This content was created by Tim Draper. This content was uploaded by Tim Draper. This is a YouTube fireside-chat video titled "Starting Starbucks with 3 friends | Jerry Baldwin" (published 2017-12-04). It features Joe, a program manager at Draper University, interviewing Jerry Baldwin (co‑founder of Starbucks, later president of Peet's Coffee and founder of Jerry Baldwin Winery). The excerpt covers the history and origins of coffee, Baldwin's first experiences with coffee, his path to becoming an "accidental entrepreneur," and stories about the other Starbucks co‑founders (Gordon and Zev) and how their complementary skills helped launch the business. The tone is an onstage interview/biographical conversation with practical reflections on passion and starting a company.
Chapters
And welcome to a fireside chat with Jerry Baldwin from Draper University. So I'm Joe. I'm one of the program managers here at Draper University. And as Pedram stated, Jerry is one of the co-founders of Starbucks and later on the president of Peet's Coffee and then Jerry Baldwin Winery. So Jerry, nice to have you here tonight. Thanks for joining us. Good to be here. So to start with, I kind of wanted to frame the talk. And to do that, I have a quote from Jerry right above us. And that quote is, it really helps if you're doing something you love instead of something you're spending a bunch of money on. You can become very discouraged if you're not involved in something genuine, something that you believe in, something that you're committed to. And why I wanted to frame the talk with that is passion. So Jerry has a great passion for coffee. And he followed his passion eventually into a business, which I hope a lot of you guys are getting into a business that you truly, truly care about. Because as you can see, it helps. So before we begin, as a coffee enthusiast and someone who's passionate about it, could you just give us a history of kind of where coffee came from?
Sure. Well, I don't remember saying that, but I believe it. Well, coffee— I haven't given the history in a long time. It was— there are lots of legends about how it was discovered. The most common is that a Yemenese monk noticed that his goats were particularly energetic after eating the leaves of this plant, and then started to look at the fruit. And over centuries, really. I mean, this is— one source has that at about the year 600. And the first discovery that I'm aware of of anyone roasting coffee beans found in archaeological digs is about the year 1000. And this was in Yemen. And there's some Ethiopians who claim that Coffea arabica was— originated in Ethiopia, but I think today everyone agrees that it started in Yemen. So it began to be traded, but carefully, because exporting beans from Yemen was a capital offense. And this was true of a lot of coffee propagation. It became so popular in Europe over— thank you for drinking that Peet's Coffee. I see that cup. Thank you. That it was very expensive in Europe, and so it was protected. And it spread from Yemen. It came into Europe, you know, variously, late 1500s, 1580, into Venice. And the Turks actually, who were drinking coffee in the 1500s, Are said to have left a bag. This is another story of the propagation at the gate to Vienna when they were unsuccessful in the siege of Vienna. There was some coffee left when they retreated, and this Polish guy said, "I know what to do with this." Roasted the coffee, and then we started the the coffee houses in Vienna, which of course are famous to this day. Went to England. The propagation of the plant itself, you know, was bit by bit. There's another great story about a French seaman who protected his plant and fed it half of his water ration while he sailed from France to Martinique and planted it there, and it became the Caribbean coffee. Napoleon had it planted in Paris, not successfully. And the Dutch took it to Indonesia since early 1600s. So through the Caribbean, through the Pacific, into Indonesia. It's grown tropically. It really isn't very good, Kona fans notwithstanding, in my opinion, above like 12 or 15 degrees north and south latitude. And altitude does help. No, I'll leave it at that. We can go on.
Oh, yeah. It sounds like you know all—
It's a big subject.
Oh, yeah. The long history of coffee. Well, eventually it landed here in the US. And then, to kind of frame the time that you were growing up in, were your parents coffee drinkers?
Yes, for a while. Then it was fashionable to have an ulcer, which they developed, and then they drank tea.
But do you remember the first time you had coffee?
I'm sorry?
Do you remember your first ever cup of coffee?
Well, I remember the first cup. My father was picking me up from after a basketball game. I was a freshman or sophomore in high school. And so I went into a diner and had a cup of coffee, loaded it up with cream and sugar. It was really awful. I mean, I have no idea whether it was a good cup of coffee and I didn't like it, or it was a terrible cup of coffee and I didn't like it. But after I got to college, I started to drink it and went on from there. And I recently had my DNA done, and it said— one of the things that it said is you probably have a high tolerance for caffeine and like coffee. You got me.
So, but now that you mentioned college, so in college, And growing up, did you have aspirations that you would ever start a business?
No, I really thought— I mean, my father was a milkman. He delivered milk door-to-door. My aspirations were modest. I thought I would end up as— in college, I was a mailboy at Crown Zellerbach, which was a big paper company. And so there were, I don't know, 6 or 8 floors of people pushing paper. I thought I'd probably end up in there someday. As I described to you on the phone, I feel like I'm an accidental entrepreneur.
A lot of entrepreneurs are accidental entrepreneurs.
When we started, and I wasn't even aware of this, there were 4 schools of entrepreneurship in the United States.
When you started Starbucks?
University of Texas at Austin, Michigan State, and 2 others I can't recall.
Then just like a great cup of coffee, starting a business generally is great with friends. You started this business with 3 friends.
Yes.
We're going to talk about each one of them. The first one, actually— oh, that's what was supposed to be up there when we were talking about your first cup of coffee. Yes. It was Gordon. How did you meet Gordon?
Gordon and I started to be roommates in our sophomore year of college. Over the years, we were roommates in lots of different places, you know, until we moved on in life. He's a very good friend.
Roommates in college?
I talk to him regularly.
Do you remember the first time you met him? Like, what your first impression was?
Well, not the first time I met him, but neither of us had— we went to University of San Francisco, and at the time we were required to live in the dorm, and until, I don't know, whenever. We both said the same thing independently, that, well, if you have to do it, why bother with the deposit? I'll pay you when I get there. And then that year, our sophomore year, it was— the dorm was full. Oh, damn. So we had to get an apartment.
Got it.
And we were just standing there in the lobby of the dormitory saying, well, wanna get an apartment? Sure.
And what type of guy was he? Was he a— is he a friendly guy? What type of guy is Gordon?
Oh yeah, very smart. You know, speaking of entrepreneurs, Red Hook Ale, fallen on hard times, but that was his idea. And he started at Starbucks, an advertising firm that was really successful in the Northwest. His partner produced the first and second Starbucks logos. The Peet's logo, although it's morphed since then, and lots of others.
And then, so you two were roommates in college, and then you guys at one point met Zev.
Zev, yeah. Well, now Gordon met Zev at the Seattle World's Fair in whatever year that was, and at a certain point during college, they were both taking a year off to go to Europe, and Gordon saw the ad on a bulletin board, you know, driving to the East Coast, want to share a ride? So they signed up and we've been friends ever since.
You rode with them along the East Coast?
Well, I did not, but on their way west, they came to San Francisco and I stayed in school. I met Zev then and then later on.
And what type of personality was he? Did you guys, all 3 of you, have complementary kind of personalities?
That was, that's one of the, that's one of the things we did right without even knowing it. is that we weren't— we didn't duplicate each other's skills. And there's no substitute for having complementary skills, talents, and interests when you're building a team. You know, don't build— it should be obvious. It's not always. But, you know, get complements, not clones.
And so I'm assuming the 3 of you got along very well.
Well, yes. Although I will say that when we started the business, we each had strong opinions. And we expressed them strongly, forcefully, and sometimes at high volume. And— but we always resolved it. And once a decision was made, there was— we just got on with it. But there were heated discussions.
