Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Fairly Priced Everything

Notes on Democracy, Entrepreneurship and Not Building a Movement

It’s been six months since the November 8 election. That night was a turning point for our country, and also a turning point for me. My business partner Ido Leffler and I had already been developing the concept for the company we co-founded, Brandless, for the previous two years.

I knew staying up all night watching the reruns was probably not a good idea, but it wasn’t optional. I’d slept at my dear friend Aileen Lee’s house and we drove into the city together. Aileen’s fund, Cowboy Ventures, happens to be an investor in Brandless, but we became “sisters” years ago as classmates in the Henry Crown Fellowship at the Aspen Institute. The rallying cry of the fellowship is “success to significance,” and that challenge was pulsing in my sleep-deprived brain the whole ride in.

Aileen and I sat in silence as the pundits on the radio debated the results of the election. I was listening, thinking, and very aware that we were inching closer to the office where my new Brandless team was waiting. They’d come from across the country for a strategy session and I still had no idea how I would address them.

I walked into the sun-soaked conference room, then started a roll call for those dialed in, partly to buy time. It was pretty quiet. This was a team of vibrant builders and believers who’d joined us early on without really knowing the details of what we were creating. But they shared our vision for a different kind of company–one that was values based, inclusive and would offer better for you, everyday stuff at fair prices.

So I told them the truth. (Sidebar: the truth is always a convenient way to go and I highly recommend it as your go-to option should you ever be in doubt.) And on this particular morning, the truth was I had yet to digest what had just happened. Yet, I felt a strange, almost embarrassing, sense of optimism and empowerment surging through me.

Brandless is timely, necessary, and I wanted to slam my foot on the gas and make it all go faster.

The election demonstrated our thesis for Brandless was true: people were rejecting the establishment en masse. In fact, people were rejecting everything, including government. I was rapidly processing the speed and magnitude of it all. Maybe it was a movement, maybe it was a sign of the times, maybe it was history in the making. Likely all of the above.

Whatever I had felt about Brandless before the election, I felt it three times as much now.

People deserve better.

And the current system, which produces, markets, and sells stuff in this country often misrepresents the real cost of things. This makes them inaccessible for some people, and forces others to pony up if they want to buy according to their values–whether that’s beauty products that haven’t been tested on animals, cleaning products free of harmful chemicals, or non-GMO food. For far too long, we’ve been trained to believe better needs to cost more. But that’s rarely the case.

What was becoming clear in that moment was that Brandless was building a small and modest part of the solution. Not for government, obviously, but for personal agency. Agency around humanity and putting people first and essentially democratizing access to goodness.

All those reports I’d heard on the radio, the ones talking about red states and blue states, about divides and differences, sounded a lot like the old product marketers who broke consumers into segments, cohorts and demographics.

They were talking about data points. What happened to people? People don’t want to be labeled. They don’t want to be told they fit in a box.

Forget politics. Doing is what matters.

Lots of startups talk about inciting a movement, but at Brandless, the movement is already happening all around us.

It’s a movement of real people who want to be treated fairly no matter their background, economic status or political leanings. It’s a movement of people who reject labels, legacy institutions, and old ways of doing things.

I see you. We see you.

Brandless is set to launch on 7/11. It’s our contribution to life, liberty and the pursuit of fairly priced everything. Come join us there.

So, that’s us. But what about you? Eager to hear your thoughts on the ideas, events, businesses and people inspiring you to make a difference.