Tim Ketchum - Founder, Composer

Welcome to another Founder Wisdom Pod. We have Tim Ketchum with us. Tim is a founder at Composer down in Berkeley, California. I had Tim on my Spark Tank show yesterday and he pitched Composer, which is a fascinating and good-looking tool for your kitchen. You can preserve or at least reduce the food waste, I would say, with that tool. It's electrical. They have like bioenzyme in it. It's, it's clean. I'm going to share my screen in a moment and Tim can definitely do a better job at pitching in than I do. But Tim, welcome to the pod. Tell us a bit more about yourself and Composer.

Yeah. Hey, really good to be here. So thankful that you had me on. Yeah, my name is Tim Ketchum. I am the CEO and co-founder of Composer. What we're doing is trying to fix the food waste issue in the world, right? Food waste is a huge problem. Basically, it goes to a landfill mostly, it releases a ton of methane, really super bad for the planet. And so the question is, how do you go about fixing that? The solution most people pitch and the one that receives the most push is composting. Composting is really good for the environment, but in the US, only 4% of food waste goes to compost because it requires work and effort from people, which is like good, but most people have really busy, hectic lives and asking people to do more work for the environment doesn't always work. So the other main solution other than landfilling is a garbage disposal. In the US, they're pretty popular, 60% of people have one, and they're good, right? If the food waste goes down your pipes to a wastewater treatment plant, it gets treated and that's super good. But only 15% of food waste goes down one despite 60% of people having one. And so there's a disconnect. There's a disconnect between this product, which is really good for the environment and really convenient. Like, I'm not trying to sell you something just on the environment. Like, it's a good product, you should use it. But so there's this disconnect between people having this thing and people actually using it as much as they could. So we really dove in. We asked thousands of people what they thought and like why they don't use their disposal more. And it boiled down to some issues, which are they clog, they're loud, they smell, They're hard to clean and they feel unsafe, basically are like the top 5. And we looked at that and we went, hey, those are all just engineering problems. Engineering problems are something me and my co-founder Kevin are really, really hyped to solve. We're really capable of solving and it's a fun project. So we went out and we just built the best possible garbage disposal and then we're trying to sell it to you.

And it looks good and it makes sense financially and everything. I wanna dig in your career so far, right?

Of course.

Dolby Laboratories. What is Dolby Laboratories? 6 years there, senior forensic engineer. What? Because you began at Capital One. Yeah, data analyst. But Dolby's interesting. What was your role there?

Yeah, Capital One. Being an analyst was interesting and I learned a bunch, but I just didn't really want to be in Virginia long term. No shade to Virginia, just not, not really my speed. Yeah, Dolby. Dolby is an audio company, so they're out here in the Bay. What they do is spend a whole bunch of money doing R&D, developing really interesting audio and visual, like, technologies, which are in everyday products around your house, right? They were in DVD players when those still existed. They're in your television now, if you have one in the US and in most other countries. They're in your set-top box. They're in any, like, entertainment product that you have is Dolby technology for encoding and decoding the sound and a lot of the time the visual aspect of the medium. And so they do that, but they don't build the products themselves. They just license this technology. And so basically what it is is an R&D company surrounded by this shell of IP licensing. And my job was to make sure that the IP licensing worked well. I was like the hands-on engineer, but I also did a ton of fieldwork going out on audits and all that kind of stuff. I was the technical representative for Dolby interfacing with all of our customers around the world, which is super interesting. And also it turns out having a lot of IP experience is really beneficial when you're starting a startup.

And 6 years there as a forensic engineer, how did you last so long there? What was so fun about that job?

Uh, it's every day is like a new little interesting project when you're working there because someone brings in a product and they're like, does this have Dolby in it? Because that's the difference between a company having to pay $2 or a company not having to pay. And when you're talking about millions of products, it's a huge financial thing. So like Basically every day someone brings a new product and I decide, well, does this have Dolby? How does it do it? How should we treat this? And then, so that's fun and that's interesting, but the reason I stayed as long as I did is also it involves a lot of worldwide travel. And I love to travel and I love to travel myself, but traveling for work's almost as good. So I was in Shanghai and Taipei and Korea and Japan and Europe and all over the place. So getting to travel a bunch and work on these cool, interesting technical questions was a really good fit for me at that point in my career.

And then you did, let's see here, Manifold and Thomas Electronic and did an MBA in between?

Yeah, yeah. So I was at Dolby for 6 years and at the end of it I was like, okay, I could keep doing this, I could maybe get promoted to a manager of an engineering team, but I was like, that's maybe not where I wanted to go. I looked at like what I liked most about the job and the engineering was fun, but what was really interesting to me was like working with all these people and all these other companies and like That, I was like, okay, how can I do more of that? I have an engineering background, that's useful. How do I build out that other skill set? And so I went to Kellogg, I got an MBA, really kind of at the time fell in love with working in the venture space. And so right out of school, I went and worked venture with Manifold for a couple of years. That was fun. That was cool. I loved it. Again, a lot of really good experience for founding a company is being on the other side of the table, knowing what investors look for essentially when they're trying to invest in a company. But then Thomas Electronics is a family business. So my family's owned and operated this avionics manufacturing company in upstate New York for like, this is their 60th anniversary of being owned by my family. And so 3 years ago, they were in a bit of a bind for some of their new product development. They needed someone to head up that division. And so my father, who runs the company, was like, hey, would you be interested in coming back for a little bit and stabilizing this? And I said, yes. And so that's what I did, building high voltage power supplies for basically every military aircraft you can think of in the Western world and trying to figure out how to do that on tight budgets and short timelines with too small of a team. So that's fun too. And again, more just, hey, this is really interesting and good, but also really beneficial for trying to build a product at a startup. So just, I think really I've been lucky in that every job I've ever had has been really beneficial to what I'm doing now.

That's crazy. Um, what led to the idea of Composer though, and the need to start your company? As you know, it's pretty fucking intense to launch a startup, right? Like, what— where did that come from?

Um, I, I am a good employee. Uh, I am, but I am better at employing myself essentially. So I was like, I was interested in starting a company for a while. And then my co-founder Kevin, who's a multi-time climate startup founder who's been trying to look at how to do a next company. He's already founded 2 very successful ones, and he was like, what, what's the next idea? And he settled on this as an option. And then he worked on it by himself for 3, 4 months and then came to me and was like, hey, I think I have something here. Pitched it to me first, and I was like, yeah, I think that this is a real company. I think that there's a real market for this, and I think that we can do it. And so I was excited about it. And so I was like, sure, why not start a company with like my best friend, who we've been friends for almost 20 years now?

So And both of you build things with your hands? Like, is that— how does that happen? I mean, I'm not a manual guy. I don't build shit with my hands. I code everything or build systems online, right? So you just hang out on weekends, you test out stuff, you have a place in which you can have the pieces, you order the pieces, you A/B test stuff. How did the first real working and beautiful prototype happen?

Yeah, that's, uh, the, the first, the first prototype he banged together in his basement, and then we worked on it a little bit. We have a lab down just down the street in Oakland that we work out of now, but at the time it was just a basement thing.

So we built that in your basement? There's so many pieces and chemicals and— well, you need to be a mad scientist.

It helps when Kevin especially is just like a tinkerer. So he's got a, a house over here and his basement is just full of like actual low-key manufacturing equipment like laser cutters, and he's got like 4 racks of tools and stuff. Like, we're starting from a position where he and I, but especially he, builds a bunch of stuff for like art projects and other stuff in and around the Bay. And so you spend a lot of time building stuff, and then you're like, well, how do I build a garbage disposal? I mean, it's a bunch of plastic and a motor put together. It's similar— it's not similar to stuff we've done, but like it's a similar level of work. So the first A couple prototypes were just put together ourselves, and then we went out. And obviously there are differences between building something in your garage and being able to mass manufacture it. So then we worked with some outside partners who are excellent for some of the design work and design for manufacture, especially so that we can build a whole bunch of these. So, right, like the first prototypes are just us tinkering away in the basement, and then after that we move on and incorporate some additional expertise because 2 people is great, but a team of 10 is better than that.

So does Kevin build custom shit in his house like all the time? Is he that type of guy?

Yes, yes, he does. He does all this weird stuff. Um, he— we, we do all sorts of odd things like that. So he's, he's definitely a bang-it-together kind of guy. Like, why pay for this thing if I can do a version that's better suited to me for less money?

And where— when did you know that you had something? Like personal feeling, or did you test it to your parents, to relatives, and be like, hey, check this out, and then you got their feedback? When did you know you had something?

There's a couple big milestones. I knew in my heart that like there's a market for what we're trying to build, but I knew like we had— we were building something, we were in the right direction, right? We were directionally correct when we put the prototype just in a house with his roommates and They used it and they were like, this is great. And I was like, okay, somebody likes it, that's good. And then the second big one was after we went through and we designed it and we made it beautiful and we made it nice to use, we brought it to KBIS in February, which is a big kitchen bath expo in Florida. I think it's going back to Vegas next year, but it's huge. Everybody's there, all of our competitors, all these companies that are not our competitors, but anyone in the kitchen and bath space goes there. And so we had a booth and we set it up and we let people play with it and people were just like, their eyes are lighting up and they're like, this is great, I would love to like A lot of interior designers and stuff are like, oh my God, it's not even a product I think about. Like, we were just getting like constant feedback that like it was super cool. And then I was like, okay, we've actually done something correct here. Like, we've built a product that people will buy.

How long does this thing last? How reliable is it?

Well, we're offering a 10-year limited warranty, which is on par with the best in class in the thing. So we're pretty confident.

How do you test for 10 years? How do you test for 10 years? You just run it 24/7 or?

Yeah, pretty much. So my background comes from avionics and we got got to test power supplies, and those things have lifespans that are 25 or 30 years, and obviously I can't do 25 or 30 years of testing on them. They're used for short bursts, but they're used over a long time period, so you just do like a lot of testing with it, like always on, you just use it 100 times more than you would in a normally— normal daily basis, and then there are testing labs you can go to which specifically test for like aging essentially. They're like, how do I compress a 10-year lifespan into like A month of testing, and then they do that, and then you're like, okay, great, we're pretty confident in it.

Yeah, I love it. The IP part, is it time yet to do some IP stuff? Have you done some of that?

Yeah, we worked with our wonderful partner out here called Run8 to do our patent and licensing stuff. We have submitted the requisite patents on basically everything that makes our disposal our disposal. It was something I knew from the jump we were going to have to spend a lot of time on because if you look at our product, it's good, it's great. We developed a lot for it, but if you don't have IP protection, someone could jump in in 6 months and have the same thing. So we need to, you know, have intellectual property protection against someone just copying all the work and year that we put into building this thing. So we have pretty good patent coverage on it.

Right. Yeah, the electricity bill to test the 10 years must have been pretty costly to have that thing run 24/7. How do you make sure it's safe? Did you have some things around that as well?

Yeah, there's testing you can do for it. Obviously, with the disposal, the actual bar for safety is pretty low because anyone can shove their hand in the disposal and turn it on today and like hurt themselves. And that was like core to our design, actually. Like, ours has an interlock. It has an iris that exists on there. So like if the door's open, you can put your hand in there, it can't run. Unless the door is totally closed, it can't operate. There are videos on Instagram of me with my hand shoved down in there trying to turn it on and it doesn't turn on. And those scared people a little bit 'cause they're like, oh my God, you must really trust it. And I was like, yes, I do 'cause we built it. And so, right, the safety is paramount. For the other stuff, yeah, there's just a ton of, hey, here are all these standards you have to adhere to. It has to use this much power, it has to be this, it has to have these shutoffs. And that's all stuff you can just engineer. around pretty safely.

And you're in California. What's the reception with VCs so far on Sand Hill?

Yeah, people love it. The reception with VCs is, unfortunately, it's 2026 and we're living in the age of AI. And so a lot of VCs are very locked in on like, I'm investing in AI or I'm investing in the classic investor B2B SaaS. Like, we're doing okay. Probably be able to fundraise, all of that. But it is definitely more work to be fundraising for a hardware product than it ever has before. And so there are headwinds, but, you know, you talk to the right people, there are always investors who are willing to go against the grain. There's always opportunity for someone who's willing to go out on a limb for a company which doesn't match the, the current market. And I think there are really probably very good returns for that type of stuff. So it's about aligning yourself with the, the right kind of investor.

Could there be AI in it? I mean, the easy way would be to stack AI word on it and be like, oh, it stops before your hands come in. That's AI. Or, oh, the bioenzyme. I mean, but is there like some real AI features behind?

No. We thought about it because again, my only goal here, I have no— we came in with no preconceived notions. It's one of the benefits of not being garbage disposal people before starting this company is we started from the ground up and we're like, what can we do? Let's make it the best we can in every fashion. And any of the trade-offs we've had for making it a smart disposal or anything like that, uh, we felt weren't worth it. What it's going to do if you try to incorporate that is going to make it a more complex piece of equipment that's harder to repair, that's less reliable, and isn't going to provide enough benefit on the other side to really help people. It might help us fundraise, but that's not what I'm interested in. What I'm interested in is building the best disposal you've ever seen. And for that, Perhaps against prevailing wisdom, the best version is the simplest one.

What if someone puts plastic or a fork? Isn't that like an— just an AI camera that can be like, oh, funnel down this channel? Wouldn't that be a function?

Yeah, it's possible. I think if you had that type of thing, you're essentially going to double the cost of the disposal. And then part of our goal here is to put it in the hands of as many people put it in the hands of as many people as possible. And if you, uh, if you start raising the price anymore over what we are, I think we just won't be able to sell as many. I'm not saying we will never do a version that has some type of advanced imaging that would do something interesting, but it would have to be like a very specific trade-off, and we haven't yet seen that. And also, that's going to lengthen the development time by— we managed to put one together that's ready to go in like a year. It would make it a 2 or 3 year project. And part of what I'm trying to do with this business is make sure we're super capital efficient. And capable of like becoming a functioning company essentially on our next fundraise.

Do you foresee a future in which people can just dump anything at one place and everything is magically being taken care of without municipalities intervening and changing the existing infrastructure?

That would be like the dream, right? Is having that type of thing. I think we are moving very slowly in that type of direction. As like imaging becomes better, like I think like a real version of this that would work is some sort of like centralized, like local, not neighborhood size, but smaller, a few blocks of like drop-off where people can just toss everything, it gets automatically sorted, and then eventually the municipality come picks it up pre-sorted from one place. It'd be much more efficient, but, uh, that I think we're a little bit far off from, um, just for like infrastructure reasons. You'd have to have like places to do this and that kind of stuff. I assume whenever it happens, Berkeley will be at the forefront because they really care about that type of stuff, but I think we're decades away from that.

And as a capitalist, I would love to monetize my garbage, right? Like, one man's garbage is another man's gold. Uh, you just throw shit there. It's— I throw valuable stuff in my garbage all the time and you get money on the other end. Wouldn't that be a cool cyberpunk vision?

Yeah, I mean, there's like a— honestly, there could be a version of our product which, uh, or a version related to our product, right? Because if you put food waste down your, your garbage disposal, the wastewater treatment plant is turning it into energy. It powers the, the wastewater treatment plant, or it can even go and make natural gas to heat people's homes. Like, to encourage people to put their food waste down there, if you have like a system to monitor each house's like organic output, that goes to the wastewater treatment plant, you could theoretically calculate how much money they are providing to the wastewater treatment plant and get like a rebate on your energy bill or something. That would be like a long-term municipal goal that maybe we'd get interested in. But I think the logistics of installing all that would maybe be difficult and expensive now. But as everything gets cheaper and software gets cheaper and hardware gets cheaper, it might be like a down-the-line type thing that people would be interested in.

Yeah, yeah. And analytics of my garbage, right? Like give me health insights and so forth or buying patterns. But yeah, I'm— I get the version of you saying 0 to 1 is a priority right now. Fundraising is a priority. Are you also doing some sales getting in home hardware and places like that? Have you started this?

Yeah, we're— we are— our go-to-market strategy is something like direct-to-consumer first, slowest lift. Amazon and similar e-commerce next, eventually retail. But we're in talks with some smaller retail operations. I think it's really, really important to be focused as a company, but also like put the groundwork across the, uh, the, the breadth of your options so that when it's time to hammer those, you're ready. And so I think we're in the market for some small retail partnerships that we can work with, test out, See what our like in-store experience looks like, see what our sales look like, and get some of that logistical understanding ahead of time before we go to like mass retail down the line. So we're working on that.

Right. For you this year, so there's sales, there's fundraising, you're also hiring people like I saw inside SalesRev. Is that a priority this year or?

We'll probably, our big priority, we were thinking about targeting, this is one of those things with a startup where you, explore some options and then you pull back and you do that. We'll be hiring on the marketing side for sure. To go with our launch, we need to do like a marketing blitz. Our marketing numbers look good, but we need to scale them. And to scale them, we need people in-house doing that type of work. We'll be hiring like a head of marketing for sure this year. We'll also be hiring a manufacturing engineer to make sure that the final product as we build it like meets our specifications, someone who can work closely with our contract manufacturers to make sure that happens. And then obviously we'll be hiring a whole bunch of like customer support people because I hope to sell enough of these that people can answer— people have to answer questions. Hopefully not because they're going terribly wrong. I don't think for that, but people always have questions. And right now our customer support team is me, and I'd love to spend some time doing more important things. Well, not more important things, but other things.

Lots of people in your niche, they go with crowdfunding, right? Like, I'm not necessarily sold on that model. Why do you think they go that way? Why have you Why have you not gone that way?

People do it because raising venture capital for, or other capital for hardware is really hard. I mean, it's something we've considered. I can't promise we'll never do it. If for some reason we are completely unable to fundraise, we probably will have to. I don't think the model is great. Like, it has issues for certain things. It's good for things which are like a lot of your time and they're very cheap to produce. It doesn't make sense for something like a garbage disposal, which is going to cost us a lot of money to build each individual one because then you're just taking all this capital and then you're immediately tying it up doing manufacturing, and manufacturing for these things is quite expensive. Like board games, great model, great model for simple electronics, but tough, tough to do like large hard manufacturing at scale for it. So we figured having some freedom with the money that we're doing and not being quite so committed to having to provide this many on this time frame like a Crowdfunding would be like our best option, but you know, it's always in the back pocket if we need it.

I love it, dude. Yeah, what are you doing to get in front of VCs and investors nowadays?

Well, thankfully my co-founder is a multi-time successful founder, so he has a bunch of connections in the space. I used to work in venture. I have connections in the space. Obviously, the first place you go to is, hey, people that you know that like you. Other than that, like, we also have some really great advisors with a lot of connections, and we're in the Bay. Bay is the epicenter for venture capital in the world, so you can throw a rock and hit a VC somewhere. So, you know, sending a lot of emails, asking a lot of favors the same way I think anybody does it. But, you know, it's hard. It's hard even if you have those advantages. I don't know how people who have never— like, I don't know how people get their first startups founded. That just seems very, very hard to me.

Yes, uh, thanks for being on, dude. Where can, uh, people find out more about you?

Yeah, if you're interested in our product or just want to give us a look, we're at composer.me. It's composer.me. Uh, you can send us an email if you want to talk to me. Um, there's an email on the website, it goes directly to me. Happy to answer any questions about the product or us as a company.

And, uh, yeah, that's Tim and Charles.