About episode
Ever get carry out food and then feel guilty about all the plastic packaging? Single use plastics are a real problem. Every year over 14 millions tons of plastic end up in our oceans, and plastic that ends up in landfills release toxins that pollute our soil, waterways and food chain. This is not to mention the carbon emissions of producing plastic packaging to begin with.
The convenience of carry out food isn’t going anywhere, and so we need to find alternatives to plastic packaging. That’s where Dispatch Goods come in. They’re an innovative startup that’s already replaced over 1 million pieces of plastic packaging with reusable containers.
In this episode, I spoke with Dispatch Goods’ Co-Founder & CEO Lindsey Hoell and Christina O’Conor, Partner at Congruent Ventures, who led a seed investment in Dispatch. We talked about Dispatch’s history and progress, the challenges of scaling circular economy businesses and what our future might look like as companies like Dispatch grow and enable us all to return packaging and materials for future use. Hope you learn as much as I did. Enjoy.
In today’s episode, we cover:
- [3:09] What is Dispatch Goods & the problem they’re aiming to solve
- [4:45] Dispatch’s partners & how their business works
- [5:40] The scale of our waste problem
- [7:15] Does recycling plastics work
- [8:49] Lindsey’s journey developing traction & where Dispatch is at today
- [11:33] The materials that Dispatch is currently focused on
- [13:00] What is Congruent Ventures, their investment thesis & why did they invest in Dispatch Goods
- [16:13] How is Dispatch scalable & what will it take to scale
- [20:52] Dispatch’s vision for the future & key strategies for growth
- [25:37] The scalability challenges of circular businesses from an investor’s perspective
- [26:36] What Christina & Congruent are looking for from entrepreneurs
- [27:24] Congruent’s investments in Planet FWD & other ventures
- [30:26] The investment opportunity for consumer products-related companies
- [32:04] Untapped opportunities that deserve more attention
- [35:08] What if the unit economics don’t make sense yet
- [35:46] The scope of what Dispatch will be doing in the future
What is Dispatch Goods & the problem they’re aiming to solve
Dispatch Goods is essentially on a mission to make reusability easy for businesses. The big problem they are tackling is waste.
Lindsey shares that she became obsessed with the problem of waste when she lived in Hawaii for a few years. The impacts were pretty apparent on their beaches. She started to volunteer at the Surfrider Foundation and launched a program called Ocean Friendly Restaurants, where they helped businesses transition to more sustainable practices. Through this experience, Lindsey felt like they were transitioning businesses from bad waste to a slightly better waste, and wanted to understand, “Why do we have waste, period? Why can’t we just switch to reuse models?” The answer: It’s really difficult for businesses to do this internally. They need an infrastructure to tap into because there’s a lot of collection, sorting, cleaning, processing and logistics that go into reuse. With these challenges in mind, Lindsey set out to build a recycling-esque infrastructure for reuse. She moved back to the Bay Area and met Dispatch’s Co-Founder, Maya, who was at Caviar, and then DoorDash after the acquisition. They’re now working with businesses primarily in the food space to help them get their packaging back in order to create circular systems where packaging can be given a second, third, fourth life.
The scale of our waste problem
It’s shocking how much waste humans create due to the current systems available to us. Lindsey explains that we produce almost a trillion single-use packaging items every year, and this number is roughly 365 billion alone in the US. She says that people think a lot about the end of life considerations, but what’s been really exciting is to understand the carbon case for reuse. There are a lot of products that are going out into the world, like a glass jar, for example, which enter the system for single use, but things don’t have to be this way. Those products are fully reusable in their current form factor, and much less carbon goes into reusing products versus recycling them or making new ones. Lindsey highlights that if the US switched to a reuse model, it would be like the carbon equivalent of removing 27% of all US cars off the road. There’s clearly a really exciting opportunity both on the wayside, but the prospects of curbing climate change are also appealing. Lindsey points out that reuse is a really logical lever for us to pull next.
What is Congruent Ventures, their investment thesis & why did they invest in Dispatch Goods
Congruent Ventures is a climate tech-focused VC that invests in companies. at the earliest stage possible; pre-seed and seed is really their sweet spot. They invest across every sector that relates to climate change, mitigating climate change, and also environmental sustainability, so that includes energy transition, mobility, urbanization, food, agriculture, and sustainable production and consumption. Christina says that Congruent isn’t afraid of companies that require a lot of hardware as they invest in both hardware and software. They’re active through typically leading deals and sitting on boards.
Christina mentions that she sits on the board of Dispatch Goods. Congruent actually spoke to a number of circular packaging companies before Dispatch, and hadn’t found one where they loved the founders and thought that they had a really good grasp on the unit economics. Those two core things were the most important considerations for their fund. They first met Lindsay very early on in her journey, tracked her progress for a few months, and then ended up leading the round after that. As Lindsay said, the industry hasn’t been created yet, so it’s literally creating something from scratch, which is typically the area where Congruent invests. Christina explains that they really bought into Lindsay’s vision; she was extremely focused on the unit economics, KPIs, and was able to show how the margins would improve over time, which was very convincing to them.
Resources Mentioned
Connect with Lindsey Hoell and Christina O’Conor
Connect With Jason Rissman
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