STRETCH: TRANSFORMING GROCERY SHOPPING WITH ANDY ELLWOOD

E99 STRETCH_ TRANSFORMING GROCERY SHOPPING WITH ANDY ELLWOOD

Transcript

Dalton Anderson (00:01.094) Welcome to the podcast where we discuss entrepreneurship and two trends and the occasional book review. Did you know Instacart's AI pricing experiments might be costing families over $1,200 a year. Today we're going to discuss why Silicon Valley needs to stop building extractive algorithms and start choosing good quests with Andy Elwood, founder of Stretch. Andy, welcome to the show.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (00:21.503) Thanks so much for having me.

Dalton Anderson (00:24.76) Andy, when we had our intro call a couple weeks ago, you talked about a couple topics, but one that caught my eye was this article from Founders Fund. But before we jump into that, do you want to just provide a little bit background on how you got where you are right now? This is not your first rodeo. The stretch is not necessarily zero to one, but maybe zero to like four.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (00:51.854) It's fair to say. No, I, you know, having the chance to be a founder again is always a privilege. Having the chance to be a founder again and finish what you started is an absolute privilege. And that's how I feel every day when I wake up and start working on stretch, because I started thinking about this problem of pricing transparency for groceries in 2013 and went on and built a company that was called basket.com.

We raised $20 million of venture capital. We had 650,000 families that we were helping. We had crowdsourced 118,000 grocery stores with 2 million products in our database. And unfortunately, we were a victim of the pandemic and a couple other tragic things that we can jump into if you want to. But all in all, we were right, but we were early. And a lot of things that happened during the pandemic and the way that pricing

got recalibrated at grocery stores to allow for curbside pickup or for delivery, reopened this opportunity. And I met and decided to partner with somebody who's been building in the grocery space for a long time. And when we looked at the opportunity, said, you know, I saw this opportunity in 2013, but then in 2025, the opportunity was just glaring me in the face that it was still there and maybe even a better opportunity. so super, super.

proud to be building what we're building and excited for all that comes next.

Dalton Anderson (02:20.666) Yeah. And especially the whole insect heart scandal that we'll get into a little bit later in the episode really puts your company and the limelight for sure.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (02:32.576) It was, it was, I've never had more people reach out to me about a single article. when, when, that, when that headline came out, was my, inbox that I have, you know, my phone, my messages, my DMS was Andy, did you see this? and I, I, I saw it and said, we're, you know, we're doing the right work here.

Dalton Anderson (02:54.052) Yeah, no, for sure. And we'll dive into it, but the article definitely is is bonkers for sure. But so in this episode, we're just going to highlight the Founders Fund article. We're going to be discussing this Instacart AI pricing scandal, and then we're to be talking about the solution that Andy Elwood's company Stretch provides. And that's going to be it. So before we do any of that,

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (02:56.75) You

Dalton Anderson (03:22.532) I'm Dalton Anderson. This is Andy Elwood from stretch, and we're going to jump into this article from founders fun. And it's really about the philosophy of like, what is a good quest? And there's a matrix of these quests and there is, there's good, good hard quests. There's hard, hard quests, or there's, there's bad hard quests. There's good hard quests and then there's easy. And then there are

bad, easy. And basically in a general sense is like you want to focus a lot of your resources and talents on good hard quests because they add a lot of value to society. And then you never want to focus any of your talent or you definitely don't want society moving towards bad hard quests. Like an example on the matrix of bad hard quests would be like genocide, which no one wants that. So that's definitely not something that we're, we're striving for. And

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (04:14.99) You

Dalton Anderson (04:20.038) a good hard quest would be like the Apollo program or a full body scan diagnostic for cancer. And then the list goes on, but it, really is something that you really resonated with myself when you talked about it, but it also resonated with you and was one of your cornerstones on stretch. So you want to dive in a little bit about your feelings about what is a good quest and

Do you think that the best and brightest are working on these good hard quests?

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (04:54.082) Yeah, it's a great question. So when I was presented with the opportunity to jump back into the founder seat.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (05:02.486) I initially rejected that opportunity. I had a lot of things going on. I had still had PTSD from the last time and the way it went down, you know, when my last company finished. And also my mom wasn't doing so well health-wise and my wife was pregnant. And I was like, you know what? This is not a good year to start a new company. I know what that's like. I know what it's like to start a new company. You know, this is the...

fifth company that I've been a part of launching. And I knew what it would take and I knew what it was asking of me to do it. And so I initially just kind of said, you know, not this year, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll support the founder. I'll support, you know, somebody who wants to tackle this, but not me. And when I had left my last company, I knew that eventually I was going to want to be a founder again. Like, you know, if you, if you're a founder, you just kind of gets in your blood and there's

There's very few things in this world that are as exciting as going from an idea to literally seeing people walk into your office that believe in this idea so much that they were willing to quit their comfy jobs at Metta to come be a part of your team.

It's an incredible experience and I've done it a few times and I knew what it would be like to do it again. But I put together four non-negotiables back in 2020 as my last company was winding down. I said, I'm never gonna be a founder again unless all four of these things are true at the same time. And from 2020 to 2025, it helped me not just go found another company for the sake of founding another company. They were a high enough barrier of entry.

And one of the ones, the one that probably disqualified the most opportunities that came my direction, especially in the age of vibe coding, especially in the age of transient software, where if you decided to this weekend, we could launch a company and get our first client on Monday. The thing that kept me from doing any of those things was one of my non-negotiables forever being a founder again, was it had to be a 10 year problem. I had to believe that I wanted to think about, talk about, and obsess about solving a problem for a decade.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (07:14.006) if I was going to begin to work on any of the problems. And with that comes, especially right now, the true understanding that the solution to the problem that I'm setting out to work on for the next 10 years doesn't exist yet. And the software or the platform to make it exist actually might not even exist yet, but directionally, I know that I understand the problem enough to know it's not something that I'm just gonna able to figure out with some smart people in two years.

So that was kind of like the big thing. And so, you so I worked on some climate tech projects, which I'm super proud of the work that we did there, but I never went all in on any one in particular. And so when the opportunity was presented to me to think about what we're building with grocery, what we're with stretch around the grocery industry, and I started to think about the 650,000 families that we'd helped with basket.com. I'm a big journal and I went back and I reread some of my journals and I was looking at some of the families who like literally send me Christmas cards.

still. Like when I announced that my wife and I were pregnant, like they were in my Facebook comments, like saying, you know, hey, it's so great to see, you've got a family of your own now. these are people who like I genuinely built a relationship with because we were saving them thousands of dollars a year on groceries by providing pricing transparency for groceries in the same way that Expedia does for travel or Zillow does for homes. And I thought about it I was like, okay, well, the data is different, but the problem's the same.

But with the data being different, things that changed during the pandemic around the way that the data was structured, I started to explore, I started to scratch the edge a little bit more. And then I was like, oh man, not only is this a 10 year problem, not only is this something that I would want to talk about for 10 years, I've already been talking about it for 12. And so I went to my wife and I said, hey, I think I've got to do this. And she said, I think you do. And as a family, we made the decision and jumped in and it's been an incredible, incredible decision and absolutely the right one.

given everything else that's happened since we decided to take the plunge.

Dalton Anderson (09:16.902) Yeah, what a ride. And, and we talked about it a little bit earlier, but the Instacart scandal that came out a couple of weeks ago from the Consumer Reports, it just, I did, I actually did couple episodes on this because I had some questions from the listeners saying, Hey, well, what are we doing about this? Like legally, like legally there should be some issues here. Like why aren't things applying? And then I did a whole bunch of research on

on different laws and how those laws came about and these acts that are close but don't necessarily apply. And overall, people were pretty upset about the situation with Instacart and the fact that the same person in the same area is paying a different, they're not the same people, but you know what I mean? Like the same person in a geographical area for the same product.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (09:53.944) Yeah.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (10:10.146) Yep.

Dalton Anderson (10:14.308) is paying different prices either because of the desperation of how urgent they need that product or how they potentially have a brand affinity with that product so they know they'll pay a higher price. All of that stuff really rubbed me the wrong way. And so I just wanted to provide your perspective on the scandal and how that positions these type of solutions in the marketplace.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (10:25.998) Mm-hmm.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (10:31.182) Thanks

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (10:41.912) Yeah. So the idea of surge pricing, the idea of a sliding scale on pricing, that's not actually a new thing. That's not actually on its own a problem, right? Surge pricing at JFK at 6 PM for your Uber makes sense, right? Like if you want that driver to go sit in traffic and wait for you, but taking an Uber home from JFK,

Dalton Anderson (11:03.398) Mm-hmm. Agreed.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (11:11.31) is a choice. And you could wait 10 minutes or you could take the subway or you could go stand in the taxi line. It's a choice. Feeding our families is not a choice. We have to feed our families. And the way in which the prices are being, were being tested and manipulated, you know, I think the phrase that was used was the shopper ceiling. How much would you be willing to overpay for something?

because of your, as you said, affinity for it, you've purchased it in the past, et cetera, was just fascinating to see, even the way that they described it in the internal documents that came out in the consumer reports. And it was possible because there isn't a source of truth in groceries. That, you know, for, you know, like when I buy a flight, you know, I'm from Texas originally, when I buy a flight home to Dallas, I am probably gonna fly American Airlines because of the number of flights that they have from New York to Dallas every day.

But I still start my purchasing trip on kayak.com because I want to make sure that American is pretty close to United or Delta, right? I'm not trying to fly spirit, but you know, if it's pretty close to United or Delta, like I'm going to book American because I've got a little bit of status there and maybe I'll get an upgrade or I'll have a larger seat because I'm a tall guy. When it comes to groceries, we drive

to a store that we hope carries the products that are on our list, we look at the price that they have there and we're like, I don't know, is that how much this costs? Like maybe. for delivery, they were able to toggle it even more and have even less transparency around the prices that they were paying. electronic shelf tags are starting to pop up in a lot of locations. That got struck down by the Supreme Court. Elizabeth Warren was all over it. And so, you know,

Bill Belichick said, if nobody's accused in you of cheating, then you're probably not trying hard enough. And I think that that's what is happening here, right? People have been, they've been given an engine, they're trying to take a mile. And I think it was last week, the week before, it was less than a month after this Consumer Reports article came out, Instacart said that we've discontinued that part of the program. And they probably have, they said that they did. But also, if I wanted to find out if they had, where would I go to find that source of truth?

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (13:39.095) And those are just some of the questions that we're asking that stretch. I know a lot of people in the grocery industry, I know a lot of people work very, very hard to serve the shoppers and it's not the grocery industry is bad, but they're being given a lot of pressure from investors, from their board, from the public markets to figure out how to squeeze as much revenue out of every trip to the grocery store as they can. And unfortunately that disadvantages those that don't have the resources.

to be able to do the research, to be able to think about all the different ways that they could leverage their time or research to go and figure out what the best price is. And with Stretch, what our value proposition is, is you upload your grocery shopping list for this week to the Stretch app. We look at every store that's on our platform that's close by to you, and we tell you before you leave your house, which grocery store has all the products that are on your list, and then what the total price for that whole entire shopping list is at each store.

So it's $110 over here, it's $130 over here, it's $150 over there. And the $150 option might be the closest option. So if you're in a rush, you might be willing to pay a little bit more to go to a store that's closer by, but at least you know, right? At least you know, similar to me with my American Airlines, at least I know I'm paying $50 more to fly American so that I can go to the terminal that I'm used to and board in group two. But I know that I paid that much, right? There's transparency around making that choice.

It's ultimately, stretch is about giving agency to shoppers so that they can make the best decisions for them and their families this week.

Dalton Anderson (15:10.572) Yeah, I think that's a fair and weighted opinion on the situation. And I think people understand search pricing with Uber and these other type of ride sharing apps. And then people understand supply and demand pricing like, hey, I'm trying to fly this flight and it's near full. It's going to be more expensive. I think the essence of trying to, I guess, maximize the ceiling of which the

product may be offered at varied by consumer preferences is where transparency is important because I think that there is there's enough transparency and background on how surge pricing or these other things work. Like it makes sense. But I think the main concern would be like there isn't enough transparency for you to know that this is even happening. And I think that's one of the main things is like

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (15:41.423) Mm-hmm.

Dalton Anderson (16:08.376) Okay, maybe it's a company preference and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with the company charging more for bread and this at this store on or in their online portal. But it is also prudent and important for the shopper to be aware of the choices that they're making so they can be informed.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (16:30.959) Yeah, yeah, there's certainly be legislation around, you know, understanding how those prices change and actually disclosing was this price created by an algorithm. And even just that disclosure is a step in the right direction.

Dalton Anderson (16:50.47) Yeah, disclosure and then some of, it depends on like the state or which bill is in flight, but I know that there's some where there's some proposals of saying, okay, like you need to state how the algorithm uses AI pricing. then how are you justifying that this is,

changing dynamically. Like how are you justifying that? And then please provide the support for your decision and your pricing algorithm, which I think is many more steps more than just the label, but I think it's good that people are thinking about it and they find that it's important like our representatives.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (17:18.191) Mm-hmm.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (17:37.167) Yeah, well, and also just being able to understand that, you know, if bread has a different price on different days of the week and different times of the day, when is the best time to go? When is the worst time to go? you know, like for, you know, traffic, you know, I worked at Waze, right? It was clear, right? You could say, hey, if I leave at one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock or four o'clock to make this trip, like when am I going to have the best chance of avoiding traffic? Well, we could show you, right? And having some of that.

insight. So it's like, hey, it is going to cost you more if you go grocery shopping at 6 p.m. on Friday night. It just is. But if you're able to, if it's important to you to save money, then we recommend Tuesdays at 10 a.m. Cool. Let me know. Like if you have to do that, there should be some way of me understanding how the system works. And that's not currently the case.

Dalton Anderson (18:30.254) No, it's more black box for sure, which I know people are going to be less comfortable with it now with just, I guess, the context and publicity and just the polarization of the two opposing viewpoints. But as you said, it's just it's all about transparency. And that's what the stretch app does. And I downloaded the stretch app and I tried it out. I like to think when you're when you're on boarded as a user,

It asks you, hey, do you want to create your own list or do you want to go with like our staple list? And so I went with the staple list because I was trying out the app and so I was like, OK, like, let's just let's just get started here. And. It walks you through, OK, here's your list, and if you want to add anything you can. And then the next step is like you put in your your preference on on the brand that which you're trying to shop with, and then you.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (19:13.7) Yeah.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (19:26.926) Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (19:27.184) come through like, okay, this is like kind of the milks that I typically like to buy or these are the type of eggs I like to buy. And then after you do that and I timed it, it took me about four minutes to go through like the initial onboarding, the signup and then the preference of the brands. And I guess it could have been a little bit faster, but I wasn't necessarily like overly focused, like, okay, this is my whole life depends on this. but.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (19:52.607) Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (19:54.663) It took around like four minutes. And then after that, it populated my list, my shopping list across New York city, cause I live, I live in Manhattan and it showed me the different stores to which I could save money. And so they did have, I did have a target nearby and there was many targets displayed on the map that had the items that I was looking for. And then there was a dollar general that I think was $15 cheaper, although it was missing like one of the egg or

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (20:20.687) Thanks

Dalton Anderson (20:24.038) one of the items that I was that I was looking for on my shopping list. And it lets me know it's like, hey, like it is missing an item. Like this isn't the full list, but it is. It is cheaper when you compare item to item. And then you have to make, you can make that decision on what you want to do for me, since I live in New York city and Andy does as well is I don't have a car. don't know if Andy, if you have a car, but I don't have a car. So for me, the distance is probably most important. And the distance is worth like an extra $15 because

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (20:46.691) Yeah.

Dalton Anderson (20:53.136) For me to transport my goods from A to B in a backpack, like on the train and bring them back to my house is more hassle than just walking to like my local Target or Trader Joe's.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (21:07.501) Yeah, yeah, no, we call that proximity pricing preference. And you're right, you know, in New York City, in Manhattan, you know, I joke that if I ask people, you know, how many blocks would you walk to save 20 bucks, most people would be like, I wouldn't. know, like, like people like their local their corner stores. And I think that eventually, we will be able to have the type of coverage here in the city that, you know, will be a little bit more.

Dalton Anderson (21:10.811) Yeah.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (21:35.469) nuanced than we are right now. the national coverage that we're starting with, was kind of, as you mentioned, was big bucks, the targets, the dollar generals, the Walmarts, the Kroger's, the Aldis. And for most Americans, there's four or five grocery stores within the three mile radius of where they live. If you're kind of like near urban or suburban. And that's kind of where is kind of our jump off point.

And I think that one thing, the new version of the app that's coming out, next week, allows you to, when you're going through that list of the brand preferences that you're looking for, if you don't care about a certain type of brand around, as you mentioned, like milk, right? If you're just like, just give me 2%, I don't really care if it's Bored Inn or if it's Daisy Queen or whatever it is. We'll just say, pick for me. And you'll just get the 2 % milk. That's the best at whatever the store is.

But then for other things, you really do have a preference when it comes to what type of soda you like or what type of chips that you like or what type of cereal you're gonna go after. And that's where Stretch gets smart every time that you use it to understand and kind of build your digital pantry. So that when we uncover or discover that there's something on sale that is typically in your pantry, in the future, we're gonna be able to let you know that item or those items.

Dalton Anderson (22:41.691) Mm-hmm.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (22:59.395) are on sale and so continue to not just be a reactive but start to be a proactive partner for you in your grocery shopping. That's where the personalization gets really fun and really builds that trust with the shoppers.

Dalton Anderson (23:14.564) No, I agree. And I understand that New York City is not the target market to definitely to start with, given that there's just a lot of like bodegas and delis and small grocery shops. Like there's not that there's not a Walmart superstore in a Costco and there's a couple of Aldi's, there's they're quite spread around and they're not near me. Unfortunately, I'd love to be near an Aldi.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (23:30.947) Yeah.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (23:41.763) Hahaha.

Dalton Anderson (23:43.591) I agree with you and I like the personalization aspect of the app and it's step one where you're able to personalize the app to the user, build a digital pantry and provide that transparency. What do you think is the next step? You talked about your update and just providing additional value to the user. Where do you see stretch going?

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (24:10.915) Yeah, so think that when it's all said and done, exists to provide agency and choice. And being able to work with retailers, being able to work with brands, being able to work with delivery companies are all things that are on our roadmap. We've actually already had some incredible conversations with some of the top grocery stores and a few really, really exciting brands that I'm excited to...

announced partnerships with hopefully in Q1. And when we think about what stretch ultimately exists to do is every time you think about going to the grocery store, we want you to open stretch, right? Because the list of building experience is something that takes place over the course of three or four days, right? You're adding things to your list, adding things to your list, adding things to your list. And they're like, all right, it's time to go to the store. To go to the store part, you click get recommendation and it gives you your choices.

This is what's closest to you. This is what's cheapest. And this is who can deliver it to you the fastest, right? Ultimately, that's the state. And you're gonna make that decision based on what your priorities are that day, right? You might be in a rush. You might be having people coming over. You might have a full day and you just don't have time to get to the store and you're willing to pay the premium to have it delivered, but you're gonna know what that premium is and you're gonna be able to make a decision accordingly. You may say, you know what?

I've got some time today. The kids are at school, the spouse is on a work trip. I'm gonna drive a little bit further to save 50 bucks, no problem. But ultimately that's where we want Stretch to be is kind of like in a perfect world. In my dream of all dreams, Stretch is a lock screen app, right? That every time you think about adding something to your grocery list, which most people do, like as I said over course of three or four days as they're planning their trip, you open it quickly, add it to the list, close it.

open quickly, add it to the list, close it. We're working on partnerships or platform builds with Siri and with Alexa. Those are on the roadmap. So people can just yell, hey Siri, add this to my stretch list. We're also even looking at chat GPT's app store and potentially being a skill within some of the large language models. People think about recipes and then after you get the recipe, then you have to turn it into a shopping list. Well,

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (26:31.791) they're turning them into dumb shopping lists, right? The shopping lists are still just buy this item, but it's not attached to inventory, it's not attached to price. It's not gonna actually, they're starting to do some delivery integrations, but that's for the privileged few who do delivery all of the time, cool, no problem. But for everybody else, the other 90 % of people who still go to the grocery store themselves, I think that there's a huge opportunity for us to be that partner for them.

Dalton Anderson (27:00.686) No, the vision makes sense in the direction and you mentioned about the shopping shopping lists and recipe integration potentially. I would love that. Like as somebody who looks at recipes all the time, it's such a pain in the butt to take the list of ingredients that you need and then buy them. If you're if you're trying to shop for like many things like I like it for my preference and workflow when it comes to cooking is I like to meal prep.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (27:10.159) You

Dalton Anderson (27:30.202) So I'll pick out like a couple of different recipes and typically I try to try something completely out of my wheelhouse and either goes well or famously fails. And I'll take the ingredients list and I would love it to just be like, okay, like add, add to my stretch shopping list. And then from there it has this price and transparency builds, builds your, builds your

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (27:40.847) you

Dalton Anderson (27:52.898) lists your shopping list and figures out where I should go to get those things and whether or not they even have it in stock is also important because you go to places and they don't have your stuff. And I'm like, that, kind of sucks. Like, especially in New York city as it has just moved here is that the stores don't necessarily have an expansive selection. And even if they do have an expanded selection, it doesn't necessarily mean that they carry what you're looking for. And so

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (28:09.071) Right.

Dalton Anderson (28:20.845) you can use their app, sometimes the app, I don't know. It's weird that sometimes the app isn't necessarily as up to date as like other things. Like I feel like sometimes a vendor, like a third party vendor has better data on whether or not that item is there versus their app, which I find odd. I feel like if it's in house, they should have the best data, but who knows? I don't know how that all plays out, but what I'm saying is the item isn't always there for one.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (28:43.619) you

Dalton Anderson (28:50.639) Nor is it in stock. so having an ability for the user just to like transfer that information into the app is like I would say golden. I've been looking for something like that, like that consistently does it. I know there's there's apps that they have their own recipe and they want to be like a kind of a recipe walled garden where they'll you can add your recipe to their list and then you can like use Amazon or something like that.

but it doesn't necessarily add the flexibility. Like I would love to be like, can I order this? Can I get delivered? Can Amazon deliver it with their grocery subscription service or is it better to just walk over and do what I need to do at Target or this various grocery store?

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (29:35.363) Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a very fragmented industry to say the least. There's a lot of little small solutions. And if you've figured them out, right, if you've put in the time to like get your favorite recipe app customized to you, eventually it works the way that you want it to, but it's not connected to price, it's not connected to inventory.

Dalton Anderson (29:40.785) Hmm.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (30:04.079) A few of them are starting to be connected to like a delivery service. But again, most people, 90 % of people still go to a grocery store. 80 % shop in store and then another 10 % do curbside pickup. And for 90 % of $1.8 trillion is a lot of groceries.

Dalton Anderson (30:22.119) Yeah, and everybody, everybody needs to either go or get them delivered. Or, I mean, as you said, the majority of us go and get our groceries. So just having a way to understand what decision makes sense, makes sense. And that's the quest that stretches on. Do you want to talk about a little bit?

on encouraging other founders or people in this headspace of like, I want to start a company. Like how to think about working towards or executing on what would be like a good hard quest or a good quest.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (31:05.315) Yeah, I think the first question that I would ask when thinking about an idea that you have, right? Because ideas are so plentiful now, right? Like you can ask your favorite LLM to come up with a startup idea and it will do it for you, right? You can give it some constraints and it'll encourage you to jump off that cliff, build your wings on the way down. But because ideas are no longer the...

Dalton Anderson (31:18.919) I'll tell you it's the best idea ever.

You

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (31:34.553) barrier to entry, everybody's got an idea. You can generate as many as you want all day long for free, right? To decide to actually go and put time, effort and resources towards an idea, the first question that I like to ask is, is it a multivitamin? Or is it a painkiller? And I'll tell you what I mean. When I left my house this morning to go to the office, I knew I was gonna be talking to you and I knew I had some investor calls immediately after. If

On my way to the office this morning, I realized I didn't take my multivitamins.

Am I going to stop at CVS and buy a new jar of multivitamins to make sure I take my multivitamins before I begin my day? I'm not. I should have taken it this morning, but I forgot. A lot of startups are multivitamins where it's like, that'd be cool. But if it doesn't exist, that's fine also. But if I have a headache that's preventing me from doing work,

Dalton Anderson (32:22.053) Hmm.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (32:36.815) from having this conversation with you, from being able to give a good presentation to the investor I'm speaking with next. I am 100 % running out and grabbing an Advil before I continue with rest of my day. And thinking about the painkiller startup is what I think is a really good first litmus test of who's in pain, how much pain are they in?

and what is a potential solution to that pain that could be created with the new paradigms that exist in the world today, with the new technologies that have been released, with the new ways of thinking about things. And I think that that's, for me, it was just a really good jump off point. There's a lot of really great efficiency apps that make my email better. But I personally am just not gonna get out of bed in the morning for building a more efficient email flow.

Like that's just, it's fine. I'm glad somebody's passionate about it, but it's not me. And that's the other thing is, is when it's all said and done, like it has to be your thing that like being a founder is crazy. Like no one should ever be a founder. Like it's nuts. It's the hardest thing that you will ever do. But when you're so driven nuts by the problem that you're trying to solve, that it makes sense to become a founder to solve that problem. That's when you know you found the right problem for you.

Dalton Anderson (34:05.297) That was a perfect analogy about them. This is the first time I've heard that the multivitam of the painkiller. I've heard often like how much would people pay for it and what are their problems? But the painkiller and the vitamins like really black and white. It's like, okay, do you actually, would you, would you stop your day to leave yourself a pain or not? It's, very straightforward on, the direction of which you need to take yourself with the next part of your idea.

And then you also talked about the 10 year problem. how long would you be willing to work on this or how long would it take potentially for you to solve this problem, correct?

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (34:44.111) Yeah, yeah. And I think that's ultimately what you're signing up for. There's conversation ahead with some investors. They're like, look, if you say yes to our term sheet, you're saying yes to us for the next seven years. And that's why you run a process, why you talk to as many people as you can. People, if you're working on a hard, problem, if you have a solution to somebody's pain killer,

like you are someone's painkiller. You can raise money, right? There's a lot of people that are looking for the next opportunity, looking for the next deal. But when it's all said and done, like you really have got to be ready to like live it, breathe it, and then go, you know, introduce it to other people and say, hey, leave your cushy job and come work on this with me. I'm going to pay you less than what they're paying you. But you get to work on this. And some people are going be like, yeah, you're right. That's what I want to do. And, you know, so it's, it's, you know, you have to be the one.

you know, who is grabbing onto that vision and then sharing it with others. And so if the idea is not that for you, then keep thinking about it. Keep waiting for that idea to pop up and present itself. look for, know, a thing that I've told, you know, young entrepreneurs to do in the past is write down everything that pisses you off for a month. Just a list. Like every time you get flustered, every time you get angry, every time it's like, man.

Just write it down. Don't do anything with it. Just write it down and look to see if there's a theme that emerges around the things that you would want to build a painkiller for. And ask other people, like what pissed you off this week? I was at a networking event recently and that was like the opening question was like, hey everyone, let's go around the room and just share something that pissed you off this week. And it was really interesting how many people, like, there's commonalities to the things that pissed them off. And so we were like, why has nobody built something to fix that?

That's the, it's not like, could you build it? It's that it like, it has to be.

Dalton Anderson (36:50.651) Yeah, once again, that's a great perspective. I was thinking about a funny part of, you you've got to convince somebody to jump ship and go to this super risky shop. Because as a founding a company, it's not a it's not a sure gig for sure. And I was thinking, OK, like if you don't have a compelling problem, you just you just you just have a you're just maxed out on charisma. You to just got ultimate Riz going because you're trying to convince somebody to do something that.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (37:17.361) Hahaha.

Dalton Anderson (37:20.547) It's really not that compelling, somehow convince them to do it. It's like, okay, well, you just made your hard problem even harder, you know? But no lovely, lovely having you on the show, Andy, and appreciate the advice to young founders and founders, aspiring founders to be. If people wanted to get in contact with you or stretch and download the app or interact with you, what's the best way that they can do that?

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (37:27.599) Exactly.

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (37:42.511) Thanks

Andy Ellwood - Stretch (37:48.215) Yeah, the website is stretchformore.com, stretchformore.com. And so that's where we've got our job listings. We've got the download links there to reach out there. I am at Andy Elwood on every social platform and I, for better or worse, read all of my DMs and reply to all of them. That's actually how I met my current co-founder. He cold DMed me on LinkedIn and...

It's been off to the races ever since. But I think that I'm a very curious person and my assumption is that everybody that I interact with can teach me something. And I like to say that that perspective has increased my luck surface area and opened up doors for me that I wouldn't have had otherwise. And so super grateful for anybody who's curious about what we're either from wanting to invest in it or wanting to join the team. But we're building here in New York City

It's a really exciting time to be building in the grocery space because a lot of people are talking about it and they're going to keep talking about it throughout the next few years as we solve this problem.

Dalton Anderson (38:58.011) Thank you so much, Andy, for being on the show. Of course, where we are in this world, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Talk to you next week. Thank you.