Taking founder life bite by bite

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Founder Jon Reed believes a future without plastic is possible and hopes his startup, Compostic, will be part of that. 

“We want to give people the products they want without affecting the planet negatively,” he says. 

Founded in 2018, Compostic provides a zero-waste and vegan-friendly alternative to cling wrap and resealable bags that break down in home composts faster than orange peel.

Having found success in New Zealand, the startup quickly went global, launching in Australia and the US, with funding support in late 2020 from Hillfarrance Venture Capital.

Recently, Compostic announced a distribution partnership with Whole Foods Market California, and Reed says it will launch one with Target at the end of this financial year. It is projected this will increase store distribution from 2700 to 5000. 

Year on year the startup has achieved 230 percent growth. Reed, underscoring his lack of a business background, attributes this to having had the right people around him from the start. 

“If I had been doing this alone, we wouldn't have made it past week one,” he says. 

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Is there anything you wish you knew starting out? 

Of course, there are things that would have made life easier: processes and documentation in terms of the CPG [consumer packaged goods] game, how to price your product, what kind of margins the retailers want to hear from you, what does the pitching process look like? But, honestly, I’m grateful that I knew nothing and could jump at it from different angles and learn along the way. 

One thing I’m glad I didn’t know was how hard it was going to be. If you look at it holistically, the journey is almost impossible. You’d go, ‘it’s too hard, don’t bother’. But, if you’re doing it barrier by barrier and all you see is the next one, you’re just taking it bite by bite. 

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Was there anyone that you worked with who really helped you along the way? 

There are three people. 

There’s Simon Pound and James Hurman from Previously Unavailable [which is backing Caffeine], who were certainly very important. 

One of the things in the CPG industry is that your packaging and branding are everything: that is the customer insight into who you are as a brand, what you stand for, and it’s a way for them to see their own morals, ethics and values reflected. If you don’t get that right, you won’t win over the customers. Simon and James put this in my mind and spent a long time working with me on that. 

To this day, the branding does an incredible job. We can sell our product at a higher price than competitors because of how well that branding has been produced. Had I not known that or had that experience around me through the early stages, I don’t think we would have gotten to where we are. We didn’t put a tonne of money into it, but we put in time, and it paid off. 

I’m also super lucky that my best friend, Josh Bowden, is an absolute guru in business. Many say don’t mix friendship and business but I couldn’t go against that more strongly for us.

I have the determination and you need that. If you’ve got all the advice in the world but don’t have the determination and the belief, you won’t get anywhere. But, you need people around you who will challenge you and say, ‘No, that’s not good enough. You need to think about this more. We need to do better.’ 

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Can you think of something that’s gone wrong and what that taught you?

I can think of a tonne of things that have gone wrong. 

One was we launched through Covid, and in the middle of that we had a shipping crisis. We went from a container costing $5,000 to $30,000. As almost all of our products were manufactured offshore, managing that across our supply chain was super difficult. 

It taught me that you cannot predict what’s going to happen. You need to have the ability to recognise those issues and react as quickly as possible. 

I also learnt that you have to believe in what you’re doing – it’s what’s held me together the whole way. 

I was determined that no matter what came my way, the outcome was always the same in that every person should have our products in their cupboards at home, and every retailer should be stocking them on their shelf because it’s important for the world. It’s up to me to make that happen.

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What’s the best advice someone gave you?

Keep going.

For anybody starting on their journey, no matter how discouraged you get, if you have that belief, keep going and break those barriers down one by one. I honestly believe that's the difference between someone who makes it and someone who doesn’t. 

Ask yourself: how badly do you want this? Does it mean everything to you? Or are you just doing this to get money at the end of it? 

The way I see the founder’s journey is – and it’s the most cliche analogy in the world, but I don’t care – it’s a genuine rollercoaster. You’ll be on a massive high, and a week later, you could be on the biggest low you ever have. There’s not much in the middle. 

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What advice would you give to someone starting out? 

Go for it. Don’t hold back; just jump in. 

You’re going to get it wrong; don’t worry about it. Learn from it. Move on. Otherwise, you’ll never take that step forward.

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Finally, what was your first entrepreneurial moment? 

I had tonnes of them. I was always going to do my own thing. 

I remember living in Auckland on Landscape Road, I would have been five or six, and my brother and I used to take all our old toys, go and sit out on the roadside with a tabletop and line them up with a big 'toy sale' sign, shouting out to cars, ‘Stop! Toys for sale! Toys for sale’.

We would come out of this thing with like $70. We were millionaires. We could have all the lollies we wanted. 

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Founder Feedback is a weekly series where founders are asked a set of questions that profile their startup journey so far. If you have a story to share, contact mary@caffeinedaily.co