The Rich Roll Podcast - Doug Evans Is Revolutionizing Juice

Episode Date: April 4, 2016

When I was a kid, I loved The Jetsons. I was convinced that by 2000 life would be all jetpacks, flying cars, sky trams and robot housekeepers. My timeline was overly optimistic, but we're nonetheless surrounded by evidence of this inevitability. From the advent of virtual reality to self-driving cars, drone delivery and beyond, even Elon Musk's idea of colonizing Mars now seems plausible. This week ushered in the future of kitchen appliances. Meet Juicero– a complete re-imagination of cold press juice for the home and office that even George Jetson would envy. I know it sounds weird. It's hard to explain. So I'm not going to try. Watch this cool video instead: Juicero is the brainchild of my friend Doug Evans. An idea so big it captured the hearts and minds of Silicon Valley, attracting $120 million in financing from technology's most high-powered VC's, including Kleiner Perkins and Google Ventures. I started hearing rumors about Doug and Juicero about a year ago. Then last month, Doug invited me to visit his 100,000 square foot Los Angeles distribution center. I was excited to finally see what all the fuss was about. But in all honesty, I was skeptical. $120 million for a new-fangled juice machine? I don't get it. He gave me a tour. I met the team and tested the goods. Not only was it the best juice I had ever tasted, I realized there is much more going on at Juicero than meets the eye. A marvel of advanced technology, the future-forward wifi-enabled Juicero exerts 8,000 pounds of pressure to cold-press the freshest juice possible from QR-coded organic produce packs (soon to be 100% compostable) that contain detailed information on nutrition, the farm of origin and the date of harvest (never to exceed 5 days). None of the nutrient degrading pasteurization mandatory in all store bought juice. No more old or non-organic produce typical of most juice bars. And of course, zero home cleanup. The space-age functionality and highly complex machinery are housed in cutting edge design courtesy of legendary product designer Yves Béhar that expertly merges aesthetics with simplicity and user friendliness. Comparisons to Apple are inevitable. And rumor has it even Jony Ive had a behind-the-scenes hand in guiding Juicero's product design. But the gadget is just part of the story. Perhaps more fascinating is the personal journey of Juicero's steward, a most unlikely entrepreneur. A graffiti artist reared on the streets of New York City, Doug Evans traded the classroom for tagging subway trains and hanging out in clubs with the likes of Basquait, Warhol and Haring before finding his calling as a graphic artist under the mentorship of the great Paul Rand. A confluence of tragic events around Doug's 30th birthday would permanently alter the trajectory of his life and career. In 1994, his mother died of cancer. Shortly thereafter, his father died of heart disease. Meanwhile, Doug's brother developed type 2 diabetes, atrial fibrillation, hypertension, and had the first of two strokes. Terrified by the prospect that he was genetically pre-disposed to early mortality, Doug turned to the raw vegan lifestyle, igniting a passion for the connection between lifestyle and health that boils down to one simple, yet powerful edict:

You know, I keep my life really simple and it's all about like having mission and purpose. And you know, when I look at how important it is for people to consume, you know, fruits and vegetables and organic fruits and vegetables and raw fruits and vegetables, like that was my mission and it really drives me. That's Doug Evans and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, how you guys doing? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome to The Rich Roll Podcast, the show where each week I sit down

with the world's brightest thought leaders, paradigm-breaking minds across all categories of health, wellness, diet, nutrition, artistry, creativity. In the case of today's guest, entrepreneurship, fitness, athletic performance, mindfulness, meditation, spirituality. You get the picture, right?

So I'm pretty excited about today's show. As of the recording of this introduction, it's Friday, April 1st, but on Wednesday, March 30th, I went up to San Francisco, to the San Francisco-based headquarters of a brand new Silicon Valley technology startup called Juicero to sit down with my longtime buddy, Doug Evans, who is the company's CEO and founder. So what is Juicero? Who is Doug Evans? Fair questions, right? Well, you might know Doug Evans because he is the co-founder of a retail chain of cold press juice cafes called Organic Avenue in New York City. It would be very difficult to travel to Manhattan and not see an Organic Avenue. They were peppered all across the city. And Doug is a guy who has been in the world of juice for, I don't know, 25 years at this point. He will tell you that

he literally has juice running through his veins. That's how important juice is to him. And Juicero, I think, is the external manifestation of this guy's life and ethos. So what is Juicero? Well, I think it's fair to say that this is a company that is on the precipice or has the potential to completely disrupt and reinvent the consumer juice market, the consumer juice experience. Their main product is this gorgeous kitchen top appliance that doesn't look anything like what you expect a juicer to look like. It's sort of akin to the Keurig coffee machines with those pods, except for juicing. But it's also not really fair to draw that comparison because this machine is so much more. It has like the technology of a 747 aircraft in it and a MacBook Pro

and the gearing. And I'm bumbling my words. You know why? Because I don't really know how to describe it. Essentially, it's this completely clean, beautiful piece of art that has a door that opens, a stainless steel brush door, and then you insert this QR-coded produce pack, contains organic, finely chopped produce. You shut the door, you push a button, the door sort of compresses. It exerts 8,000 pounds of pressure on this produce pack and it presses out the freshest juice imaginable. This appliance is wifi enabled. It has a scanner that reads the QR code.

It can tell you the farm where the produce was picked, what date it was picked. If the produce is past its expiration date, when you press the button to make the juice, it won't make the juice. It's also like incredibly aesthetically pleasing. And that's because guys like Johnny I from Apple, Yves Behar, the famed product designer, Tony Fidel of Nest, some of the brightest minds in technology and design have conspired to influence and craft and create the look and the

feel and the technology behind this really amazing machine. Doug raised a boatload of cash, $120 million from some of the top Silicon Valley venture capital funds, Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures. Also, he's assembled an incredibly impressive list of individual investors, including Matt Rogers, who is the co-founder of Nest and the guy I've been informed who is behind developing the original iPhone firmware, right? Like these are major players, the best and the brightest in Silicon Valley, in tech and in wellness.

And it was really a privilege for me to be able to visit Juicero and sit down with Doug on the day before launching the product, before publicly announcing for the very first time what they are doing. Because prior to Wednesday, their webpage was blank. There was an embargo on all press. People knew that Juicero had raised a bunch of money, but they weren't even really clear on what the product was. They've been in stealth mode. It's all cloak and dagger until yesterday. So it was sort of all hands on deck at Juicero when I was there, a lot of anticipation and excitement from the team about finally being able to share what they're doing with the public. And then the day after I left the following

morning, all the press broke loose. There was a profile in the New York Times, articles in everywhere from, you know, Tech Crunch to Vanity Fair to Vogue to you name it, right? You can do a simple Google search and I'll put an itemization of the most prominent press in the show notes for this episode. It was so cool for me to be able to be there and witness the behind the scenes on one of the biggest days in the company's short history, the precipice of launch day. And to kind of interface and talk to some of the brilliant PhDs that are working on the motherboards and testing the product. I don't even know how to describe it. It was just very special to me and very cool. And I can tell you that to be able to sit down with Doug and get him to focus for 90 minutes in the midst of this whirlwind

of this crazy storm of anticipation was really quite something. And he's got a crazy story. His story is amazing. He's a very unlikely entrepreneur, a very unique dude, and nothing if not fanatical about quality. This is a guy, again, who lives and breathes juice. He lives and breathes this company. He basically lives in the office, and this is his passion. And it's very exciting to be able to play a part in helping share his

story and the story of this company that I think is really going to make an impact on the wellness landscape. And it's going to be very interesting to kind of watch develop and roll out over time. I know I'm bumbling my words. I'm not very articulate here. I'm doing this without a script, but it really is hard to describe what Juicero is. It's something that you have to see. It's something you have to experience. They made a marketing video. I implore all of you guys to watch it. I'll put a link or actually I'll embed that up on the episode page for this episode. So make a point of watching that so you have some context for what I'm talking about.

And again, I'm gonna put up tons of links in the show notes to all the press, et cetera, so you can read further and understand better what I'm talking about. All right, I don't wanna bury the lead too much. I think that's all I'm gonna say about Doug and Jussero. I'll let the interview illuminate you further. But before we get into that, first.

All right, so Doug Evans, Juicero, this is a great conversation. This is a conversation, of course, about entrepreneurship. It's about health and wellness. It's about juicing, the misconceptions and the health benefits of juicing. It's about health and wellness. It's about juicing, the misconceptions and the health benefits of juicing. It's about how to empower a team. It's about aesthetics.

It's about design. It's about creativity. It's about thinking outside the box. It's about disrupting industries that need disrupting. And it's about how to provide better access to healthy fruit and vegetables for humankind. I really dig Doug. I love this guy.

I'm so impressed with what he has built. I can't wait to see where he takes it. So without further ado, enjoy this conversation with my good friend, Doug Evans. So just walking around here before the interview, it almost feels like there's this distinct sense of anticipation, almost like Cape Canaveral before the launch. Like tomorrow's a really big day for you guys, right? Yeah.

What is going on around here? Okay. Let's just get into it. Okay. So we're rolling. Yeah, we're rolling. We're on. We started. Okay. Let's just get into it. Okay. So we're rolling. Yeah, we're rolling. We're on. We started.

Okay. So 39 months ago, I started Juicero with a big idea and incredible confidence and naivete. So I was kind of like the Forrest Gump of engineering when I began this project. And so now all forces are kind of crossing T's, dotting I's, getting ready for this launch tomorrow, which is 16 hours from this moment. This moment. And are you going to stay up all night and be in this office until the article posts in the New York Times? I think that's the plan. Is that the plan? Yeah. So just to, you know, I probably will explain this in the introduction and we're going to get into the whole thing, but this is a very, this has been a very cloak and dagger situation. A lot of excitement and anticipation in Silicon Valley. There's been

a bit of a press embargo. Your website has basically been a blank page. And as far as the public is aware, all they know is that you've raised a bunch of money. It has something to do with juice and it's big. And that's about it. Right? That's right. So tomorrow the public is actually going to find out what exactly this is. That's right. That's huge. It really is huge. And it's exciting. And, you know, although I believed that secrecy was overrated, the main reason why I didn't talk about it and those articles, we never announced raising any capital because I didn't think that was something to celebrate. I just want to be able to focus and not take time. But that just ekes out, right?

That's just, I mean, tech crunch, like all this sort of Silicon Valley rags were all kind of covering your venture capital raise. It's hard to raise that amount of capital without people knowing what's going on. But I think what happened was people would taste the product and they'd see the demo and they literally couldn't control themselves. They had to tell someone it was like seeing a UFO. Well, you have this sort of apocryphal story about the Campbell's soup guy, right?

Yes. Can you tell that story? Yeah, it was interesting. So Kleiner Perkins had seen the product and it was so funny. One of the partners in Kleiner Perkins, when he tasted the juice, was like, stop, wait. And he was running around the office like the Kool-Aid man, breaking into other meetings, interrupting other pitches, just trying to share what he saw with other people. And just for the audience,

Kleiner Perkins is a very prestigious venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. It's sort of grade A, top of the heap. Like if you are trying to raise money, like these are the guys that you want on your team. Yeah. They funded companies like Google and Amazon. Right. So. And I heard, I read something or no, I listened to like, they have their own little podcast, right? So I listened to this doing my homework in preparation for today. And one of the guys, I forget his name, was commenting that you had come in without any sleep and there was a problem

with you going through security. So you couldn't actually bring in all your juice testing stuff that you usually do to do your spiel and your presentation. So you were kind of left without your armaments, right? Well, it was a great story. I got introduced to Kleiner Perkins through a vegan fashion designer in New York City, Leanne Hilgard from Vogue Couture. I know. I've met her before. Yeah. So she's great.

And she knew someone at the Humane Society who knew someone at Kleiner Perkins. And you're hustling. And I'm hustling. And I'd been raising money in $25,000 increments. And then one of the prominent venture capitalists in New York, a guy named Howard Morgan said, Doug, you're going to just get crushed here. You need to go to Silicon Valley. You've got a big idea. You know, they back big ideas there. And so I was thinking, okay, well, okay well I don't know anyone out there how am I going to get connected and then Leanne

who I met through Alicia Silverstone another vegan had introduced us Leanne was raising capital for her clothing company and she had told me she met with Kleiner Perkins and I like said really

and she goes yeah I said the Kleiner Perkins. And I like said, really? And she goes, yeah. I said, the Kleiner Perkins? And I said, oh, would you introduce me? So she types out this little cute email. Oh, I want you to meet Doug. He's the best ever. And so I then have a quick conversation with the assistant to one of the partners there, Amol Deshpande. And the assistant said, well, Amol, we'll take a phone call. And I said, well, I'll be in San Francisco, which of course, if I was going to be meeting with Kleiner Perkins, I'd have to fly into San Francisco. So she said, oh, well, okay, well, we'll set up a little meeting for you. So I fly to San Francisco. I bring my original Juicero press. I bring the produce and I give Amol this demo and Amol is bringing in other people. So he's the guy

that's bouncing around like the Kool-Aid guy. But Randy Commissar, who's one of the five general partners on the investment committee, Randy wasn't there that day. And so I left. I flew back to New York. And when I got back to New York, there was a message that said, oh, Randy could see you tomorrow. You just turn around and go right back? I turned around and I went right back. But you gave them the impression that you were already in Sanford. When that door cracked open, you just jumped on it and said, oh, I'll be there.

You didn't have another reason to be there, right? That's right. You were doing it just for that purpose. Absolutely. And then you just turned around and went back. Yeah, I don't think it was subterfuge. It was very much. No, no, no, I got you.

It was opportunistic. Yeah, yeah, of course. And so then I flew back. So then they said, well, Randy can meet you. So I looked at the plane schedule and I knew how quickly I could get there. So I took the next plane back and I landed in San Francisco at 10 o'clock that night to meet with Randy the following morning. But at that time, TSA confiscated the Juicero press prototype. So I landed with literally just my backpack

because I didn't even have any clothes. I always carry a toothbrush and dental floss, but I had no clothes. I had no press. And so I got there bright and early in the morning. Right. And did you have, oh, juice. Awesome.

Thank you. And so- So you had to come clean and say and say, I flew out again. You had to come up with an explanation why you didn't have your stuff, right? At that point, we were already in love. I didn't need to be expository. It was more like I'm here. Randy knew I lived in Brooklyn because I had told him my whole graffiti writing, you know, streets of New York.

And I want to hear about that in a minute. OK, but go ahead. So so I get there and Randy's like, what do you got? And I just told him, I said, well, look, I'll have to set up another time for a demo. But let me just, you know, walk you through who I am, what I'm building, what impact it will have on the world, why this is a good investment for you. And 90 minutes went by. And at the end of the meeting, he's like, look, I'm really interested in this. I think we should do it. And we set up another time to do it. Right. And there's a difference

between backing a good idea and, oh, thank you, handing me a beautifully colored green juice, backing a good idea, like, you know, just investing in something that you think has potential versus the kind of ideas that an organization like Kleiner is going to get behind, because they're not going to get involved in something like this unless they see, you know, just a huge upside that is worthy of the risk that it's going to take to bring a product like this to market. Like this is a big idea. Like you just move your whole operation from New York to Silicon Valley. And it really is a technology play as much as it is a health and wellness juice company. Yeah.

I mean, literally, Randy said, we will fund you, but you need to be in San Francisco and you need to work out of our office. And that's what we'll take because you're going to need a lot of help. And that's the segue into the Jeff Dunn, Campbell's Bolthouse story. Right. Which is? So it was easier, I'll preface the easier, that for Kleiner to make a seed investment than it was for them to make a series A big investment. So part of the diligence or due diligence is when they have to validate the business model, the market space, the hypothesis, and speak to experts. So someone at Kleiner had a relationship with Jeff Dunn. And Jeff is like this, you know, six foot X tall guy who was the former COO of

Coca-Cola, ran half of the world, a hundred billion dollar business for Coca-Cola. And he was brought in by a big private equity firm, Madison Dearborn, to run Bolthouse Farms. Mm-hmm. And he was running, and they were growing somewhere on the order of a billion, with a B, pounds of carrots. And they had a $40 million juice business that he had grown to hundreds of millions of dollars. And then they had sold Bolthouse Farms to Campbell Soup for $1.6 billion. And now Jeff was the CEO of, of Bolthouse Farms and became the president of Campbell's Fresh. And so I go down there to, you know, as part of, they would, they would have sent me to the moon. You know, I needed to check every box on that

diligence list. So I go and I tell Jeff my story. Now I'm prepared. I get there early enough. I have backup redundancy. And Jeff sees the product, tasted the juice and said, this is the best juice he's ever had in his life. And then he decided that he asked, could he personally invest alongside with Kleiner Perkins? And then that was- And that's influential on Kleiner's sort of decision tree about how to get more involved, right? In terms of doubling down on the investment. Yeah, absolutely. Because this is someone not just saying, hey, this tastes good, but Jeff saw he had spent 30 years in the beverage business

and was involved with Adwala and Minute Maid and had a juice business under his own dominion. Right. So let's get into what the big idea is. And maybe the best way to kind of back into that is to talk about the juice business in general, what's wrong with it, and kind of the problem that Juicero intends to solve. I mean, you kind of gave me, when I met with you in Los Angeles, when you gave me a beautiful tour of your facility there, you kind of gave me, I suppose, some version of the elevator pitch. But it's pretty compelling. So why don't you share that? Yeah. So I think the juice business, and this isn't a religious thing. So I love all juice, but I'm also a designer at heart and I have high standards. So I seek the effort of what it takes to get to the best. So very discerning in that front.

And so I've been juicing for 25 years. So I started off with a Juice Man juicer and an Acme juicer and an Omega juicer and then the Green Star juicer and Breville juicer. And I had this range of juicers. And that was for the first part of my juicing career. Just consumer home use juicers. Consumer home use. We're not talking about like the business end of it. Yeah, single gear, double gear, masticating, hand crank wheatgrass juicers, centrifugal juicers.

So I knew a lot about juicers. And then my life, and I'll just start here in 1999, my mother had died from cancer. My father was dying from heart disease. My brother became morbidly obese, developed type two diabetes, atrial fibrillation, hypertension, and then had the first of two strokes. And so for me, I thought that I was genetically cursed and that I was going to die.

How old were you at this time? I think it was about 33. Uh-huh. So early 30s. You're like this mad artist at the time, right? Like I was in New York the other week, last week, at dinner with John Joseph. I was like, hey, I'm going to go see Doug in San Francisco. I know that guy. I knew that guy back in the day. He was out tagging, you know, he's just a crazy streak graffiti artist. Yeah. So, you know,

my background is, you know, very typical, you know, entrepreneur where, you know, I grew up in the streets of New York and I don't know whether I got glasses too late so I couldn't see the blackboard growing up because I was the worst student ever. I never did any homework. I wouldn't show up to class. I was trouble bouncing off the walls, had a sweet tooth, and ended up in public junior high school where I started writing graffiti. And I wasn't a famous graffiti writer. It was a choice of either stealing drugs, stealing cars, or writing graffiti. And this was in Manhattan? Yeah, this was in Manhattan. What neighborhood did you grow up in?

You need to shut the window. So I grew up in upper Manhattan. So the tip of Manhattan Island. Oh, wow, way up there. Way up there. And so I would go, you know, all city and it was just, you know, kind of crazy days. During the day, I was like a little white kid.

And so I would be able to go in and steal spray paint. And what was your tag? Did you have like one tag? Yeah, like my tag was pain. Uh-huh, nice. So I don't know what subliminal thing that meant, but just to give framework and how like you connect all the dots,

part of the funding for Organic Avenue was me selling original Keith Haring artwork that I had that Keith did for me in 1980 when I was 13 and Keith was 21, hanging out with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol and Fab Five Freddy. That's amazing. And so I had three original Keith Herrings. I sold two of them to help fund Organic Avenue. I still have one, and it's currently at Sotheby's. And I'm debating whether or not to put it in the auction or not, just because I'm not attached to material things anymore. So a picture of that to me is reminiscent enough of the original. So it's a liability for me to

have artwork because I'm so transient. Yeah. You're living kind of a gypsy life right now. I don't know if I would sell that though. I mean, personally, I'm obsessed with that era of New York City, like the Warhol factory era. I mean, were you like a downtown club kid or what was your, I mean, how did you get to know Keith Haring? Like, how does that even happen? I mean, I was a little bit of a club kid and it was just like not wanting to go to sleep. Right. Like, you know, just going from one activity to the next. And so there was, you know, this was the era of graffiti, hip hop, break dancing. And like Crazy Legs was in my homeroom in high school, right? And this other graffiti writer who's like a famous DJ, Kay Slay, had told another guy that was in my homeroom to come to my, to extort me for spray paint because I had a lot of paint.

Right. And so I wouldn't give it to him. So he had this guy literally walk into my homeroom, punch me in the face, and walk out. And it was kind of like crazy time. So all this graffiti between like 13 and 17 just drove me mad. And so when I turned 17, my friends were going to jail. They were on drugs. They were committing crime.

And not one of them was going to college. So one of my friends had gone into the army and I was like, God, I got home bloody, like exhausted, bruised and dirty and like trembling. This is like your scared straight moment. This was my, like, yeah, the, the anxiety level then was just like through the roof. It makes like what's going on now effortless. Um, but it was like trembling. And then I stayed up that night. And then the next day I went to the recruiter, army recruiter, and I joined, I said, what is the roughest, toughest thing that you have? Like, I want discipline. I want to get out. And like, I literally independently shaved my head in anticipation of going into the Army.

And they said 82nd Airborne, and I was 17, and my parents also thought I was crazy, but they could relate that my ego didn't want to go to a community college. Now, community college looks like it would be fun. But I said, I'm not going to college. I'm not going to work. I'm going to go to the army. I believe in the army college fund. You know, I'll learn a lot. And so I joined the army. What year was that? That was 1984. 1984. Wow. And how long were you there for? It's a crazy story. It's like, it's just so weird. Cause like for the people that are

listening, like I'm looking at you and you just look like a nice bookish Jewish boy. You know what I mean? Like you have this crazy story, but it like, it doesn't fit the visage that is in front of me. Yeah. You're not like, I'm going to show you where I don't know if we're going to, maybe we'll, we'll extract the photo from the military ID, but I'm going to show you, I'm going to show you what my, what my army picture looked like. Yeah, right there. Oh my God. So, so when I joined the army, all right, send that to me, I'll put it, Can I share that on the website? I don't know. I don't have to blur it out. My social security and all that. And it was kind of a crazy, crazy thing. This was the second military ID after I got hardened in there. Wow. Yeah. You

look like a different guy. So it's, so it's working. You got the discipline. I got the, I got the discipline. It kicked your ass a little bit. Yeah. And then I got out of the Army. Where did you do base camp and all that? I did Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, also known as Fort Lost in the Woods, Missouri. So I did boot camp in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I then did infantry training and combat engineering training there. And then I went to Fort Benning,

Georgia to do airborne training, which is jumping out of planes, which I don't know why someone would jump out of a perfectly good airplane. How many times did you do that? I did as few times as possible, but somewhere like in the teens. And you have to stay jump qualified. You got paid an extra $45 a month to jump out of a plane. So it's kind of a crazy thing. After the Army, or after boot camp, I then went to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, also known as Fayette-Nam, for Fayetteville, North Carolina. And that was, you know, I totally was, you know, isolated. I didn't relate.

I still don't know one guy that I went to the Army with. I mean, I was there. There were guys, it was like one big blur for me. It was like, so I went from chapter to chapter in my life. And how old were you when you got out? Well, you know, it's a strange story. I don't know how much you want to dig into it, but I was in the army for 13 months and then I got discharged from the army. What'd you do? All right. Yeah, we don't want to camp out here too long, but I got to know what happened. So the criteria for joining the Army was you had to have a pulse to be an enlisted person. And the criteria to be an officer

is you needed to have a squeaky clean record. So after doing boot camp, infantry training, combat engineering training, special forces, explosives and demolitions, remote training, unit armor training, I did all this training, training, training. I was acknowledged by my commanding officer as a enlisted soldier who had leadership potential to become an officer. Right. But the checkered past wasn't going to allow that to happen. So the growth potential was capped. Well, the checkered past, my record, and I told my recruiter when I joined the army, all of this. So I was fully transparent because it wasn't like I had warrants out for my arrest. I had a juvenile record. My record was sealed.

But after he nominates me to officer candidate school, two weeks later, he calls me into his office and says, Private Evans, have you ever been arrested? Yes. Did you do this? I go, yes. He goes, did you do this? No. Did you do this? Yes. And we went through this, you know, sheet of these, you know, seemingly trivial misdemeanors associated with my childhood. And he said, did you file this affidavit and this disclosure and this waiver, all language I never heard of. And you're a lawyer. I didn't know this because you need that in order to join the army. And he goes, I believe you that you told this to your recruiter. And, you know, this is not uncommon, but I have orders to discharge you from the U.S. military for fraudulent enlistment.

Oh, my God. And to me, like, I'm keeping the straightest poker face, and I'm, like, celebrating inside my head, saying I'm getting out. This is, like, the best way to get out of this. Oh, my God. Because the only other way to get out early is to go AWOL or to, like, pee on yourself. Right, Section 8. Yeah, some crazy stuff like that. And so he, like the irony, and I don't know if this has happened before, the irony is my discharge, he gave me an Army Achievement Medal for my meritorious service under his command. And then he said, look, I have three choices. I can give

you a dishonorable discharge, which would be understandable because of your fraudulent enlistment. I can give you a general discharge because like maybe it didn't work out. Or I can give you an honorable discharge. So he actually gave me an honorable discharge with an army achievement medal. I had my wisdom teeth removed and I was back on the street. I feel like you should have stayed in touch with that guy. Like, I feel like I, if he was alive right now, like I'd want to call him and tell him what you're doing now. I'll see if I could dust off his papers. Lieutenant Rogers. I think you should try to get in touch with him. He's probably commanding general right now.

Who knows? All right, so what happens? You go back to New York City and you start this career as a designer? So I got out of New York. I started to work. I was working as a waiter. I was working as a busboy. I was working in nightclubs. I was now a little bit more buffed. So I was working security. And then I was saying, well, what am I really going to do

with my life? And I did have a lot of focus now and I had a lot of discipline. And so the closest thing to writing graffiti was graphic design. And I found a book by this legendary graphic designer named Paul Rand. And Paul had designed the logos and corporate identities for IBM, ABC, UPS, Westinghouse. And he was working with this designer or this entrepreneur, Steve Jobs, who had left Apple and was working on his next big thing. Next. And Paul was also teaching the master's program at Yale on graphic design. So I see this book and I'm saying, oh my God, this is like, Paul Rand is like the Warhol Basquiat of legitimacy. Like he's the real deal. So I see there's no phone number for him in this hard bound book, but I see that Paul had won the art director's Medal and the Type Director's Medal.

So I called up the Type Director's Club, and I said, do you have a phone number for Paul Rand? And they just gave it to me. So I called up Paul, and I said, Mr. Rand, I just got out of the Army. I was a graffiti writer, and I want to be a graphic designer. I'd love to meet with you. And he hung up the phone on me. He did really? He just didn't even give you a shot.

He was like, you know, I'm really busy. And so I called back. Right. Because I'm used to having drill sergeants yelling at me, like a graphic designer, this was nothing. So ultimately, Paul said, look, next time I'm in New York City, you know, I'll call you and, you know, we'll get together. And then- That's pretty good. Yeah. Well, it was pretty good, except he didn't do that.

Right, right. He's just trying to get rid of you. Yeah. So as I'm researching my graphic design, I meet this typographer and he had told me that he's like, you know, interested in what I was doing. And I said, well, I'm really interested in meeting Paul Rand. He goes, oh, you just missed him. And I go, he was here? Wow. And so like literally I called Paul that night and I said, I understand that you were in New York City.

You said that you were going to call me and we'd get together. I'm just going to come see you tomorrow. This guy's like, I can't get rid of this. I mean, the hustle, the street hustle, man, it goes all the way back to the beginning, right? Yeah, 17, 19 years old. So I go back and I visit Paul and I said, Mr. Rand, I don't need your money. I want to learn graphic design. He goes, I teach at Yale. And I go, the closest thing I get to Yale is I go to the Yale club, um, by Vanderbilt Avenue and I eat free hors d'oeuvres, but like, I'm not going to the master's program at Yale. I've never been to new Haven, just not on it. I said, I just want to work from you. I just, and give me anything to do.

And he opens up the door to his backyard and he had seven acres rolling in Weston, Connecticut. And he goes, go pick up any stick bigger than 12 inches wide and make a pile. pile. And so I spent the next week literally picking up every stick that was bigger than 12 inches, logs, et cetera. That's beautiful. I love that. And so this is a funny thing. So you win this guy over eventually? Well, I won him over when we had accumulated all of this wood. this is a great story. I haven't thought about this story in decades. I mean, this is, so I create this huge pile and it's now 4th of July weekend. And we said like the end result of building this big pile is we were going to burn it. And so I set up, you know, these big rocks and boulders around this pile of wood that we're going to burn.

And then Paul's wife says, Mary, and she goes, well, you have to get a fire permit to let them know that you're going to burn so they don't think the house is on down. So you have to call the fire department and get the permit to burn. And so I call the fire department and they go, oh, we don't issue permits. It's a holiday weekend. I said, well, who does? And they go, the fire chief. I go, well, do you have his number? And so I called the fire chief on this Sunday afternoon on the holiday weekend. I said, I'm calling from the Rand's house. We are scheduled to burn and we didn't get the permit over the week. And Paul and his wife were just looking at me,

like not knowing what to do. And then we just burned and we put out the fire. And ever since then, Paul had this kind of great affinity towards me. And I worked with Paul for seven and a half years till he died. That's amazing. Like, and I knew that you worked as a designer, but I didn't realize that you were basically apprenticed under the master. I mean, that's quite something. Yeah. I mean, what did you, you know, what was it about that guy that distinguished him? Like what made him great? And what did you learn from him? I mean, he had, first of all, he was, you know, he was just funny.

He was funny and he was sophisticated, but he had an incredible eye and taste and his thought process about how he looked at things was every day was a new adventure. And he had a library in his house that he built in Western Connecticut that was probably one of the greatest art libraries, you know, ever. And sometimes we'd go there and, you know, he'd have an assignment.

He was in his later years. He was in his like late sixties, seventies when I met him. So I would do, you know, I'd set type for him, like he would sketch something out. And that drove me to learn computer graphics. Because before that, everything was just very analog. Right, so for somebody who's listening to this, it might sound like we're getting really far afield of the subject matter at hand, but I don't think that we are. I think this actually gets to the very core of the birth of Juicero because we have established this incredible like sort of street smarts and tenacity and like work ethic and then how you get this discipline. And that

butts up against this artistic sensibility that finally finds structure with this mentor and this guy who had this incredible eye, you know, this amazing ability to discern what's important about a company and distill it down into a symbol that actually influences culture on like the most mass level possible, right? And what people listening can't quite comprehend at the moment is the physical manifestation of Juicero, which is this product that, I mean, when you unboxed it for me in Los Angeles, I was like, this is like a work of art. I was like, did Johnny Ive design this? To which you responded, no, but he's on the board. Well, he's an investor. He's not on the board.

Okay, he's an investor. He's involved. Okay, he's an investor, he's involved. But it was very clear immediately that you have an impeccable eye for design and aesthetics and that sort of infuses the products that you showed me. It's quite a beautiful thing. Yeah, well, the interesting thing is that while I was working for Paul,

I had to work to make a living. So I transitioned out. So he never paid you. He's just like, you can hang out. He never paid me. And money never got... He did do three logos for me. So it's interesting if someone Googles Doug Evans and Paul Rand,

there are several articles written. Did he do the Organic Avenue logo? He did not. But one of the designers who I had introduced to paul who became a disciple of his ended up doing the organic avenue logo and the juicero logo so it's it's interesting how i kept you know the this simple core aesthetic um together but paul was um as we drove i gave up you know working in bars and nightclubs and supermarkets and started to get into graphic design and then desktop publishing and multimedia and was riding that wave. And then when Paul died, so if you Google, the last logo that Paul did before he died was the Doug Evans and Partners logo.

And this was like a design firm that you, this was, this was like a design consultancy. So I was doing more strategic consulting and, you know, some of the things about when you're with someone of that level, you like my design skills were not like Paul's and Paul made it clear to me every day. And so I would get better, but he, he convinced me to do other things. And so, but I had to work to earn a living. So I would do many other things. And then I went from this analog to digital and black and white to color and multimedia and online. And then Paul died of cancer.

Then my mother died of cancer. So Paul's death really coincided with all these other deaths in your family. Yeah. And a real kind of wake up call for me. And that's your moment where everything kind of shifts for you. Yeah. I really became aware of my mortality. And so what happens?

So then I'm in a nightclub in New York City in 1999. And I met Denise Mari in a nightclub and she was a vegan. And I never heard the term vegan before. I thought it was short for vegetarian. And we were talking about a lot of different things. And then the next day I bought David Wolf's book on nature's first law, the raw food diet. And it's so funny. Like every chapter ended in that book with cooked food is poison. And like, it was a, it was a really, between reading that book, being exposed to Denise,

seeing like what happened in my own family, I just was like, I went cold cucumber. So I gave up eating cooked food, processed food, refined food, meat, dairy, animal products. And I started eating. Like really just like that. Like it was done. Yeah. I went literally within two weeks, I went vegetarian, vegan, raw vegan. And as quick as I could capture the information, it got. And then I continued to read. I continued to be exposed to the information.

And that became kind of the awareness that everything, like I have a belief still to this day, that everything you put in your mouth is a life or death decision. And so it's about raising my standard. So I look at the food or I look at a drink and i go is this up to my standard is this a level of quality that's worthy of my consumption is this the highest quality nutrients on a per calorie basis so it's like some people will eat anything like i'll look at something and go is that worth it it? Like, do I really want to eat it?

Do I need it? So it was the combination. And now, you know, where I've kind of focused on the mindfulness and the thoughtfulness around, you know, being present, I can look at something and I can be aware of like my craving. And am I eating it because I want the sensation of it or am I eating it for the nutrition or am I thirsty or am I hungry? And it's, it's, it's a totally different ability. Like I can look at something that I would have eaten in the past.

Like I still like, you know, the smell of like rosemary chicken or chicken gizzards or something like that. But there's no circumstance of which I would actually put that in my mouth. But also to be able to master that practice of mindfulness where you can take that beat and recognize the craving and like think it through to its conclusion. I mean, most people just, it's just impulsive. You know, the craving kicks in. They're not even consciously aware of what's going on and then it's in their mouth and then they just eat it and don't think about it ever again. Yeah. I mean, it's part, I actually did several 10 day Vipassana meditations.

That's cool. So no reading. Silent meditation. Silent. No reading, no writing, no speaking, no eye contact, no phone, no computer. It's like totally being kind of quiet and with yourself. Vipassana is Tali for insight meditation. And it's a non-denominational part, but basically you sit in silence and you observe the sensations in your

body and you don't react. Like you just don't react. Like you sit down and you feel like, oh my God, my foot has fallen asleep. And instead of moving it, you just observe it. The dispassionate observer. Yeah. And that forces a divide between your thinking mind and your higher consciousness. And you're allowed to see that these are not necessarily the same thing. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a beautiful thing. not necessarily the same thing. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. So like literally, so I really look and say like, you know, now, especially with the microbiome, it's like you were like 20% human and 80%, you know, bacteria. So the bacteria can cause the cravings that can cause the action that can make you consume things.

I say that all the time. People don't actually believe it, but it's true. It really is true. The foods that you're eating are going to dictate the foods that you crave down the line. Yeah. All right. So you're having this crazy renaissance. You're doing silent meditation retreats and you're raw vegan.

So when does it pop into your head that you and Denise are going to create this business out of this? I mean, you start like just juicing in her apartment, right? That's how it begins. Yeah. I mean, Denise was very passionate about wanting to do something plant-based and she loved the animals and was very ethical in that front. And I was still like working. I was still into the digital, you know, world and the design world. And then I decided that I, to make it easier for myself, for my own selfish reasons, which ultimately

became altruism, that we should create a business. And so, you know, Organic Avenue was, Denise was the founder. It was her business. I was there to help. I carried boxes. I did a lot of work. And then after Denise was tapped out on our credit cards, then I started to invest capital to help it grow. And that started a few years later, three years of different ideas from, you know, tofu cheesecakes to hemp clothing

to ultimately settling on doing fresh, ripe, raw, organic salads, entrees, desserts, smoothies, snacks, and all the things that I could eat. Like it was like the saying, oh, well, you know. Because this is a different era, you know, Angelica Kitchen was around, but there weren't too many other places, right? Yeah. And they, they only had a couple of raw options and they were pretty bland. Right. And so we, we did that. And then Organic Avenue literally had a hundred percent growth year over year. And we, we went from, you know, using like the Juice Man and the Twin Star juicers, the Green Star, to ultimately getting a Norwalk juicer. So explain what that is.

So the normal juicer, like the Twin Star is a two-gear juicer where you have two gears and you put the produce inside and it literally, the gears crunch it and then force the produce against a screen. And then the juice comes out and the fiber gets pushed out. And it's a small, powerful machine, but it literally takes forever to do. And then the centrifugal juicers are much faster, but they don't make the same quality juice as the masticator. They spin super fast. There's some heat involved in that. And so the idea is that there's some cellular breakdown and that degenerates the nutritional value of the

juice. Yeah. And the flavor, it basically oxidizes it. It's just this process of oxidation. They've moved towards slower juicers, but we got a hold of a Norwalk juicer. And the Norwalk juicer is what was used in Gerson therapy and high quality. It was a cold press. It weighed like 65 pounds, cost a few thousand dollars. I think they're $2,600.

They sit on the kitchen countertop. And like that was my assignment that we would get the produce and we would wash the produce and then we'd chop it. And then you'd, you'd grind it up and slice it, dice it, grind it. Then you'd put it in these cloth bags and then you'd put it into the press and the press had like a thousand pound hydraulic piston and it just pushed the two metal plates together and you got juice. And then you were left with like a dirty bag, a cloth, and produce would be everywhere, on the ceiling, on all walls and projectiles. And it was an arduous process, But the juice that it made was pretty good.

And this begins in, you start selling it out of Denise's apartment initially, right? What was the first retail location for Organic Avenue? That was in 2006. And it was at the- It wasn't that long ago. Yeah, really, 2006.

It's like forever ago, but also feels like yesterday. 10 years ago. How old are you, 48, 49? I'm 49, I'm gonna be 50 in like four months. Oh, you are? What month? June. June.

All right. We're about the same age. Yeah. October for me. Okay. Yeah. Wow. Well, you're in great shape.

So are you. All this juicing is working. Yeah. All right. I feel great. So we opened up the first retail store. So we had what was growing with very strong home delivery business. And we actually had like a showroom on the second floor of this loft in Chinatown.

And there were underground parties and there were events. And there was sort of this cult of celebrity around it too, right? Did that happen later? It began early on. What happened is basically people would hear about it and it turned out celebrities care a lot about their body and their health, at least a certain part of them. And this was like new kind of back to the future of cutting-edge technology where we were making things with fresh, raw, organic plants that tasted good.

And they tasted good and they were relatively low calorie and they were nutritionally dense. And we undercharged for practically everything. So people would buy them, but it started off with fashion designers and celebrities and business people, and they would get delivered. And I remember just literally from three in the morning to seven in the morning making the product because we were so obsessed with keeping it fresh. And then we'd have to get it delivered. And it was like started there.

And then there was no street traffic, like being on the second floor in a loft between 2002 and 2005. Not even any signage, like you just had to know? No, you didn't want to have signage because it was like quasi not a retail establishment. Right, you get busted for- Yeah, you know, like we literally had the police come one day

thinking like, what was going on there? I was like, we're- Some kind of like after after party. Yeah, it's like we're making salads or something. And it's pretty funny. And, you know, one of the cops really liked the product and came back. So it was funny for the product.

And so we ended up opening a store and what took off and probably 60% or more of our sales were juice, cold press juice. So we started with one Norwalk and then we got to two Norwalk and then we got to three Norwalk. And then we bought our first good nature X then we got to three Norwalk. And then we, you know, bought our first good nature X1 press, which weighs 600 pounds. And it was a big press. And we put that in the basement of the retail store on the corner of Stanton and Ludlow on the Lower East Side. And literally I thought-

Chinatown. Yeah. It's literally right by Chinatown, but it was the Lower East Side, like right on the borderline. And I almost died that day, kind of lowering this press down the stairs into this basement of a tenement building. And I actually have video of that press in there.

And so we did that. And so that was sufficient for us to make product for our one retail store. And then we opened up another retail store in the West Village. And turns out that we had concerned if we opened up the second retail store, it would cannibalize the sales of our first store.

Right, that's what we thought. And so we wanted to make sure that this other location was far enough away. West Village and like Lower East Side, those are like universes apart though, in terms of like walking traffic. Yeah. But we had people who were coming like from Short Hills, New Jersey or Greenwich, Connecticut or Upper East Side or Upper West Side, because there were no customers on the Lower East Side. The Lower East Side was the armpit of New York City. We couldn't have selected a worst location to open the first store. But that's just where

it seemed kind of hip because that's where some of the vegan restaurants were, but it wasn't where the affluent people were. So when you say it was a world apart, that punished us in our whole delivery system because it was so far to get to everywhere. So we opened up the West Village store. It turns out when we opened up that store, sales in the West Village exceeded the Lower East Side by a multiple within the first week. So we had a cash on cash return

for opening that first store literally within months. But now we had no more capacity because we were operating out of a 350 square foot kitchen in the basement of this tenement building where the other store was. And that's when we decided that we were gonna buy, we were gonna rent or find a commercial kitchen and we were gonna get more equipment and expand.

So we ended up going to Long Island City and opening up a 2,500-square-foot facility, which seemed like just huge. And then we outgrew that, and so we took the building to the right of it and then the building behind of it. Are you self-financing this the whole time, you and Denise, or are you taking on investors? How are you growing so quickly? So between 2006 and 2009, I ended up putting back on my kind of graphic design multimedia hat,

media hat and I started like doing commission sales for online companies. So I was like, I was used to being the youngest guy in the room and here I am like the oldest guy in the room working with young 20 something, but I was totally focused on selling. Just to make money to put into organic out. Yeah. A hundred percent. I literally, it Literally, I felt like I was prostituting myself. And I didn't care at the time whether I was selling online ad campaign to Verizon or T-Mobile or Sprint. I just needed to get that campaign. And I earned commission. And doing that, I learned selling skills.

Because I was already fearless, but I didn't have a lot of advanced skills and just sheer persistence and grit and selling. And I was able to put in 20,000, 30,000 a month into Organic Avenue for years, approaching a million dollars. So I used my entire savings and every cent that I was making, and I wasn't being paid by Organic Avenue because there was no money to pay me. And then in 2009, we had our production facility opened. We had the multiple stores, facility opened. We had the multiple stores. And I just said, look, I think this is going to work. I gave up my sales and commissions jobs at the point that I found our first outside investor. So this guy named Joel Schreiber from Waterbridge Capital, he was a customer in the store. He came into the store and I didn't realize he was actually looking to fund someone else to do a different juice concept. And she had brought him in to

like snoop around at what we were doing. And then he met me and he said, I'd rather back you. And so he became our first investor. And then we raised like, you know, maybe a million dollars in small chunks, big chunks. And then we opened up two stores in one day. We opened up Soho and the Upper East Side. And then we... So at the peak, like how many retail stores did you have? 12. 12.

And so like 2010, you guys hit like 10 million in sales, right? Like this is working. Well, yeah, I can't disclose financial figures as part of my gag order. Okay. So I don't even know if I can say gag order. I read that somewhere. It's in my notes. But you didn't say it.

I did. So, so by, so by 2012, we ended up taking on a private equity investor who made a smaller investment than a bigger investment. And the end of 2012, they had a controlling interest of the company. And then January, um, 2013, um, I'm having breakfast with the, the guy there. And he says, Oh, Doug, I've got a great idea. And they go, what's that? He goes, well, I'm having breakfast with the guy there and he says, oh, Doug, I've got a great idea. And they go, what's that? He goes, well, I want you to come work for us in the private equity firm and look for other deals like Organic Avenue. And I'm like, really? And he's like, yeah. And you'll still be on the board, but you're done with Organic Avenue.

And it didn't really register to me. And then I was like, oh, okay. And I'm really kind of in shock. But in the course of this part, they had bought the privilege to do whatever they want. So they had bought out the investors. They had bought out most of my shares. And they had the right to do whatever they wanted. Like, I'm fully responsible.

I knew that that was a possibility. I couldn't fathom it because, you know, I thought I was doing a great job. It's that thing that you hear from entrepreneurs all the time where they know it, they know that this is a possibility. And certainly you hear this story time and time again, but you don't think it's going to happen to you. Yeah. I didn't think it was going to happen. What would possess them to take you out of the equation when you were the key functioning element that allowed it to grow and flourish? I have no idea. Like literally I've read the case studies and the Harvard Business

School reports. I mean, it's classic. I don't know why they do it, but I couldn't fathom it because like I was hardworking. I wasn't expensive. I loved what I did. And so at any rate. Right. But there's like a whole bunch of, there's, there's probably certain things about this that you can't talk about. So I don't want to go too, too much down the rabbit hole here. But I mean, the idea was that big money was going to come in and they were going to blow this thing out. And you got kind of, you are sort of a casualty in this equation, right? Correct. Yeah. And so you're back to kind of square one. Well, now I-

You cash out or whatever happens, happens, right? And then it's like, okay, well, what now? Well, I mean, like it took me about a week to really figure out like what, I had a real problem. And my problem was like, how was I gonna get my juice? Right. That was my problem. Because like, I wanted my juice.

I was spoiled. I was used to being able to take a clean glass and go up to a juice press and siphon off this fresh nectar coming from organic produce and i knew about juice pressing we were the largest independent buyer of organic produce in New York. So this was, Suja didn't exist at the time. Like Juice Press had one little store on First Street and First Avenue. Liquitoria had one store. I mean, this was the early stages.

Yeah, no blueprint juice. I mean, basically it was store-bought, naked. That kind of evolution was probably around though, right? Yeah, not on the East Coast. Okay. So maybe this is a good place to kind of stick a pin in just talking about juice in general. I mean, I think for a large percentage of the population, they approach it like juice is juice, right? You buy it at the store, you buy your Tropicana orange juice. What's the difference between that and going to Organic Avenue? Does it matter if it's organic? And then there's this whole argument that I kind of want to get into a little bit about people freaked out about juice

because they think it's just all sugar and you should stay away from juice. So what are the health benefits in contrapoint to that? There's a whole bunch of stuff that I kind of want to talk about in general, just in the world, the universe of juice. Yeah. So it's an interesting thing. I think that juice, um, like can mean anything. Like Lance Armstrong was on juice, right? Definitely a different kind of juice.

Right. All right. So, but I think the, the, the word juice can have many meanings. And even in the juice world, you know, there's products that contain 1% juice all the way to 100% juice. So the juice that I'm talking about is 100% juice, 100% organic, mostly vegetable juice, and made fresh without additives, without preservatives, and without processing or pasteurization. All right. So in the wake of Organic Avenue, you're just wanting your juice, right? Yeah, so I wanted my juice. I knew about juice pressing and I knew about, you know, home juicers.

And I like, you know, was literally daydreaming and sketching to like how I was gonna get my juice. And I was like thinking, do I sneak back into Organic Avenue in the middle of the night and fill up a flask? You don't have like your own juicer at home though? Well, the thing is I had my own juicer, but like I didn't have like, I was spoiled. I was used to having a whole like team of people. And you're not going to go into Organic Avenue and pay to somebody to give you juice, right? That's not going to go into Organic Avenue and pay to have somebody give you juice, right?

That's not going to happen. And I knew too much. I mean, I think that was a real thing. I knew too much and I had ideas. What does that mean? Well, the proper way to make juice and the proper way to store produce. It's like you really want to make sure that the produce is triple washed properly. And you want to make sure that you're keeping the produce really cold at all times. So, you know, when I see a juice bar and the produce is left out and I see like cutting boards.

Which is probably the, you know, predominantly typical scenario, right? Like we have this idea, we go to this juice bar, we pay a ton of money to have our juice made, but we never stopped to think, well, is that produce organic, first of all? And when was it picked and how long has it been sitting back there? And what is the degradation in the nutrient quality

of that produce when it's been sitting around that long. Yeah. Well, look, I became very aware of the difference between buying produce in a supermarket, buying it in a farmer's market, buying it from a distributor, or buying it directly from the farm. I knew all those steps. So I wanted to have full visibility and transparency as to where my produce was coming from, when it was harvested, and then being able to use science to determine when it expired. And so if we fast forward to Juicero now, so here I am, I have a Norwalk press and my refrigerator is filled with produce. And the waste that I had, it's like, you can't

buy a half a lemon and, you know, two stalks of celery and, uh, you know, a quarter cucumber, right. Or three leaves of kale. Like, so invariably I'd overbuy all this produce and not get a lot of yield. And then I'd end up throwing out the excess produce. And I'd love to say I composted, we didn't have compost in my apartment in Brooklyn. You're a gypsy anyway now, right? Yeah. There's no compost for you today, is there? Oh yeah. Are you composting? Yeah. I'm not personally composting. The company is though. The company is composting.

Right. I got you. And I mean, I don't have a pot at home. Like I have a juicero at home. No, you live here. I get that. I'm here. Yeah, okay. So, but we compost all, we have tons of compost here. So the insight that I had was to make really,

like to make the best juice ever, you know, had a few pillars that were paramount. And one was the freshest produce from the farm. And two was keeping it really cold. And then three was having a press to slowly press the nectar out of the fiber. And there were no presses available that were easy to clean. And the produce was all dubious in the path of how it would come. So that's when, and I remember I tried having my cleaning lady in Brooklyn and I tried to give her instructions on how to wash, how to prep, how to chop and prepare. She's going to be your juicer?

Yeah, that she would do all the work and prepare for me so I could just juice it. And that didn't work out. So that's when I had this epiphany where I thought about creating an entire ecosystem around juicing so that I could like have it, you know, be effortless and easy. Like I want to get up and, you know, I have a Ashtanga yoga practice. So I'd be in the Shala at 5.30 in the morning. And I loved having a green juice before I went to yoga. It just helped just keep me liquid and hydrated and flexible and light. And I wasn't going to start getting up at three in the morning to do it. And I wasn't going to make it the night before. So there were voids in. So my dream was to be able to make a juicer that would take minutes to be able to get juice, and that would be a press. So entrepreneurship 101 is what is the problem you're trying to solve,

right? And as you explained to me the other day so eloquently, when you want to buy juice, you have three options, right? You can go to the store and you have these pasteurized juice options there, a variety of quality level at price, et cetera. Secondarily, you can go to the juice bar where, as we mentioned, you don't know if it's organic, you don't know how long it's been sitting around, there's no accountability. Or third, you can make it at home and create a big amount of mess and waste and it's very time consuming.

So here's the problem. The solution that you're looking for and that Juicero hopes to solve for consumers is the ability to create the freshest, healthiest juice possible in the most facile and sort of time-saving and mess-free way possible. Yeah, exactly. Is that accurate? And I think the insight, which is now obvious, I predict everybody will be doing this in the future. This is just changing the rules that as opposed to making juice, we sell a juice press and we sell fresh produce that's washed and chopped and diced. And then we allow the consumer to press the juice at home at their convenience. And then we use software to be able to track the produce from

the supply chain. So we know like every pack of Juicero, Juicero pack of produce contains a little QR code on it. And that QR code can be read by a smartphone, Android or iPhone. And when you scan it, it actually says what ingredients are inside, when it was packed and what are the nutrients and what farm each ingredient came from. So it's like total visibility transparency in the supply chain so that you can have that. And then we put a scanner in the press itself. So when you put the pack of produce in the Juicero press, it's reading it. So it's processing all this information so that A, it can determine how to best press it to get the most yield.

And it's making sure that it's not expired because you don't want to be pressing old produce. And then B, it's sending back to your smartphone on the app, you know, what you just consumed from nutrition and calories and ingredients. A couple observations. The first is it's a closed ecosystem in the way that Apple sort of has created a closed ecosystem with its hardware and its software, right? Like this very easy to use, beautiful consumer experience that's completely contained. But my second observation is I'm not sure it's totally clear for the listener. So it's just to

like really paint the clear picture. The Juicero is a juicing machine that sits on your countertop in your kitchen. It doesn't look anything like what you would expect a juicing machine to look like. It looks like a beautiful piece of technology. It looks like it could be an Apple computer. You're not quite sure what it is, but essentially it has a door that opens up. It's a very heavy metal door, like brushed stainless steel with only one button on it.

It opens up and there's this orange interface with two pins. And that's where you stick in this packet of fresh produce that you guys produce and ship also. And you close the door and it presses the juice fresh. It reads the barcode on the packet so you know it's fresh. And then you can dispose of that packet. And I guess the idea in the future is that it's going to be completely compostable, right? But right now- But it presses all the liquid out of it and there's zero mess. So there's no cleanup whatsoever. When you're done pressing, you're done. You could go on to your next activity.

The other observation I want to say is that when you're normally juicing using any juicer, you're doing the work. In this case with Juicera, you set it and let it. And the Juicera press does the work. In this case with Juicera, you set it and let it, and the Juicera press does the work. So you could be like, I can take a, I could like run, check my email. I can get dressed. I can do other things while the press is actually going through its two minute cycle. And if it reads the barcode and realizes that the produce is expired, it will not make the juice. That's correct. And it'll send you a notification saying, hey, but we'll also let you know that, hey, Rich, you've got a pack that's going to expire tomorrow. I suggest you drink it today. Okay. It's crazy. First of all, the thing

is like a work of art. You did an incredible job with the aesthetics and the simplicity of it. It really is beautiful. And it's going to be, I really think it has the potential to change this industry completely. I mean, that is the big idea that, you know, the Kleiner Perkins of the world are sort of anticipating and banking on. Yeah. Well, look, I think for me, it makes it easier to consume more servings of fresh fruits and vegetables. I think what we did was we made green juice taste good, like really good. And so people, like we have a green in a recipe that has literally no sweet fruit in it at all. And it's 25 calories, two grams of sugar. Not that

I watch calories or that I watch sugar, but the fact that those metrics are so carefully viewed, we decided to see, could we work within these parameters? And we did. And unequivocally people just go bananas when they taste that green juice. And literally if you were to press it and then let it sit or wait, like it doesn't taste good over time. Like it tastes amazing when you press it. Like that was the insight of not not selling juice, but selling produce and

selling a press and the system so that you can make the juice and drink it. Right. And this barcode will tell you, does it tell you the farm where it was picked? Tells you the farm. Tells you where it was picked and the date that it was picked. Yeah. You have all these metrics and every nutrient, like the nutrient breakdown. It's a very complex, complete nutrition panel. So you could see the percentage of vitamin A, C, B6, K, magnesium, potassium. And the other really interesting thing was this problem that you had to solve about how to create the packaging membrane, because you're putting live produce into this packaging, right?

It's alive. There is respiration occurring. Correct. It's going to create these gases. And it consumes oxygen. Right. So how do you prevent them from exploding, right? How do you, like, that must have been an engineering and, you know, sort of feat to figure that out.

I mean, we have seven food scientists and 12 PhDs who work in the company. So this was literally, you know, it's one of the reasons why we had to raise capital, because we needed to be able to bring on the team. And that's what, you know, Kleiner Perkins and the other investors helped structure was, what does this organization really need to look like? And then what are the job descriptions of these people? And how do we fill these roles? Right. It's fascinating.

So here we are on the eve of the public announcement. I feel so privileged to talk to you, you know, because as of right now, the public is unaware of what this product is. But tomorrow morning, people are going to know. And I'm going to give you like a link to a video that you can, you know, share with the viewers that will actually let them see it. And it's a little comical, but it'll show the process. And how does it feel to kind of be carrying, you know, this whole thing on your shoulders, right? This is a massive organization. I mean, you're a juice

guy, you were making, you're a graffiti artist making, you know, juice in Denise's apartment. And here you are now the CEO of what by all accounts is, you know, a massive undertaking. And there's, the expectations are very high. Like how do you, what's your daily routine? Like how are you navigating this? Like what's your emotional state right now? I mean, I feel extremely, like blessed wouldn't be like a strong enough word.

I feel it's surreal, but I feel I've been given an incredible opportunity. I've worked hard to get the opportunity, but I think I'm humble and hungry, right? My new friend, Chip Adams from Under Armour said that in Under Armour, they've got a cafe and they called humble and hungry and that, you know, you gotta be humble and you gotta be hungry. So I think for me, there's a lot of stuff to do. You know, I keep my life really simple. Um, and it's all about like having mission and purpose. And, you know, when I look at how important it is for people to consume, you know, fruits and vegetables and organic fruits and vegetables and raw fruits and vegetables, like that was my mission and it really drives me. And so I just take it one day at a time.

I mean, right. And, and what do you say to people when they say, uh, well, I don't know about all this juicing, you know, maybe I should just blend well, I don't know about all this juicing. Maybe I should just blend or my doctor tells me it's too much sugar. There's a lot of misconceptions, I guess, is what I'm getting at about juicing and the kind of juice that you're talking about versus what you're going to find at the grocery store. I agree with every doctor that added sugar is a problem. As a whole, Americans are consuming too much sugar in the form of added sugar, whether it's high fructose corn syrup or refined beet sugar or cane sugar. But the US dietary guidelines say that Americans should be having seven servings or more of fruits and vegetables and that they say at least half of them can come from alternatives like 100% juice. And so I look at 100% vegetable juice and 100% blends of fruits and vegetable juice with no additives, no preservatives.

I think that the sugar is one element that comes along with all of these other vitamins and minerals and flavonoids and micronutrients and phytonutrients that I see it as all as a benefit. But the average American is really deficient in these things, right? When you're just eating processed food and fast food and too many animal products, you're not getting your dark leafy greens and your vegetables and your fruits and your diet on the regular. I mean, I think that the essence of being able to do this, I'm going to show you a picture. I can ask my brother if he'll let us post this, but my brother lost 100 pounds. Oh, that's fantastic. And reversed his type two diabetes and his hemoglobin A1C, you know, drop from, you know, to well into the normal

range. And so really, you know, powerful to be able to- Is that just by shifting his diet and juicing or did he become like a raw vegan? Oh my God. Wow. So that's his before. Yeah, he's a big boy. And that's him on Saturday. Wow, yeah, that's a huge change. Right? That's a big time. How long did it take him to lose all that weight? I mean, probably about three years. Since his second stroke, he came in and, you know,

like literally I had to do an intervention. How old is he? He's gonna be 52. Two strokes at 52. Two strokes at 52. But now he's lost the weight. He's got his faculty back. And he was diabetic.

He was a full-blown diabetic. And now not only did he go from diabetic to pre-diabetic, now he's just not diabetic. And he drank on average a minimum of four glasses of green juice every day. And this was green juice that had an apple in it or a pear with it. God forbid, a little bit of fruit sugar in there.

Yeah, so I think that's it. And I think the question about fiber, fiber is really important. And if you're drinking the juice while you're eating a plant-based meal, you're getting fiber and so many other things. So I don't know from a scientific perspective, what happens if you drink, you know, processed, you know, cardanized orange juice? Because that's not my world. But I do know that, you know, our, like what we made

and what we're offering these fruits and vegetables have very healthy nutrition profiles. Yeah, I don't think there's any question about that. The other thing that's super interesting about what you're doing is that you're on the vanguard of this sort of explosion in food technology. It's no secret to you and to people that listen to this podcast that we're really at a tipping point planetarily, right? The way that we raise animals for food is just a, it's a broken system that's destroying the planet and has, you know, profound ethical implications. And it's making people like your brother very sick, right? This is pervase

across our culture. And we can say, well, everybody should become a raw vegan, but the reality of that actually occurring is not as likely as the development of new technologies around food. So Juicero and then companies like Beyond Meat and Hampton Creek are really pouring not just money, but a lot of brilliant scientific minds into solving these problems. And it's just interesting that, you know, you're here, this really is a technology company. Like everything that you're doing is, it's not just a juicing company, right? You are part of that community of innovation. And I think that's really exciting. Yeah. I mean, I don't look at us as a juicing company at all. I think we are a technology company and an organic agriculture company I think we are a technology company and an organic agriculture company focused on solving the produce gap, making it easier for people to have more servings of fruits and vegetables.

And now that I've been vegan for 17 years, I think the raw is very important, but I think that whole food, plant-based diet is extraordinary. So I think that for other people to make it accessible, I recommend eating whole food plant-based because there's so many things that they can have from legumes and quinoa and whole grains and steamed vegetables and all these parts. So I think that whole food, plant-based, and being very cognizant about adding oils and adding additional salts and sugars and processed food is the problem. So if someone moves whole food plant-based

with a lot of salad, a lot of raw vegetables, and like, I think that's a very healthy way to live. Right. What has been, I mean, you're gonna get no argument from me here. Yeah. I don't know if I should add to that, right? I just, I don't know, I'm so used to arguing.

Right, no, no, no, it's all good here. What has been the hardest part of this Juicero adventure that you couldn't have anticipated? I mean, I can't imagine you would have, you could have ever dreamed it would have blown up to be the thing that it is or that it's on the precipice of becoming. I mean, I think the hardest thing is staying focused and like making decisions. Like there's so many, there's a, you never have perfect information. The product's never perfect. There's never the perfect candidate. There's never the perfect investor. There's never the perfect deal terms. So it's like one decision at a time and having the discipline to make decisions and to lead. And so I think that's where we're putting out into the world.

I'm very proud of. And I think there's a lot of things that we can improve upon. And we have a whole roadmap of things that we want to do to make it easier for people to have more servings of fresh, ripe, raw, organic fruits and vegetables. So this is a journey. And to me, this launch is really the day of the race. Everything I've done today is the training. Everything I've done today is the training to be able to enter the marketplace. Right. And we're in this time where entrepreneurs are like rock stars.

And every young person aspires to be a quote-unquote entrepreneur. And there's this kind of conjured sexy lifestyle that's associated with that. I mean, what is your, you know, can you paint a picture of what, you know, your entrepreneurial journey over the last two years has looked like? If you could encapsulate that, like what is the truth behind what it takes to, you know, have an idea, you know, get it funded, build it and, and get it to the, you know, the starting line, the launch pad that we're at today with Juicero. I mean, realistically, I think it's a little psychotic. Like it's insane.

Because in one part of the world, we talk about mindfulness and then, you know, and balance. Right, it's just like a wellness company, but in order to like birth this thing that can help people, you're almost mandated to be out of balance yourself or compelled, pulled in that direction, I should say. The team that we have at Juicero works so hard and it's so humbling. And they do things like our fresh operations team, they work in a 35 degree temperature all the time. And you've been there.

Yeah, I saw it. Right. So the processes that they go through from the time they enter the building till they get into the place where we're filling the produce packs, they wash their hands three times using three soaps, three sanitizing agents, and then wear gloves. And then they're operating at 35 degrees. We have people, you know, who are having to work all hours, day and night. So as the entrepreneur, it's like being prepared to literally be on all the time and being at service and, you know, being calm and the leadership, which is really kind of sets the tone. So for me, you know, David Wolf, you know, says, you know, have the best day ever. I'm like, I embodied that. And so the trick.

Every time I've ever talked to you and I've called you or emailed or whatever, and I say, Doug, how are you doing? You're like, best day ever. And that's the signature line on your email. Yeah. Well, what happened is that's a trigger for me. Like, you know, that brings me back to my core. Like my state that I want to be at is I want to be at this best ever consciousness. And, you know, just like anything else, you wane off of it. So what happens is I have all these like little goalposts, guideposts that bring me back. So one is whenever someone asks me, how am I doing? Like I'm the best ever. So I literally could be in excruciating pain. Like I could just be exhausted.

I, you know, I could have just, you know, like had someone, you know, quit or like, you know, lose something or break something. And like that trigger brings me right back to the best ever. And so I think to be on this journey, it's being able to handle the pressure. We hired this 32-year-old PhD who went to Stanford, worked at Google, worked at Apple, and we're recruiting him from Apple. And the responsibility that I'm thinking about, this person to leave Apple to come work in this startup, and they've got a baby, they've got a family, to come here. To attract people and to have them buy into your vision. To me, it was harder to build the team than it was to raise the capital. Because the team you're dealing with, you know,

venture capitalists, you know, invest in many companies, right? I'm treating every, you know, Juicero team member as a venture capitalist who can make one bet. And that's how they're going to allocate their 40, 50, 60 hours, 80 hours, you know, per week. Yeah. Interesting. And when you gave me the tour of the LA facility, which, how many square feet is going on? That's 111,000 square feet. It's a LEED gold certified building with solar panels on the roof. It's on four and a half acres and it's a total green building. It's gigantic. And at the time, I don't know what's going on now, but you were cranking out like, I don't know,

4,000 pouches a day or something like that. And you had a whole team of guys that were just pressing them just for quality Q control, like just quality control, just to see if it was all good or where the problems were, right? Not for sale, not for anything, just internal study. Yeah. I mean, that was the discipline of kind of building a product that, you know, it's a lot of responsibility. We are going to feed people and we're feeding people, you know, fresh produce. So it's a big responsibility. And so the, you know, I, I consider myself like the CEO, but I'm also the chief safety officer. Like it's so important. And to do that,

like building a team and have processes and following the processes and establishing challenge studies and microbiology to make sure that we are really doing things the best you possibly can. And what would be the ideal, you know, how would this play out in the most ideal way? I mean, I know that there's plans down the line to ultimately, you know, how would this play out in the most ideal way? I mean, I know that there's plans down the line to ultimately, you know, expand the controlled ecosystem to include the actual farm. So you're completely vertically integrated. Yeah. Is that still part of the idea?

I mean, I love farmers. And I think, you know, what I want to do is be a great customer for the farmer and a great partner with the farmer. My kind of endgame is to literally have everyone in the world of all races and geographies consuming fresh, raw, organic Juicero products in one manifestation or another. I think that's a good place to stop it, to end it. Okay. You're changing the world, man. It's really inspiring. I mean, you can throw that term around pretty cavalierly or casually, but what you're doing here is huge.

And I think it has the potential to positively impact culture and people in a really profound way. So I'm proud of you, man. I can't imagine what it took to take that idea to where it is today. And I'm just so excited to see how it's going to play out. Tomorrow's going to be a big day for you. I can tell everybody here is super excited. And I just, you know, thank you for inviting me into your San Francisco lair to spend a little time with me. Well, Rich, you're an inspiration to me inviting me into your San Francisco lair to spend a little time with me.

Well, Rich, you're an inspiration to me. When I grow up, I wanna run an ultra. We'll go run, anytime you wanna go running, man. Yeah, so I, you know, you're a family man. You've got 10 people living in that house, all plant-based and you're, you know, I look at you as all love. And it's just, you know, I'm grateful, you know,

to know you. Yeah, well, to many more juices in the future. And by the's just, you know, I'm grateful, you know, to know you. Yeah. Well, uh, to many more juices in the future. And by the way, thank you for, we drank two beautiful juices throughout this podcast. And I can say, cause I have done a taste test. The difference is legit. Like when you, you, you lined up like these other juices next to the Juicero version of the green juice or the beet juice or the pomegranate juice, there's no contest. So actually there is one question I would like to, I think that's sort of important to address if you allow me to indulge you a little bit. And that is this idea that

being plant-based or that wellness is an ideal for the 1%. That is, it's an elitist thing, right? And so that's something that I'm always trying to work to kind of correct and find solutions that are accessible for anybody, irrespective of socioeconomic status. Your product is beautiful. It's definitely, you know, aspirational for certain people in the way that a MacBook Pro is, right? So how are we going to help make what you are doing accessible to people who perhaps might not be able to afford the unit? It's a really good question. So it's really hard to share a MacBook Pro, right? But it's really easy to share a Juicero. Like one Juicero could handle an entire building or family or block. So I think that if people want to have a Juicero, they could easily, you know, share it and collaborate because it takes a couple of minutes to make it and it will actually bring community and people together. So, you know, we're looking

at ways of deploying these and like Boys and Girls Clubs of America or different places where they could be a standing fixture and then someone can, you know, just buy the pack and then press it. And then we're looking at deploying these in food service establishments because you can go to the finest restaurants in California and not get fresh organic vegetable juice cold pressed. Yeah. And you'd make it easy for any restaurant to just make that available. Yeah. But you could almost do like, almost like a vending machine situation

where you could get the packs and then there's just a juicero and you press it once you get your package, like. Yeah, well, it's interesting. You wouldn't even need the vending machine because the QR codes would allow you to just use your phone to authenticate and authorize it. But we are going to have Jussero in a handful of La Pan Cotidienne LPQs in Los Angeles

and also in Gracias Madre in San Francisco. Oh, that's fantastic. You got to get it in the Gracias Madre in San Francisco. Oh, that's fantastic. You got to get it in the Gracias Madre in LA too. That honker, that guy honking out there is trying to tell us that we should wrap it up, right? That's fantastic. So get kind of institutional customers and clients so that that's how you really get it to spread.

I mean, I am literally, you know, even during this podcast, I've just got a call from a CEO who wants to put a Juicero in their office so that all their employees can have fresh green juice. So I can see them wedged between the water cooler and the coffee maker. Yeah, definitely, man.

Thanks for talking to me. I love you, Rich. Cool, so if people wanna find out more about Juicero, there's gonna be a lot of press rolling out this week, right? The embargo is lifted. I'll put links up to whatever press rolls out. I guess we'll be finding out in the next couple of days. Juicero.com is a website, yeah?

And is there social media stuff? Like accounts and everything like that? Yeah, it's all Juicero, J-U-I-C-E-R-O. All right. So Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube.com, all Juicero. I mean, it was such a simple word and it was just so available. The URL wasn't available, was it? The URL was totally available. It was available. The URL wasn't available, was it? The URL was totally available. It was?

You just got it like off network solutions or whatever? For $8.99, $8.99. I love that, that's fantastic. So it's, you know, sometimes like just things work. Right. So, I mean- Did you come up with the name or how did you do it? I came up with the name.

Yeah. And, you know, I will say like, I'm such a non-violent guy. I live by hymns or practices, but I love Muhammad Ali. And the Muhammad Ali quote that I remember that always comes to mind was, I hated every minute of my training. And I said, suffer now, don't quit, and you'll live the rest of your life as a champion. Pay now, love it later. So I memorized Invictus. I memorized these Ali quotes. I memorized a lot of these sacred scrolls so that I can know what to do.

So the only thing I need to do more of, Richard, I need to exercise a little bit more. Well, I can be your consciousness on that. Okay. You want me to text you and bug you about that? I'm happy to do it. I think what we should do, I'm gonna be in LA pretty frequently. We should go for runs.

Happy to do it, man. I would love to do that. Okay, terrific. All right, man. Thanks, Rich. All right, peace. Plants. All right, I hope you guys enjoyed that.

Doug is a kick in the pants. I wish him the most luck. I think what they are doing is truly incredible, truly remarkable. Since the day that I sat down with him, the press embargo has been lifted. The New York Times article is out amongst a trillion other articles that just came out in the last 24 to 48 hours on sites ranging from Gizmodo and TechCrunch to Vogue and Vanity Fair. I mean, it's everywhere.

You can do a simple Google search, read up, watch the video on my webpage, on the episode page for this episode. And please don't forget to peruse the show notes for lots of links and additional information to take your edification and infotainment beyond the earbuds. Thanks for all the support, you guys. I love you guys. Shout out to Sean Patterson for help on the

graphics, Chris Swan for production assistance. The music was done by Anna Lemma. I love you guys. I'll see you soon in a couple of days. Until then, be well, eat well, and thrive. Peace. Plants. Thank you.