(#190) The AI Grocery Revolution w/ Andy Ellwood

Everyone welcome back to Kyle Talks from Kyle and we talk we have a great conversation with you today my guest today is Andy Oh, what he is a serial entrepreneur. He's built companies Facebook has bought them Google's bought his companies And he also sold planes for Warren buffet in our conversation today. We talk about his new company. He started stretch It's an AI platform grocery platform To help families kind of go about rising food cost But we also talk about the bigger picture. We talk about the future of AI agents working on your behalf And whether this technology is going to completely evaluate humanity Or assist humanity We have so much good conversations here sit back and relax and enjoy my conversation with Andy L would Andy L would welcome to the podcast Thank you for making time Jumping right into it Who is Andy? What have you done? What are you doing right now? Just fill us up on everything I am a repeat startup founder that is constantly looking for ways to leverage collective knowledge That there's a little bit of things that you know a little bit of things that I know if we put those things together Jump over the ground and spit out something. Is it something that we know that's more And so I've been a part of companies that leverage collective knowledge of the past 15 20 years And I'm building a new one called stretch which is the first ever smart grocery shopping list helping people save time and money on every single trip to the grocery store We're we've launched Over the holidays and we're saving people about a thousand dollars a year on groceries just by simply using present transparency Like what we expect to have for most other things in our purchase history like Zillow for homes or Expedia for travel but for whatever reason there's no source of truth when it comes to groceries And we decided we should build one Also, I have to ask I heard you sold planes or something like that. Can you tell us about? I'm interested actually yeah, yeah I got my start studying finance and college and always had kind of an entrepreneurial bent Through that I was you know entrepreneurship is even easier if you're good at selling people things and You know, I believe that there's two types of people in the world people who are in sales and people who are in denial that they're in sales And we're all selling something right and You know the sooner that you lean into the fact that sales is a really valuable skill the more stuff I think most of us would have and so my first job at a college was selling life insurance Which if you can sell life insurance you can sell anything else A great the most popular conversation to turn into a close like Hey, Kyle, you've so much your yes recently. Yeah, I've got something for you. You know So that was my you know my first job out of college But fortunately, you know when If you're good at something it where it gets around and so Warren Buffett has a private jet company And they were looking for somebody to lead sales in the North Tech region where I was based and selling private jets to celebrities billionaires and athletes is more fun than selling life insurance So okay, I come from a sales background I liked I grew with you a thousand wholeheartedly you Know your in sales or you're lying to yourself. That's so true so true With any job really I'm my salesperson mind is how does that work? Did you send like cold emails? Hey, I got this plane like how does that? Yeah, well, so the best part about having Warren Buffett own the company is he's pretty good at marketing Um, and so you know he uh, you know, it comes with all net jets He became a client of net net net just started in the late 80s Warren Buff became a client in 1995 He liked to company so much he bought the company in 1996 And so 96 on you know, it was part of the the the Berkshire portfolio and The company that worked for his marquee jet which was a you know I'm share version of the card and you know, it was talked about by a lot of really amazing people It was actually on the first season of the apprentice with Donald Trump Was like come up with a marketing campaign for marquee jet right and so you know Jesse itzler who a lot of people have you know seen more recently America said a blatantly, you know, he was our boss and you know, absolutely incredible marketer So you know, they were they were always doing sense. They were always having celebrities involved and so You know always advertising the right places, you know, the the marquee jet super wool party was like a honest ticket in the early 2000s Everybody wanted to go to that you know to that event and so uh, you know, just word of mouth You know when there's about 10,000 people who you could possibly sell to everybody kind of knows a little bit about what you're doing Vincent to function of making sure that you you know are able to show up with the right information and make sure you get the right jet on the ground You know for the for the way that you need So yeah, but I think the most interesting part about you know the the sales process was It was fun to work with the celebrities. It was fun to work with the athletes But the thing that I learned the most from was the people who are like the celebrities of industries and you've never heard of them I like tell them that's the thing that they do and if you were in their industry you like you know They're the top of the game But like to most of us the world you've never heard of them and so they they enjoyed being rich without being famous And I think those are the people that I learned the most from oh Okay, I like I um I recently was having discussion with a previous guest and they were talking about how there's so many people or their top Top performing but you have no idea who they are. So it's kind of interesting that make I Yeah, there's people we don't even know But they're the best so what they do and if you're in that arena you would know who those people yeah Yeah, that's great And he also wants to congratulate Jason I believe your family just expanded a little bit Yeah, that's my my my first-born daughter is seven months old So it's uh it has been a crazy past 12 months, but uh Nothing better than the world so very very very grateful and she slept through the whole night last night So I'm not trying to bribe you and you and other new parents that are out there, but like my daughter slept through the night last night I'm like that felt great. I'm not a parent yet, but I do know that's like top yeah, okay Big night big night big day All right We're focused on coyotes about like specifically finance economy how it all comes together what that means For people in and I want to kind of jump into stretch with this We want to understand people want needed Let me start with this I believe it is a Blessing to be ignorant about finances in America Whether you want to call it a blessing or not. I agree But the point is we're very ignorant about our finances in America Especially when it comes to groceries keeping on top of that people are aware, but they don't know really what's going on So economy is the bridge between that and with tariffs and all these things that are affecting prices and we discuss How does stretch play into that? Because I believe you guys use AI think tell us more about that Yeah, yeah, so I think that the inspiration for stretch really kind of goes back to my childhood You know my mom, you know, I'm the oldest four kids and I didn't know how month to month we were um, you know until later like I was able to look kind of look back and you know In conversations with my parents, you know like as adults like yeah, there were definitely times where you weren't really sure how we were gonna make it next month And you know and as a kid, I never knew right like like and like shout out mom and dad, you know like yeah Yeah, you know, they did an incredible job of like you know like they were worried and they you know They did the things that they had to do to make sure that we always had enough like I thought getting hand me down For my friend Josh was like cool Right, like I didn't realize that it was like we constantly measure, you know that You know the Williams family at church were we're trying enough to like give me his clothes, you know after you have grew them so um, you know So Looking back on how through all you know my parents were My mom had a clip but called once a month cooking and it showed you how to like mash up a bunch of recipes So you could go to the grocery store one time per month and use every ounce of everything that you bought Over the course of a month to make a month's worth of dinners and so Like a high list you're saying or like okay, okay, I thought But so it's really you buy this one shopping list. Okay, right like you can make all the dinners for the month But you know that that meant that you know the end of every month Yeah, there wasn't a whole lot in the pantry of the fridge right like we were waiting you know waiting for the next Shopping trip right and so you know a couple of memories that I have of that and you know Different creative things my parents said and so I you know thinking about now right grocery prices are 25% higher than they were before the pandemic And you know there's been a lot of news coming out about the different ways that retailers and even the delivery companies are keeping prices are Officially higher than you know what they probably should be if if you know free market economies were able to move the way that they should And once grocery prices go up, they don't ever really come back down. It's like, "Hey, I won't charge less if you don't charge less." Okay. And there's only a handful of retailers that control everything. And so one of the big challenges and one of the big opportunities that I saw was there's no source of truth for how much do my groceries cost this week? By the time you walk into a grocery store, you put things in your item. Even if you're doing calculators, you walk through the aisle, you're just kind of guessing what's my total going to be when I get to check out. Yeah, like you have an idea of I see what's going on. You can kind of play in the price and it's right every time you go through it. But once you get up there, they're like, "It's $158." You're like, "Oh, I wonder how much it is at another store." You're not going to go put everything back. You're not going to drive across town and rebuild that same list inside of another store. And the closest that I've seen, I earned you over 1,000 shoppers last summer when we were deciding whether we wanted to build a stump or not, is the most common thing that people are doing with a kind of clothes is they're downloading all of the apps for all the grocery stores in their neighborhood. They're rebuilding their grocery with seven times. They're exporting all of those prices and putting them into a sell file. And they're like, "All right, this store costs this much." And then it's two or three hours of research to figure out where can I actually buy, where can I feed my family this week and for how much? And then the crazy part is that because of dynamic pricing, the prices that they got on their self-berechtied might change by the time they actually get to the grocery store. And so it's tough for families to understand how much is it going to cost to feed my family this week. And so with stretch, we're doing all that work for you. So with stretch, you simply give us your grocery list, tell us what's on your list, just buy this week. And then we will check all the stores that are on the platform in your area. And we'll tell you it's 136 here, it's 148 there, it's 156 here, it's 175 there. And you actually know before you leave your home, you know, turning left or turning right, you know, as you get out of your driveway, you could save 30, 40, 50 bucks. And it's free app that's available, so download it, it's on Apple and Android. Oh, so it's an app you like go on the app on your phone. That's easy. So I'm thinking as a consumer now, so I talked about it on the podcast many times. I love Aldi. So long story short, my late grandmother, on my mom's side, she took us to Aldi and I was like, she got two carts full of stuff. And I'm like, this is going to be a spoiler. It wasn't expensive really. And then grand scheme, compared to like a two-period or something. And I'm a big fan of Aldi now, big big big fan. But there are things I want to get at Aldi. For example, meat, when me, my wife go grocery shopping, like we just did last week, we get meat from Costco because we get large, store it, things like that. So as a consumer, let's say, okay, I downloaded stretch on my phone, I'm going through it. Can I tell it like, okay, I don't want to get my meat from Aldi. Can it like put those different things together? Yeah, we're working on being able to just split your list across multiple stores. The version that's in the app store, and we're recording, you know, end of February. It does not yet do that. But what I've seen quite a few people do is they'll build two lists. So maybe they've got like meat, produce, and dairy on one list. And they've got, you know, bags boxes and cans, you know, the in-riall things on another list. And they're like, hey, you know, like for this, I'm willing to spend a little bit more for fresh produce and better cuts of meat. But this, I don't care. Like, you know, cereal is cereal, you know, potato chips and potato chips, like just, you know, like, I'll go store brand on all of those things. And so being able to have kind of two lists based on probably two different shop, you know, two different shopping trips is something that we've seen a lot of, a lot of people start to do already with the app. But then you're able to compare, you know, for meat seafood and produce, which stores have the best options today. Great. For, you know, chips and soup and longage, which, which, you know, store has the best prices today. And the speed with which prices they're changing is actually increasing, not decreasing with, you know, a lot of terms, shelf tags, loyalty and coupons. There's so many different variables that are going into it and to be able to just keep track of it all for, you know, just the very simple, not negotiable. Like, it's not, it's not a laundry. And maybe I'm going to take it over today and drive myself, you know, like, no, like you have to feed your family. And you know, like this is not a choice. You know, and I think that that's the, you know, the thing that I think about when I look at all of the insanity that's happening in the technology marketplace. Like, there's so many new technologies. There's so much noise about what AI is going to do and it loves not going to do it. Who's going to win? You know, it's going to affect the economy. But the thing that I know for a fact is AI is going to change most things. But everybody still needs to feed their families. And so if we can use the technology that's coming, you know, that's going to be a part of our future to help people do the second thing even better. I think that's a winning proposition that I'm excited to be a part of building. I wholeheartedly agree. I think that's what I think about the AI that comes from a lot of listeners and general like AI buzz. AI taking away jobs, AI replacing human agency. What does that look like for stretches? That's something you have to think about. I don't think just from me looking at it in our conversation. I don't think stretches taken away human agency. On the other hand, I can see the arguments for that. So what do you as the founder, creator? What does that look for regular people like me that uses? I think about AI. Similar to the way that I think about. Cloud computing. Or the way that I think about Excel, right? It's a tool, right? You know, and did Excel take away jobs? No, like it just made people more efficient at what they did. Did it take away hours and hours and hours of people doing long form calculations? You know, by hands and with a calculator. Like, you know, the macros on them with Excel, especially made everything faster. We're better now, you know, cloud computing. Change what was possible. You know, AI is a step change difference. And it is going to be a part of our future. So, you know, I encourage everybody. Like if you're most people are using AI right now. Like a search engine. Like a search engine like on steroids, right? They're like. Answer this question for me. And it'll give you a better answer than, you know, all of the, you know, the sponsored links that are on do. Right. Yeah. Really, really, really, really started to think about like what outputs can, you know, can the different AI tools, you know, do for me? How can it be almost thought partner? How can it challenge the things I know and can I think about things differently? That's where I really start to see, you know, kind of a light bulb go off. And what I'm using it for mostly is the things that are repetitive tasks. That I don't want to do anyway, but I have to. AI is a really good replacement for the stock that interested like it, want to tell it how to do it once it can do it again. And we think of that's, you know, grocery shopping is not anyone's favorite thing to do, but you have to do it. And so if we can use the technology to make it easier. And where stretch actually the more that you use it, it understands your personal preferences, it understands your dietary restrictions, it understands your budgets, it understands your brands, your stores that you love. Like all those things are things that if you had to do it over and over again manually, you'd have to remember it, but the technology now allows it to be a very smooth companion. And I think that that's where we think about it. We use a lot of AI to develop things on the backend to make sure that, you know, the algorithms are correct and to make sure that we can build product faster. You know, that is just creating a lot of efficiencies. And we were smaller teams as a result, like we don't need to have, you know, we last got a bit, we had like over 40 people on the team, you know, like we're a team of less than eight now. You know, and so it's not necessarily replacing jobs. It's just making people more efficient at what they do. And I think that it's, you know, my favorite part about it is that it is a known trend. It's a known thing that's happening because of the surprise, you know, it's a global financial crisis, which doesn't eat. It's not like all of a sudden we're all trapped in it. It's a continuous step change, but it is one that you have to keep up with, right? Because it's moving pretty quickly. And I think that that's where, you know, where I can view it is, can we use all of that technology to help with our everyday. And I think the answer is yes. I was recently talking to a couple of individuals about recession proof businesses. And that's come up a lot lately. And a lot of people think like, it makes sense. Hey, we're still going to use the restroom. Hey, we're going to need a trash bag, et cetera, et cetera. And those things are true. But there's an argument I've been aware of and I actually agree. Big recession proof systems. We're getting more to the business side of it. Big recession proof or Salesforce hub spot like these whole businesses cannot replace that that is how the businesses live essentially. So how when it comes to being recession proof, when we have this, with stretch looking specifically, what is that? People have to shop, but do they have to use stretch for that down the line? What does that look like for stretch? Yeah, you know, I think that I would I would level it up from recession proof to anti a fragile. So if you need the word fragile. And if I were to say, what's the opposite of fragile? If I'm carrying it, carrying it, it's creating a champagne glass glasses and I drop it. They're fragile and they're going to shatter into a million pieces. So what's the opposite of that? A common answer would be that they don't break. That's durable and durable is not the opposite of fragile. Durable just means they stay in the form that they are currently in. Anti-fragile is a book by Nassim Tildi, European economist. And he argues that there are systems and companies that don't just, that are not just durable, but they actually get better in hard times. And in the book, I highly recommend it. It's a great book to just think about when, like, it's almost counter-sicknessful. But it actually gets better when things get challenging for other people. And you can think about that when you're, you know, personalized, like, what can I do to be anti-fragile? You think about the company life, like, what is our company do if things get in the economy? And I think that as, you know, the looming reception that people talk about, the, you know, all the changes that are happening in the geopolitical marketplace, you mentioned tariffs, you know, different relationships that are actually going to have with other countries. You know, it's all, it's all in flux right now. You know, Peter Zion, one of my favorite political strategists, he has book got those called the end of the world is just the beginning. And, you know, it just talks about like, like, like, do you think you're shifting, right? They've been shifting since the Bush administration, right? And it's the thing that we have Bush and Obama and Trump and Biden and Trump. You know, they've all done it. They've just all, you know, done it differently as far as like kind of, you know, the US bringing more things on shore. But I think that like, when we look at those big trends, you know, how can you position yourself to be anti-fragile is really like a question that I asked a lot. And letting us, we're stretch goods into that is, you know, working in a non-lungury, right? It's not a, you know, it's not bonus spending, right? And people thinking about, you know, how can I be smarter and expect more from the world because I now have technology that works for me that work on my side that advocates on my behalf. I think that that's where the agentic side of commerce is going to go that we will have agents that negotiate on behalf of us, saying, you know, the Ellen family of three that lives in New York City spends this much per month on groceries. They're brand loyal to on, you know, this type of pasta, this type of of critichips and this type of startling water. But they're pretty open to everything else. You know, hey, Mr. Retailer, what, what would you like to offer them for their shoppers this week? Is the future that I can imagine happening? And I think, you know, we've seen across a lot of other industries kind of real time bidding, but I think that's something that could come to grocery as well. Yes, I, we're getting into very interesting territory for me personally, at least I've heard consumed lots of things. I know for the future as far as AIS, AI is concerned, having agents speak on behalf of us. Elon Musk has talked about this show, Rogan, a lot of big players that are wealthy have talked about this. And I think that's what's the scary part for at least today's generation people. I know that for the industrial revolution was scary for lots of people because it took a lot of jobs. I equate AI to the same thing. It's going to happen. You can't stop it. Same thing. What? What's going on, I think, is that how you view for stretch. So now I was thinking about stretch. I was thinking long term recession proof, anti-fragile. This, you're asking your consumers to do this extra action. You're asking them to build a new routine. Maybe they already doing it. Maybe they not. I'm asking at least 50% I don't know what that is to do that. Now out of agent that makes that easier. But what does long term, I guess, sorry, I have lots of thoughts to tell building on this. So stretch AI, your agent just say, hey, retailer XYZ, I like this. It's on my doorstep tomorrow morning. Is that like the future you see because Amazon's already kind of doing this. Yeah, yeah. So a couple things, you know, and the Williams to one of the founders of Twitter. And then they said the best companies are when you take an existing human behavior and have AI make it feel that have technology make it feel magical. 90% of people in America shop with a grocery list of some kind. And then there's a human behavior that already exists, right? Yeah, that's like 20 billion grocery lists every year. Most of them are on posted note. On a piece of paper on the side of your fridge. On an apple, apple note or text from your spouse. Yeah, and so I have like that list in front of your fridge. You can like look into it. Yeah, yeah. Almost all of that they're all just those done after it's used that one time. Right. This with a little bit of personalization, right, like the list that kind of gets to know you better, right? That when you say when you say chips, it knows that you mean, you know, Gerino's cool ranch. Right. Like, you know, most shopping is, you know, you know, what it means when you get to the store. Like, you know, if you were going to send it to the store and then have it delivered to you, you'd have to actually like get super specific stretch stretch gets to know you and what you mean, you know, when you say that. So I think that that's the first step is is we're kind of, you know, taking something that people already do, you know, a billion times a year. And just adding technology that makes it feel magical. And then that process we're starting to align supply with demand. Right. When you think about all the grocery stores, you know, they're stocking a bunch of food, hoping that it's what people want this week. But there's over a hundred billion dollars a year of food waste in the grocery industry. Right. And then they're not just food waste because they're not aligned with people what people actually want in the neighborhood. They don't actually know what's on people shopping. That's ahead of time. And so there, you know, with something going bad, they can't market. Hey, you know, we we've got this available for like two days. We'll give it to you. But we think that there's a future where that is possible of stretch where you can actually say, hey, there's 70 families in the neighborhood who have sweet potatoes on their shopping list. Before you get your next tip of sweet potatoes, and do you want to offer, you know, those sweet potatoes that you already have two people in the neighborhood at a discounted price. So you don't have to write it right. Write it off. You know, things like that are things that we're thinking about. So really aligning the, you know, the buyer with the seller. You know, creating efficiencies there. I think you know, it's something that's good for everybody. But then if you think about the way that most people buy groceries today. Right. Only 10% of it's delivery. Another 10% is curbside pickup. And then the other 80% is still people going into stores. Buying their groceries for themselves. Right. That 80% has not had any real technology solution provided for it in a very, very long time. And so that's really where our target focuses is the 80% of Americans that still version thought for themselves. And 80% of a 1.8 trillion dollar industry is, you know, is it is a good, is a good, is a good, accessible market to go after. I agree. If I'm consumer hat. If I'm thinking as a consumer, though, like, for example, I'm surprised by 10%. I feel like that's probably growing. A lot of people I talk with both who older than me with kids and in my same age bracket. They do pickup. That's like, especially with kids. I've heard that's like the best thing ever. Yes. So then if I'm a consumer, I mean, you can relate to this. You just have a child. You don't want to go in. Maybe whatever it is. If I'm a consumer, can I say I like this and this and this from this store. And now I want to, can you put up the pickup order or do I have to do that? Yeah. Yeah. No, that's where this is going. Yeah. Absolutely. Is the integrations with the delivery companies, integrations with the Uber eats of the world, the Instacards, the Jordashans or the curbside pickup. What's really interesting, you know, and this is something that we've learned when we were talking all of shoppers last year is curbside pickup is for a specific set of items. So in the same way that you know, there's certain things that you buy from from all the other certain things you rise and Costco. What a lot of people do for curbside pickup and I don't know if this has a name yet, but they do curbside pickup for inner inner aisle things, right? It's a bag. And then they go park the car and then they go into the grocery store to do the outer aisle things themselves because they want to pick their produce. They want to see the marbling on those stakes. They want to double check the other cheese selection. They want to make sure that they pick the, you know, the dairy or non dairy milk products that they want. So even though they do curbside pickup for maybe the bulk of their buy, they do another buy when actually walk in the store to do the outer perimeter. So because you know, it is the number one complaint for all the delivery services. Like, you know, like the Avocado's were two right at the beginning of the banana and we're green. But you know, like the produce picking the, you know, the, you know, kind of the experiential grocery is where most of the complaints are on the delivery and. So it's interesting phenomenon that even though people do curbside. a lot of people then go back into the store. They just don't do their entire shop. So, I find it trying to. - I've seen that too. I used to work at Target doing curbside long time ago, but I would help get here, here's your bag, you said, you're et cetera, they'd go back in line and I'd see them in the store. Like I just saw you in your Lexus or whatever it is. - Yeah, yeah. - And I think that's an important part, right? Like, I like this, expanding on this idea, seeing these things. I want to see the marbling, USDA, what kind of grading is it? What does stretch do with that? They're like, hey, he likes 50% marbled and it just uses AI. I mean, I don't know, like what is that? Yeah. - Well, and you know, you know, that's the reason that we're really targeting this towards people who do go into the stores themselves. Right? So, they're doing the picking themselves. But I think that, you know, I can imagine a future where we say, your best grocery list this week is to go to all D for these seven products and to actually order these eight products from Walmart.com. Right? Like if you're optimizing for price, you know, but I think the most important thing about what we're building is it's not always about price. Right? It's about the agency of having information so you can make the best decision for you. Right? You know, the household CEO, the kids are in school. It's Tuesday morning, it's 10.30. You know, at the time before pick up. And if you drive it actually 10 minutes, you could save $80 on this week's grocery list. You might do it, right? You might drive the 10 minutes. Right? Go to a different store, you know, you haven't been there before but like, man, we've got really great prices and so you know, how, you know, thanks stretch. I appreciate you finding that for me. On Thursday at 6.30 p.m. you got three kids in the back of the car. You do not care how much it costs. You just want to know the store hasn't been stocked and then they could do curbs and pick up. And you want to go to the store, it's on your way home from soccer practice and you hit that order button and it's ready in 30 minutes. And you know that you're just gonna pull up, they're gonna pull in the back seat of the car and you're gonna get the kids home and have for dinner. Right? So there's trade-offs in, you know, how much is it cost versus how much time can I save? And I think that's the, you know, the human psychology of that is something that the more stretch learns, you know, it's time of day, hey, you know what, Tuesday's at 10.30 in the morning, saving money is more important. Thursday's at 6.30 p.m., you know, efficiency and inventory is more important. And so it's really interesting for us to think about the way that we can serve our shoppers no matter what their circumstances. - Is that something you're already seeing? You, prices isn't always important. Is that something you're seeing now with the users of stretch? - Or the notice? - Yeah, a lot of our early users are very price-movated. But we are seeing, you know, when the results screen pops up, you know, they're able to see, you know, distance and they're able to see inventory and they're able to see price if you're for your entire shopmanist. And so just to see which one they toggle between is the interesting, you know, signal for our standard chain that people are not always just focused on price. They're looking for distance, that they're looking for product selection, you know, like Aldi had a lot of store brand, right? None of, you know, if you took your Aldi grishuist, you can't buy any of those things at Target. - Yeah. - But on the back end with AI, we built in a clip, what we call an equivalency model that says this product at Aldi equals this product at Target. And so we can actually give you an apostabus comparison of, you know, this is what the Target brand product is. This is what the Aldi brand product is. And so that's one of the, you know, that one of the pieces of technology that is baked into everything that we're doing. - Gotcha. Another last business question I have where we jump to like consumer side, but I'm thinking for the future of stretch and what that should look like. I'm thinking of Amazon. Amazon really changed to everyone I just ordered. So I'm a big, I'm like on a health journey. I love sardines now. Oh, yeah, I don't know. I just ordered some sardines yesterday after the gym and they came there at my door last night. So I'm like, oh, I just, I'm like, that said, and with that experience you're being super fresh, what does that look like for like stretch in the future, connecting with other, let's say Aldi, stretch in Aldi, make a partnership because you want to reach those people who don't go in and just do pick up. I imagine I have no statistics. If I imagine that grows exponentially, just looking at Amazon alone. So let's say like, hey, Aldi, people take a picture of your produce. Now it's on your site and stretch against cellophonic. Oh, those look like good avocados. I'll get this one, this one, this one, this one. And this is way future. Have you thought about that? Yeah, I think that we're building the grocery intelligence layer, right? So you know, being able to translate what is available at what price will be reached. And the fulfillment of that, there's already massive companies that are all on the fulfillment piece of it. But the origination of, here's what I intend to purchase and this is what I want to feed my family this week. What are my choices? Great. I'm going to send it to this delivery company for fulfillment. Or I'm going to do this, the curbs I pick up. Or I'm going to go myself because I have the time. Those are going to be things that are constantly-- And by fulfillment, sorry to interrupt, just to make sure I say, bitch. By fulfillment, you mean the people who go and pick the orders? The pickers. Yeah. OK. Yeah. So the insururbs that Uber eats, the George Ashley, the gig economy workers. Huge, huge businesses that are doing incredibly well. And I think that the most part are a pretty solid spot, where we are not trying to just place them. That's not our business model to ordinate all of the little just the stuff that last mile. You mentioned Amazon, feedback. What Amazon has is nobody's going to touch it. Their fulfillment network is next day. If you ordered Sardines anyway, I hope the gym and they were actually door tomorrow night, there's zero other companies that can do that. It's magical. We're talking about making it technology film. I was talking-- interesting enough. Socks are my producer of the show, Rio. And we were talking about how all these businesses have come from Apple, the App Store. So you mentioned Uber Eats. No real question here. It's just interesting to think about Uber Eats, DoorDash, all these things. Stretch AI now. Big companies coming from the App Store. So if you have any questions-- Yeah. When I was very fortunate to be one of the first apps ever acquired, the first startup I joined was called GoWalla. And launched in 2009, like, totally after the App Store. And we were acquired by Facebook a few years later. And it was like one of the first apps to ever be acquired. And then after that, I went and worked at Waze. And Waze was the first billion dollar app acquisition. And that would not have been possible without the App Store launching. And the reason that both of those companies and Uber and a bunch of other companies, it wasn't just that there was an App Store, but it was the location-th hearing enablement. So you had to turn on your location preferences and say, share my location in order to receive that information. And it goes back to what I mentioned. You know, at the top of the show, collective knowledge. When we were at Waze, me driving and sharing my information might be, hey, there's a cop there. It's not that powerful. But when there's hundreds of people driving down the same highway, all of that information in the back end, Waze, we were able to consolidate that and turn it into a format that anybody benefits from. And I was in charge of our broadcast partnerships. We did partnerships with local traffic reporters all over the country, where they would actually be able to communicate with people on the road that were stuck in traffic. Like, what are you seeing? How bad is this slow down? And these community, this community of people stuck in traffic were helping other people avoid that traffic every single day. So how does stretch use that, then? I assume you have those tools. What does that look like for you in your team? Yeah, well, every single data point that somebody says from a preference standpoint, from a choice that they make. Like, this is a good retailer for me. This is a good brand for me. This is a good price for me. Goes into our training models and our training data to make sure that the next time somebody is presented with a similar situation, we can understand, hey, most people wouldn't be presented with this situation with this way. What's your preference? And it's like, oh, actually, I would go a different sort, or I have much more brand loyal. I perhaps overcoat whatever it is. All those things go into the personalization, but also just helps the back end data sources that we have just be that much smarter. And every single threat to your source is another thing to help our models be that much more effective. I'm also thinking of, as I'm hearing you say that, I'm thinking of, let's say, there's two vegetarians doing shopping on stretch. One vegetarian says, hey, I really like this brand not the other. I have a feeling the model behind stretch can say, hey, oh, you just told me, vegetarian, a lot of these vegetarians like this option and not this and using that data point. That's interesting. That's interesting. Okay, on the side of consumer, I know we're getting closer to time closer. My question is this, I know you have to make money. You have a family to feed, you have a team. I'm a consumer though and consumers don't care about that. They don't care if someone else, they worried about themselves, especially with groceries. What's the free and what's either has to be something to be paid because you have to get paid. What do I get from that? Yeah, so the apps for the shoppers always. We're not having a sneaky paid version that's better. It's my least favorite thing about the way that people build that. Oh my gosh. It's funny last year. I kept going viral on TikTok when I was talking about building this company. That was not what I was doing with my card, was being viral on TikTok. The first time I showed a screenshot of the app, I don't have a good calling. I used TikTok for zone out while I'm having coffee in the morning. I just started recording videos about grocery prices and they're too expensive. We should build something to help. This first time I showed a picture of the app, it got 1,000 comments. It has 500 followers. Hundreds of thousands of views. There were still many of the comments. I paid for this the only one time. Don't make any subscription. You make one time feed a download. This is going to be free. There's three different ways that we make money. The business intelligence massive. Gertrude stories don't know what's on people's shoppers. They don't know localized demands. They don't know what their competitors are charging for similar products. There's so much information that is available because of the way that we structure our data. That retailers and brands are willing to pay for. The second piece is something close to advertising. The way that I think that is closer to advocacy, what can stretch you on behalf of our shoppers? If you're trusting me with your family's grocery list, right? Gertrude lists are pretty personal. You learn a lot about a family based on what's on a grocery list. We view that very strongly. I've stood outside of grocery stores to try and do some research. I was like, hey, I'll give you a gift card. If you show me your grocery list, you're like, no, they don't want to give away their grocery list. They don't want me to see that they're buying 24 packs of truck-out fudge pops. But that's personal information. We want to be respectful of that. We think about your sharing of information with us. What can we do on your behalf? Can we negotiate a better discount, a better coupon, a chance-created cry-out, a new flavor for a new product that's coming out? Those are the kinds of things that we think about there. There's some marketing dollars that are available in that side of the world. But it's always about like, I want every single time that somebody thinks about adding something to their grocery list. They open stretch and add to their groceries and they're at like bombarded with a bunch of crappy banner ads. The third way which we've already mentioned is that affiliate fee. If we send a shopping list to a store, that store wants to pay a commission to us. It's not an option for the shopper. But those are three of the ways that we have already started to work out. But all of those allow us to keep it free for the shoppers. I see. So if I'm correct to me if I'm wrong, please. But making it into a layman turns understanding. Sounds like one of the scenes there's lots of data transparency. Whether people would think that's bad or good and this is opening a whole new conversation. How do you guys think about that? Because people, I'm one of those people that says ASAP not to track when it asks this. Yeah. What is that? Am I losing you money then? Let's say I download stretch or there's people who actively do that. What does that look like for you guys? Yeah. I think the value that people are getting, and this is something that, as the CEO, I think about a lot, is how do we make it a win-win situation? So this is not currently in the build. But one of the things that we've been wrestling with in debate internally is what if we pay to data dividend? What if we said, hey, part of the way that we make money is through advertising and data. And for us, that's how literally every single app on your phone makes money. I agree. Yeah. So we're just going to be honest about that fact. Yeah. That's how we make money. Like that is how we can be, that is how we can provide us, we can provide you a service. What if? Because the market level that is pretty good. Instead of just profiting it, we said, hey, the whole goal of this is to make it easier for you to feed your family. We're going to pay a quarterly dividend based on you being a member of stretch. And so kind of the REI of apps. And I think that it's something that, like I don't shop at REI at a bunch, but I love that it ended every year. Like, some portion of what I paid was back to me in the next year of adventure. It's something that I think that there's going to be a lot of unique business models that are going to be required in the future. Because when you think about the way that the current advertising stack works in most technology, it requires humans to see ads. It's the number of impressions that an ad gets. It's the reason that social media networks are behavior modification networks that are tricking you into sticking around because of dopamine hits so they can serve you another ad. Jaron Leneer's head talk from 2018 is one of my favorite head talks. And he talks about the original sin of the internet was that we decided that it had to be free for everybody and that we would pay for it being free for everybody with ads. And so every single business model since the 90s has been designed to advertise to you so that you can get free internet. And that's what's caused so much of the strife and the challenges of our society is because it's all about how long can we keep you on a site. And I think that's one of the things that I think a lot about. And I think the new business models are going to have to emerge because it was not going to be humans on most sites in the future. It'll be AI and agents grabbing that information, not looking at that banner and not looking at the, you know, the, the enraging thing that's going to keep me like the president said what? Yeah, I talk about that a lot on call talks. But just to, yeah, everything you just said, I side conversation, I personally believe when I am currently 29, I believe when I'm like 60 70 and I go into a store, hello, sir, how you help you? It's completely AI, Robert. I believe that's a thousand percent going to happen probably even sooner. Anyways, with what you said about like social media algorithms, it's been a rage bait, joy bait, just keep you going whatever kind. What stretch be doing that? Essentially, oh, here's this. A lot of people love this, Aldi or a lot of people seem to love Costco. Based on what you've shared, it sounds like it would probably, whether that's better good, that's for people to decide. Just realistically, in my wrong words, that's kind of sound like they're two of the same sides of the coin. Yeah, I think that if the information is like if we would give it as information that helps you achieve your goals, we want to make sure that you can find it. If your goal is to save money, your goal is to eat healthier, if your goal is to save time, then we want to expose that information to you. Personalization of it, we're going to know that this is actually helpful for Kyle. Not we need to hit a thousand people today with this banner at an order to meet our quota. Wouldn't it be a banner at, though, it would be this store as you just taken from you said, you don't want to show banner ads. Thank you. It won't be a banner at, it will be this store, though, my misunderstanding. Something. It would be somewhere in your journey. There's three different user journeys within the stretch experience. The first year is I'm adding something to my list. Open the app, I've been cold cats, close the app. Your wife is adding things to the family list. And you guys are building your joint lists together. Then there's the time to go to the store. Get recommendation. Hey, stretch, where should we shop this week? Stretch, hold up recommendation. Here's all the stores in your area. This one has a special just for you and your family. They went off your $20 off coupon because they're trying to, some of the things that are on your shopiness, they're trying to move because they have another shipment coming in next week. One time off. you could choose to take it early this time. And then there's the actual shopping in the store, so you're checking the offer list. When you're in the store, it doesn't store when a server view up, especially discount coupon or give you an offer that you were not aware of previously. Store, I was talking about the CMO of a major grocery store, 95% of their coupons don't get redeemed. I have just like free money that's there, but the discoverability of it is really hard because they don't know what's on your shopping list. They don't know who to target that coupon to. And so if we can help them create more efficiency of it's on your shop list, you want to buy that thing. You've told us you're gonna buy that thing. There's a coupon available that you just don't know about. Like if we can like connect those two things together, that's good for everybody. And I think that's where a lot of the inefficiencies in, you know, it's a very old industry. There's a lot of inefficiencies that we're seeing that we think technology could be the cure for. - Thanks. Yeah, that makes sense. That actually clears up a little bit. I know we're getting at time at time here, so I have a few quick fire things. - Sure. - So before we end, can you tell us short, why should we download stretch for anyone listening to this? - Yeah, I think that we all shop for groceries. We all feed our families. And it's incredibly inefficient and you're leaving money on the table. You're spending more time, you should, and you're spending more money than you should. And stretch will just expose that before you. And once you see it once, it's pretty fun to see this thing at a time. - Awesome. I do have a thing. I love guests talking to each other. So every guest is, they're asked a question by the previous guest, and then you leave me a question for the next guest. So Adam Swart, he's a CEO of a, crowd on demand company. And he says this for your next guest, what are their thoughts on educated, this is totally different than what we're talking about. But thoughts on the education gap, there are educated women who are doing well, who want to get dates, but don't. And there are uneducated men who want to get dates, but don't, and they usually don't want the educated woman. What is your guest thoughts on this, on how to solve this? What do you think? Yeah, this is totally, yeah. - I think that I'm really, really grateful that I'm not dating in 2026. - Amen. - And if I was, I would never download a single one of the apps, and I would just find opportunities to be in fun places doing things that I loved, and look around to see who else in a fun place doing the thing that they love, and see if maybe they want to do that thing with me next week. - I really like that, Andy. I like that. So I like that. I have to see what I'm doing. - I do need to answer the question, because I'm not completely sure what the question was, but that is the best day in advice that I have ever received and have ever given out, is run your race. Like, don't be the absolute best version of yourself. And if you're sprinting at the thing that you're meant to do in this world, and you've got to look next to you, and somebody's keeping up, and they're running in the same direction, like run together for a little bit, and see what that's like. And then like, they hate you wanna go for another run, let's do another thing, and let's do another thing. And just keep being true to yourself. Like, people play way too many games, and it's not that hard. And people stay in relationships way longer than they should, because they're afraid of being single again. Like, fail fast, like fail fast. Like just like, say who you are, say this is what's important to me, and if they're like, ah, that's not important to me. And it's like, cool, nice to meet you, have a great life. - Thanks. - Next. - Yeah, go Gigi, go next. I entirely agree. I'm curious to have some thoughts on that. But with that said, Andy, give us a question for our next guest, and it could be about anything as you can see, anything. - Yeah, yeah. Dear next guest, if you were gonna drive, if you were going to describe yourself as a cuisine of food, what would it be in life? - Cousie, what kind of, I like that, I like that. Well, Andy, we're at time here. I'm gonna be respectful. I've genuinely enjoyed this conversation. If people wanna get connected with you, if they wanna get with stretch, how can they do those things? - Yeah, download stretch in the Apple or the Android store, just search stretch groceries, and you'll find that there, it's free download. If you wanna track me down, I grew up on the internet, so fortunately, I am @AndLwood on every platform, and I read all my DMs and then for a reason, made a lot of money from people who wanted to invest in the company who've slid into my DMs, which is wild, but it's the way the world works these days. So I read them all and I replied to every message that I can, but that's the best way to track me down. - Awesome, thank you Andy for coming on, - Absolutely, that's a big shoutout to Kyle Tox.