Nothing is perfect. That first product I launched, I mean, usually when you look at the first iteration of a product, it’s cringe-worthy. It’s never perfect, but perfect is the enemy of good. So we just need to put something in the world and see how people react and learn from that. And iterate and hopefully, we iterate fast enough to get to that product that people actually love.
Photo from drinkwildwonder.com
Steven Chan: Yeah. And one of the things I think you’ve mentioned in your interview was even through the 2020 pandemic and the pandemic still going on, you were making it into whole foods — 500 grocery stores and even on national television, featured on the Today show, which is incredible.
These are a lot of amazing things that you’ve done. How are you able to learn and make those connections during an incredibly challenging environment? Did you have specific mentors, networks, or tools?
Rosa Li: Yeah. I’m generally a pretty persistent person. I do think that grit is something that’s very necessary for building a company because there’s always challenges that come at you. In a span of 24 hours, there could be five bad things that happen, maybe three good things that happen, and they just keep going. So I think it’s important to just manage one’s emotions.
The greater purpose and meaning behind Rosa Li’s successful food line
Rosa Li: And if there is a greater purpose and meaning behind the company, then there’s a reason to keep going forward. So I wasn’t just building the company because I wanted to be entrepreneur. I thought this product was cool. I think there’s a lot of meaning in launching this business.
So, inspired by my grandma, I think the drink really brings back memories with her. And we’re here to really create everyday wonders and for those undervoiced in our communities. So there’s a mission piece to the company as well. It’s called Wild Wonder, and it’s named for that reason: so, 5% of profits from every can actually goes to causes that support female and marginalized communities, which is something I’m personally very passionate about. And by building this business and bring something that’s healthy to the world, not only am I making peoples’ lifestyles healthier and better, I’m also hopefully bringing more equity to the food system as well.
Because if you think about all the products on shelves, a lot of them are just from people who want to make some money. They’re not necessarily the best products. And I think I truly believe in our product. In crafting a product like this, we put a lot of thought and care in the ingredient sourcing and the products being high quality and also bring more diversity to retail and to retail shelves and to the entire food [eco]system.
Overcoming racial discrimination in creating a successful food line
Steven Chan: You mentioned diversity is something that’s very important, right? And I think in one interview — and you can certainly correct me if I’m wrong — you mentioned that female founders, especially persons of color founders, face additional barriers in so many aspects of business. And for those who don’t know those barriers, what kind of those barriers have you had to overcome? Is that something that you’ve been able to overcome?
Rosa Li: Yeah. It’s a constant challenge. And it’s really hard to, I guess, describe because I can’t really A/B test these things. Like, I’m an Asian female. I don’t know what my experience would have been like as a white male. But I can tell you in psychology there’s a term called similarity attraction. So you tend to like people who are more similar to you. And I’ve noticed that from my own personal experience, it’s very easy to build a connection with someone that looks like you and that shared a certain experience as you.
So if you think about the venture capital world and people in power, they’re not people that look like me. So it’s just much harder to really for them to build trust and for them to stay invest in you. And the stats are out there. So less than 1% is definitely low single-digits of venture funding goes to minority or BIPOC and female-founded businesses.
And that’s something that I’ve seen during the pandemic: the small businesses are the ones that got hurt the most, especially those founded by marginalized communities, because they just simply didn’t have access to all these resources. They may not even have the language skills to get access or to learn about the resources.
Steps on how to overcome racial prejudice in business
Rosa Li: So I think it’s important to provide more support for those communities. And it’s important to also bring that issue or just to make people more aware of these things. And that’s obviously a topic. It’s very popular topic of discussion in the last two years, right?
Steven Chan: Yeah. And I think these resources is a very hot topic because I think that there can be stereotypes out there that say, “Oh, wow, a lot of Asians are privileged,” or there’s that model minority. This is at least historically in the United States: they’re viewed as a successful minority, wherein reality, you mentioned that so many small businesses have unfortunately had to shut down or cut back quite a bit and were minority owned. I know that as a society, there’s more that needs to be done. But how do we then overcome that? How does the one overcome that? Or maybe there’s nothing they can do?
Rosa Li: Well, the first step to solving any issue is to become aware of it. So I think if more people discuss the issues at hand and share their perspectives, then we can learn more about each other’s perspectives to start with. And then the next step would be to bring certain things to action.
My business is really about bringing healthier products to market. We’re not a company with a mission to talk about racism or biases in a society, but there are small things we can do.
Rosa Li’s successful food line and its business culture
Rosa Li: So in hiring, I want to make sure that I’m hiring diverse talent. It’s not just about even it’s a small team, but we have a very diverse team from — there’s AAPI, there’s people in the LGBTQ community, there’s male, female, like, all sorts of people with all sorts of background and talent. So I think it’s important to bring everyone together because we can all contribute to the same cause with our different talents and perspectives. And so it’s good to hear everyone out.
So really, in building my business, culture is very important. I’m very open to feedback, and I always want people to contribute and share their feedback with me and with every team member, so the company is going the direction based on what everyone wants as well. There’s a mission and a vision, but how we get there, that’s the result of everyone’s efforts.
Steven Chan: I love that. That diversity — it’s incredible because each person has their own superpower that can help contribute to the success of what you’re trying to accomplish.
Thinking about yourself, then, I’d love to transition to more of the nuts and bolts on a day-to-day basis. As a founder and a CEO of a company with now a national footprint, you have so many different moving parts. Are there particular things that you make sure you do in the morning and then how you structure your day? Is that something that someone else manages for you or that you manage yourself?
Business tip — leading your company with a healthy lifestyle
Rosa Li: Yeah. I mean, a lot of people ask me, “What’s your day-to-day like?” And to be honest, there’s not really … two days that’s alike. But I basically make sure I am mentally and emotionally present. And taking care of my own health is actually very important for the health of the business as well, because what I bring to the culture, and what I bring to the team, is actually very impactful for the company as a whole. So I make sure I lead with a healthy lifestyle.
Rosa Li: So hydration — I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions, but…Something I would say this year [is that] I want to hydrate more frequently and it’s very important for health. And obviously eating healthy is also very important. Regular exercise. Better quality sleep. I always optimize for good sleep. So those are actually just simple things I take care of that’s good for my health, and it’s very impactful for running a healthy business as well.
Steven Chan: Yeah. Do you have any particular go-to’s, coaches, or other mentors that help you with this process?
Rosa Li: I definitely think it’s important to surround ourselves with a network of coaches, friends, mentors. On the business side, we have advisors who come from different backgrounds. We have advisors on the operations side, on the strategy side, on-sales side, [and] marketing. [It’s] very important to surround myself with people with more experience because obviously, what do I know? I didn’t come from the food and beverage industry, so they’ve definitely helped me tremendously.
Be surrounded by people who have more experience than you
Rosa Li: I also surround myself with friends and coaches that are here to support me during when the times are hard. And that was super helpful, especially during COVID, when our business model really changed a lot and when our business first got hit really hard by COVID.
And then there’s kind of the important habits I build into my daily lives, like making sure I get enough sleep, making sure that I get enough physical activity to stay productive as well, making sure I have a rest day in a week so I don’t get overworked and get burned out because that’s counterproductive. Back in the private equity and finance days, I used to work — I felt like I worked — 24/7. There was never a break.
Steven Chan: Seven days a week!
Rosa Li: Yeah, exactly. So there’s no break. And it really wasn’t healthy and sustainable. And I actually find that there’s kind of an optimal point for everyone. It’s different for everyone to be highly productive when we are working.
And to me, work-life balance — which people talk about a lot — is more of a mental state, and that’s different for everyone. So if I feel balanced, if I feel healthy and I’m always motivated by work because I believe in the work I do. I do work on average, more than most people I know. But it’s something that I enjoy and it doesn’t feel like, “Oh, this is work necessarily.”
“Perfection is the enemy of good”
Steven Chan: That makes total sense. For folks who are inspired by you and what you’ve accomplished — maybe they don’t necessarily want to start a food business but they are inspired by the fact that you’ve had this uphill battle against the industry over the past few years of COVID, pivoting, changing your strategies — are there any particular words of wisdom or advice that you want to give to such individuals?
Rosa Li: I’ve been given a lot of advice by other people. I think usually advice is kind of a projection of everyone’s own experience. The one thing I would say a lot of people have trouble with is — it’s really like — taking that first step. I kind of mentioned this earlier: perfection is the enemy of good. And a lot of people try to be perfect. They want to figure out all the pros and cons and talk to everyone and get all the advice and almost like have this roadmap laid out before they launch something.
And to be quite honest, everything changes once you launch something and it’s much easier — it’s much better — to just put something out in the world and get feedback. As we all know, it’s really hard to get to that perfect product, and there’s no perfect product. It’s really hard to get there without learning something from your real customers and iterates.
From mistakes to a successful food line
Rosa Li: Most people’s first version of their product is very different from what they ended up with. So I would say, put something out there and don’t be afraid to put something out there that may not be perfect. And, I would just be more okay with making mistakes. Be more okay with things not being ideal, because it’s more important to learn from those mistakes and then coming up with something that you think is perfect.
Steven Chan: Yeah, I think we had another speaker, Hanson Li. We were talking about analysis paralysis and that can really freeze people’s progress. So that makes total sense that perfection is the enemy of good enough.
Rosa Li: Yeah.
Steven Chan: Well, I want to say, Rosa, thank you so much for your time and sharing a lot of how you fashioned your career and how you’ve navigated a lot of difficult times. It’s wonderful to have you here with us.
Rosa Li: Thank you for having me. I’m super excited.
Steven Chan: Yeah. For folks who are listening stay tuned for the next episode of Imagine Talks podcast. Thank you.
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