Female Founders: Hanna Mandelbaum and Alison Blumberg of Evermore Pet Food On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
A good founder will always prioritize the health of their business over their ego. Effective founders need to be self-aware and open to learning from others. They need to strike that fine balance between working autonomously while also remaining conscious of their own knowledge gaps.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Hanna Mandelbaum and Alison Blumberg.
Hanna Mandelbaum is the Co-CEO and Fairy Dog-mother of Evermore Pet Food. As a big picture, out-of-the-box thinker, she crafts a broader strategic vision for the Evermore brand. Whether it’s a dog-food eating campaign or canine office parties, she has innovated in ways that the entire “fresh food” category has followed.
Alison Blumberg is the Co-CEO and Sourcer-ess of Evermore Pet Food. In her role, she painstakingly researches and vets their ethical vendor partners, oversees all aspects of production and related logistics, works closely with the lab, and generally keeps order whenever it can fit into a spreadsheet. Her passion for animal welfare and sustainable food systems drives every decision about Evermore Pet Food.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
We came together as two animal lovers — a dog walker (Hanna) and her health-supportive chef client (Alison) — in a moment of crisis. Another one of Hanna’s clients ran a home-cooked dog food business and suffered a life-changing, and ultimately life-ending, health event. We stepped in to help out on a temporary basis, but the universe had other plans. It was far from a turnkey operation, and we both completely shifted gears in our lives to start Evermore Pet Food. Doing so involved a steep learning curve, with a lot of work to develop a product we could responsibly sell to the public. It’s actually a remarkable story, which we wrote about here.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
Very early on we had no marketing budget and decided that a good way to get our name out there was to “eat our own dog food.” We called the endeavor Evermore Me in a nod to the documentary Super Size Me and proceeded to stream live “feeds” of ourselves eating Evermore daily for the whole month of March (2011). We also limited our food intake exclusively to the ingredients in the food for this time period. The press around this snowballed beyond our wildest imagination, including Kathie Lee and Hoda eating it on The Today Show and Jeanne Moos coming to our office to interview us — the resulting segment aired on and off for a month. We even got international coverage.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Besides the fact that we did all that work to pull off Evermore Me and actually got the attention we were hoping for BUT didn’t have the infrastructure in place to meet demand. We couldn’t have been in business more than a month, when ADP approached us about payroll services. Being the rookies we were, we assumed that we could take a salary right away. Needless to say, we ran a grand total of two payrolls before we realized that paying ourselves was a long way off — nine years to be exact. Those were two early cart-before-the-horse lessons that made it abundantly clear that growing Evermore was going to be a marathon, not a sprint.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
We definitely had our angels along the way, especially the friends and family who have gone above and beyond over the years, but oddly one of our biggest debts of gratitude is to someone we have no doubt almost ruined our company. We initially felt immense pressure to raise capital and came very close to taking a deal that involved a significant amount of money. This would have forced us to pursue an aggressive growth strategy at the expense of our ethos and authenticity. At first, backing out of the deal put a lot of strain on us, but ultimately it helped us understand who we are — and who we are not — both personally and professionally.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
The expectations around motherhood and the lack of societal support for childcare are a huge factor — especially when there’s a cult of personality around the archetype of the single-minded founder who puts everything but their business on the back burner.
Many industries are so male-dominated that there is still very much a “boys’ club” mentality. Breaking in and being taken seriously requires an extra level of assertiveness. Women are socialized to be cooperative and even accommodating, but starting a company requires us to be demanding. Founders have to demand that they belong, that there is a need for what they have to offer, that they have the best (or only) version of whatever it is they do. We can get so paralyzed by imposter syndrome that it can be hard to unapologetically forge a path forward.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
Government-subsidized childcare would help women and the economy as a whole, not just founders. On a societal basis, we need to keep re-evaluating, questioning, and dismantling the expectations around gender. For better or for worse, certain attributes like empathy and collaboration tend to be perceived as feminine, regardless of who embodies them. Leading with these traits, however, can yield great results and need to be rewarded in the workplace as much as the traditionally masculine ones that have been historically associated with success.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
Maybe we’re biased by our own experiences here, but women do often operate from a place of community and relationship building. We’re able to build the sort of companies that we would want to work for and see our employees as people with lives outside of work, allowing them the flexibility and support they need. If you don’t buy into the idea that you need to be singularly focused and grow as quickly as possible, achieving a healthy degree of work/life balance is also easier when you are the one setting the benchmarks.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
You can’t have a life outside of your company, and the only way to be successful is to work 24/7. Toiling nonstop may seem heroic, and it may lead to success, but it’s definitely a recipe for burnout.
Mistakes are bad and should be avoided at all costs. Frankly, some of our best outcomes began with some seriously worrisome mess-ups (don’t worry, nothing that put any dogs at risk). The reality is that mistakes happen, and there’s nothing you can do to avoid them. The most important thing is how you (or others involved) address them, because that speaks directly to your (or another’s) accountability and integrity.
Your business plan is your business reality. Once your pro forma and strategies hit the real world, any number of factors can derail even the most meticulous planning. As long as you are able to react and shift accordingly, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
Being a founder is not for the faint of heart. It requires a high level of stamina and risk tolerance. A lot of people may not be interested in testing their limits on those fronts.
Running a business means living in the gray and adapting to change at a moment’s notice. If you are someone who likes things more black and white or wants predictability, don’t be your own boss.
A good founder will always prioritize the health of their business over their ego. Effective founders need to be self-aware and open to learning from others. They need to strike that fine balance between working autonomously while also remaining conscious of their own knowledge gaps.
At the end of the day, you’ll be remembered for the rules you broke and the risks you took. Thinking outside the box is a crucial trait for a founder, so people who prefer to play it safe might not thrive in this role.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
- It’s up to you to make people believe in your business. Even though we knew from the get-go that our food was special, it wasn’t immediately apparent to everyone else. Passion, however, can be infectious. In our first meeting with an important distributor, we were waxing poetic about the virtues of Evermore and Alison absentmindedly took a bite of the dog food. Her genuine enthusiasm won over everyone at the table, and we’re pretty sure that helped us secure the distribution deal.
- Be ready to pivot. At the time, working with a distributor was THE way to do business in the pet food industry, but it wasn’t the best way for us to do our business. It took us years to recognize this. However, once it became clear that we needed to shift to a direct-to-consumer approach, it was like the seas parted and our business started to truly take off.
- There’s no white knight. There have been times when running our company was a genuine struggle, and we couldn’t see a path forward. In some of these dark moments, we’ve been approached by business advisors, would-be investors, and other “experts” who claimed to hold the keys to our success. In every case, it quickly became clear that their proposals were more about lining their own pockets and taking advantage of our perceived naivete. If someone sounds too good to be true, they probably are.
- There is not one way to define success. By conventional metrics, we are not the most successful food in our category. As far we’re concerned, however, we’re so proud of what we’ve accomplished: bootstrapping our way to profitability, providing health insurance, 401(k) plans, and a living wage to ourselves and our employees, and forging strong relationships with our vendors and customers — all while keeping our integrity and commitment to humane sourcing practices.
- Savor the valleys, not just the peaks. We used to live for the highs — like the great Evermore Me press and breaking sales records — and get depressed when the dust settled. Over the years, we have come to be grateful for the lulls. Those “down” times keep us going because they allow us to take a moment to breathe and gather the energy needed to face the next hurdle.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
We’ve certainly made the world a better place for a lot of dogs and their humans. Our customers are constantly reaching out to let us know that the switch to Evermore has been life-changing for their pups.
On a broader scale, we feel deeply about supporting a sustainable agricultural system that prioritizes animal welfare. The more dog food we make, the more we get to vote with our dollars and guarantee income for farmers and ranchers who are doing truly good work. We genuinely solve a problem for our vendors, by providing a regular source of income for parts of the animal that might otherwise go to waste or be sold to rendering facilities for far less than they are worth.
We often have to make the case to our customers for why we are more expensive than other brands. This gives us an opportunity to provide the education to help them distinguish genuine animal welfare practices from humane-washing claims.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
We would love to inject nuance and awareness into the conversation around animal welfare. 99% of the meat in this country comes from factory-farmed animals — that’s 99% too much. Most education and advocacy around this gut-wrenching issue promotes veganism as the only solution. The reality is that dogs are not vegans, and this binary approach is alienating for many individuals. There are concrete steps that can be taken to both improve the lives of farm animals and have a positive impact on the planet.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Each other! We are a bi-coastal business and have been working from our respective homes for more than a decade, so we don’t get to connect in person often enough. As two very different individuals (practically strangers) who were brought together in partnership by very unusual circumstances, it turns out we are eerily aligned on a very deep level and have come to share a strong sisterly bond.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this!
Female Founders: Hanna Mandelbaum and Alison Blumberg of Evermore Pet Food On The Five Things You… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.