Nelli Garton and Kelly Abbott of Tablecloth: An Impact Analytics Platform You Can Trust

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos, tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos El gordo, the taco standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset la Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded when San Diego Startup week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the moon SD Tecos with your host, Neil Bloom. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, and I'm thrilled to have you here. On the Tacos and Tech podcast. We interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities, and we do it weekly, so thanks for tuning in. Every Tuesday, a new interview and on Fridays we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbroodtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode and welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I am your host and today I am thrilled to be joined by the co founders of Tablecloth, Nellie Garten and Kelly Abbott. Hey, guys, thanks for joining the pod.

Hi, thanks for having us. We're excited to chat with you.

Absolutely. It's really nice to have you here. I'm excited to hear the story. Kelly, you and I go back quite a few years of working in the 101 Broadway building. I think different floors but doing startup y stuff. I think you're with Etienne doing something. And now you guys are building a tech company. Do you. Nelly, do you want to give us a quick overview of what Tablecloth is?

Sure. At Tablecloth, we are about six years old at this point and we primarily work with private Equity to collect data and help them understand their environmental and social footprints. So we look at how they treat their workers, how they think about the planet and the environment, and then also how help them to do better. Once we collect that data, we help them set goals to try and improve. Yeah, that's what we do.

Incredible. Well, over that time, six year period, obviously it's become more important both legally to do some of these things and generally accepted. And I'm really excited to have that chat a little bit about where the industry has gone since from where you started. But I'm guessing you started this because you saw this was needed way long ago. So to you it probably feels like about time. Where does it all start for you? How did you get in this industry?

Yeah, I'm in a little bit of a circuitous route for me. So I come at this with about 20, 25 years of evaluation experience. So quantitative and qualitative analysis. I have a PhD in policy and management and a former professor at Brandeis University, where I helped set up a center on philanthropy and social justice and moved to San Diego to do the turnaround on the Jacobs center, which was doing a really interest comprehensive community change initiative. And that's where I really started diving into the different types of capital needed for healthy and thriving communities. And at that point started the San Diego Impact Investor Network, where we were trying to build the ecosystem locally around impact investing, making sure that there was opportunity, deal flow, and also common language and, you know, connecting investors to potential investments. And Kelly and I met each other at that when I was really diving into how do we bring the governmental capital, philanthropic capital, obviously a lot more thinking about the business community to help communities and people thrive.

Wow. A lot of questions come to mind for me of personal interest there because I'm an ecosystem guy. I gotta have gotta ask you some questions of like where the ecosystem was and where you think it is locally, because that's both from capital from economic development. So we might get into that in a second. Maybe let's bring in Kelly's backgrounds as well. So Kelly, where to get started for you? Because I know you come from a little bit different vein.

Sure. I mean, I'll start in the middle. I met Nelly basically while I was on hiatus. You know, I'd spent 15 years entrepreneuring and was exhausted and took a break for a while. And when I met Nelly, I had sort of designed my purpose, what do I want to be doing in my next ventures. And you know, it was just a match made in heaven, really. I met Her, I liked her personality, I liked her background. And then with her brain, she had all this amassed knowledge around how to make a genuine positive impact in communities. And I thought, this is ideal match, right? I can build software out of her ideas and she and I could go to market with this stuff. So my background prior to then was SaaS software in general. I'd also done some consumer apps, spent a little time in the building dating app world kind of stuff, had worked with PE and vc and I'd done a lot of analytics in the past and sort of understood how all these parts could come together into a product. So instantly we had a vision for it and we just liked each other enough to say, you know, you're willing to spend the next 10 years cracking this nut, and here we are.

And Kel, on your end, did you built most of your companies in San Diego or have you built. You've built some tech companies in a few different areas geographically.

I have lived in San Diego, and then at a time I was getting hired out by companies that weren't in San Diego. So I did do stints in LA and San Francisco, but commuting. So I'd always lived here, but spent part of time with the companies that were based there, basically in product development or some sort of management role.

Okay. And you have. You've done both technical side and the business side as CEO, so you kind of can fill a lot of roles there. But the capital piece of building you had, you built a product for kind of the capital markets before as well, too.

Not for capital markets specifically, but I'd worked with PE funds who were buying and selling companies.

Got it. Okay. So that's where kind of Nelly's background kind of comes in a little bit around the capital markets piece. Take us a little bit through Nelly on your end. Like the history of tech for capital markets. Like, did it exist? Does it exist? Where do you see that part playing a role?

Yeah, I mean, I think it is particularly on the impact and the esg. Obviously, technology has been a critical component to capital markets that look at it solely through the lens of financial data. And so I think we have basically ignored the other half of the equation that we need to think about, which are those different impact components. And so when we started, there were very little efforts on building tech, particularly in the private markets. Obviously, public entities have been required to report and, you know, be more transparent as a result of their public status versus private markets, which essentially has been a bit of the wild west in terms of whether or not they have to meet any standards. That is very much changing. And you're seeing that with new legislation in Europe on the SFDR sustainable Finance Disclosure regulations. Similarly, we're seeing some movement here with the SEC in the US but those are still somewhat looming. There's been very little requirement to report on these components. But I think, you know, the last five years things have changed drastically. In terms of people's recognition that being impactful and thinking about how you treat, you know, the communities you're in, the people that your stakeholders as well as the planet, there is a higher expectation, a recognition that this is both risk mitigation and potentially value creation for companies. If you are polluting, you're going to get sued. If you are discriminating, you're going to face legal action. And that is changing. And also just in terms of brand development, you know, the next generation, young people, women, are absolutely demanding that you can't separate the two. You can't make money over here and then come back and do good later. You need to incorporate them together. So I think that, you know, those are some of the trends or the maybe history of how we're, how we've gotten here and really excited about how that is getting incorporated into business decisions.

Can you define a few terms here? Just, you know, let's say it's for me, impact investing. What is the world that includes impact investing for you?

Yeah, no, I think it's really important to distinguish between impact investing, ESG and helping people understand those a little bit better. So impact investing, there is a, an official definition that comes out of gin, the Global Invest Impact Investing Network. And the big components of that include that impact is intentional. So it's about the what you are building and for your customers or clients, you are trying to make the world a better place, whether that's environmentally, socially or in other ways. And a key component of that is that it is intentional and measurable. So that you are actually, if you're looking at investing in a company that is making solar panels or, you know, that's actively trying to change, ESG is actually much more of an internal effort of looking at how you run your company, not necessarily your output. So I think those are really important distinguishing factors and definitional things that often get conflated because any company should look at how it is doing in terms of its own internal practices. And that's the kind of E S and G conversation these days. But not every company is focused on impact, whether that's in health or tech or agribusiness. I mean, Many can be. But is that helpful for you?

Yeah, yeah, that's a good starting point. Kelly, let me ask you a little about like the technology use for this industry. You know, dashboards are often, you know, they're pretty common on the financial side, right? That the Bloomberg terminal and having data at your fingertips, like what do you think's become unique to this class of investor that and what are the different needs from a technology piece that you've started to see through building this?

Well, honestly the tech stack is pretty well built at this point. Right. There's lots of BI tools that we can integrate with and lots of analysts that are working at companies who want data delivered in certain ways. So for us it varies. It can be a raw feed of data where we take their incoming data from their portfolio companies and provide it back to them in some process manner where our intelligence is applied on top of it. And so for that it's a lot of ETL work. It's a lot of behind the scenes data structuring and cleaning and very little dashboard work to be honest. Then on top of that, if clients aren't as sophisticated, they don't have internal analysts, they don't want to run their own reports, then we can provide those sources for them through basically our client portal, which is built out to represent what their impact theory is, their thesis for change. Whether it's ESG or impact, it doesn't really matter to us. We just want to know what are you interested in tracking and how will you align your goals around those metrics? And then we can design a user experience that showcases those metrics in a really meaningful way for them. Specifically. Specifically. And because we're working at, you know, a portfolio level, we get to assemble a bunch of different companies into one view, but then also narrow the view down to a single company if they have a problem area with them that they want to address.

Yeah, just gonna was gonna say or ask that, you know the set of tools you're creating for professional investors. Right. Really they report to their investors. Right. So, so the gps to the LPs right. And so are they using turn these tools internally to make investment decisions and in turn putting reports out to their investors and them. Is that how tablecloth is being used in that regard?

Yep, exactly. It definitely is. So we have funds who have their LPs with direct access in to our system so they can come in and look at the granular data at the portfolio company level if they're interested. Often folks want to put together a dashboard that is a Little more LP focused and might be a little higher level. So it's not the same level of that they would use for their portfolio companies. I like to think about it and split them up into exploratory and explanatory dashboards. So when we're exploring, we're really trying to understand the context of the data. When we're doing an explanatory dashboard, it's much more about telling the story of the organization.

Got it. Okay. So you've obviously learned some things from building. Right. As entrepreneurs, we are all about pivots from learning from our customer. Right. That tells us and dictates. And at the you've met mentioned, the industry has changed. Has been changing at the same time too. So maybe take us through a little bit around like where the initial idea was six years ago versus what you're delivering. Nelly, if you want to start there a little bit and give us some color around where the industry, like you mentioned, for five years, what's changed to help you, you know, build and iterate the product.

Yeah, I mean, I think one of our first pivots was we thought we would be working a lot more in nonprofits and philanthropy, partially because that was more of my network and background. And we had have. We realized it was a nice to have, not a need to have. We got an early PE client who valued the information we were providing, would pay for it. And one of the things I think that really drove us to this was that realization of, you know, going pretty directly at the source of power and decision making. So when you're working with a PE fund, they are in control of tens of thousands of employees, experience of, you know, and helping them to see that you're not paying living wages to a good portion of people. They have to face that information. So that is part of why we really dove in deeply about four years ago and focused in on private equity primarily. And so I think those are a couple of places where we've made adjustments in terms of where the field is going. Up until the last couple of years, it really has been folks didn't have a lot of knowledge about ESG and it wasn't talked about. That is quickly changing. And I think that what we're seeing is a pretty rapid acceleration of the expectations around data quality. I remember talking to an investor five years ago who was one of the preeminent, like impact investors, ESG folks, and he said, well, I don't need this. I just asked the CEO how they're doing and I asked him, do you just take the CEO's word for it on your financials too. And he was like, well, no. So I think, you know, the expectation now of LPs to move beyond self report data to actually use this data to make improvements once you have the information. And also now even thinking about like audit trails and being able to verify the quality of data that you have, the expectations in this space are rapidly.

Increasing and the mandating a bit too. Right. That's gotta help putting a deadline there by state or federal or by exchange. Right. So that's got to have accelerated some stuff, which is a good tailwind for you.

Yeah, no, we have lots of good tailwinds right now for sure. Kelly, go ahead.

It's very topical. I mean, there's literally no cocktail party. I don't go to a lot of cocktail parties, but no conversation I'm having with a friend or a former colleague or something like that where they haven't heard of esg.

Right.

It's just been in the news and they, they may not know exactly what the term stands for, but they've definitely heard some, you know, rumblings about it. And so, yeah, it's in the news. It's a sort of groundswell of opportunity for us because we've been in the game for five years and people can find us really easily and they know that we do this work.

Yeah. The other thing I would add on there is, you know, the thing you've seen this year is the politicalization of esg, where you've got states and attorneys general saying, we're going to pull money out of anything that ESG related. You have it on both sides, you have the other side saying, actually we're going to put more into it because we know that's what makes good companies. But I think what is important to note on that is that you're not seeing that from CEOs of companies, you are not seeing that from investors, you are seeing that from politicians who are trying to make this into something. But for example, you know, in the work that we do and how we think really dive deeply on the social side of things, like there's almost uniform agreement in every survey that has been done that companies should treat their people well, they should protect them so that I don't care what you call it, if you call it esg, like right now, there's a lot of like backlash around that. These are fundamental things about whether or not you're treating people well that will affect your brand, it will affect your standing as a company, and it's just what is sustainable?

Well, what it really sounds like is it's become a mainstream. Right. Of what would be impact, investing will be investing, this will be part of that. And you are helping normalize that so that people don't feel like I have to have either an asterisk or a certain kind. So where is the product headed from here? Based on that, based on this bubbling up and becoming so mainstream, what do you see as the next steps, Kelly?

I mean, the opportunity is really to be in every company. So we pride ourselves on workforce analysis. We sort of have a focal point around the s in the ESG. E&G are more mathematical, they're survey based or there's good hard metrics that have been out there for a long time and they're kind of easy for people to suss out. The S is hard. Right. The social factors are really hard. And this is where Nellie's PhD brain matters more than, you know, my brain, because she can sculpt the models and knows the incentives and knows the data science and the social science behind it. But the opportunity is to do good, solid workforce analysis for every company. Every company has a workforce. So we see ourselves as being kind of, you know, the intuit of esg because we are so strong in workforce analysis and every company could benefit from that kind of analysis. So where are we in product? We're trying to make it foolproof. How do you get your employee data in here in a way that's safe and secure and, you know, not fraught with errors and incompletions? That's, that's part of the challenge. So doing that and doing it at scale so we can bring the price down is where we're headed.

So the social, the piece you mentioned around social is actually really important because you are seeing maybe more on the real estate side. I see people talk about the impact of a building. Right. Environmental footprint and companies are very quick to go there too. Right. They can do that. And the social, that is super interesting. Do you have to get data that is both self reported by employees and then, I don't know, like HR compliance kind of data that the company reports or how do you do, how do you start to build that in to get a solid data stream?

Yeah. So we think about this in terms of triangulating data from numerous sources. So we do ask the employees about their experience and we want to gather that information. We look at what policies organizations have in place and we also tap directly into their HRIS systems and we pull data at the employee level. So Every row is a person and is, you know, we're looking at their demographic data, we're looking at their pay data. I mean the level of granularity that we are able to get to, to be able to slice and dice that data to help them really use it to identify where challenges begin to happen. So you know, on things like diversity equity and inclusion, are we seeing pay equity for women? Are we seeing it for people of color? If not, at what point are we seeing that? Are we seeing that in hiring, are we seeing that in promotions and pay raises? And you know, we are able to really dig in deeply for our clients and help them to diagnose the challenges and then to create interventions or new ways of doing it that won't have those same biases embedded in their processes.

Got it, man. The first, whatever the reason, the first image that came to mind is seeing if Twitter would have had a tablecloth dashboard and what it looked like pre and post Elon on the S side that could be a rhetor question. That's totally fine. But that was the image that went my head of just like alarm bells or maybe a lot of self reported, you know and like real data finally coming out that after the fact that people are as they're exiting. But is that the goal, to use it and let the power everyone see kind of a company score and see how a company's really doing in that regard?

Yeah, I mean I think down the road, yes. I think the transparency and accountability are critical for change. I think the way that we're using it and how we're hired currently is by the owners of these companies, the private equity folks. So we're not making that information public currently, but we are providing it back to them so that they can make changes. I mean I've brought data back to companies who had no idea that they were paying less than 10% of their employees a living wage. And once you see that, you can't unsee that and so you know, then they have to address that. And so that's really currently our strategy is more of a change from inside. So let's bring the information back to you. What do you see and how can we help you to do better?

Got it. Okay. Well, it's awesome. Super noble of what you guys are building. You guys built. You guys met in the impact community in San Diego. So I gotta ask, what's the state of the impact community in San Diego like? You compare data across the world. Do we have a presence here? Is this, do people care in a different way of how they invest their money locally.

That's a Nelly question. She's the, she's still the impact person. I'm just the tech guy.

No, but you met in the community as well too. So let's take Nelly's view, you know, and then yours. I'd love both of you in that regard. Like, are we making progress?

I think we are. I absolutely think we are. And I'm super hopeful about where we're going. I think in San Diego, there definitely are some fantastic standouts of folks that are doing really great work on the impact side of things. I do think that it's still a little bit disconnected at times and you've got pockets of great work happening. My hope, and maybe, Neil, this is on you to, you know, do more of the ecosystem building, but is that connectivity between folks and the ability to then learn from what others are doing to be able to accelerate that growth? But there's no question that since we started this, this, there's just been a tremendous shift. And whether that's San Diego, whether that's nationally and or globally, the wave has crested. And, you know, basically, if you're not paying attention to it, you're already behind the curve.

Way to put it on me to go make the change, which I am. I love that mentality. You're right, though. You know, business owners have the opportunity to lead in their community in pretty much every way that they do it right with their pocketbook, with their decision making, with the people that they employ and empower. So you're absolutely right. Like the CEOs or the business leaders of every company, it's really on them. It's on us. Like to lead by example. I think I'm going to give a commentary on that since you kind of pushed on me. Like, I think our companies in San Diego come with really good intention to want to do that, think that our leaders of those companies hide behind those companies and could be the face and say, look at the amazing work we're doing. Me as this, this person within the company. So I think we're good at letting our brand speak for us. But in certain things like this lead by example mentality, I think humanizing it and showing that the people are doing it themselves is a leadership quality. So I think we have room to grow there of seeing the individuals within each company in San Diego who do these things well. But Kelly, how about your opinion? You came at the impact community from. You're in hiatus, you had built companies and what led you to and where do you Think we are now, from your perspective.

Perspective, Yeah, I mean, I guess so. I. I did have a little stint doing seed investing, and I could see from my perspective there, you know, after having been an entrepreneur, sort of getting into a part where we could put some more money in the community. And I don't know if you remember this, but I had like a founder's pledge back in the day where if you had an exit in San Diego, you could pledge to reinvest your money back into San Diego companies. And a number of people signed that pledge. Actually, Al signed that pledge, and so he's making good on it. And so that is a form of impact investors investing. Right. Proud to have been a part of that effort. If I were to be cynical, and I'll only be cynical for a minute because the rest is largely positive, or to be cynical, the way that people were making investing from my experience in the seed community was really based on financials and financials alone. So if you were a decent founder who had good experience. Right. That experience generally in the past would have benefited a white dude. I mean, let's just be frank about it, right? So you weren't getting a lot of diversity in your pool because of the. That sort of initial requirement. And the other part is finances. I mean, finances don't have any opinion on what gender or skin color you are or whatever the case may be, or, you know, what your ethnicity is. You just. The finances are the finances. And it's easy for an investor to make an investment decision that the finances look good. Right. And so for that, there was no sort of impact lens that I was seeing people use. Except. And here's where I get positive. There were investors who were definitely interested in supporting women, supporting people of color who are starting their businesses, sort of people who are coming from communities that were traditionally underfunded. You know, that was starting to happen, and it was a pretty blunt tool to wield there, but it was something that you could start seeing to happen. And then I think just the seed community in general is one of those, you know, kind of look for opportunity where opportunity isn't normally looked for type mentalities. Once you start getting more institutional, things get a little more standardized. But as seed investors, you're really encouraged to look at people who are, you know, trying this out for the first time, for example, and that's a good thing. So I started seeing more and more activity there. I forget what the original question was, but I feel like I rambled enough to make a decent enough answer there. And I'm actually really proud of where we've come. In the last 20 years. I've been able to watch it all grow like no capital was getting invested in San Diego. That came from San Diego 20 years ago. It was all coming from other places. And in the Internet community where we are, you were dependent on money from San Francisco and la, and that was really hard. It was hard to do 20 years ago. Now there's plenty of entrepreneurs who had good exits in San Diego are keeping their money focused here, which is. Which has been great.

That's great to hear. No, I really appreciate the perspective. It's funny, I think we're still so early. Like we haven't had as many exits as many other cities. And so I think if, if you take that view, this is a great time to build the foundation and say great. When you do have money, let's already have trained how to do it with good habits. So, you know, wherever we are in that spectrum of filling the flywheel, as we like to call it, you know, reinvesting after you have the exit, reinvesting time, talent and capital. I think you're right on that. Of just like having good habits around doing that. Where's the founder pledge now? Can we keep that alive? Can we? Love to.

Yeah, you can. Ticket, ticket, run with it. It.

Okay, let's talk about that offline. Maybe that's a good interlock piece to. To include. If you join Interlock as a investor, you have to sign the founding fund somehow. Okay, well, really, really appreciate this. Obviously having good habits around investing and hiring and all those pieces includes having good habits around picking the food that you eat. And in San Diego, the best decision you can make is always having tacos. So the people want to know, where are your favorite tacos? Nelly?

My favorite tacos are from Salud in Barrio Logan. I just was there on Sunday because I have a dear friend in town and so that was the first place that I took her.

Still a line out the door.

We caught it at the right time where we. There was only one person ahead of.

Us, but yes, a rarity for sure. What's the smart order at Salud. What's for you?

The Al pastor and the quesaberia is where I went on Sunday. Nice.

I love it. Kelly, how about you?

Well, as cto, I probably shouldn't say this, but the taco shop in Columbus where I went to college is. Is an answer and a security question for some of my logins. But I won't, so I won't mention it by name. But that's where I cut my teeth on tacos. And I always would get. They had this amazing chorizo. So I would get a chorizo taco or chorizo burrito. But in San Diego, when I first moved here, I only had that yardstick and didn't really know how good tacos could be until I went to La Posta, which is in Hillcrest. And I have a theory. Maybe you can validate this for me. But my theory is the first place. This is already blown with Nelly's choice, but maybe in general, this adds up. The first place that you have a taco in San Diego is generally your favorite in San Diego. And I actually think that there should be like, a taco photograph, like, coffee table book, where you just take photographs of taco shops, various locations and stuff like that. Because there's so much diversity in that. It's just an amazing experience, rolling down the street, seeing a taco shop and saying, I want to try it. So La Posta and Hillcrest. And then I have one other. One other really juicy nugget for you here. I'm a longtime lurker on Reddit. I don't upvote anybody. I don't make comments. I don't. I certainly don't post stuff. But I created a San Diego taco map and I posted it to Reddit, and it's my only claim to fame on Reddit. And it got. Got, I don't know, 300 upvotes in the San Diego subreddit, but it's there. And you can get this. It's an open contribution. It's a Google map, so anybody can add to it. So if you're stuck and you just want an idea on a place to go for tacos, there's no better source than that stupid little map I created.

Oh, amazing. All right, well, we need to do it. We need to collaborate on that, because we take every answer mentioned on this podcast and we put it into tableau, and we've got a visualization of the tacos and tech taco database.

Cool.

So we can link to that in your posts as well, and vice versa. Link your subreddit in the show notes here. But, yes, I am all for visualizing that data. And I absolutely agree with you on the emotional connection of your first. My first was actually not a taco. It was a California burrito. My first was at Sombrero, which I heard in a Blink 182 song as a kid and had to try it, and it is still my favorite. California burrito, Mexican food from sombreros. So I hear you on that first but but amazing entries to the database. Guys here. Really appreciate it. Great having you on first of all as well and for building amazing tech that is going to really organize the way that we build companies, the way we invest even better. So thank you for everything you guys are doing and for being on the podcast.

Thanks for having us. Sweet.

Nice seeing you, Neil.

You guys too. Cheers. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to Tacos and Tech Podcasts. You can find all of our episodes on freshbridtech.com as well as on Twitter at Tacos and Tech Pod. Also follow Fresh Brew Tech on all of our social platforms and make sure to share and give a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Play. Thanks again.

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