Leader in Zero-Plastic Online Grocery Shopping — Zuleyka Strasner, Founder and CEO of Zero
Led by Zuleyka Strasner, Zero is an online marketplace for sustainable groceries, home goods, personal items, and more, on its way to becoming the largest sustainability platform for consumers in the country.
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What does your company do? What makes you unique versus the competition?
Zero is a marketplace for sustainable groceries, home goods, personal items, and more, on its way to becoming the largest sustainability platform in the country. What we’ve built is a service that brings a lot of value to our members. It enables the consumer to choose products wisely, according to their values, with very little effort. We hope it becomes commonplace.
How are you funding your growth — e.g., revenue, VC, CVC, government grants, M&A? What are 1-2 lessons you’ve learned along the way?
We are a venture-backed business with revenue helping us along the way.
Lessons learned:
Stay committed to your vision but…
Keep an open mind to advice and out-of-the-box tactics
If you had to start over, what are 1-2 tips you’d give yourself in order to be faster, more effective, and higher impact?
The first is to trust in myself. In a startup, you’re always dealing with some new problem or setback, but we have always and without fail, found our way through them, as scary as it may have been at the time. The second is to be quick about what stays and what goes, whether it’s ideas, processes, or people. Holding on for too long doesn’t work.
Outside of your current business, what other 1-2 climate or sustainability sectors seem like promising areas to start a business? What might those solutions look like?
Transportation is a big one, and not just cars and trucks, but longer-range solutions. Many of the produce items Americans like to eat come from places far away, and so to have the convenience of that being available year-round currently requires some tradeoffs to be made. Some day sooner than most think, we might be seeing VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) transportations solutions.
Similarly, in farming, we know that these giant monoculture farms are depleting the soil of nutrients, and can do a lot of harm to the local ecology. The challenge, of course, is to make a more sustainable alternative profitable, and this is where we see high-potential solutions like vertical farming, which takes up far less land and water making some headway.
What are some habits and routines that keep you focused, healthy, and sane — e.g., meditations, exercise, productivity hacks?
For me, it’s exercise, every day. It’s my time for myself — a thing that I do only for myself. Another one is going on walks. I’m not as regular at them myself, but it is something that I’ve seen take hold in our company. Folks will update their Slack status to “away,” take a walk, and then come back recharged and more productive.
What recommendations do you have for our audience — books, podcasts, quotes, tools?
One of the most beneficial books taught me how the VC world operates (it can be so hard to connect with the right people!) — Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld. While it was rather dry and a bit boring for someone like me with a non-linear learning style, it was a necessary read and pretty informative.
What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you — outside of your own family?
I was recently presented with a semi-surprise, much-needed trip to reconnect with friends in December. Sometimes you need to remind yourself that life isn’t all business. Can’t wait!
Do you have any requests, announcements, or final advice for our listeners?
Being a founder/CEO requires you to be many things to many people. Sometimes it’s the most rewarding thing in the world, and sometimes it’s the most difficult. The only path is to trust in yourself and to listen to those around you — the people you hired (who you hired because they’re experts after all), your customers, and the people who support you (mentors and advisors).
Also! We just launched a new nationwide shipping version of Zero, so that anyone in America can place an order. We launched in October with a very slimmed-down introductory catalog, and plan to ramp up through the holiday season. You can check it out at https://zerogrocery.com.
Learn more.
Apply to our join our Climate Mastermind, an invite-only executive coaching group for climate CEOs and investors. We focus on faster business growth, better decision making, investor savvy, and stronger networks. Founded by Dr. Chris Wedding — with $1B of investment experience, 40,000 professional students taught, 25 years of meditation practice, and certification as a Mastermind Professional — our cohorts function like your own personal Board of Directors.
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Note:
THE TORCH is an interview series from Entrepreneurs for Impact. We profile CEOs and investors mitigating climate change. Our goal is to highlight their work and inspire others. As we deal with multiple crisis, from Covid and racial injustice to climate change and economic recession, we need some of this positive light in what seem like dark times. Onward and upward.