Putting Things to Good Use with Kimia Talebian

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 countins 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 beer and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos El gordo the taco stand in pesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset la Hoya 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 who who believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SDTechOS with your host Neil Bloom. Startups get the party startups get the.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host Neil Bloom, San Diego's Tech Ambassador and together you're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle. This segment is brought to you by Cox Edge. Our longtime partnership with Cox Business has helped their engineering teams develop new tech products for small businesses and startups. Cox is investing in Edge capabilities and working with developers and engineers across the ecosystem to deliver ultra low latency compute solutions, helping customers to improve application performance and to reduce cloud transport and on premise infrastructure costs. Interested in hearing more about Cox Edge? Please visit coxedge.com and mention Neil Bloom or freshbroodtech.com for our partner discount.

Welcome back to the Tacos in Tech Podcast. I am your host Neil Bloom and today I am joined by Kamia Talebian, CEO and co Founder of Goodoose. Hey, thanks for joining the podcast.

Pleasure to be here.

It's so good to have you on. I'm so glad we got to connect recently and I'm really fascinated to hear what you're building with Good Use. Do you want to give us a quick one minute overview of what it is?

Yeah, sure. Good Use is a social app dedicated to giving and getting free stuff. If you think about the category free, historically it's been kind of mistreated. It Sits in the sketchy parts of Craigslist. It's riddled with advertisements on some other apps. So we saw an opportunity to build a beautiful ad free experience dedicated to free goods.

Awesome. We love the social impact mixed with entrepreneurship, mixed with business. So we're going to have a fun conversation here. But first we got to get to know you. Take us back. Where are you from and how did you end up in this crazy tech world?

I am originally from Iran. My family immigrated to Canada when I was young. I studied finance in undergrad and did a very short stint in investment banking. I started my career in consulting. I think that's where I started getting introduced a little bit more to starting new businesses. I think a lot of people do ops projects, which I did. They do strategy, which I did. But I also had a chance to work on some really cool blue sky strategy for how do you start a new company? So we sat inside an investment bank and helped them build a new division, the new product line. So I had the opportunity to do market research, interview users, then build out wireframes, which was really unique and it was really fascinating. After consulting, I left and joined Cirque du Soleil, which is a live entertainment company. And there it was, a pivotal point in my career. I had a chance to have colleagues, my fellow acrobats, who would literally risk their lives every day doing something that they really love. And I was really inspired by that. Like, I wanted to feel that level of passion about what I wanted to do. So I did what people around me did at that time. I left and went to business school to see what would bring me. I knew I was always really passionate about people. The part of my job, even in consulting, that I enjoyed the most was getting to know people and figuring out how I could make their lives better and thinking about how I can scale that. Obviously, like, technology is a very powerful lever to do that. So I had those two levers. I'm like, okay, I want to do something with people. I want it to be related to tech. So then I joined Lime, which is a micro mobility company out of business school. There I had a staff of 100 people. You know, I had a chance to work with mechanics, drivers, also, like my manager, being able to provide this really cool product which helped connect communities. So I had a chance to really play both parts of what I was passionate about.

I have to take you back to Cirque du Soleil because a lot of us have seen the shows. We got to know some of the perks. Did you get to do anything fun. Did you get to dress up in any of the cool costumes? Take us through some experiences there.

I don't think the average person wants to dress up as an acrobat. I mean, they are perfect human beings. Everything about their bodies is perfect, and their costumes help enhance that. I don't look that way, so I never, never dress like them. But my office did look over our studios where they would practice. And obviously I was very curious. I would go into the studios, I would make friends, and they taught me a couple tricks. How to use the trampoline, how to fall properly, how to, like, dive into the foam pit. Did all those fun stuff.

Okay, so that's the stuff you want in your office environment that's unique, and that's pretty cool.

Very unique. I mean, like, we had, like, music playing in the background at the time. Volta was the show that was in production. So people are doing all sorts of crazy parkour tricks.

That's pretty fun. And to get paid for it, the best. So let's talk lime for a little bit. The scooter wars were our continue to be crazy. Just. In fact, I heard, you know, birds coming back to San Diego with E bikes, and that's their, you know, San Diego is the first one there. So always, we love always a good scooter news. But right when you were involved is kind of the craziness, I would think, right? Like 2018, 1920, right before COVID which Covid, I feel like, kind of wiped everyone out. But take us through what you learned kind of from building marketplaces, because that's the hardest thing, right? You're building two businesses, in a sense, and getting them to talk to each other. What was that like?

It was really exciting and hard. So in business school, you learn about the businesses, which you should stay away from. They all have these, like, similar characteristics about them. It's like, you know, highly competitive, highly regulated, capital intensive, operationally intensive, thin margin. And the scooter business is literally all those five things at the same time. I thought that to be really, really exciting. How do you build a business where your product is virtually indistinguishable from your competitors, where you have a ton of regulation that you need to abide by and you need to hit certain profit margins. And this is where, like, operational excellence really came into play. And it was really, really awesome. Like, every day you have a fresh start. You know, you get to place your scooters in a new area. You get to open up the warehouse, repair them, and try out different flows and for me, the way I thought about it is, how can I be a little bit better every day? How can I make sure I find one new place where I can place the scooter and it will get one more extra ride? How can we change one thing in the way that the scooters are being repaired, where it will shave off seconds in terms of what it takes to repair something? So, yeah, it was. It was intense. It was really fun.

Were you. Was anything unique about San Diego compared to other cities or. Pretty much every city was operating similarly. It's just another Geo, I would say.

San Diego was the most competitive market that we had globally. I think we had seven different operators at the time coming in. There was no regulation. So most markets that you go to, there's a cap in the number of scooters that you can put. There's some rules that in the beginning there was basically nothing. And then when the rules did go into place, it was almost an overcorrection, where the rules were so intense that none of the operators could figure out how to make money and be able to deliver scooters to customers at the place and time that they wanted them to be in.

Wow, interesting. We've seen a lot of stories of scooters ending up in some pretty random spots. Do you have a memory of the most outlandish spot that a scooter ended up?

I mean, scooters are where people ride them, so I wouldn't say, like outlandish. Like they're by bus stops, they're by.

7 11, like on a roof or, you know, like places you had to retrieve them, that you're just like, how did it get here?

Not that I had seen anything in particular. Most of them are near really, like, bus stops and people's homes, like where people want to ride them, right?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay. We're trying to get some fun stories out. It's okay. So you learned a lot about marketplaces, obviously, and now you're going into a new marketplace which is competing against free groups. So take us through a little bit about good use and how it began. Take us through the founding story, I guess, a little bit.

Well, the founding story. Well, I met Darius through Lime, actually through Joe Cross, who put me in touch with him. And Darius, he's an awesome guy. He's really passionate about people like I was, and really passionate about technology. And that's kind of how we hit it off.

Darius, CEO of Suite Labs. Just so that listeners know.

Yes. The thing that really drew him into thinking about this Idea was how can we impact happiness, actually. And there's a ton of research that goes into, like, what are the actual factors that drive people's happiness? And one thing that consistently comes in is giving and gratitude. So doing things for other people. And with that in mind, so he thought about, like, hey, what are opportunities where you can do acts of giving every day without it being like a huge thing that you need to do? And we all have stuff in our house that we don't use anymore. It sits in our drawers, it clutters our closets. And there's somebody out there who could probably use that. And to have the opportunity to meet with that person. One, you meet a new person, it's always great to have another friend. Two, you get to help somebody out. You give them something, so you create space in your own house and that person says thank you in return. So that whole experience is an opportunity to impact happiness on the edges and help people engage in more acts of giving, to meet people, to be happier.

Really cool. And this is being developed in this new virtual studio, venture studio in San Diego, Eido Studios, which I think we'll hear more of in the future. So we'll keep it a little murky for now, but what's the process like of taking this idea and turning it into a business? Like, what are you, what have you done already since you've been involved for a while, and what are you kind of working on to move forward an idea into a business?

This may sound a little funny, but it's not that different from my days at Lime. I think of every day as a fresh start. Like, what can I do that is going to make the app a little bit better than it was yesterday? So we had the basic mechanics in place. We launched the app last year, not to have a real launch, but to get data and see how users interact with the product. So I look at the product, we sit down as a team, and we look at where are the points of friction, what are the changes that we can make on the edge to make the product a little bit better? We've mapped out the user experience coming from top of funnel discovery, to coming into the app, to creating their first listing to give something, to meeting up and receiving that thank you note. What are the different points of friction in that entire process so that we can just make it a little bit better. So that consists of talking to users, sitting with designers, sitting with our engineering team to figure out what are the, let's call the atomic units that we could change to just make It a little bit better. We launch it, we test it, we see how it works. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but that's okay. And the objective is to just directionally be moving in the right direction and getting better every day.

Okay, so some of the things that are fun about marketplaces compared to SaaS is that there are so many other KPIs, so many other metrics and really so many other levers and therefore business revenue models than just standard subscription, monthly subscription. Right. So what are some of the things you're looking at and how often are you. Is it daily, weekly, monthly? Like what. What is guiding you to determine your decision making on this business?

So we have two key metrics that we look at. First one is listing freshness. So we want every day to have new listings, new items that people can give and get with each other. The second metric is listing engagement. Every listing that comes onto the platform to find a new home. At the end of the day, it's a marketplace. We want stuff to be put to good hands and to continue getting used. So we want to measure how much stuff comes onto the platform and of those stuff, how many of them find a new home.

Okay, are you launching it by geographic area right now? Kind of similar as other marketplaces or what's the reach? I guess so.

We started in San Diego which is our largest market. We have small, small number of users across a couple other GEOs like Austin, Denver, Bay area. But mainly our focus is in San Diego. Like you mentioned with Marketplace is a two sided platform. You kind of need those people to meet and be close to each other. So the way that we've been running our user acquisition and we started with a very tight, dense Geo in San Diego core and then as we build density, we're starting to add other zip codes around it and expanding that reach. So right now we're covering all of San Diego and we're just driving towards density.

This isn't necessarily a new idea. Classifieds have existed and Craigslist has always had a bit of a free piece. The rise really came with Facebook having these groups where I'm sure a lot of people, potentially moms, have utilized this in exchanging baby goods. What are you learning about having it on an app? Like any difference of behavior in terms of maybe it's security or other things like that, like any behavioral differences from what existed before.

So what our users say that they like about using good use over some of our other, some other platforms is one we really care about, data privacy. Like we will Never sell a user's data. That's just something that we've decided culturally that we're never going to do. So if someone, for example, on Facebook, we all know how they leverage data. Our app is dedicated to free, so you'll never see other items that are $5 or $9. That's also a very different experience. And finally, there's no ads on our platform. So you really have a truly seamless experience. Nothing should be getting in the way of people giving and getting free stuff. Something that we always talk about through our different product features that we're designing. That is what we're doing, helping people connect and giving get free stuff easier as a result of this new feature.

Interesting. So where do you think the business models will come and what do you think scale will look like for that?

There's a couple different business models I'm thinking about. One is we just launched our group feature which allows you to create your own private, invite only community of giving. I'm wondering if there's an opportunity to have mega groups and figure out a way to monetize that. Like I'm being like an organization at least. When, when I was at some of the consulting firms, we had days of giving and days of service where we would go out into community and we would maybe like paint a wall, pick up some trash. Now with everybody being virtual, I wonder if there's an opportunity to put that in like a virtual setting. So let's say one of the consulting firms creates a group for all their employees. Their employees go out and give stuff, exchange stuff, and at the end of the year, we can help them measure what impact they had on the community in terms of carbon footprint saved, in terms of number of items put to good use.

Really cool. I think what's also unique is in San Diego we've got a number of social good, social impact entrepreneurs who have built some big businesses like Classy and gofundme. And therefore there's great talent here and there's just that concept of give first in our DNA. So it's fantastic to just see another good company building this space. Take us through. Where do you think this is? If you hit your metrics, hit where you think it needs to be. Where is this in a few years?

Well, if we're painting the world out there, I would love it that every single person before they went on Amazon to buy something, they would check the use first. I think that's what success would look to me because I just think about even myself, the number of goods that I accumulate in my house. I am sure there's somebody on my street who has that exact item and they're not using it. And they would truly be happy if I took it off their hands because we just feel, I mean I feel so guilty when I buy something and I don't use. It just sits there. It collects dust, it takes up my space. If someone wants to take it, it would bring me joy. So that's what I'm hoping for. Like before anybody goes to buy something, they check the use first.

Awesome. So where can people find it? It's in the App Store. Good use.

It's available on iOS on the App Store. It's also available on web. So GoodYou SE where you can go and sign up. It's mobile first responsive so it's easy to use on any device.

Okay, we'll have linked in the show notes too. You've been in San Diego for quite a bit. You know that we're a taco town. We got to know where's your go to taco spot.

There are two places that I love going to. Pacific Beach Fish shop. So good. So, so good. Great atmosphere. And the second one is El Pescador. Probably the freshest fish I've ever had.

Nice choices. I don't think we've had either mention before. So they'll be new in our taco database. We love it. Camille, thanks so much for being on. Thanks for kind of opening the kimono on this marketplace you're building and really hope for one to try it out and use it. I'm excited to see what goods I can find on it and share with others. And thanks again for being on the podcast.

Pleasure to be here.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neil Bloom. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music and this podcast is edited and mixed by Patrick Norton at citizenrecording.com youm can find Neil Bloom on Twitter eelbloom and on LinkedIn as well as well as fresh brewed Tech and Tacos and Tech Pod on Twitter too.

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Hey Sam.