The following interview is a conversation we had with Jonathan Legge, Co-Founder and CEO at &Open, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: Over $35 Million Raised to Create the Future of Corporate Gifting
Jonathan Legge
Thanks for having me. Delighted to be here.
Brett
Not a problem at all. Super excited to chat. So, to kick things off, we just start with a quick summary of who you are and maybe just a bit more about your background, for sure.
Jonathan Legge
Yeah, my name is Jonathan. I am the Co-Founder and CEO of &Open. I’m talking to you today from Dublin, Ireland. My background is not typical for a tech Founder, which I didn’t really realize at first, but then I got invited to some off sites and realized I was definitely the OD one out. My background is design. I studied furniture design originally here in Dublin, then moved to London to study at the Royal College of Art, went there to do an MA and ended up staying in London for eleven years and operating as a design consultant over there. Worked for a practice called Studio Ilsa, and during that period of time started exploring business ideas with my brother and seeing what we might like to do together. And we set up a little ecommerce business and we’re kind of moonlighting in that space.
Jonathan Legge
And that business was very much about experimenting together, seeing if people were interested in what we had to offer and looking to see how we could do a hybrid between e-commerce and physical retail. So we built out partnerships with the Standard Hotel group, so house group running pop up stores in their different locations like Berlin, Paris, New York, London. And that business grew to a place where I was like, actually, this is more than a hobby and it probably should be a full time job. And it grew, I think, because I’m pretty curious. When I get challenged about stuff, I like to figure it out. And I think I also believe that I see design as a way of solving problems and it’s a way of thinking about things and a way of thinking about how you make something better.
Jonathan Legge
And yeah, I think that background has set us up nicely for what we do today.
Brett
And just hearing that background, obviously Brian Cheske from Airbnb comes to mind. Has Brian Chesky had a major influence on you and inspired you?
Jonathan Legge
It’s very funny you should mention that. It’s only an hour ago, I was just talking about him. Airbnb is one of our clients and we do a lot of work with them and their team. And, yeah, his perspective on things, what they’ve done, is extremely inspiring and his kind of always bringing it back to the human perspective and how somebody would feel like, how will this make them feel? It’s something we often think about in the space we’re in, which is gifting. And I think it’s really important to always, particularly in this kind of hyper digital world, it’s often overlooked how the person might actually feel. And I’m definitely inspired by those founders at Airbnb, and they come from a design background.
Brett
Right. If I had that right, it was the Rhode island school of design. Yeah.
Jonathan Legge
Both of them studied at Risdi, which would be like the US version of the RCA, where I studied very similar backgrounds.
Brett
Now, obviously in the startup world, there’s some famous stories about Airbnb in the early days with their boxes of cereal that they sold to survive. Do you have any stories like that from the early days of building &Open?
Jonathan Legge
What did we do to survive? I mean, were lucky in the early days that we had an e commerce business and were self funded, so that e commerce business was profitable and we had it as a hobby. So were just experimenting and having fun with it. And then when we decided we wanted to take it seriously, it was like, actually what really works in this business? And when we looked into the numbers, it became clear that over like 33% of our revenue was coming from corporate requests. The likes of Google Meta, Airbnb, their marketing teams getting in contact with us and looking to put together gifts for events. They’re running off sites, different field marketing.
Jonathan Legge
I mean, our opportunity came from realizing that kind of very much naively leaning into that space and then serendipity playing its role, which was we became hosts on Airbnb. We experienced their gifting firsthand. They tried to gift a guest of ours. We saw how generous they were trying to be with their gifting, but we also just saw how epically wrong it went. They sent a gift. Nobody knew they were sending a gift. In particular, the guest, who was the intended recipient, had no idea they were going to get a gift. And then they also had no idea that they’d even tried to gift. And Airbnb had no idea that the gift had failed. And being pretty curious about this and knowing that we had a channel to communicate with them, we opened up a conversation simply saying, we could help you do this better.
Jonathan Legge
And they were back saying, we really appreciate that, but you guys are way too small. You’re operating out of your garden shed. We’re gifting across the globe and there’s no way you could help us do this better. But were pretty persistent and kept the conversation open. It came around to a moment where there was a team over from San Francisco. I was invited to meet them for coffee, and then they called the next day to say, we’re running an RFP out of San Francisco. There’s eleven us retailers pitching to be our global gifting partners. We’re very curious to hear what you guys have to say. You are definitely the wild cards. You’re the only european company pitching.
Jonathan Legge
But if you’re willing to commit to a six month process, we’re willing to listen to you for the next six months and after that we’ll tell you how you got on. And we jumped at that opportunity and we pitched like crazy and reimagined our e commerce business and rethought the infrastructure, kind of tried to connect the dots in a different way, and ultimately stepped away with a contract to be Airbnb’s global gifting partner. And that was the beginning of &Open that moment from experiencing their gifting, trying to understand it, believing we could do it better, and then six months later convincing them that we could.
Brett
Where did that confidence come from for you of, hey, I could do this better?
Jonathan Legge
That’s a good question. My wife would say, that’s a male thing, I think. There’s not like lots of things I could say I can do better, but it was just that, in particular, the realization that they were being really generous and they really genuinely cared about the guests and the hosts and they were trying to build those relationships and just how wrong it went. It wasn’t even necessarily that we could do it better. It was just like, it has to be possible to do this better because they’re trying to be so generous and it couldn’t be that hard to get it right. And then it was like, okay, we have these vendors who are providing merchandise to us and we’re just selling them.
Jonathan Legge
But what if we rethought this entire infrastructure, and how do we put a global network in place around this, and how do we bring their whole centers into play here? Because that’s how they want to the power of the gifting. So I guess it was just joining up those dots in a different way. And I think my background in design definitely helped that. And rethinking those problems and establishing different patterns and naivety always helps as well to think. But as a general rule, even when we had our small ecommerce business, it was like, how can we represent young designers better? How can we represent craftspeople better? And yeah, I think it’s always just trying to do things like a little bit better. Even when were running our small, different retail events, it wasn’t like about massive fit outs or taking over spaces.
Jonathan Legge
All we really need to do to make a difference here is like, let’s just wash the windows and oil the hinges on the door and just make a clean, sharp environment. And then a curation of what we believe is great gifts. It’s just doing the simple things really well, I think just makes bigger things better.
Brett
So from my perspective, if I just look at how I view corporate gifting every year or so, I start to get gifts normally around the holidays from lawyers, other, and they come in these big wrapped boxes and it’s just full of a bunch of cheesy shit, a bunch of candy I could buy in the store, a bunch of things I don’t care about. And it really does nothing for the relationship. Maybe I’ll eat a box of candy or something like that, but there’s nothing very meaningful there. And if anything, I think there are some of the times it almost hurts them, because in my mind I’m thinking, wow, you just went to a website, put in your credit card, and just dumped this gift on me without any thought, any personalization.
Brett
Is that a fair way to summarize kind of the traditional approach to corporate gifting?
Jonathan Legge
I think that’s a very fair way to summarize it, yeah, I guess the way we looked at the opportunity, like right from the get go, and I mean, I definitely have a bias to getting philosophical about stuff, but our thinking about it was that we’re going to be doing nothing new here. Like, gifting is as old as sin, but in the context of corporate gifting, it’s kind of been corrupted by its own culture. It’s become wasteful and thoughtless and careless. But all companies are gifting, and every different part of the is gifting. And they’re gifting because businesses are powered by people, whether it’s the employees or the investors or the customers. At every level, there’s people there, and that’s like a plethora of relationships that need to be nurtured.
Jonathan Legge
And there’s all these different ways you can communicate and get in contact with each other. But relationships are not a quantitative thing, they’re a qualitative thing. And gifting isn’t a silver bullet, but it definitely can help augment a relationship, particularly in kind of the hyperdigital, fractured world we live in today. And so if that’s our position on things, then it’s like, really fundamentally what we’re trying to do is bring gifting back to being thoughtful in the context of corporate gifting. So, like, how do you scale thoughtfulness? And for us, at the beginning, part of that journey was very much about where are we sourcing these gifts from? What vendors are we going to work with? And then also, it’s not how are we then presenting them? And maybe it’s not a good idea just to send somebody something.
Jonathan Legge
Maybe you should give the person who’s going to get the gift a modicum of choice. Like, don’t give them a voucher to Amazon prime where they can choose anything from batteries to, I don’t know, a box set of West Wing. But give them something that’s curated enough that it shows the thought you’ve put into it and as a business, that it represents your brand. So, like, for example, we do a lot of gifting for Spotify, and during the pandemic, they wanted to gift all their advertisers, and Spotify is like a huge global business, but the way to make it thoughtful in their context was they’d been talking to all these advertisers on Zoom, but they hadn’t seen them in a long time.
Jonathan Legge
So the messaging was like, we don’t even know if you wear pants anymore because all we’ve seen is your head for the last year. But if you do wear pants, we found the best possible pair of pants and we’d source these amazing track bottoms from a really beautiful female. Found a business in LA using just recycled cotton. But the choice around it is where the person get to choose one was like, but if you don’t want another item in your life, maybe you’d prefer a subscription to headspace, because it’s been a difficult year and we could all do with a little help. The third choice was maybe you don’t feel like you need any of this and there’s somebody more deserving out there. As such, maybe you’d like us to donate the value of this gift to black girls code, a charity we support.
Jonathan Legge
So I don’t know if that’s a massively long winded way of answering your question, but it’s about making it thoughtful, that doesn’t mean you have to hyper personalize the gift. You just have to frame it around the brand’s voice and message and offer that little bit of choice so that people can kind of really buy into what they want in their lives. Does that make sense?
Brett
Yeah, that does make sense. When it comes to curation, what’s the approach when it comes to choosing the products that you’re going to offer? In the demo video that I saw, you had the mama Fugo soy sauce, which is big in my household, you have the graza oil. You have these hot products that are very much, I think, trending right now in certain demographics. Like, my fiance is obsessed with that graza olive oil, and I know a lot of people who are how do you choose those products, and how do you have your finger on the pulse so well to have products like that in this demo, for example?
Jonathan Legge
It’s a good question. The curation of the product offer, the gift offer is very, I’d say, to an extent, fairly intrinsic amongst the founders, like myself, kira and Mark. It’s something where it’s a space we’re just very interested in. And we’ve built up a really great team that are ex fashion buyers, so ex Porte, ex Selfridges, ex Mr. Porter, who kind of really get that space and have their fingers on the pulse. And for us, it’s combining that kind of, like, what is the latest and what’s really interesting in that kind of d to C consumer space, but also kind of, what are the classics? Like, where can you find the best caps? Like, where do you find the best water bottles? Who’s producing them in the most sustainable manner? Who allows for the right types of customization and bringing that offer together.
Jonathan Legge
Do you have the classics? Like who weaves the best blankets, who does it in North America best? And who does it in Europe? So there’s a whole kind of network of vendors we’ve built up across North America, across Europe, and more recently across APAC, and very much looking to kind of run a very responsible supply chain. So we’re on track to be a b core by the end of the year. So taking all of that very seriously and taking our responsibilities there seriously, but at the same time, having fun with us and looking to support really interesting young vendors out there as well. And different producers. Like, we work with quite a few different olive oil producers in the US. We work with Flamingo estate out of LA. We’ve got a small batistery we work with out of LA as well, called Pacific Cakes.
Jonathan Legge
We’re supporting kind of vendors at every scale, and I think that’s the goal as we build out this gifting ecosystem is very much to have the classics and those big vendors in the mix, but also to be able to support local networks and local vendors, and to allow people have that opportunity to gift locally. Like, to be able to gift, like if a new cider business opens up in your state, we’d love that in the mix, and we’d love you to be able to gift that cider that was local to you, stuff like that.
Brett
Logistically, I’m feeling stressed out. This must be a logistics nightmare behind the scenes, I’m guessing, right?
Jonathan Legge
I mean, there were some big leaps we needed to make there, and the right partners to put in place. And the reason we call ourselves unopened is because we do everything end to end. The only thing we don’t do is openly gift. So when it comes to logistics and the fulfillment in that entire space, we look to think all that through. And so when you’re talking about grass, olive oil, and that element of our marketplace, we work with the vendors to make sure that they have the right logistics in place and the right shippers for the last mile. And then where we’re taking in the inventory, which we also do, we have three different fulfillment partners working with us across North America, across Europe, across Australia, to cover the wider APAC region, and specifically then out of Shanghai to cover China.
Jonathan Legge
So, yeah, when you get me talking about it is quite of a nightmare. But the whole, I guess the kind of wizard of Oz element of &Open is making sure that our customers don’t feel that pain, because it’s one of the reasons they come to us, because in many cases, they’ve tried to gift, and within reason, it’s relatively straightforward to do gifting across North America. But when you start to do it across Europe, across APAC, cross border, just taxes, duties, everything else kind of starts to blow up in your face.
Jonathan Legge
And our job is to understand that and know it backwards and ensure that it doesn’t blow up in your face, and kind of to be more pointed about to make sure it doesn’t blow up in the face of the recipient, because there’s nothing worse than being sent a gift that you may not even be expecting. In the meantime, in order to even open that gift, you have to pay the taxes and duties before you’re handed over the parcel. So we see that happening a lot with a lot of our competitors who have grown up in the US and haven’t had to gift a cross border, whereas we grew our business out of Ireland, a little island, and had to very quickly learn how to handle cross border shipping and everything else that goes with it.
Jonathan Legge
So, I mean, the short answer to your question is, through a lot of hard lessons and being forced to do so from a tiny island on the edge of the Atlantic.
Brett
We had a client in Ireland and we mailed them a podcast mic to get set up for their podcast, and it was a nightmare getting it there. It was exactly what you just described. It took us, in the end, two months to get this stupid microphone shifted. So when I saw that you were in corporate gifting and you’re in Ireland, like, wow, seems like a tough place to be based, but seems like you guys have navigated it perfectly well.
Jonathan Legge
Yeah, I think that the difficulties of doing it from here have stood to us as we scaled and been lucky to have one Airbnb as our first client because they just grew so fast. Like, went from sending a few hundred gifts out the door every month with our small ecommerce business to sending out 3000 gifts a week within the period of six months. Like, it was crazy change in trajectory for us. And we learned a lot working with them because they were our first client. And for two years they were our only client because were just learning so fast and really didn’t have the capacity to take on anything else.
Brett
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Brett
Now back today’s episode.
Brett
Where did that level of patience come from? To be able to sit with one client for two years and not feel like the burning desire just to expand and grow and bring this to more companies? Was that hard for you to battle? Because I feel like myself and other founders listening in that may be hard to be sitting there feeling like you have this potential rocket ship and then to not make any big moves for two years. How’d you do that?
Jonathan Legge
Yeah, nobody’s asked me that before. I think there was a few elements to it. We were self funded, and we remained self funded for three years. And that was intentional from my perspective. I wanted us to stay self funded because I wanted us to really understand what were doing and to have the foundations in a really strong place before we took in outside capital. And the patience was also about, like, my founders are also my family, so my Co-Founder is my brother Mark, and my other Co-Founder is my wife, Kira. So there’s dynamics there that take time to find their place. And given that we are family, we wanted to make sure that all of that worked before we applied the fuel that comes with external capital. So it was about that.
Jonathan Legge
And for me, it was also making sure we had the right team around us, that we understood the logistics like we just talked about, but also we understood what were doing from an engineering perspective and a product perspective. So, yeah, the patience was in making sure we had those foundations in a really good place before we looked to accelerate. Yeah, I think it was important to us just get the basics right and then get excited about growth.
Brett
From day one, did you have the idea that someday we’ll raise venture capital for this business, or initially, were you long term not planning on raising any venture?
Jonathan Legge
Another good one. You’re making me think about how I felt at the time. I think from day one it was, wow, we’ve discovered something here. This could be really interesting. But then it was like, okay, this is growing like crazy. Just with Airbnb, we don’t have the time to think about it. We didn’t have a sales team, we didn’t have a marketing team. And then it was like, within 18 months, we started to receive inquiries from, like, wework and Turu and Spotify and Shopify, saying, hey, we see what you’re doing with Airbnb. Can you start helping us? And that was when, like, okay, there’s something a lot bigger here, and we’re going to need more money to really grow this.
Brett
How many gifts have you shipped this year?
Jonathan Legge
Would you say we’ll end the year shipping over a million gifts? I’d say this year.
Brett
Wow.
Jonathan Legge
It hasn’t been our epically busiest year, but it’s really beginning to build back up again, which is quite nice. I think everybody’s felt the market shifting and I think as summer has ended, we’ve really start to feel a shift back and for the traction to begin again, which is really exciting.
Brett
Is that on track then, with what you were predicting for this year, or. It sounds like that may be a little bit behind, or did you already know at the start of this year that it was going to be a bit slow.
Jonathan Legge
We knew as we moved into this year that it was going to be a difficult year and it was going to be slower than planned and we kind of adjusted forecasts to deal with that and we slowed down our hiring to deal with that. But what’s really nice is I think it’s really helped us sharpen up the team and it’s put us in a really strong place now as we move into 2024. Like, we’ve only made one or two hires this year, but they’ve been really impactful. With a new vp of revenue, a new head of product and our first CFO and at a leadership level, it’s just feeling, I think, more ambitious than we ever felt before. We’re pretty emboldened as we look to kind of build out this gifting ecosystem we’re after.
Brett
What’s keeping you up at night, apart from the two kids were talking about there in the pre interview?
Jonathan Legge
We’ve been doing a lot of planning recently and I think it’s thinking about what is our North Star and how does that fit into what we’re doing today. So working kind of forward towards that North Star, but a lot more. What we’ve been doing recently is kind of working back from the North Star for us is like, how do we build this global gifting ecosystem, and how does that ecosystem work when we have these amazing clients like Spotify and Atlassia and Etsy Airbnb as senders, and we have all their customer base and their employee base as the recipients, and then we have this whole network of vendors as well.
Jonathan Legge
And in many cases, some of the senders, like some of those brands like Peloton as a client, they’re also a gift provider with us, how does that ecosystem evolve and how do we make sure we’re taking the right steps now to allow us, I guess, ultimately build out a whole new category around loyalty is how we’ve been thinking about it. Because it is about scaling, thoughtfulness. It’s not really just about getting. I feel like a lot of the industry just looks at like, how do I get another piece of something out the door and we’ll call it a gift, whereas for us, it’s not even about what you’re sending out the door. It all comes down to the like, it’s a cliche for a reason, but it is the thought that counts. And when you land it thoughtfully, it really does resonate.
Jonathan Legge
And when that works, a big part of our product is not just getting the gift out. It’s also allowing the person who receives the gift easily say thank you. And in doing so, you’re really beginning to get the flywheel of that relationship building. You’re sending them a gift, because when you get a gift, you naturally want to say thank you. But it’s not always easy to do, and we really look to make it easy to say thank you at least once, if not twice, and to share messages with each other. So, yeah, it’s that big picture. And how is this all going to play out? And how do we make sure we’re making the right moves now to get us there as quickly as possible, but also in the most kind of stable and sustainable way?
Brett
What are some of the moves you’re making to prepare yourself for that?
Jonathan Legge
I mean, building out our on demand offer. So our marketplace as it is today and what you see there today is very much a direct consumer offer of perishables. So like we talked about, like olive oil, chocolates, kind of the classic gifts, flowers, but also beautiful homeware with candles and bottle stoppers and chopping boards. But how do we take that further? And lace in apparel and print on demand, and how do we take that even further and start to work with a lot of our manufacturers directly via the marketplace and build out a truly self serve solution? What place does AI take in all of this? And we’ve started to kind of feed that into the product of late. And what is the team we need for? The recent changes in the team have definitely made us stronger for that.
Jonathan Legge
So, yeah, the marketplace is the beginning of really shaping this because we’ve started a kind of top tier enterprise with global brands that are recognizable and that’s been really amazing for us. And there’ll always be a level of customer service and support that’s needed with those types of accounts. But we’re getting more and more SMB level inquiries. We’re also getting more and more interest of people asking how they can just use it for their own personal gifting. That kind of space also excites me a lot that you can see it in a product like notion where they’re appealing to the B2B space at the same time as the consumer space. Basing it on the idea that I think is very resonates that we’re moving between work and our personal lives very fluidly these days.
Jonathan Legge
And so why should you have a different product for doing the same thing? Like in the world of notion, you’re planning a go to market strategy and you’re planning your family holiday. Like, why shouldn’t you use the tool for that? And in the world of &Open, you’re planning to gift your employees at the end of the year and you also need to gift a bunch of your family to live abroad. Why shouldn’t you use &Open to both of those things? And how do we make sure the products can work in all those different environments?
Brett
Something that you mentioned a few minutes ago was about category and you mentioned loyalty there. We had another company on in the corporate gifting space and they did not want to be called corporate gifting. They wanted to be called a sending management platform. What do you want to be called if it’s not corporate gifting, is it a loyalty platform or. How do you think about that?
Jonathan Legge
Yeah, I think fundamentally for us it is about loyalty. That’s pretty much what it boils down to, like loyalty and advocacy. And that has different language depending on the vertical you’re in. But loyalty is applicable. Loyalty really matters. Loyalty is not easily won. And in a hyperdigital world where there’s endless options, it’s harder than ever. And the more digital we’ve become and physical or remotely we’re operating, the more we miss those real connections. And a gift is a simple human gesture. It’s this real connection and it reaches people with a powerful message. When it’s coming from a brand, it says, like, I matter, they see me, this company cares. And those real connections build relationships, and those relationships are what power those businesses. And loyalty matters now more than ever.
Jonathan Legge
From loyal employees to loyal customers, like retaining a customer and growing with that customer becoming an advocate of your brand, that’s like hundreds of times more valuable than acquiring new customers. And so to your question, for us, it’s very much about loyalty. It’s not about sending, it’s not about reaching and connecting. The overarching thought is loyalty and relationships.
Brett
It makes sense because that’s the, I guess gifting is just what they’re doing. But what you’re really trying to sell and what you want the value to be is like the end state that you offer. Right, which is.
Jonathan Legge
Yeah, exactly. Gifting is just the device. The message it channels when you open it is very much, that’s what matters. And it’s about the thought and that’s what’s really powerful. And it’s not a silver bullet by any means, but it is very powerful. It can really help augmental relationships, and it’s been key to Airbnb as they’ve built out their global communities. Similarly, like in more recent years with Intercom. Yeah, it really does make a difference.
Brett
What’s the most epic corporate gift you’ve ever received?
Jonathan Legge
Receive. I mean, I don’t get gifts.
Brett
People too scared to send you a gift? I’d be scared to send. The gifting mean.
Jonathan Legge
We recently sent two founders huge crates of oranges. That was quite fun. They’re based in California. We have a local vendor there that has grows oranges and tangerines, and we put together a huge boxes of that for them. That was a fun gift we sent. I know there’s some really nice vendors we have out there that send me samples of their product. I have two bottles of whiskey the other side of the room here that came from great vendors. I appreciate them a lot.
Brett
As I mentioned there in the intro, you’ve raised over $35 million so far. What have you learned about fundraising throughout this journey?
Jonathan Legge
That there is no formula. My background coming from furniture design. I’d never even had an interest in this space, paid attention to it, and what was very foreign to me. And therefore, I kind of, at first, quite intimidating. And I don’t have a business background. I had very little interest in accounts. I have very little interest in my own bank account. And so when you look at this whole space were stepping into, I was like, okay, what is the formula for this? And then the more you get into it, she’s like, everybody has their own way. There is no formula. And the key is just like, keep it simple. Tell a story. Practice that story. Find believers.
Jonathan Legge
Find folk that believe what you believe and will help you make it even better and can imagine, even can bring you to that new horizon and know that it’s really fucking hard, and you’re going to get beaten and broken and rejected time and again, but you still have to stand up there and you have to hold true to what you believe, and you have to execute on it again and again. And, yeah, it’s not easy, but bottom line, there is no formula other than keeping it very simple and telling a true story that you very much believe in.
Brett
I feel like the media and just in general and society, being a Founder is really glamorized, and I know you touched on it there a little, being broken and bloody. What’s, like, the lowest point you’ve had so far in building the company? Were there any just points where you reached a real bottom and you said, fuck, I don’t know if this is going to work. Did you ever have any just hard moments like that come to mind?
Jonathan Legge
Yeah. You phrase the questions if there might be one. But there’s multiple.
Brett
Yeah. How many this week?
Jonathan Legge
Yeah, exactly. You stepped into that quite gently. We have this amazing employee. She’s been with us for. We’ve worked together myself and the founders for almost a decade now. And a few years ago, she talked about wanting to leave the company and that it was just. It had become too much. And I remember at that moment, standing in her, like, being in our office, which is on the third floor, and thinking, I wonder which would be more painful if I just jumped out the window right now and probably would break my legs or having to push through this conversation and find a better answer. And I always remember thinking that in my head, like, should I just jump out the window? Would it be easier? But I didn’t jump out the window.
Jonathan Legge
And she took a break for a few weeks, and she is still with us today and is an asset and a joy to work with, and we’d be lost without her. But to your question, every other week, there’s a whole facet of the job that often just feels like firefighting. And you know, you will never be able to put out all the fires. So you just figure out which are the most impactful ones, which are going to do the most damage, and you pay attention to those and keep your eye on the other ones as best you can. And that’s not easy to sometimes know things will go wrong and there’s nothing you can do about it. And sometimes there’s something you should do about it. You have to just let it go.
Brett
Now, we’re on to our final question here, since we’re almost up on time. Question is, what’s the vision look like.
Jonathan Legge
For the future of the company?
Brett
And I know you’ve touched on that a little bit, but I just want to give you a clear shot here. What’s that three five year vision that you’re working on building?
Jonathan Legge
Yeah. The question we’ve been talking about a lot of recent is like, how do you scale thoughtfulness? And for us, it’s very much about building a gifting ecosystem. And we’ve been using the term ecosystem because we feel like there’s three core components to it, with the sender and the recipient and the vendor. But there’s a lot that happens around the periphery at different scales. And so we’ve kind of tried to map out how all that happens. And when you start thinking about that, it’s like, how big can this be? And if it’s going to be big, how do we do it responsibly? So ensuring that we’re like, becoming a b core is a key part of that, the beginning of doing it the responsible way.
Jonathan Legge
But yeah, how do you truly scale this in a way that it transcends b to b and transcends the consumer space and just becomes the default for people when they think of gifting? In the same way, if you’re stepping out of the street and you want to take a journey somewhere, your default is most likely to be Uber. Or in the same way, your default for travel might be like, that’s where we want to take this. That’s where we believe we can take this. It’s easy to say things like, this could be a multi billion dollar business, but it really could. But I’m more interested in kind of how we power that and how we ground it in what we believe, which is kind of the power of human connections and bringing it down to how does this make this person feel?
Jonathan Legge
Like, how are they going to feel when they get this gift and how do they react to that? And how does that bring that relationship closer together? So, yeah, it’s building that ecosystem. That’s the big vision. How do we build a global gifting ecosystem that becomes the default in everybody’s mind when it comes to sending a gift, which people love doing. It’s a really joyful thing to send a gift, which should be more joyful to send a gift than to receive the gift. But in the kind of global world we live in, it’s very hard to do that. And so for us, it’s like, how do we just make that easy and joyful for everybody?
Brett
Amazing. I love the vision and I’ve really loved this conversation and I know it’s going to be a hit with our audience. Like I said, we are up on time, so we’ll have to wrap here and save some other questions that I had for part two of the episode, which we can hopefully do maybe a year from now and catch up on all the progress you’ve made then. But before we wrap, if there’s any founders listening in that just want to follow along with your company building journey.
Jonathan Legge
Where should they go? Yeah, they should check us out &OpenCo is the website. It’s also the same on Twitter and on Instagram. They’re the best place to keep up with us. And yeah, we’re always looking for exceptionally curious, driven characters to join our team, and we are not a typical team. We have every type of background in our team. So everybody is welcome.
Brett
Amazing. Jonathan, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
Jonathan Legge
Thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure.
Brett
All right, keep in touch.
Brett
This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
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