The following interview is a conversation we had with Jon Carter, CEO and Founder of Prado, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $5.7 Million Raised to Improve Fresh Food Accessibility Nationwide.
Jon Carter
Thanks, Brett. Good to be here.
Brett
Yeah, no problem. So, to kick things off, could we just start with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background?
Jon Carter
Sure. So John Carter, Founder and CEO of Prado. And I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. And I spent time living in Miami, New York, and now based in Austin.
Brett
And two questions that we like to ask just to better understand what makes you tick as a Founder and as a leader. First one, what Founder or CEO do you admire the most and what do you admire about them?
Jon Carter
So you guys told me not to say Elon Musk, so I won’t say him. And I think I would have to say that I’ve got an awful lot of respect for Tim Cook over at Apple. Mostly know he had to step into Steve Jobs shoes, which is in itself just a frightening task. But the way in which he’s managed the company since has been really impressive. And I think his ability to navigate, not only following behind a giant, but also continuing to lead innovation at Apple is quite impressive and just seems to be, from everything I can tell, a decent human, which is a plus.
Brett
Major plus. I read his book a couple of years ago and it was a fascinating read. And I feel like you don’t commonly see the COO move into the CEO role, which was interesting. But what I didn’t realize was that was never like this long term planned thing. I’ll maybe get the days wrong exactly, but it was something like he was just supposed to be taking over as CEO for a couple of weeks while Steve Jobs was out, and then he was going to come back, and then all of a sudden, he died and he found himself in that position permanently, which is just insane to think about. That wasn’t like a succession plan, it was a temporary thing. And then all of a sudden he was there and he’s been able to navigate it and just crush for Apple, which is super cool.
Jon Carter
Yeah, which is all the more impressive from our perspective. Right. Because it’s one of these accidental things where in fact, I believe that the exposure that he had to Apple supply chains. And just the perspective enabled him, from my perspective, to be a really great CEO. And I think there’s just not a lot of respect given to operators in some of these tech businesses. And I think in a lot of ways that is where the magic happens. And so I think it’s just an interesting story, interesting observation, and an interesting case in terms of leading a business from that position and vantage point. Yeah, for sure.
Brett
Very cool. Let’s talk about books. Are there any specific books that have had a major impact on you as a Founder?
Jon Carter
Yeah, this recent book that I read called The Practice of Groundedness, and it impacted me on a number of levels. But what I’ll say is that it gave me a perspective, particularly in this high stress, high anxiety life that is being a tech Founder. It gave me some practical tools to really help day to day with just managing the stresses that come with the job and the realities of being a Founder, but also just personally able to navigate challenges that I have with anxiety and managing my own mental health. So it’s been a very useful book from that perspective.
Brett
Nice. I’ll have to check that out. I’ve not heard of that one, but I love reading, so I’ll add that to the Kindle list.
Jon Carter
Cool.
Brett
Nice. Well, let’s talk about Prado. So we call this the Pitch or the Elevator pitch. So can you just talk to us about the problem you solve, who you’re solving it for, and really what that product looks like?
Jon Carter
Yeah. So we help food service operators unlock the magic of recurring revenue and subscriptions on their business, which, it turns out is tricky to say the least. The logistical concerns associated with perishable products and putting an offering that allows consumers to order into the future requires a lot of coordination of multiple systems. Historically, businesses in our ICP have gone and built out their own solutions for this problem, or they’ve gone to something like Shopify, but then they have to bolt on several apps to get to something comparable. And so we’re trying to make that simple with a no code solution that’s turnkey for our target market, which is prepared meal businesses to start, but more broadly focused on functional lifestyle nutrition, which gets into CBG and some of the movement that we’re seeing recently in food as medicine, so that food service operators can offer personalized subscription services to people.
Brett
And then are these meal prep companies or how do they define themselves?
Jon Carter
Yeah, so the early adopters, if you will, of our product is absolutely meal prep companies, but the opportunity is bigger than that. So on the macro side of this, consumers are increasingly looking for convenient lifestyle solutions and everybody eats. And so ordering an on demand formats is great for certain occasions. Going to a restaurant is great for certain occasions. Going to the grocery store great for a certain amount of let’s just call it your share of stomach. But the idea that I can outsource nutrition to a trusted partner is very compelling and also it helps with lifestyle goals like you’re on a certain diet or you have certain dietary preferences and increasingly you have chronic disease that you’re trying to manage and diet nutrition is an obvious solution. So meal prep is the early kind of first inning of this, but we see it more broadly impacting food service and increasingly see businesses looking to offer a subscription service offering in addition to everything else they do.
Brett
So would this be like a new revenue stream for, let’s say, a restaurant who’s just looking to diversify revenue a little bit?
Jon Carter
Exactly. And at least my vision and my hope for this is that as the country shifts from what I’ll call chronic disease management to chronic disease prevention, there is a lot of tailwinds in the form of insurance companies moving in to subsidize and reimburse for nutrition programs as well as employers moving in to subsidize for better nutrition, for employees to both increase productivity, but also to lower the premiums that they’re paying for chronic disease like type two diabetes. So what we want to do is give food service operators a turnkey way in which they can put an offering into the market that helps combat that issue. You can certainly go to the grocery store and eat healthier, but nothing’s like having someone do it all for you and you just have to eat the food, which is the idea at scale for us. Nice.
Brett
I love that. And even just on the current business focus, I’ve ordered a lot from meal delivery companies and every time it’s just such a miserable experience. I like to do kind of the local ones like the mom and pop, not the big venture backed startups that are doing meal delivery, but the mom and pop ones are the best, in my opinion, in terms of food and quality. But they are just so behind in terms of technology. Like they would send venmo requests. It was a nightmare coordinating with them and getting deliveries. Just every part of the experience is not Amazon, it’s not what you hope it would be. So I can see that problem a lot. And I would assume that most of these meal delivery companies today, they’re probably not super business savvy, right? And super tech savvy, so that they need tools like this to really deliver to their customers.
Brett
Is that right?
Jon Carter
That’s 100% right. And one of the big issues with this particular industry, and I’ll just call it subscription based food service, is that consumers will burn out or they will get frustrated with the inflexibility of whatever ordering platform that they’re ordering from their local food service provider on. And a lot of that just boils down to being able to pause, skip, plan ahead and have things automatically rotate, say, on your order for you. And so what we do is we take the power of a VC backed tech stack and we put it in the hands of local food service operators so that they can compete with those national businesses where it’s not as sustainable, the food’s not as good and you’re paying mostly for freight and packaging as opposed to the actual food. So long term, we think these local food service operators are the answer.
Jon Carter
And giving them an excellent customer experience or giving them the tools to put an excellent customer experience out there is how this scales nationally and globally, ultimately.
Brett
Nice. That makes a lot of sense. And take me back to the early days and that origin story. So what was it about this market that made you say, yes, that’s it, I’m going to build a business around this?
Jon Carter
Yeah, great question. So I’ve been a product professional in technology my entire career. I’ve seen disruption play out in three massive consumer verticals. Financial Services was the first and Entertainment was the second. And at the end of my stint in entertainment at Live Nation Ticketmaster, I lost my father to type two diabetes. And that was the point at which I had an intention to do something about that particular health issue. And I didn’t understand at the time how important diet was towards preventing and in combating and reversing, in some cases, type two diabetes until I ended up in Austin working with a company called Snap Kitchen that set out to be a healthy, prepared food business. And I would hear from people who wrote in about how this service was changing their lives or changing the lives of family members. And I ended up becoming the CEO of Snap Kitchen and on that journey saw how difficult it was to focus on being a food service operator while trying to be a technology company at the same time.
Jon Carter
Because the tools weren’t out there for us to do this at a way that we wanted to and that our customers expected us to. And so after my stint at Snap, I set out to put the tools together to allow this industry to thrive and grow. And my answer to that was, well, let me be the technology partner to all the operators out there so that they can just focus on making food and impacting lives.
Brett
Amazing. I love that. And I’m sure that gives you a lot of trust and credibility with your Target customers, right? Because you were in this business, you were on the other side of it, navigating some of these challenges.
Jon Carter
That’s right. And I not only empathize, but I lived in their shoes. And so we have a relentless obsession with making our merchants lives easier and removing friction from their customers experience, but also their day to day operating experience. And if you think about it, these are oftentimes single operator mom and pop businesses where they are focused on making food for their customers and dealing with orders that they need to get out. And so any amount of time we can shave off of what they have to do or the jobs to be done is something that we want to attack in our product. And that is the core thing that we live and die on and that our customers trust that we are going to deliver on.
Brett
And for founders listening in, can you just define jobs to be done and talk us through that framework?
Jon Carter
Yeah, sure. So Jobs to be done is a great framework that allows you to kind of think about how to dissect the journey of a customer. And we think about it not only from the merchant is our customer. So the operator that is making the food. But we also think about it from their end customers perspective and what is it that they have to do day in the life scenario to deliver on their end of the value chain and then for the consumer to get the goods? And so as we think about all those jobs to be done, each of those are either an opportunity to make our product better, introduce a feature, or to simplify a process. And so that’s how we think about systematically attacking the customer journey towards an ever improving product experience.
Brett
Super interesting. I love that. This show is brought to you by Front Lines Media, a podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage and grow their own podcast. Now, if you’re a Founder, you may be thinking, I don’t have time to host a podcast, I’ve got a company to build. Well, that’s exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. Now, back today’s episode and can you talk to us about growth and the growth the platform is seeing right now?
Jon Carter
Yeah, we don’t share numbers specifically, but what I’ll tell you is that we’ve doubled our GMV year over year, which is the amount of transactions that we are processing through our platform. And we look to double again by the end of this year with a real big push into the market. And we have a lot of exciting things happening in this food as medicine category with both partnerships on insurance, with insurance companies and employer benefit brokers to unlock a lot of value for our merchants and their consumers, where we want to look to facilitate subsidies so that people can eat better.
Brett
And when it comes to your market category, is it Ecommerce operating platform? Is it a new term and does it matter, I guess with this market? I see market categories really matter with enterprise buying because that’s how enterprise buyers make buying decisions. But is category important for you? And is that something that you think a lot about?
Jon Carter
You know, it isn’t. We think a lot about what pain do we address for our end customer? And so the way we talk about it a lot is it’s a no code solution to ecommerce for food service and we really specifically help unlock the superpower of subscriptions and recurring revenue both in terms of growing the business but also in terms of simplifying operations. So we tend to talk about it in those terms as opposed to a product category or software category because that doesn’t mean a lot to our target merchant. What they really understand is their own pain. And so we try to talk to them in those terms.
Brett
And what are you doing right now to connect with those buyers and what are you doing to really rise above all the noise? Because I feel like I’ve seen a couple of companies in this space raise funding in the last few years and I’m sure that Wix probably has some type of play targeting them or they could kind of do it themselves. So what are you doing to rise above all that noise and connect with buyers?
Jon Carter
I think focus is the key thing. So focusing really narrowly on this particular category of business and this particular style of e commerce allows us to really deliver on things that it’s hard to get from a generic e commerce platform like say, Shopify or Wix. So I think that helps us a lot in terms of connecting with our merchants. It’s really a lot know we’re known in the industry because of our experience and we’re able to connect organically that way. But it’s also outbound efforts and just being in the places where our merchants are, whether that’s on conferences or trade shows, et cetera, and what’s like the.
Brett
State of this market. If we just look at meal kit delivery in general, it’s got to be just booming right now. Do you have any numbers on just like the size of the market and what that tam looks like today or what it’s going to look like in the future?
Jon Carter
Yeah, so meal kits is not exactly what we focus on because meal kits, it means you’re assembling something at home. And we really focus on the prepared ready to heat meat segment, which the public data on call it direct to consumer. Meal kits inclusive of ready to heat meat meals is somewhere around 20 billion with a 17% kegr projected over the next three to five years. So we’re very early and it’s mostly dominated by the big national brands like the Hellofreshes of the world or the factors of the world. And the smaller local regional players are just starting to come into their own and catch their stride. And we look to be that technology partner that really enables more of those businesses to compete at a higher level.
Brett
And if you reflect on your go to market journey so far, what would you say has been the greatest challenge you face and how’d you overcome that or what are you doing to overcome that challenge?
Jon Carter
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think of the challenges we face in a few categories. One is having your value proposition clearly stated and I wouldn’t say we’ve nailed this by any stretch of the imagination, I think we’re still working on this every day. But how do you connect your value proposition in the most succinct, crisp way towards getting your target customer to identify with you as a solution? So I think any business in SaaS is constantly working on that in their go to market. I think the other one is because in the way went to market was to really focus on working with a small set of businesses in our category towards making sure we got the product right. We didn’t have it right up front when we got to market. And so we spent a couple of years now getting it optimized, getting it to a really good place where we can compete on the same stage with a wix or a shopify and win accounts.
Jon Carter
And I think that just takes some time and I’m impatient. I want it all to happen yesterday, but that has had to play out over some time and that’s been a lesson in humbling us on what it really takes to compete.
Brett
And if you were just starting this business again today, what would be the number one piece of advice that you wish you would have known?
Jon Carter
It’s that even though you have been an operator in this space, you don’t know what you don’t know. And so I think what I’ve learned and been humbled by is being in the market, getting on the road and spending time with these businesses and understanding the unique issues that they face, which weren’t exactly the same issues that I faced when I was at Staff Kitchen. And they’re not the same issues that another merchant in an adjacent nearby city or town might be facing. So understanding the synthesis of those challenges, if I could go back in time, having more of that understanding earlier would have certainly benefited us in terms of moving faster and go to market. But I think you just have to get out there and do it at the end of the day so you can’t have regrets about that.
Brett
And final question here, let’s zoom out three to five years from today. Can you just paint a picture for us of what that high level vision is going to look like or what it’s going to look like?
Jon Carter
Yeah. My dream and dreams would be that we’re impacting tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of lives with the ability for food service operators that are wanting to solve lifestyle, nutrition challenges, dietary needs for food as medicine patients, that’s the friction for that market to thrive and grow is removed and that we’ve enabled that to happen. And as a result, chronic disease count has come down in America that the healthcare system as it exists today isn’t as expensive as it is today and that ultimately we are enabling people to live healthier, happier lives.
Brett
Amazing. Love that vision. And I really love everything that you’re building, John. We’re going to have to wrap here. We are up on time before we do, if people want to follow along with your journey as you continue to build, where should they go?
Jon Carter
So we’re at getprodo.com or I’m on LinkedIn and you can follow me on Twitter at John J-O-N-D. Carter. And those would be the places.
Brett
Awesome. John, thank you so much for coming on, talking about your journey, sharing lessons that you’ve learned along the way and really talking about this high level vision. This has been a lot of fun and I’ve learned a lot and I know our audience is going too, as well. So thanks for taking the time. Really appreciate it.
Jon Carter
You bet. Thanks, Brett.
Brett
All right. Good luck. 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.
Jon Carter
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