🎙️ Podcast Ep #4: Copia CEO Komal Ahmad

👋🏽 Welcome to Doing Well by Doing Good: The New Startup Model, a newsletter and podcast series highlighting the startups aiming to be profitable with a purpose. Subscribe here

Food, sustenance, and the basic needs of a human are still not met for billions of individuals around world. Most surprising, is that in the United States, 11.8% of households are food insecure as of 2018, and with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, that stat has nearly doubled.

As we’ll learn in this podcast, hunger is a logistics problem not a scarcity problem, especially in the US, but also all across the world. In this podcast, we’re exploring a very direct way of solving the redistribution issue. We chat with Copia founder and CEO Komal Ahmad and explore how she came to solve this, and explore for the first time in our Podcast a Public Benefit Corporation structure and talk about how that plays into Doing Well by Doing Good differently than standard C-corp structures, like those of the companies we’ve interviewed before.

Check out the full Podcast by clicking below or searching on your favorite Podcast application. Scroll down for the full transcript and topic-specific links. Listen to Podcast

Founding Story

Anand [0:46]: Alright, welcome Komal! Thanks for being here. So why don’t we just get started? How would you describe Copia in one line?

Komal [0:57]: Thanks for having me! A technology company built to solve the world’s dumbest problem? Hunger

Anand [1:03]: All right. And why are you solving that problem?

Komal [1:07]: Because we waste 3x more food than there are mouths to feed. Because lack of food that’s the issue rather than ineffective distribution of that food. Because hunger in America is not a scarcity problem. It’s a logistics problem. So when I say that we’re solving the world’s dumbest problem — hunger is dumb, not because it’s unfortunate, and it sucks. It’s dumb, because it shouldn’t exist, we have more than enough resources to feed everyone on the planet three times over. And that’s what makes it dumb.

Anand [1:39]: That’s actually a pretty staggering step. So that sounds like a very big problem. So I’m actually curious, how did you get to this point? What was your founding journey? What made you solve this problem?

Komal [1:51]: Yeah, sure. So candidly, it’s really surreal for me to even be here sharing my experiences today. You know, truth be told, I wasn’t even supposed to be here. Let me explain. As, as a daughter of Pakistani immigrants, I had four very specific career paths laid out for me, an early age, doctor, lawyer, engineer, or a complete failure.

Anand [2:18]: It was a great accent by the way.

Komal [2:23]: Oh, it was years and years of practice. Let me tell you, my dream was to be a Bollywood actress. But as you’ll come to find I ended up doing something far more realistic, like solving world hunger.

Komal [2:34]: And so my journey began when I was a student at Berkeley, and I was walking down Telegraph Avenue when I encountered a homeless man was begging for food. Most people beg for money, but he was begging for food. And it really compelled me to stop and invite him to join me for lunch. And during lunch, he sat across from each wolfing down his food, so he was unbelievably hungry. It wasn’t a ploy for anything else. And in between bites, he shared a story. He said, my name is John, I just came back from my second tour in Iraq, I’ve been waiting weeks for my military benefits to kick in. And because they haven’t, you know, I haven’t eaten in three days.

Komal [3:16]: Well, this really hit home for me. This is a veteran, someone who would give the most selfless sacrifice for our country, only to come home to face yet another battle, that of hunger. And then adding insult to injury. Right across the street, Berkeley’s dining hall is throwing away thousands of pounds of perfectly edible food. And so it was this very stark reality of those who have and waste, and those who are in need and starve. And those two people right across the street from one another. And what I realized was that hunger isn’t just a sad, cruel and unfair problem. It is a dumb problem, and one that I can help to solve. And you know what I remember growing up being reminded by my parents. “Eh Komal, don’t throw away your food, people are starving in Pakistan.” Of course, like what I discovered after my lunch with john, the veteran was that hunger is prevalent, not just in the poorest nations in the world. It’s everywhere. Even in Silicon Valley, one of the wealthiest places on the planet, one and four don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Meanwhile, over 365 million pounds of perfectly edible food are wasted every single day. And to kind of wrap your head around that number. If you imagine the world’s largest football stadium filled to its absolute brim. Now with last night’s Pad Thai, or this morning’s Croissant. Untouched unopened perfectly edible food. That’s how much of it was wasted every single day in America. And this cost us over $218 billion every year. And if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of methane after the US and China.

Komal [5:00]: So there’s this massive economic costs, there’s a huge environmental impact, not to mention that some of the wealthiest cities in America, like I said before, one in four don’t know where their next meal is coming from. So clearly it’s not a lack of food. That’s the issue, rather an ineffective distribution about food, meaning that hunger is not a scarcity problem. It’s a logistics problem. And so resolving this disparity between excess and access, has become my life’s mission and Copia’s purpose. We’ve built our platform to solve both hunger and food waste across America, and eventually, across the world.

Komal [5:39]: And so, after my conversation with John, I marched right up to our dining hall manager, and I asked them, you know, what do you do with your excess food? They said, well, we try not to have any. And I said, well, how often does that actually work out for you? And after a lot of pushing and prodding, they finally admitted that they do have excess food, but they have to throw it away. And so I said, Well, why would you throw it away? When you go right across the street to people in People’s Park and donate it? And they said, because of liability? We don’t do that. I was like, yeah, you know, homeless, people’s high powered attorneys are standing by just to sue you. Like homeboy can’t afford a hamburger, somehow we can afford a litigator? What about you, we’re gonna sell this through to us 10 minutes ago at full price. So you’re saying 10 minutes ago, it was good enough for Berkeley students. And now 10 minutes later, it’s not good enough to feed people who are actually in need? Where is the logic? And I wasn’t gonna accept this answer naturally. So I did my own research. And I discovered that in 1996, President Clinton passed what is called the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan act. And it protects all corporations, organizations, individuals from any liability when they’re donating their perfectly edible food. In fact, in the past 24 years, the number of lawsuits or legal claims that have been filed against any business individual has been zero. But everyone and I mean, everyone and their mother has like a second cousin twice removed uncle’s hotel that shut down because they donated food. But in fact, that never happened. So I print this out and demand meeting with the executive director of our dining hall and I say, I want to start this food Donation Program, this is the right thing to do. Here’s all the protection. I can pretty persuasive when I need to be, and in less than 10 minutes, he agreed, and we went off to start one of the nation’s first Food Recovery organizations on a college campus, which was essentially students picking up food from our dining halls or on campus events, our stadium or arena and then redistributing that food directly to nonprofits?

Anand [7:38]: So was that a nonprofit itself or was that Copia?

Komal [7:41]: Yeah. It was a student organization. So that was what at the time was called Bear Abundance. Okay, because we were like, you know, the Golden Bears. So Bear / Bare. And yeah, and so it was just a student run organizations taking it directly to local nonprofits. And it was a great start. But just hugely inefficient. You know, I vividly remember one day our dining club manager calls and he’s like, “hey, Komal, you know, no one came to this we have 500 gourmet sandwiches leftover. They need to be picked up in two hours or we’re going to throw then since we’ll need fridge space. So do you want them?” I’m like, “Yeah, I want them.” It’s like, “Great, come get it. You have two hours.” Mind you. I’m still sitting in class. And so I grabbed my bag, I dash across campus, I jumped into a Zipcar. I go through all these one way streets up to our loading dock, and begin loading this food into the trunk of my car. And it’s perishable foods as quickly as possible. And so I’m blasting the AC while he frantically tried to get these sandwiches in the trunk. And I finally do and I slammed the trunk. And I’m like, Phew thank God, this is amazing food. Of course, there’s going to be nonprofits that want it. Right. So then I proceeded to call 30 plus nonprofits in Berkeley, in Oakland, even as far as Richmond. Like, Hey, I have this amazing food, use it as 500 gourmet sandwiches, I’d like to donate Do you need them? A third of them don’t answer the phone. A third of them say no, we’re okay, we don’t need any more food today. Thanks. And then the last third, like Actually, you know what? We could use 10 sandwiches or 15 sandwiches. Like great. I have 485 sandwiches left. Yeah. What are you gonna do with those? Yeah, and I remember Seriously though, summoning my inner South Asian grandmother. I’m like eh you look so skinny. Take this food eat it to like random people on the street. Just like a crazy South Asian grandmother.

And I just remember being pulled over the side of the road so frustrated. Why is it so hard to do a good thing? Why is it so hard to do the right thing? Where are these hungry people at? Like they’re freaking everywhere when we don’t have anything to give. And now when I have this amazing food to give them, they’re nowhere to be seen. And it was this frustration that was essentially the birth of my inspiration. Now I thought how much more effective, how much more efficient this whole process would be, if those who have food could say, hey, we have food, and those who needed food, hey, we could use that.

Anand [10:08]: Cool, like a marketplace.

Komal [10:10]: Yeah, exactly, just like a marketplace-matching food donors with nonprofits in need to clear the marketplace and instantly create value for both parties. So a win-win was really that simple.

Anand [10:22]: Yep, and that was Copia.

Komal [10:25]: That was the inspiration-the persperation behind the inspiration. Yeah. It wasn’t that simple to build. But that’s exactly what we built at Copia. You know, the first time ever, all businesses can easily and effectively redistribute any of their excess food to those who need it most. And our technology makes the whole process smarter and faster than ever before, with essentially web and mobile platforms that allow you to easily request pick ups of your surplus food, have it matched and then safely delivered to nonprofits in need, with a nationwide average delivery time of 26 minutes or less. And Copia is not a nonprofit. I know this sounds all touchy feely, really good for the world. And it is. That being said, we are a for-profit company that has built proprietary technology to solve both hunger and food waste across America, and eventually the world.

Mission and PBCs

Anand [11:18]: Yep. Yeah, this is exactly why I’m glad to have you on the show. Because I think, the real premise here is Doing Well by Doing Good. Right for profit, something that can grow on its own, with its own profits. And not just a nonprofit, where you’re asking for grants, but you know, actually being able to grow at a fast rate. You know, that’s really the key. And if you can do that you can have much more impact. And we’ll talk about that a little bit later. But I think, you know, you were talking just about how Copia got founded. What is your company mission? So what is the company mission? And how does being a PBC play into that?

Komal [12:00]: Yeah, great question. You know, Copia’s mission is evolving. Our vision stays true. Right. So the ways in which we are feeding hungry people is continuing to evolve, depending on what our resources are, you know, and my whole goal was to feed hungry people, right? Whether it was like, as this crazed college student taking excess food from our cafeterias to now this founder of a technology company that has built this robust, proprietary, technical infrastructure that’s redistributing this highly perishable food, and matching it at warp-like speed to nonprofits that use it at that day, that time, that quantity of food, you know, so there’s a lot of — like we said before, it is a logistics problem, right? You have this high quality, incredible food, you’re- we’re talking globally over a trillion dollars of food, perfectly edible food is being wasted. And it is a significant amount of money. Getting this high quality perishable food, understanding with certainty, like who is in need of it, how to get that food packaged, and safely delivered. You know, which part of the supply chain because food waste occurs across the supply chain, from farms, to manufacturers, distributors, to households, to local restaurants. So for us, focusing, where do we work? Whose problem can we solve? And what we decided is the biggest problem, the most addressable problem that Copia itself, at this moment in time can solve is where $90 billion of food waste occurs, which is at food businesses, and then businesses with food. So food businesses like the Cheesecake Factory’s of the world, and the Whole Foods of the world, and then the businesses with food like San Francisco 49ers, Intel, HP.

Anand [13:57]: Right, so then PBC. So then the PBC concept versus a standard C Corp. You know, the idea is, it’s for public benefit, which means that you’re for profit, you’re growing fast. But at the same time, you have a mission. Right. And and you can make sort of that choice at the right time to pursue that mission first versus profits? Or is it one and the same? I guess I just want to understand how that works.

Komal [14:22]:

“Yeah, so conventional wisdom says there’s a trade-off between social impact and economic performance. Beyond the very short-term, business actually profits from solving social problems and creating this shared value.”

The shared value is created when we successfully achieve social value and economic value. At the same time, when we can find solutions that can do both that can generate a tremendous amount of wealth and successfully solve social problems, then we can actually address our social problems at massive scale. So in this whole process we ended up becoming Y-combinators first Public Benefit Corporation.

“A Public Benefit Corporation is a Delaware C Corporation. It is a legal entity that allows for both the high growth business model and a legally binding social mission. So we believe in doing so it sends a very clear message to our customers, to our partners, our nonprofits, our investors and the public at large. And that’s with it we say that you know, Copia is social mission as part of the legal foundation upon which our entire company stands.”

And it also joins us to a global movement that challenges businesses to reconsider their role and their responsibility, and one that seeks to change what it means for a corporation to be considered successful. And so by combining the values of a social enterprise with the power of a for-profit business model, we strive to achieve both. And we use technology in business essentially, as a source for social good.

Doing Well

Anand [15:55]: That’s very cool. And yeah, that’s what I wanted to get to, which is when we talked about Doing Well and Doing Good. The first thing I wanted to focus on was the Doing Well part. From that perspective what makes your business sustainable in the short-term and long-term? And generally what is your business model?

Komal [16:15]: Yeah. So for me and I would say not because I came up with the idea. But when Copia wins, everybody wins. And I think also to the TLDR of everything that I said above about a Public Benefit Corporation essentially no bullshit means is that if there was a business decision that I had to make, where one option would result in a tremendous amount of money being made at the cost of people being fed or food being diverted and waste being reduced. That if there was a time where I could make a lot more money, or I could create a lot more impact those two things were in opposition, I have the legal authority to make the decision which results in the company doing a tremendous amount more impact than it would financial returns, which seems almost antithetical to business. That is part of my fiduciary responsibility as an officer for Copia. What’s beautiful about this and not because I came up with it is that is that when Copia makes money, everybody wins. When we make money, it means we have recovered more food, we have diverted it from going to landfills, we have recovered more high quality food that is now being converted into high quality meals. For the communities in which we live, work, play. We are helping businesses capitalize on this food that they would have otherwise had to pay to throw away. We’re helping them to turn trash into cash. We’re helping the environment or helping nonprofits get more culturally diversified and more health-wise, appropriate low sodium, gluten-free options, kosher, etc. High quality meals. And in doing so these businesses have already produced this food, right? This is already going to go to waste. We’re not asking businesses to make more food, donate more food vis-vis by producing more food. All of this food waste occurs. What we’re saying is now use this really easy, this really intelligent solution to donate any of the inevitable excess that occurs. And in doing so, like you will be perpetuating and reinforcing this new business model this business model of the future, where it’s not about business, or impact or people or profits. It’s going to be about both. It goes from profit or impact to profit and impact.

Anand [18:39]: That’s really powerful. Yeah, it makes sense. So in that case, then Copia is incentivizing everybody, both the companies that are donating the food as well as the nonprofits. Frankly, it’s a win-win because, you know, the companies are getting rid of their food and then I assume that Copia, you know, as the middleman in the marketplace, would then be making some profit off of each unit of food that’s being saved. Right. And that’s being donated and recovered.

Komal [19:10]: Yeah, there are three different ways that we actually help businesses. And there’s three different revenue models that we also have at Copia. We help our food businesses further capitalize on their food donations. So even though we are a for profit, the end recipient of food donations is always a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which means that our customers food donations are tax deductible. We’ve created this IRS compliant tax deduction automation processing platform that essentially has 8x the total amount of tax savings that are available now to businesses for food that they would have otherwise paid to throw away and also the total amount of food that we’ve been able to recover. So that’s one part of it. Transparency is really important to copia. So we’ve created this real time environmental and impact dashboard that our customers can access 24/7. So a glance it’ll help them see, like, how much methane did they divert how much water did they conserve? How many pounds did they recover? How many people did they feed? Which nonprofits have they served? And both internal and external stakeholder engagement as well as this taxation automation processing solution. And now what we found is that the biggest actual economic benefit that both the business receives, the environment benefits from, as well as Copia benefits from, is when businesses actually are reducing the amount of food that’s being wasted. It sounds kind of counterintuitive. But in fact, we waste 3x more food than there are mouths to feed. And so we need these businesses to become more efficient. And so what Copia has done is we’ve now invested in machine learning to develop predictive analytics that help businesses understand why is this waste happening? Right? Is it the Indian food station? Is the Chinese food station? Is it on Mondays? Is it on Fridays? Is it raining outside? Employees commuting to work, Fans going to a game? What is driving this excess, and then giving them the actionable insights they need to reduce over purchasing and overproduction? Knowing that they’re never going to get to zero, because it’s just built into our business models. But we can help them become more efficient, we can do so as a SaaS business, which is what we’ve now become where we’re offering both improving purchasing and production decisions, and really helping businesses take control of their waste.

Anand [21:33]: Yep. So is this SaaS revenue, as well as a per unit revenue?

Komal [21:42]: Yeah, so we have pick-up costs. And additionally businesses pay us anywhere from $500 to $2200 a month to manage their entire food donation and to be their food donation solution. So to figure out what what’s being donated, what is that value of that? where is it going, getting the tax deduction receipt, and ensuring that doesn’t go wasted anywhere in the supply chain ensuring that that food is protected and safely delivered. So average delivery time is 30 minutes for Copia. We are going to feed 4 million people this year with incredible food that would have otherwise wasted. And the other part is we also want to help these businesses tell their story. We want to help them provide them with the customized marketing materials they need to showcase how their food is too good to be wasted. Yep, that they’ve committed themselves to feeding people and not landfills. And so by providing photos, testimonials, along with access to PR opportunities that they can then leverage to engage with their customers and their employees. we’re enabling our customers, our businesses to save food, save money, save the environment, and of course, feed the hungry. So like I said, everyone wins with Copia. And this is all to say, though, yeah,

“Copia is more than just feeding the hungry, we want to save businesses money as we help them save the world. So we’re like Wonder Woman if she also had a degree in Corporate Accounting.”

Anand [23:08]: So basically, you’re like the food recovery intelligence platform for all of these companies.

Komal [23:16]: Yes. The overall vision is for Copia to become the world’s most effective and intelligent solution for the redistribution of surplus food. Overall, our vision is right now we’ve developed all of these incredible, intelligent and sophisticated algorithms. And we’ve created this real time marketplace, we’ve created demand signaling, we understand what the need is like for 1000+ nonprofits all over North America. Now we know that we could use the same types of logistics, infrastructure, same types of algorithms, etc, to help move medicine, medical supplies, books, clothing technology, because it’s not a lack of any of these resources, it’s just an ineffective distribution of those resources. So the future of Copia to become the world’s most effective and efficient platform, the world’s most intelligent platform, for the redistribution of surplus resources, period. We’re just starting with the hardest one first.

Anand [24:10]: And the World’s Dumbest Problem

Komal [24:13]: The most fundamental need. Yeah.

Doing Good

Anand [24:16]: So you kind of touched on this already. When we talk about Doing Good, in 10 years when Copia is a huge success, what global challenge will you have helped solve. You touched on this already, but I want to just pose the question in case you want to say anything else about this.

Komal [24:33]: Look, we waste 3x more food than there are mouths to feed. This cost us over a trillion dollars every year. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of methane after the US and China. We cannot from a global economic, financial, public health perspective let this problem continue to exist. It is NOT sustainable. Regardless, we have to have a scalable solution to solve this problem. There have been an incredible plethora of nonprofits all over the world that have been trying to do some variation, some portion of what Copia is doing. Whether it’s food banks that are doing incredible work, whether it’s small Food Recovery organizations that are geographically constrained, they are doing this amazing work. And they are addressing the problem in their own right. Yeah, for me, for Copia, I’m not interested in addressing the problem, I’m interested in solving the problem.

Anand [25:36]: Yeah that was actually my next question. Which is why this PBC? Why not a nonprofit? Why not maybe a profit organization and then just get a B Corp certification. Why not do it some other way? Why specifically this way?

Komal [25:54]:

“This is the future. Why should we have to defend a company and make it a nonprofit because it does something good in the world? Why can’t this be the future of business where businesses do good and they’re required to do good while they do well? And this is the way of the future.”

I mean, you see companies like BlackRock that are no longer going to invest in any companies or firms that are not actually committed to a sustainably socially responsible future.

Anand [26:26]: And it’s not the CSR either.

Komal [26:28]: This is not CSR. This makes financial sense for you to do the right thing. That’s the whole point for Copia. Sure if you don’t care about hungry people, that’s one thing. But that’s fine but if you don’t care about like, food being wasted. That’s another thing. But like you sure as hell want to be able to make money, you sure as hell want to be able to save money. And frankly, in a time of COVID, where resources are still so expensive, and so scarce, in some cases, you cannot afford to just needlessly throw away food. And that’s also why we’re now, as we’ve continued to evolve Copia’s technology and become this waste tracking software, we are now helping businesses understand, how can they become more efficient with their resources? How can we use these insights to grow their business? So that they can actually feed more people and feed more paying customers.

Anand [27:25]: In many ways, you’re not just Doing Well by Doing Good in your own company, but you’re also helping your customers do that as well.

Komal [27:33]: Yes, yes. And that’s on both sides of things, even our nonprofit partners who pay us to get the high quality food that they do. One of Copia’s core values is delivering with dignity. And that is something that’s so embedded even in our technology, so we have like a chain of custody in the entire process. So we know when the food is dumped, we know the amount of food and that type of food, the net value of the food. When was it package, when was it picked up by the driver, when did the driver scan in all the items? When they did they drop it off to the nonprofit? When did they scan it there? We have complete insight. So from a health and safety perspective too. What we also do is we provide all of our customers, all the food donors with these recyclable reusable Copia bags that can hold up to 50 pounds of food that our customers are putting this food into. And after that, they’ll scan the QR code, they’ll request to pick up and these bags are so great. They say we’re delivering with dignity. It says like “Fill ‘er up, Buttercup.” It’s these amazing bags are being delivered to the doorsteps of these nonprofit organizations. And it comes not as this curry spilling out of an Ikea bag. But it’s this real high quality meal that is delivered with dignity. It’s a gift. That’s a gift. It’s so important to me because I’m such a firm believer that today, it might be John, but tomorrow, it could be me. You know, it could be someone in my family, God forbid. It’s just, we need to treat people with respect. I don’t think that poor people need any more canned food. They’re like, I don’t know what the hell to do with canned food.

Anand [29:26]: We don’t even know what to do with canned food. Right?

Komal [29:29]: Exactly! So we need to up the respect in which we also provide resources. And so that’s another thing. So I think a lot of times people think because it’s leftover food. It’s like crap from people’s plates, but it’s not. Even when we partnered with the Super Bowl, we were their exclusive recovery partner. We recovered 14 tons of food which is 4x 16ft refrigerated trucks filled from top to bottom, not with popcorn or hotdogs, but Filet Mignon, lobster rolls, $300 cheeses, pulled pork sandwiches. I mean, not all my jam. I am a Muslim. So of course not really my jam, but incredible food for the 23,000 people that we fed that weekend. What’s crazy is that it’s because we are a for profit for good company that I can also with pride say we’re going to feed 4 million people this year, mostly with incredible food that would have otherwise been wasted. While we do that we’re going to be saving businesses and nonprofits over $21 million. And this is the future it’s not about just profit — it’s profit, food, planet — it is all of these things in one.

Company Culture and Values

Anand [30:41]: Makes sense. And in terms of the company, I want to ask one question around your culture and you mentioned core values. What other core values do you have at Copia and how do you embody that not just in your customers and your end clients, but also your employees, and everybody that works at the company.

Komal [31:02]: I have crawled through the pit fires of hell to even be sitting here on the other end, on the other line talking to you. So one thing that I’ve really understood now in building Copia is that you have to, in the words of Les Brown, surround yourself with people who are unstoppable, unreasonable people who refuse to lead life as it is. Because they know that if change is going to happen, it’s up to them. People who believe what I believe not people who just want to like do something good in the world. I wasn’t born wanting to solve world hunger — that’s not what I mean. But people who believe that this is possible, that it’s not even just possible, it is necessary.

“So at Copia we want everyone to have the attitude of gratitude, have genuine gratitude. Gratitude is contagious.”

You know our actions, our reactions, our communication, it expresses our gratitude and being grateful and sharing gratitude inspires and empowers others to do the same. It creates this echo chamber that radiates out of our business and does wonders to attract and retain the best, the brightest and the most generous around us. We want people to be genuinely hardy in their approbation and lavish with their praise.

Anand [32:24]: Yeah, so positivity is kind of all around in order to have a positive feedback loop in that case?

Komal [32:29]: It’s less positivity because feedback is important regardless. We want it straight no chaser. It’s not about positivity. And also even when I think about my own mindset. People are like you must be so optimistic. Positivity, optimism, pessimism, fuck that. I am hell bent, and God be my witness, I am hell bent on solving this problem. And that’s a very different reality. And that speaks to another one of Copia’s values, which is the importance of being more than passionate, but to be hungry. Passion alone is not enough, flames of passion can be extinguished when we confront the inevitable obstacles that come our way.

“We must be more than passionate. We must be hungry. Passion is what gets you started. But it’s that hunger that keeps you going. Hunger is that insatiable drive that enables you to achieve something greater than yourself. It’s this unrelenting force that compels you to get up. Even after you’ve fallen down 100 times before it means doing whatever you need to get the job done.”

Advice for Founders

Anand [33:42]: Yeah, I was actually gonna ask you as a final question around advice for would-be founders who want to start a Doing Well by Doing Good company, or people that work at a Doing Well by Doing Good company like Copia. Sounds like you kind of gave some good advice already. But if you had any other advice, I’m sure people would enjoy hearing it.

Komal [34:04]: Yeah. I mean, I think that one is like not everyone has to be an entrepreneur to do a tremendous amount of good. And you don’t have to be an entrepreneur to create something worthwhile in the world and to create change that is worthwhile in the world. Like none of these things are necessities. That being said, an entrepreneur is not something you half-ass is not something you whimsically decide to do. For me, for all intents and purposes, I didn’t even know how to spell entrepreneur when I became an entrepreneur. I was not one of these typical Silicon Valley dudes who was like I’m going to go start a startup. No, I wanted to solve a problem. I was training to be a doctor in the United States Navy. That was my destiny. This was not it. So there are a few things I would say. One is, I had planned out my entire life when I was 18. I was going to study Integrative Biology at Berkeley, I was going to become a doctor and try to be a doctor in the US Navy, I would find the love of my life, and I would marry them, I’d have my first kid after my first year residency, second kid after my final years of residency. All of this stuff, and now I recently turned 30. And turns out, I’m happily single, I don’t have any kids, and I am definitely not a doctor. The one thing I did do was fall in love it just wasn’t with a person, you know, but an idea, which sounds corny, but it is true. And so the lesson here for entrepreneurs, or for just people really is to write in pencil, and preferably one with a very big eraser. I had wanted to be a doctor for as long as I could remember, I was on that path. And yet it was this one random lunch with a hungry veteran that completely altered my life plan, and ultimately led me to finding my true purpose, my reason for being.

“So you can make all the life plans you want. Just remember to not write them in permanent ink. Draw them up in pencil, where you can erase them, alter them, challenge and improve them as life unfolds.”

Because nobody, not even you, can predict who or where you’ll end up being in even five years. Think about anyone in 2015, who was like, here’s where I see myself in 2020. Like, nearly 100% of those people were wrong. So that’s about passion being more than passion, being hungry. And then probably the last one, because we’re running short on time, is so many people on my journey, have said, come on Komal. How are you going to take leftover food and give it to poor people and somehow make money from that? That’s impossible! Like how are you going to dramatically reduce food waste? How are you gonna solve world hunger? Like all of this? This is insane. How cute little girl, what great ambition. And I remember being so upset when people would say that. And now I respond with the words of the late great Muhammad Ali. Impossible is a big word thrown around by small men who prefer to live in a world as it is, instead of using the power they have to challenge it, to change it, to improve it. Impossible is not a fact, it’s an opinion. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing. The Impossible does not exist, and it can no longer exist. We cannot tolerate a world where we waste 3x more food than there are mouths to feed. We will not tolerate it.

Anand [38:17]: Wow, that’s very inspiring. There’s always going to be naysayers if you’re doing something worthwhile.

Komal [38:24]: Yeah and for your audience, I hope you feel inspired. But I’m not here just to make you feel something. I’m here to get you to do something. So if you’re here today, if you’re listening in today, that means you care about doing good in some capacity in the world. And if you’re a human being you care about food, so whoever you are, whatever you do, Copia has a place for you. So whether you have excess food or you know someone who does or you want to invest in the future, or you just want to be part of this. With Copia, you can move the needle on hunger and food waste in America. So the question is, will you? One woman with a simple idea can make a world of a difference, but a group of people banded together can rid the world of an unnecessary and solvable problem-the World’s Dumbest Problem.

Anand [39:17]: Well, that’s an amazing way to sign off. What an inspirational message. Yeah, thank you so much, again, for taking the time. I thought this was a really awesome conversation, and I really appreciate it.

Komal [39:30]: Thank you. Yes. Thanks so much for having me.

Thanks for listening (or reading). If you want to know more about Copia, interested in joining their mission, or want to connect with them, check out their website here.

If you think someone you know would love this content, forward the email or send them the link below to subscribe to the latest updates. Subscribe to DWDG

Until next time. See ya!

Anand

Originally published at https://dwdg.substack.com.