GOODY- Building a Hot Early Stage Company Virtually

Valentine’s Day isn’t just the biggest day of the year for florists. It’s also the biggest day for Goody[1], a hot new company that is revolutionizing and dramatically improving the process for giving and receiving gifts.

The old adage that it’s better to give than receive is in full force with Goody. The app features an elegant design and intuitive user interface with state-of-the-art engineering making it incredibly easy to use. You text the perfect gift to any of your contacts in seconds. Goody features a vast assortment of just the right gifts for any occasion – birthday, anniversary, thank you, sympathy, get well, love, congrats, sympathy – along with easily customizable cards. As a giver, you get the adrenaline rush of doing something that will bring instantaneous joy to someone you care about.

But Goody solves a series of problems with the act of actually receiving gifts. Will the person like what you’ve selected for them? Maybe they prefer a Le Labo Discovery Set of fragrances to the Mejuri handcrafted fine jewelry you chose. Or perhaps they would love a silent Theragun Mini to massage their tired muscles rather than the Ember temperature controlled coffee mug you thought they would enjoy. No problem. The recipient can accept or swap the gift easily and do so with the fun of browsing the well curated selection.

Then there is the issue of where to send it, getting the right shipping address for those who you want to treat. How many times can you enter a new address into Amazon? Goody solves that problem too. The receiver inputs the address where they would like to receive it, making the whole process easier for everyone. 

When it comes to paying, here is another simple but useful innovation. You don’t pay until the recipient accepts the gift, so there is nothing up front. And then, like all good e-commerce sites today, they maintain your payment details securely so you don’t have to input them after the first time.   

Another unique aspect is that unlike some other gifting apps, Goody doesn’t require the recipient to download an app. You literally don’t need to know anything other than the person you want to send a gift to and their phone number.

When you put this all of this together, you get something that really will make you and others happy - by sending gifts via text that are as thoughtful as they are convenient.

Finally, if you’re in a position where you - or your company - want to give multiple gifts of gratitude to clients, business partners, or employees, Goody makes that seamless too. Just input a list of recipients and the rest takes care of itself. 

This is all showing in the company’s results. Goody is scaling rapidly; the numbers of users, gift givers and receivers have spiked and this is all translating into enormous growth on the company’s revenue line.

Now, how can a start-up grow so rapidly, build a dedicated team, secure funding, design products, develop partnerships in today’s distributed, working-at-a-distance environment? By following the key principles of Leading at a Distance.

Co-founder and CEO, Edward Lando, has launched and been an angel investor into a number of companies and he’s applying all his learnings to make Goody take flight. He has raised a $4 million seed round, all over Zoom. He has built a small, passionate, and dedicated team – all distributed across Miami, New York, and Los Angeles - without having met anyone in person other than his co-founder and a couple of team members who he’s worked with previously. The team communicates continuously via Zoom and has multiple channels of messaging to collaborate and make progress.  When one speaks with members of the Goody team, certain virtual leadership best practices become noticeable:

•  Trust is a prerequisite for virtual team success, and they are creating a trusting environment through open, frequent, and transparent communication.
•  Edward and other Goody leaders recognize the importance of building relationships and are using technology aggressively to foster connectivity.
•  Just because they are not physically co-located does not mean that they are not being proactive about accountability. Each of the members of the Goody team have a clear understanding of their role and in these early days, they are building a culture of holding one another accountable.
•  One proven technique for motivation and progress in the virtual world is storytelling.  Edward and the team have raised funding, secured partnerships, and are pitching prospective enterprise customers by using the art of the story.
•  And they have been on a hiring tear, all virtually. They recognize that in order for employees to be effective in a fast-growing start-up operating in a virtual world, they will need to be highly self-motivated and self-disciplined, comfortable with technology, able to collaborate easily, and comfortable with ambiguity.

So, if you're inclined to build a company in this virtual environment, take inspiration from Goody. And if you're inclined to be a great gift-giver and balance joy with convenience, start using Goody.

[1] I serve as an advisor to the Goody management team.