Season 2, Ep. 7 | Transcript

More Elephant Intro

[00:00:38] Jason Rudman: It is time for the latest More Elephant Podcast and we're in this series around food and entrepreneurs, and I'm delighted to welcome two great entrepreneurs to the podcast, Narda Marza and Andrea Laderman, co-founders of Goldi. 

Goldi is a food tech platform that helps hotels and restaurants personalize menus based on guest dietary needs. It's about boosting revenues, improving communication, and reducing order errors without requiring new systems or kitchen retraining.

So as part of this series, you will have heard from entrepreneurs that are in the food business, most of them liquids. Narda, and Andrea welcome to the podcast because you're going to take us down a path on a food tech platform that's helping the B2B space to get to the C space. So, welcome, glad you're here.

[00:01:35] Narda Malakzad: Thanks for having.

[00:01:36] Andrea Laderman: Thank you so much for having us.

[00:01:37] Jason Rudman: So, we always start on the More Elephant story with the origin story…so, individually your story and how you found each other?

[00:01:47] Narda Malakzad: It's interesting, so we both individually have had dietary needs or restrictions—we don't like to say restrictions— and our families do as well. We met when Andrea's youngest and my eldest were in preschool together and our families became fast friends and we'd spend time together and really struggle to feed our two families together on Friday nights when we'd all hang out and try to order food.

It was abandoned cart after abandoned cart and we realized there was a big hole in the market for trying to take care of people.

You know, there's a human need to eating, obviously, and menus and restaurants don't really speak to that. And so we always say we did what women do when the thing they need doesn't exist—we created it. And so, we started down the long Goldi path. I don't know if you wanna add to that, Andrea.

[00:02:43] Andrea Laderman: No, I mean, other than to say even before we met, we struggled with our individual needs, which are not terribly complex, I wouldn't say.

Personally, I found the stress of trying to eat three meals a day, just for me, to be incredibly, just the whole journey to be incredibly difficult. A lot of time thinking, a lot of time wondering where to go, a lot of time wondering what's in things and it just doesn't make sense.

And then, when you look at the numbers and half of all people have some dietary restriction, we came together and knew we had to solve this problem. 

And, I'll just say, I have always and always will admire Narda, in doing anything like this, there's nobody else who I would want to partner with. She's tenacious, she's unbelievably smart, she's creative. And so, you know, not only were we best friends, but certainly on my end, there's just a huge amount of respect.

[00:03:42] Narda Malakzad: Same, same, obviously. I like to compare her to a beautiful mind. She's incredibly smart and the reason we got our patents.

[00:03:53] Jason Rudman: All right. So that's what I love. We get to pull threads here however, before Goldi, were you both entrepreneurs?

[00:04:01] Narda Malakzad: I was. So, prior to Goldi, I had, coming out of business school getting my MBA, I had an online shop, where it was modern home furnishings and then, got derailed by the bigger businesses coming into the internet and offering free shipping and I couldn't afford it, 

I had access through my family to some big warehouses in Culver City and came up with the idea of doing event spaces. And, built a business of high-end weddings, corporate events and non-profit events, and did that for about ten (10) years, where I got to know a lot about hospitality, food and feeding giant numbers. Fifteen hundred (1,500) people in a night [and] having the paramedics show up because someone ate something they were allergic to. You know, all of those things.

[00:04:47] Jason Rudman: And Andrea?

[00:04:48] Andrea Laderman: I took a little bit more of a traditional corporate route out of the gates. I worked in management consulting and then in the entertainment business in finance and corporate development.

The two things I was always passionate about and moved toward more and more were business development—really just partnering in order to raise the level for all people involved and product and technology.

So, I ended up going more and more entrepreneurial in terms of the companies that I worked with. And fell in love with the whole process of developing and creating products and technology and then thinking about how partnerships could drive the technology and the product forward. 

And then had our second child and retired for a period of time but truthfully, I've always had entrepreneur envy and hoped to come up with something that I believed in enough to take it forward. And then obviously having the right partner being key, and I'm just grateful that it happened, to be honest.

[00:05:57] Jason Rudman: Right. Can we just point out that you had your second child and you said you're retired. And I don't think that is true because I don't think you retire when you have your second child. 

[00:06:05] Andrea Laderman: Thank you. 

[00:06:06] Jason Rudman: Yes. I think that's really important. So, you've talked about this coming together around shared lived experience, food, not being able to find the right options for you, your families.

And Narda, we should acknowledge that you and I first picked up this conversation back in October of 2023, when the focus of Goldi, was somewhat different because it was direct to consumer at that point. So if you could take us through that evolution and then ultimately what Goldi attempts to solve for.

[00:06:42] Andrea Laderman: Yeah. The core problem has never changed. It's the fact that 50% or more of people have some dietary restriction, whether they follow a keto diet, a Mediterranean diet, the latest trend, whether their doctors have prescribed, told them to eat in a certain way, whether they're ethical reasons, allergies, a whole host of reasons. And the problem only seems to be growing.

And yet, on the other side, menus are opaque. They're non-transparent. They're one size fits all, as Narda likes to say. On the restaurant side and the hotel side, there's a labor issue and a knowledge issue— the wrong information is given all the time. Dishes are sent back all the time.

We intend to solve that problem every single day. Three meals a day for the people who are trying to eat and feed themselves, their families and their friends, and for the properties and restaurants that are trying to serve them and do so more efficiently and more effectively.

I think that that hasn't changed. I don't know Narda, whether you have anything to add to that.

[00:07:45] Narda Malakzad: I think it's important to point out, we look at it as a human problem, not necessarily a tech problem. We've just solved it via tech. We've used that tool, but it's a worldwide human problem trying to eat based on each individual's very specific needs.

It's like a fingerprint. Everybody eats differently. And to feel helpless when you're in a restaurant or at a hotel is incredibly overwhelming and there's no need for it.

[00:08:16] Jason Rudman: So again, there was a pivot along the way. Right? And I think Andrea, when we met, you had this, “in order to get to the Cs, you've gotta go through the Bs,” which I really, really love. So, B to B to C, which really spoke to me.

Why the pivot? What have you learned that caused that pivot in the first place? 

[00:08:36] Andrea Laderman: Well, so for context, we were really building this during COVID.

We had the idea before COVID and there were lots of product sketches being drawn, but the real intense building and the decision making around product happened during COVID and everybody was ordering a lot of food online, including us just out of pure necessity.

We're homeschooling or building a business. So I think that really, informed how we built the platform, which was to be in many ways, a better DoorDash or Uber Eats or GrubHub.

We saw these platforms on the one side that weren't really focused on product. They were focused on logistics. They were focused on expanding into every corner of the world, and there was no personalization.

Minimal discovery in terms of finding new restaurants and finding ways to eat and expand one's horizons. And so we thought we could take this idea that every menu can be personalized and we could zoom out and use that to be a better way of discovering restaurants. Where the restaurants that you see are based on how well they feed you and the people who you're eating with. 

[00:09:52] Narda Malakzad: A meritocracy. 

[00:09:54] Andrea Laderman: Exactly. And meritocracies raise everything. They raise revenue, they raise wellbeing, and within that, then everybody would be able to see their customized menu.

So we built for that. We built as a better DoorDash. We built it so that you can connect with other people, select who's dining and that would also drive the hierarchy of restaurants that you would see. 

Everybody would get a personal menu. And we actually took that to market and you can guess how that went. 

[00:10:21] Jason Rudman: You learned some things.

[00:10:22] Narda Malakzad: Oh, we learned a lot…

[00:10:26] Andrea Laderman: We learned so much. The real challenges, to be honest with you, weren't traction with people and they weren't even traction with restaurants. It was operational. We couldn't get to the last mile.

We couldn't get the orders into the point of sale due to just not having the partnerships in spite of our efforts.

[00:10:44] Narda Malakzad: Yep...

[00:10:44] Andrea Laderman: And so, it just wasn't practical. We were literally placing orders manually on our restaurant partners websites as orders were coming in.

So, we shut that down and we thought about what other simpler, more elegant applications there might be for the tech. And particularly when it comes to hotels; you have a captive-ish audience.

You have the opportunity to serve them many times a day in-house. And yes, people go, people travel to venture out, but as much of that guest dollar as you can capture, the better.

That's exactly what we're finding—people now in hotels are dining on premises more often, check sizes are going up because they can order more food. It feels more abundant. So it's been a great pivot for us.

[00:11:37] Narda Malakzad: Yeah, it's been in some ways a major pivot in some ways, not really.

The technology's the same. It's been fairly simple for us and we've gotten so much traction so quickly. It's really scratched an itch.

[00:11:50] Andrea Laderman: Yeah.

[00:11:51] Jason Rudman: I love it. So what's the unlock there?

Andrea, you talked about the challenges with the B2C model on that last mile where I can only imagine…the image in my head of five screens up and you're manually on restaurant A and then restaurant B and somehow, you want it to work and it doesn't work. 

What's the last mile challenge in the B2B space? I'm in a hotel. How does it work for me?

[00:12:16] Andrea Laderman: Yep. So comparing last mile to last mile, the on-premises dining that we're talking about in hotel, whether you're picking up the phone and calling room service, or whether you're ordering with the server, in restaurant, there is no last mile. The server’s actually the last mile.

So, there's no tech integration required whatsoever on the part of the hotel. There are no menu changes on the part of the property. We work with exactly the menu that they have and any modifications that the chef already allows.

And so from a consumer standpoint, it's a mobile web product, and what that really means is it's as simple as scanning a QR code.

The code might appear on the menu, it might appear on an acrylic on the table. Some people don't like QR codes, so there are other ways of doing it, like a tap card.

And from the moment you tap that card or scan that QR code, you're asked two questions…

Do you follow any diets and you're given a chance to select, and then are there any foods that you dislike or avoid? You hit okay to the terms and conditions and up pops your completely customized version of the menu along with instructions on how to order human-to-human.

[00:13:33] Narda Malakzad: And it's interesting. One of our hotel partners, this is the first one we launched.

We were looking at their menu and they had two vegan ‘vee’s’ on their menu. And I had a meeting with them and said, you know, I think it's time to get rid of your little dots, your vees and your GFS and all of that because a vegan walks into your restaurant and thinks they only have two choices for dinner. But, if they were to scan the Goldi QR code that's sitting right there, they have like twelve (12) choices.

And so, it's really unlocked the menu and made the menu more human as opposed to kind of being a menu for robots, right?

[00:14:06] Jason Rudman: I love that it's made the menu more human.

So, let's pull on that thread if we can. So, I eat paleo pretty much, haven't eaten red meat or pork in, eons, can't give up chicken. It's hard. 

I don't eat wheat. That's not a dietary restriction, it's just a choice. You mentioned that, as I scan the menu, if I'm looking for vee or gf, I'm seeing like two. Then all of a sudden with Goldi, I see twelve different options. How would that work if I was looking at a paper menu? What is it about the experience Order Goldi that ultimately translates that from two to twelve?

[00:14:41] Narda Malakzad: Well, that's where the tech comes in, right? 

So what we do, what we call the menu math, and what our system does is it takes all of your dietary preferences. And then it takes the menu and it runs it against the menu, and it automatically cycles through every omission edition and substitution available to create new dishes for you that the kitchen already does.

It has it, but the servers maybe don't know the nuances. You know, you can't have a twenty page menu where you're cross-referencing. It makes it a dynamic menu where a menu of let's say twenty items becomes a menu of five hundred items, and the kitchen is already prepared for that.

[00:15:22] Jason Rudman: I think that's the key, unlock, right? So the kitchen has all the ingredients. They're not showing you five hundred different options, right?

The permutations of take ingredient A, ingredient B, ingredient C, omit D. But if you want F over here, I don't have a dish on the paper menu that actually has A, B, C, and F, but you can get A, B, C, and F through this experience.

[00:15:43] Andrea Laderman: Exactly. And maybe in doing that, you're stripping out some things and you need to add other things in to make it feel complete and hearty. That's happening. That's available also.

And so, it's also driving what we call upsells where you charge for adding avocado or you don't, but you have the ability to do that. And, that's another thing, driving check sizes up.

[00:16:09] Narda Malakzad: Yeah, it's interesting, at the beginning, a lot of restaurant owners and some of the hotel people high up in F and B [Food and Beverage], they were like, oh, we're worried about chef.

You know, chef's gonna be upset about this and we get on the phone with chef, and chef is always like, yeah, that flavor profile doesn't work, but you know, what we could do is we could do this easily.

Chef is actually like, yeah, this is a great idea because it's going to be less dishes sent back. It's going to be less errors, less questions running back you know, it ends up a positive experience for everyone along the entire line. 

[00:16:37] Jason Rudman: Right. Can you describe the business model and what it takes to launch it? In my head, everything that I understand is that restaurant tech is highly complex, and you actually even mentioned that in your B2C model in terms of point of sale systems and everything that you need to do.

So from an Order Goldi perspective, is it complex?

[00:16:57] Andrea Laderman: On the backend, what we do is complex. On the restaurant-facing and the consumer-facing side, we've gotten to a place where it couldn't be simpler to use or to implement.

We know that tech integrations and platform migrations and all those things are anathema to businesses that are really just trying to focus on guest service. So, we were able to migrate Goldi to a place where there is no tech implementation required whatsoever on the part of the property, restaurant, the hotel, the stadium, the university.

And there are no menu changes needed. There's literally nothing to be done other than we take in ingredients from the property from the venue, in whatever format they have them, we onboard and translate that into our system as part of the service. We may need a thirty (30) minute call with somebody in F&B, maybe the chef, maybe somebody else to clarify a few things and to understand modifications and swaps. But we can have people up and running in a week from the time when they decide to move forward with Goldi.

They decide where that QR code's going to go, whether they want a tap card or something else. And some properties want co-branding. And so we implement that quickly and we take all ingredients, we onboard and we launch.

It was really important to us, based on our years of experience doing this, to not require any kind of implementation on the part of our partners.

In terms of the business model, to have a pricing structure that could offer a clear ROI to the restaurant, we charge a flat licensing fee every month. It's a very digestible amount. 

We've had hotels come to us and say, I'm so glad that we're getting in before you realize what you're onto and before you raise your pricing kind of, are you sure this is all you want to charge?

And, so it's a very friendly pricing structure against which you can measure things like increased check sizes, repeat visits, that whole revenue per occupied room, some of those metrics. 

So, thank you for asking that. 

[00:19:14] Narda Malakzad: Yeah, over the years we removed every friction point and all it did was build a better product.

[00:19:20] Jason Rudman: I feel like you just got your billboard on the ten (10) with the hotel. That said, we got in before they realized how good it really, really was. You know, I'm aiming for every single marketing angle here that I can.

[00:19:31] Andrea Laderman: My favorite, favorite thing about the platform is the potential to generate data about how people want to eat to then streamline the menu development process.

So, there's no attempt to take the creativity out of it, but to rather say, this is how this dish stacks up against how we see our guest base wanting to eat. And maybe, it's as simple as nobody eats beets or blue cheese and that therefore save yourself having to buy those ingredients.

Or maybe there are a lot of people eating keto, but then we see more and more people who are on a low FODMAP diet. And here's how this maps to that. And, if you want to consider alternatives to these ingredients, you can. Or you don't have to.

And so, everything becomes data informed to the benefit I should say, of both the guests and the restaurant.

[00:20:29] Jason Rudman: Two things. The data piece fascinates me, right?

So it sounds like you're on the beginning part of the data journey as you've gotten Order Goldi up and running.

Can you talk a little about the data you're collecting and what you anticipate that you can utilize that data for in the future?

[00:20:46] Andrea Laderman: Yeah, absolutely. So every time a person hits the system, whether they've created an account or not—if  they've not created an account, we're tracking them anonymously, which is absolutely fine—we are seeing which diets they follow and which foods they're trying to avoid.

So, that amounts to a profile for each person and when you scale that up to thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, you get the full picture of exactly how people want to eat and what the distribution of preferences is, and then you can hone in, of course, geographically to a specific property, to a specific area, to a zip code, and really understand the fingerprint of the people who are passing through and who are potentially going to eat more at your establishment if you can serve them correctly.

That data has the ability to then translate into a menu development tool where you can see how well your menu lines up against your user base, how to modify things perhaps in order to be a better fit and waste less.

And so we're really just at the beginning of properties having the ability to use that data in a very practical way. And then on the other side to sort of measure, are people coming back and eating on premises more? Are they ordering more? 

There's some very simple metrics that we can collaborate with our partners. We can and do collaborate with our partners to look at revenue per occupied room, average check size, number of visits. Those are simple things to measure and we can already see those, having a big positive impact.

[00:22:31] Jason Rudman: And I immediately go to two things in my head. There's a future of research, as you collect and you curate this data, you're going to be able to shine a light on dietary preferences and how to solve them at scale.. 

And then I'm thinking about the localized marketing efforts of the properties and their ability to have a very, very different message about how they serve people that come through that experience.

And marketing is basically marketing to one, right? It's marketing to you, it's marketing to Andrea, it's marketing to you, Narda, right? And we can do that in an AI-enabled, digital world with this data to curate a very specific message and a very specific experience. The future of the data and what you can do with it sounds ultimately really fascinating.

[00:23:20] Andrea Laderman: So, I mean, you've hit on something that has always been a little pie in the sky for the moment in terms of actually developing it. But, one of my personal favorite things about the potential for the platform is when you think about a restaurant, first of all, marketing dollars are extremely limited, and it's incredibly difficult to reach the right audience with the right message.

But if you are, let's just say on Instagram trying to attract a particular audience, you could actually market at the customized dish level to a person based on their preferences. Up could pop five dishes, images of five dishes, that I personally could eat for my preferences and moreover, the right restaurants could be matched with the right people with that right message.

So that would be a huge breakthrough, an a-ha moment on overall efficiency, on personalization. I don't even know what to call it, but that you've hit on something that I am super, super excited about.

[00:24:23] Jason Rudman: Well, let's talk about the power of AI to enable the localization at the local restaurant…to do that at scale as well.

I think you hit on a couple of things that are really important. Localized restaurants, marketing budgets. It is probably not where they're focused. They are at the mercy of referral.

[00:24:40] Andrea Laderman: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:40] Jason Rudman: If you have a good experience and you happen to be on social, you're going to tell people about it. And that's earned. But it's an over reliance on that.

The power of a restaurateur or a hotel owner, with AI, very quickly to be able to generate six hundred (600) variations. I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago, and on the screen, as somebody that leads marketing and brand for a credit union, the power of AI to rapidly generate multi-variate testing at scale in thirty (30) minutes

…they show taking a tagline, a stock of images, which could be images of food and then another tagline. And in minutes, generated six hundred (600) different variations that you could then go test in marketing channels. 

[00:25:29] Andrea Laderman: It's so cool. 

[00:25:29] Jason Rudman: It's cool. I say to everybody you know, embrace AI, don't be fearful of it. We obviously need to be mindful of bias in it, but the power of it to localize the marketing effort with great data, to your point, and then, Order Goldi being part of that stream of monetizing the data, frankly, right? 

To be able to amplify the reach of every restaurant, every hotel, every institution, every organization that does business with you. That's really, really powerful. 

[00:26:01] Andrea Laderman: Yeah. 

[00:26:01] Jason Rudman: So you mentioned early on in your journey when you were fingers on keyboards ordering on websites in the middle of COVID.

How do you find hotels, restaurants? How do you find the businesses to be part of the Order Goldi experience? How does that work?

[00:26:19] Narda Malakzad: A few different ways. I think we've been very lucky. We've had a number of people who've really championed us, whether they've really understood what we're doing or really believed in myself and Andrea, they have propelled us and put us in touch with the right people and vouched for us. And, community is everything.

In addition to that, I mean, we hit the pavement. I like to make fun of someone we know who says boots on the ground, but that's what we, that's what we did.

[00:26:47] Andrea Laderman: I wonder if he knows who he is when he watches this.

[00:26:50] Narda Malakzad: You know, we go to conferences all the time. We'll walk into places we have stalked restaurants at hotels where we will, every week, go and have lunch just to talk up the F&B (food and beverage) manager to get the meeting. It's nonstop and it is paying off sometimes more slowly, sometimes more quickly.

There's no easy way particularly for two women who've been out of the workforce for a number of years and we pull every lever, every day.

[00:27:18] Jason Rudman: That's the work of the work, right?

So entrepreneurship in season one, we met a number of entrepreneurs on More Elephant and they step away from…Andrea, you were talking about traditional corporate line of work. 

You've got this dream, you've got this idea that you can make the world a better place.

That's ultimately the purpose of More Elephant—to shine a light on people that are, either in a small way or in a big way, making the world a better place. And it requires work, Narda, to your point, right?

It's boots on the ground, it's walking the street and the meeting with the F&B—manager of food and beverage for everybody that’s like, what does f and b mean—food and beverage.

To your point, you may have to do that more than once in order to just get in the door, let alone getting them on your digital directory and making them available to their customers.

What is the journey reaffirmed or taught you about yourself?

[00:28:16] Narda Malakzad: Before we pivoted, we definitely had a moment where we were like, what are we doing?

As Andrea likes to say, Goldi is inevitable. It's going to happen. It is the future of food, it's the future of food consumption. But we were really stumped by our inability to do that last mile.

And we took a few months to really just think and think and think. And we had discussed about the only way Goldi fails is if we stop trying. And so, we just iterated and iterated until we figured it out, you know? And we will continue to be at that crossroads. That's every day. You just never stop trying because the minute you stop trying is when you fail. That's it.

[00:28:57] Andrea Laderman: I think I went from a little bit of an imposter syndrome—why me? What do I have? why would I be the one to, especially, considering this? 

This was a pretty monumental undertaking for me as a first time entrepreneur and really first time product person in the sense of creating a product from the ground up…to why not me?

And that has impacted everything that I do. And it is felt throughout my body, quite frankly, is the shift from feeling like an imposter to feeling like we are absolutely the right people to be doing this. And so, I mean, it is just, once you feel that way, there's no turning back.

[00:29:45] Jason Rudman: That is such a powerful sentiment for anybody that's listening. I think we all, in our history of getting to this point, had moments where we've had imposter syndrome, felt like we didn't belong, felt like we hadn't earned it.

I also think there's an added element of working through am I worthy? Should I be here? Is my idea going to get off the ground for entrepreneurs in marginalized communities? And I think that your message, Andrea and Nard, incredibly important for people to hear. That I deserve to be here. The idea is Goldi…

[00:30:21] Andrea Laderman: Thank you. 

[00:30:22] Jason Rudman: …is going to happen. We're going to be the people to do, make that happen. So I love that. I love that.

[00:30:28] Andrea Laderman: I actually want to add one thing because it is so human and Narda talks about this a lot also, and you mentioned marginalized communities, specifically relative to entrepreneurship. As women, we have been treated differently.

We aren't looked at, we don't feel with the same credibility as a man who walks in the door.

And that's not a victim thing. That's just something we've experienced in reality. And I remember going into one meeting with a venture capitalist and feeling like we had a man who was an advisor at the time. We needed to bring him and we did. And he was great and they looked at us such the vibe was much different in the room and cut to years later…we just don't care.

We believe in Goldi so much. We know that we have something. We don't care if you look at us differently. You either want the product in the platform and you see the growth potential, you see the resilience and the resolve behind it, or you don't.

So that's just another, when you talk about the More Elephant philosophy, another kind of core evolution that took some time to happen, but now that it has happened, is incredibly empowering.

[00:31:46] Narda Malakzad: Yeah. We realize they may not be the partner for us. We don't need to always be selling. Right? Like, are you the right partner for us? Are you gonna treat us right and see us? Yeah. At the beginning you feel very desperate, you know?

[00:31:58] Andrea Laderman: Yep.

[00:31:59] Jason Rudman: Andrea, Narda, those are the types of conversations that need to continue to be talked about.

The hard reality, Andrea, of what you shared there, is that the percentage of VC money that goes to female-led companies is incredibly small. Single digits, like low single digits.

So what you experienced is the reality, and I appreciate we're at the point where it's you, not us. If you don't appreciate that, we know what we're doing. We've got this vision to get this company off the ground, we're driving forward, we've got wins.

And somehow in your lexicon of bias, you feel as though we are not able, that's on you.

Not us. 

[00:32:45] Andrea Laderman: Yeah. 

[00:32:45] Jason Rudman: That is a global message beyond entrepreneurship. And I think for little girls, anybody in a marginalized community, is to find your path and realize that there are people that will back you and you will find them right? So just keep on going.

What's the future you envision for Order Goldi? And you can be as dramatic and as inspirational and as bold as you care to be.

[00:33:11] Narda Malakzad: What do you think Andrea??

[00:33:13] Andrea Laderman: So, the future of Goldi is that every person in every corner of the world, no matter their budget, no matter their individual needs, no matter what they have access to, can enjoy food safely, stress-free with a sense of freedom and abundance, and as Narda likes to say, joy bringing the joy back into dining.

And it doesn't have to be limited to restaurants. We chose restaurants because they're singularly non-transparent and difficult to navigate.

People cooking at home can cook to whatever preferences they like, but it could be and should be three meals a day, every day, every person in the household, every person in the social group feels at ease, taken care of, like they can explore new places, new flavors, new foods, while still aspiring to be their very healthiest, most fulfilled, most vibrant self.

[00:34:23] Narda Malakzad: Yeah, and I think if I could add to that, I mean just more, slightly more detailed, I mean, you know, college campuses, stadiums like it should be, you should have the opportunity to put in your body something that works for you and know what it is, anywhere you go. I mean, it's eating…is the most human thing.

[00:34:46] Andrea Laderman: I'll also say on the other side of it, for the restauranteur, a lot of these restaurants are family-owned and driven by a passion. So much money goes into creating a concept. So much love, so much creativity, and then the business realities are unbelievably harsh.

And to be able to connect with your audience, the people who are going to enjoy and appreciate your food, with a message that is tailored to them. Eliminates all the wasteful marketing spending, the wasteful food aspect of it, when you don't know really how people want to eat or what they're not going to eat, and to make that path just a little bit easier on the business side, is another kind of ultimate vision that we have.

[00:35:37] Jason Rudman: The optionality on the menu is what strikes me. 

I mentioned taking three or four different pieces of a marketing piece and creating six hundred (600) of them with AI. Narda, I go back to where you said there were two things on the menu, but there's twelve or fifteen different variations that the chef has the ingredients for, and with a little bit of tweaking, is actually able to make, that you wouldn't know about because it's actually not written down or it's not in front of your face.

So yeah, the optionality piece is blowing my mind. Let's talk about the VC experience raising capital given the experiences that you shared.

And you know, again, we on this podcast, we don't shy away from those difficult conversations and you sharing what it's like to be in those conversations and feeling, sometimes like you didn't belong or you had to bring the man along in order to, you know, feel like you had some degree of credibility.

Where does Order Goldi find itself today from a raising of capital perspective? And what other anecdotes or nuggets would you leave with the audience particularly? 

I'm thinking about entrepreneurs that are starting out that identify with the story and could benefit from those More Elephant moments along the way of what it's been like to raise capital, talk to VCs and get the company to where it is today.

[00:36:57] Andrea Laderman: Well, we've had a small number, I would say, of real conversations with the venture community.

Some casual ‘putting out feelers’ with people that we knew, some actual pitch meetings, a limited number, but still a number. And what we found was that we were early.

The platform alone is not enough, and the bar continues to be raised in terms of what you need to prove you've done or show that you've done in order to be able to raise money. I think being women and me being a first time entrepreneur and Narda, being a first time tech entrepreneur, doesn't help.

We've definitely seen people raise a lot of money on a lot less than what we had developed and what we brought to the table. And maybe there's some inherent bias there or whatever the case may be.

But what I think we've realized is that we were lucky because we then had to figure out how to operate our business on revenue, really on nothing until we got to revenue, and then on the revenue that we were generating. And we avoided the pitfalls of spending $10 million.

I'd like to think we would not have done that. We've always been pretty judicious with the money that we've taken in from investors who we do have, but we figured out how to operate this thing on our own revenue, which gives us a lot of power. We would be able to scale much more rapidly were we to raise and we think we're getting to that point, but we now have the luxury of doing it when we want and on our terms.

So Narda likes to say everything happens for a reason. We felt like we were beating our heads against a wall and you know, we brought so much to the table and nobody's revolutionized this. But in the end it's been a good thing.

[00:38:54] Jason Rudman: Narda, anything to add?

[00:38:56] Narda Malakzad: I mean, I think she hit it all and I think at every moment where we felt like we're hitting our heads against the wall—what do we do now? what is the unlock? what is the unlock? 

Every single time the unlock has been, take a beat, zoom out. Look at the big picture and align. And every time we've done that, we've made leaps.

[00:39:20] Andrea Laderman: I agree with that.

[00:39:21] Jason Rudman: Yeah. Andrea, two things that you said resonate. One, feels like solutions with a lot less have raised a lot more. Yes. We've seen the graveyard of those experiences.

But two, I think the full circle moment is because we had to really scratch and scratch for it and really, really work for it, we're now in a position of power to be able to determine when we walk through and when we unlock that door and to expand.

So again, like a full circle moment in terms of having to work really, really hard and feel like the door was always shutting in your face and now you've got the opportunity to control when the door opens.

I think that's pretty amazing.

[00:40:04] Andrea Laderman: It's a great place to be. It's a huge relief to be here. 

[00:40:07] Jason Rudman: Yeah. How can listeners learn more about Order Goldi, learn more about both of you and the path that you've traveled and where you're going in the future.

[00:40:19] Andrea Laderman: We have a website www.ordergoldi.com. Maybe changing to myGoldi soon. A little more personal maybe, maybe not. 

We're on LinkedIn as both as individuals. Narda Malakzad, Andrea Lademan and Goldi We do have a presence on Instagram and we're pretty easy to get in touch with.

[00:40:44] Jason Rudman: Awesome. We're going to drop all those links in the podcast episode. And I can't wait for our audience to not only hear about what we just talked about, but also get engaged because again, I think from somebody who eats a particular diet, I am now going to figure out how to Order Goldi in my life.

Thank you so much for spending some time with the More Elephant Podcast.

[00:41:11] Narda Malakzad: Oh, thanks Jason. 

[00:41:12] Jason Rudman: Can't wait to see what happens next.

[00:41:13] Narda Malakzad: We love your podcast. It's amazing what you're putting out there. It's really brings a whole world together.

[00:41:20] Jason Rudman: Well, thank you. Hey. We like to say we have two of these ears and one of these mouths, and if we only use the ears a little bit more often and a little less of the mouth, I think the world might be a better place.

[00:41:33] Narda Malakzad: I think you're right. 

[00:41:34] Andrea Laderman: I'll see you soon.

[00:41:35] Jason Rudman: Appreciate you both. Thank you.

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