Launch Pad

Karl Ulrich's Elevator Pitch of the Month for November is Allbirds, founded by Joey Zwillinger, WG'10.

Elevator Pitch: “We set out to make the most comfortable shoe in the world. What we did to do that was strip away every single detail of a current construction of a shoe that is unnecessary and either takes away for comfort or is focused on dropping cost or doing something else that's unrelated to our customer. And then we engineered and innovated a fabric where we packed in fibers from the merino sheep that are about 20 percent of the width of a human hair that are typically used in $5,000 suits and we engineered a fabric that was strong enough to make into a fabric that could be an upper of a shoe, that's the part that's above your foot. And we constructed what we think is a great shoe. And we did it in a way that was incredibly sustainable for the planet.”

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Karl's wearing Allbirds right now.

Partly for the look--no logos, just a stylish wool sneaker--partly because they really are, as Time magazine called the, The Most Comfortable Shoe In The World, and partly because they're made of sustainable materials, which is awesome. But he truly loves this company because they're so very innovative. Think a shoe company can't also be a great innovator? Listen to this terrific interview. Did we mention that Joey is a #WhartonGrad?

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Fertility care is expensive—and the experience itself is far from wonderful. Enter Carrot, which works with employers of any size to offer egg freezing and in-vitro fertilization (IVF) as a workplace benefit.

Fertility is having a transformative moment. Tammy says, “Infertility and fertility are fast becoming no longer taboo topics to talk about—so much so that people will ask their employer for it. And that was not the case 18 months ago.”

Cost is the biggest barrier to fertility care, but Carrot isn’t just a financial vehicle. Tammy explains, “Carrot is a platform that helps make the experience better. So you can chat any time—text or video or voice—with fertility experts. And these are nurses and doctors, to help you really navigate your decision-making.” Carrot just raised $3.6 million in seed funding, and Karl has a takeaway for the smart VC out there: “If women and opportunities related to women are systematically being under-invested in by others, hey, that's all the better for those who get it.” Listen to the Tammy and Karl’s full conversation for more entrepreneurial insights.

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Lunch for under $6. That’s what MealPal promises.

Here’s how it works: you place an order online, anytime between 5:00 pm the night before and 9:30 am that morning, and you get to choose from lots of restaurants that have partnered with MealPal. Each restaurant offers just one meal, but you get a picture and an ingredient list. Set when you want to pick up your lunch, between 11:00 am and 3:00 pm. Then at lunchtime, you walk up to the counter—skipping that long lunchtime line—and pick up your lunch. That’s it.

Of course, what makes this possible is economies of scale. As founder Mary Biggins explains, “we're really helping restaurants with their labor costs. So for restaurants, labor is actually the biggest cost that they have. That accounts for over 35% of their total cost. It's much more than food. Food is usually about 25% of a restaurant's cost. And so because on MealPal, each restaurant is only offering one meal per day, they get a lot of efficiencies of scale, because they're making a lot of the same thing at once.”

One fascinating aspect of MealPal is that they launched in Miami, where Mary was located at the time, and Mary thinks that this helped them: “In San Francisco and New York, there are so many people knocking on the door of restaurant owners every day--whether it's a delivery service or something for front of house or back of house, and so in Miami we didn't have that same competition, and the restaurant owners that we interacted with were so helpful.”

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Karl Ulrich's Elevator Pitch of the Month for October is Zipline, founded by Keenan Wyrobek.

Elevator Pitch: “We deliver essential medical products using drones, small robotic aircrafts, in the hardest to reach parts of the world. Our first customer is the government of Rwanda, and we are responsible for all of the outgoing blood supply chain, delivering units of blood to hospitals for the entire western half of the country.”

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