Inspiring Innovators: Riana Lynn
CEO and Founder of Journey Foods, On being a serial entrepreneur
At SAP.iO, we work with innovative people and new technologies that positively impact our world every day, and we think it’s time to share their stories with you! In our series, “Inspiring Innovators,” we get to hear how founders, CEOs, presidents of cutting-edge startup technologies overcame, thrived, and pursued their goals. SAP.iO’s Alexa Gorman sat down to discuss the road to success and lessons learned with some of our most inspiring startup founders.
Meet Riana Lynn
Starting as a biology student in college building websites on the side, Riana Lynn was unknowingly launching her journey as a serial entrepreneur. Even as a kid, she knew she wanted to work on health issues to impact her community positively. Using her background in biology, she took an interest in larger food systems and how food affects our chronic diseases. Coming from a family of food entrepreneurs and farmers, it was no surprise that Riana’s first food company became one of the top juice bars in the country. After this accomplishment, she had the opportunity to work at the White House and even spent some time in Silicon Valley working for Google.
With all this experience to pull from, Riana set her sights on a new horizon, developing solutions that solve food science and supply chain inefficiencies. Riana shared with us that consumers spend $3 trillion a year on packaged foods and that research shows evidence that eating packaged foods is related to the increase in chronic diseases and poor mental health. Confident that we could change these problems with better science and data tools, Riana founded Journey Foods.
Journey Foods is a portfolio intelligence and lifecycle management software for food development and innovation. Their approach puts nutrition and sustainability at the forefront of product development, helping formulate products according to specific consumer and company goals. To further their impressive progress, Journey Foods builds integrations with companies like SAP to drive widespread impact quickly.
“I work on solving the most significant problems in food that effect my family, our communities, and the world.”
Let’s Chat
What inspired you on your journey as an entrepreneur?
Riana describes herself as a serial entrepreneur. Starting in the era of “dorm room entrepreneurs,” she studied these young up-and-comers and learned about what they were doing. Inspired, Riana began building websites on the side as she pursued her studies. While attending grad school, she launched her first food company with the realization that she could make more money in a month doing this than a biologist or public health person. Riana was motivated by the thought that by creating healthy juices, she could make a real impact on people’s lives, thus kindling her entrepreneurial aspirations.
“As a Black female founder born in the Chicago area, I wanted to work from Chicago but then had the opportunity to go to DC and thought this might be the path to helping my community. In DC, I was continually inspired by tech entrepreneurs. I would see young tech entrepreneurs and founders coming through and helping develop policies around how to rebuild the economy. It was clear to me at that point that entrepreneurship was my future.”
What characteristics do you have that support you as a Leader?
Riana describes herself as artistic, quirky, and creative, asserting that it is valuable to have a creative lens. Being passionate about art and colors helped with branding and creating supporting materials. She also credits the part of her personality that helps her be a chameleon, meaning she can mold to understand different cultural perspectives and types of business. Riana is a big-picture optimist, and because of that perspective, she has been able to move her ideas forward.
“I’m very optimistic regarding the big picture and about deadlines and tech solutions and what my team and I can accomplish. Sometimes this can be challenging, especially for people you work alongside that don’t have those same traits. It is important to have people around you to rebalance that.”
What are you most proud of at Journey Foods?
When asked what she was most proud of at Journey Foods, Riana spoke of the inspiration she sees in her team, noting that the more they work to understand and build custom solutions, they know that they are solving issues downstream that make a difference. This inspirational attitude helps drive the team and supports them as they focus on their goal to help several thousand companies optimize a few million product lines and products to feed 2 billion people. Impressively, Journey Foods is 20% to that goal, having optimize 103 million manufactured products that have entered store shelves, and is prepared to push this number even higher this year.
“I’m most proud of what Journey Food is today and what we have built. When I named this company Journey Foods, it was because it was a mix of my journey as a leader and accomplishments with that of the Food Industry.”
What challenges have you encountered as an entrepreneur?
As a woman of color in the food and supply chain technology industry, many challenges need to be faced. Often, she finds that she is the woman of color in the room, which can get lonely and cause difficulties in fundraising. Another challenge was that she was young, starting a business right after undergrad and even during grad school. That didn’t seem to slow her down, growing her company to one of the top juice bars at 25 years old and beginning Journey Foods in her early 30s.
“Now I am invited to events and stand on the stage giving keynotes worldwide speaking on food innovation, representing who I am and where I come from. Now people want to listen to my ideas not just because of the diversity that I represent but because they are my ideas. I feel like I have made progress on the challenge of being not only a minority or a woman, but also being young.”
What is the best advice you’ve received?
Thinking about the advice she had received, what stuck with Riana was the idea to hire slow and fire fast. As an entrepreneur, you are stretched so thin that you must bring people on quickly as you are rapidly expanding, and at times people might not always be the right cultural fit. Riana reminds us that people might not be the exact person you had in mind but be open because that person could still have a valuable skill sets needed to build something powerful. You have to let go of what you had thought you were looking for because there are so many people in the world that can help you build.
What advice do you have for a person thinking about launching a business?
Iterate, iterate, iterate! Riana encourages people looking to start a business to remember that there will be many iterations over the lifetime of a product. You are ever-improving, ever-changing, forever. You will create a team at some point, and you need to trust them to iterate. Make sure to get your product out as soon as possible because you will never be able to launch with the perfect product. Iteration is key to continuous improvement.
What We Learned
In her conversation with Alexa, we learned much about Riana’s journey of serial entrepreneurship, and we don’t think she’s even near finished yet! We are encouraged to see how Riana has married her family’s history with food, background in Biology, and entrepreneurial spirit to create this innovative food technology company. This inspiring innovator is on a mission to make a difference in the food-tech industry and positively impact communities around the globe with her flair for entrepreneurship.
We have worked with so many inspiring innovators like Riana at SAP.iO. Are you next? If you are a startup looking to work with us, check out our upcoming programs here.
