The GTMnow Podcast is available on any major directory, including:
Erica Anderman is the co-founder and COO of Foodini, an AI-powered platform solving food allergy and dietary transparency through data infrastructure. With over 15 years of go-to-market experience across foodtech and vertical SaaS, Erica has led revenue at companies like Slice, Seated, and Odeko, and held roles across sales, customer success, partnerships, and RevOps. She began her career in door-to-door restaurant sales and now builds GTM from the ground up, helping 50% of the population with dietary needs find safe, personalized dining experiences.
Discussed in this Episode:
- Transitioning from CRO to founder (and why it’s so humbling)
- Tactical frameworks for finding product-market fit (especially in early pivots)
- Building a GTM motion from zero using community and customer obsession
- What AI actually changes in GTM (hint: it’s not just about productivity)
- How to treat fundraising like a sales motion (including identifying your ICP)
- Practical tools Erica is using to build GTM motions faster with fewer resources
Highlights:
00:45 From Sales to CRO: The Unconventional Path
02:47 Why Being a Generalist Can Make You a Better Leader
05:31 What AI Is Really Doing to GTM Roles
06:33 Scaling Yourself Before You Scale Your Team
08:00 From CRO to Founder: Sales Skills That Transfer to Fundraising
10:10 Fundraising Is Just Another Sales Funnel
14:12 Relationships Compound in GTM and Fundraising
22:33 Finding PMF by Listening Hard
26:04 When Your GTM Motion Becomes Compliance-Driven
27:41 Community as a GTM Lever (Not Just a Buzzword)
38:28 Pre-PMF vs. Post-PMF
42:53 Turning Messy Data into Valuable Content
56:12 Tools Over Headcount: Erica’s Favorite AI Stack
Guest Speaker Links (Erica Anderman):
LinkedIn: /ericaanderman
Foodini: https://foodini.co/
Host Speaker Links (Sophie Buonassisi):
LinkedIn: /sophiebuonassisi
Newsletter: https://substack.com/@sophiebuonassisi
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The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.
GTM 155 Episode Transcript
Sophie Buonassisi (00:01.674)
Erica, thank you for coming on the podcast.
Erica Anderman (00:04.69)
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Sophie Buonassisi (00:06.968)
Absolutely, I’ve been wanting to have you on actually since we first connected and just hearing you go through your founder journey, your operating experience in San Diego. So glad we’re taking the time to connect now.
Erica Anderman (00:17.992)
Yeah, absolutely. San Diego is a great time. I’m sad. I missed the New York one. So, excited for the next one.
Sophie Buonassisi (00:22.45)
I know, I know we got some beautiful sunshine here this summer though, so we’ll take it. And we will jump into your founder journey, but first I want to start with your operating experience because you had a bit of a non-traditional path to CRO. You you came up, yes, through sales, but also through operations, customer success and partnerships. Maybe walk us through those early days. What did they look like?
Erica Anderman (00:27.602)
Yeah.
Erica Anderman (00:45.192)
Yeah, sure. So yeah, I really, got my start in sales in terms of, you know, starting outside sales, door to door, restaurant, small business sales. But really quickly after a lot of it, first experience was…
single platform for the most part. did an internship before that, but at Single Platform we were inside sales and outside sales, but basically we figured out inside we could scale much faster. And in the beginning there was about 10 of us. We took a…
personality test of understanding the team as part of, you know, one of those like get to know each other early days. And I think the results were every single person on the team, except for the one woman we actually had in finance was a persuader. And I was the only one that was a persuader stabilizer. And so I realized we had no account management. We were all sales. And for me, it was just kind of being intuitive of understanding a bit. I actually cared and was super curious about what the experience was post sales.
While I’m motivated by hitting numbers like any salesperson, I also really was drawn to the, we need to fix and understand how this connects to this and how the product actually gets the feedback from the customer team and kind of building out the post-sale side of things. So I was always drawn to that. And then over time, a lot of it was just continuing to kind of put my hand up as we had new teams and kind of new areas to focus on. That’s one benefit of picking the right startup.
that’s growing really quickly is you’re constantly seeing new teams and new initiatives get developed and as long as you continue to do a really good job at the job you’re doing, usually they tap you for that. So a lot of it for me was just kind of saying yes, taking on those new teams and getting the confidence, I’d say, to lead the full revenue org. I think in the beginning for me it was feeling as though I needed to have experience.
Erica Anderman (02:47.158)
in every single area and slowly but surely by having a little bit of experience in sales, account management, a little bit more on the rev-op side and then marketing, I started to understand, you know what? I actually am more effective by being able to solve problems across the full customer journey and really kind of see things come together than I am at becoming a super expert at one special area. And a lot of it was
also finding leaders who believed in me. That was a big portion for me in the early days where I had two CEOs who ended up giving me the job of leading the revenue org before I asked for it when I was leading post sales. And a lot of that finally made me realize, know what, you’re right, I can do this thing. know, confidence is always something I think we’re all working on.
Sophie Buonassisi (03:44.13)
Definitely. Forceful confidence just being handed the revenue organization. I love it. And what kind of early career beliefs and leadership beliefs did you hold that allowed you to just keep advancing in organizations and have the confidence to keep going?
Erica Anderman (04:00.616)
I think a lot of it is always learning. I think the kind of, there’s this limiting belief, I think especially women have of you need to have experience in every area before you do it. And I think that’s something I hear a lot, especially from younger women earlier on in their careers is this, know, but I shouldn’t do it more. I don’t have this specific experience for this job. And then I think.
Sophie Buonassisi (04:25.676)
I’m not qualified. Yeah.
Erica Anderman (04:27.58)
Exactly and and now having managed hundreds of women and men and having them all approach me for it’s there’s it’s insane to me how many more men think that they are qualified and they don’t care they are open to I can do this and they have that confidence and so I always try to tell women it’s like it’s just a limiting belief it’s internal like ultimately everyone is still figuring it out no matter what role you’re at or how much experience you have especially in today’s days with AI changing so much
so quickly. I think the most important thing is to stop questioning yourself and put yourself in an area of which you’re afraid that you might not know everything because that’s where you learn and also where you have the best experiences.
Sophie Buonassisi (05:14.562)
Well said. And that is the cool thing about AI. It’s almost level setting the playing field where regardless of what role you’re in, seniority you hold, everybody is suddenly learning something new. And it’s something that if you are not adopting it, you are being left behind. And so it’s really resetting the playing field.
Erica Anderman (05:31.38)
I mean, I spend time with our 22 year old, know, recent college grad who is just in love with the AI tools. I learn more from him than I do from mentors who have been, you know, CROs and different kinds of learnings, right? There’s obviously a benefit to years of learning, especially from a management perspective, but from a go-to-market, you know, tools perspective, I’d say we’re in a new era where there’s a lot of, almost too many new tools
and things to use that I think keeping your eyes open and really being open-minded to trying new things and new tactics is the right way to go.
Sophie Buonassisi (06:12.846)
And you’re an interesting inflection point of building because you are in the early stages of Fudini’s journey and so you can almost take AI and really build AI native whereas you know startups that are further along it is a bit of a process to actually kind of bring it into your foundation instead of bolting it on.
Erica Anderman (06:33.908)
1000%. It’s been very humbling to go from managing huge teams, having VPs managing specific functions, sales underneath me, to now going to a team of one. And it’s been years. At first I was like, wow, I haven’t been the one outselling myself in many years. But it’s fun and I actually think it’s good for me. It’s like getting back in the seat and now, like I said.
a new time. And so it’s very different now to figure out, how do I replicate myself? And maybe that’s through video, sending sales of myself to using tools to send that to a lot more people than hiring the way that, you know, I was brought up in my early days managing sales teams. It was a quota per rep. You know, that’s how you built your models. You obviously factored in a bit for attrition or people not hitting their quotas, but ultimately that’s the way you kind of built this buildup method.
And now I think it’s just completely different. And so I think those that are kind of using the tools and being more open-minded towards leveraging AI are going to be the more successful revenue leaders.
Sophie Buonassisi (07:49.548)
And take us through that transition from CRO to founder. And then there’s a lot of areas I want to dive into that you just touched on. But what does that transition look like going from operator to suddenly being in the founder seat?
Erica Anderman (08:00.649)
Yeah.
Well, besides again, the humbling experience of having no resources, figuring a lot more out. I don’t want to say it’s that different, especially when you join really early stage startups like I have where I was around in the first 10, both single platform and Sly. So we didn’t have a ton of resources there either. So you are figuring things out. But as a founder, you really have to
They focused on areas you just never have before, right? Like I’ve always had a technical person, obviously we now have gotten one, but in the very early days, you’re really needing to lean into areas that you don’t have expertise. And so I think where I’ve kind of leaned back as what I’ve always found to be the most important thing at the startups I’ve been at, which is kind of that really clear mission and understanding what you’re there to do, because that is, think, the framework and the foundation.
that you need to then build and scale teams as you grow. But it’s been a lot of just kind of relearning, I guess, and kind of forgetting a lot of what I’ve learned when you’ve had bigger teams and you’re focused more on management issues and scaling and a lot more on kind of what are the ways that I can scale myself and, you know, learn. think fundraising is also something as a revenue leader.
It’s sales. It’s a different type of sales, but ultimately you’re identifying your ICP and investor for you. You’re telling your story. There’s similar ways and I do think as a revenue leader previously, it helped me to kind of figure out how to set up the go-to-market motion obviously for a company early on.
Sophie Buonassisi (09:55.256)
That’s a really good point. I love that analogy of using fundraising as a sales organization or vice versa. So if you were to run it that way, what kind of tactical advice would you break down for other founders?
Erica Anderman (10:09.948)
Ultimately, a lot of it is identifying, looking at market conditions, right? So even in fundraising, there’s market conditions. Today, AI, every company that has AI in its name is getting a ridiculous valuation compared to traditional SaaS, and that happens super quick.
And there’s obviously a factor of you need to truly actually use AI. I think there’s also a bit, especially in the early days of these kinds of companies that are like AI enabled and exactly how are you using it? But from a tactical standpoint, I think there’s understanding the what the market looks like today and understanding how to sell yourself as a founder. Right. I think one area for me that has been a challenge, as I said, is is is the confidence. Right. And really
I’ve always felt this limiting belief of like, well, I need to learn more, have more experience. And I think when you start as a founder, you realize so many founders had so much more confidence so much earlier on, like straight, you know, at a school before they had any experience, they just had a lot of conviction. And so I think coming out of go to market and then starting as a founder, a lot of what I’ve used is that
understanding how to build that mission that I can then build the team around and then building that story that becomes my pitch and the pitch of what I’m building is similar to the pitch of what product I’m selling. Ultimately, I’m now just selling to an investor to get them to buy into my vision to kind of join me for this. But it’s just, you know, different type of sale, bigger stakes.
bigger money. And ultimately, obviously, there’s a lot of difference later on as you scale. But I think there’s a lot of learnings that you can bring with you to the founder seat.
Sophie Buonassisi (12:08.238)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I hear you. Yeah, and I find that when we’re receiving pitches, for example, it is the difference is you’re almost the product also, right? So yes, you’re pitching the product, but you’re very much the product at an early stage, the founder itself. So you’re being like, is this the right person for building this product? And obviously the market conditions and why, but suddenly you’re personally rolled up under the product too, which is an interesting thing.
to consider, but I feel like has similarities to being a sales leader or revenue leader in general, because you’re recruiting. You’re recruiting people to buy into your mission. So maybe there’s a lot more commonalities there than meets the eye.
Erica Anderman (12:48.415)
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of what gives me confidence in what I’m building today is that I’ve spent 15 years in this industry and I have learned a ton, right? My first company was one of the first companies to build menus on the internet. So I know that that schema of menus is still being used. And today what I’m building is a better way to actually get transparency into ingredients because I know that those menu schemas that are used across all online ordering.
companies don’t have the ability to add ingredients, which is a unique insight that I have because I’ve been in this industry for a long time. And so while that doesn’t mean I have it all figured out, in all honesty, the, you know, go to market, which we can get into was not what I thought it would be when I started. The business is pivoted and we’ve learned a lot as we’ve gone. But ultimately my knowledge of the industry and my experience in the industry, my relationships that I’ve created.
over a decade of just doing my job, building partnerships at different companies. But those relationships, a lot of people move within the same industry and ultimately you build upon that as you continue to grow in your career.
Sophie Buonassisi (14:07.032)
Definitely. It compounds relationships. And it truly is a small world in SAS. And for the little bit.
Erica Anderman (14:12.464)
Exactly. And it matters. That’s what I think is the positive too, is when you care about the relationships you built, you know, I think that it matters, whether it’s people who have worked for me who are asking for…
you know, me to talk to their hiring managers for referrals or people who I’ve worked for, my CEOs that I’ve previously worked for. I am really proud of the fact that I can call all of them and they want to help me and back me. And I think that’s something everyone should just hold true to themselves at no matter what role you’re in or no matter what company you’re in is.
doing the job, building the right relationships around you is going to pay off no matter what you decide to do in the future.
Sophie Buonassisi (14:56.366)
So well said. When we think about it too, around referencing and overall hiring internally, but also referencing on the investment side is, if you’re doing the work, nobody should have something bad to say about you in a way. People should enjoy working with you. Typically, references are all 100%. Because if you’re doing the work and doing it well, people will say just tremendous things.
Erica Anderman (15:21.524)
Exactly. Yeah, I think it means a lot.
Sophie Buonassisi (15:25.016)
Give it to listeners especially. Give us a little bit of context to Foo Dee Dee. And we’d love to jump into your go-to market. I’m a big fan, I’m already familiar, but for everyone else.
Erica Anderman (15:34.686)
Yeah, nice. So yeah, Fudini was born out of really actually started, met the company through Go To Market Fund. I at the time was full time leading revenue at Odeco. I had joined Go To Market Fund and I was at one of the earlier dinners that we had here in LA. Sat next to a fellow LP who we were talking about our backgrounds and I told him a lot about my experience in food tech and he
Said you know he’s like I met a guy who started a company. He’s trying to solve for people who have allergies or dietary needs He’s celiac and he started the company in Sydney, Australia Guy sitting next to me was Irish guy who also lived here in LA But again small world and you never know His friend was coming to LA next week, and he asked me if I would mind getting coffee with him And helping him out because he was you know new to the restaurant tech world
So I was like, sure. I personally can eat most things. I’m pretty lucky. But growing up, my brother had an autoimmune disease that prevented him from eating certain foods. He was doing the elimination diets. My niece and nephew have allergies. My best friend had two kids riddled with allergies. And for me, was one of those, it doesn’t impact you, but you see it. Every time you sit down at a restaurant now, they ask you, do you have any allergies or dietary needs?
curious about what he was building, met him, and at the time he was building a consumer app for people like him. So he was sick and tired and not knowing where he could go to get a sandwich. And the big aha for me was it was incredible the growth that he was seeing. Consumers loved the product, over 100,000 users in less than a year all signing on to help them figure out where they can go and what they could eat. The challenge was
How do you get the data? And that’s what he was talking to me about being in Restaurant Tech is he was like, I’m reaching out to each and every restaurant trying to get the information about exactly what they’re using in their food when trying to make sure that we obviously can tell consumers exactly what they can and cannot have. And the challenge was getting that data. And that was the big aha for me was this system is just not set up.
Erica Anderman (17:58.994)
today in terms of where recipe information, where products and ingredients that are used within our food are currently in back of house systems, if they exist. For like the fine dining, farm to table restaurant, typically they aren’t even documented. But for most chains, they’re documented, but they’re not actually integrated within the ordering experience. Consumer ordering, whether that’s in the restaurant, online.
it doesn’t actually have any of that ingredient information. Thus, we’re manually asking every time we go out to eat what we can and cannot have, which is of course prone to error, mistake. Every 10 seconds, someone’s going to the ER because of a food allergy related incident.
And so add in the kind of growing food is medicine movement, a ton of people paying attention now to longevity and their biometric markers and understanding their nutritional needs. There’s just kind of increasing consumer demand at this point to know what’s in our food when we dine out. And so that’s what we’re really building is working within the hospitality industry, not just restaurants, but you can imagine stadiums, amusement parks, aged care, anywhere food is
served, there’s a need to know what exactly is in that food. And so we’re helping to create that transparency, leveraging AI to kind of fill in the gaps, using a dietitian team to verify the information so that we’re able to create personalized menus for diners, custom to whatever their allergy or dietary need is.
Sophie Buonassisi (19:39.68)
Incredible. And I think I read actually just the other day that one in three Americans now has some kind of restriction, allergy, intolerance. So market’s certainly there in terms of volume.
Erica Anderman (19:53.008)
Exactly, but the learning, know, again, learnings right here for the listeners. It was hard to figure out. we thought, you know, beginning consumer is the most in need here. But the challenge is your product has to be able to deliver for those consumers. And we learned after quickly looking into the industry that.
Even though consumers want this, you can’t give them the data they need. Especially, it’s a health-related issue, right? It’s a food allergy. Some people prefer to avoid dairy for whatever reason, but for the people where it’s an actual need, that’s not something you can just guess at.
So I always say also, cause people are like, you use AI. We use AI in certain aspects really to help us to agentic AI perform a job. If we don’t have the information available right away, we will go search a database. We’re building a products database of exactly what restaurants are buying and what those ingredients are within those products. We’re doing the work. You can’t take a picture. You know, there’s a lot of cool AI interfaces these days of take a picture of your food and we’ll tell you exactly what’s in there.
You can get pretty good, right? And the better the tech gets, we can have an idea. But for people who have food allergies or true needs, we actually need to do a better job at documenting the information. So it took a lot of work and understanding what we actually needed to do to do the job here and to get this accurate information and figuring out the go-to-market as we went.
Sophie Buonassisi (21:23.746)
Yeah. And at what point did you actually join Fudini? Was it still a consumer app or had you transitioned to be more of the data layer?
Erica Anderman (21:31.25)
Yeah, yeah. So I joined about a year and a half ago when it was a consumer app. And so part of my time now joining as co-founder, you know, at the time it was still in Australia, just a consumer app. So my co-founder moved to LA here with me and we started the business and really pivoted to be the data application layer, obviously using a lot of my…
knowledge about the industry and the big kind of aha for us was really understanding the need across online ordering. And that’s been a big focus for us is building this data application layer, which has been about a year and a half that we’ve been working on it now.
Sophie Buonassisi (22:09.228)
Incredible. And when you’re thinking about the data that you’re gathering and how you’re interviewing or shaping the initial go-to-market plan, what did that early day look like? Obviously you had the transition from consumer forward, but I’m curious what that progression looked like for anyone else who’s thinking about their go-to-market, who’s pivoting, who’s really trying to dig in and trying to find that product market fit initially.
Erica Anderman (22:33.244)
Yeah, of course. I’m not gonna, I will just say it’s hard. You know, like it was, because there’s a lot of, a lot of factors, especially with two-sided, I it the marketplace, but I have experienced, you know,
Sophie Buonassisi (22:37.816)
Yeah.
Erica Anderman (22:47.634)
A lot of my previous experiences were in marketplaces. Slice, we worked with local pizzerias and we had consumers ordering those pizzerias. We had the similar battle of where were we a consumer at? Were we a place for people to come order pizza? Or were we software, vertical SaaS, for these pizzerias where we were powering their online ordering? And there was battles over the years over time of trying to kind of figure out the go-to-market, even at a company that had product market fit, right?
There’s a lot of learnings always as you go. But the big learning for me at Slice was by focusing on that one vertical and really learning and understanding the challenge we were solving, we needed to build a better experience to order.
And that meant the restaurants, the pizzeria partners were who we were selling to, but consumers benefited. And it was B2B2C was the real unlock from a growth perspective because we powered the online ordering where we would acquire the consumer. The consumer would have said, I just ordered within two seconds rather than having to call and be put on hold while I’m driving home on a Friday from picking my kids up from soccer practice. Now I can click reorder every week.
on this amazing app and we saw by looking at the data that.
on average, people were looking at, you know, one to two of their favorite pizzerias every single week. They weren’t necessarily using us as a discovery app. And that really allowed us to own in on we should be a tool for people to order from their favorite pizzeria. It’s about providing loyalty and it’s about really leaning into an easier and better way instead of trying to be this discovery engine. And that was Slice. But to bring it to Fudini, similar for me in terms of understanding
Erica Anderman (24:38.364)
the problem we were solving. And here, blatantly obvious, consumers love this, right?
emails we get. When they showed me when I first joined, some of the consumer people being like this is a savior. We’re scared to go out to eat right now. This has been plaguing us. I never bring my kids out to eat because I don’t trust what I ask the waiter or waitress. I can see in their eyes that they don’t actually know. And who’s to blame them? They probably started the job a week ago. You expect them to be an expert at every ingredient. And so it really was about learning and
understanding where the problems were and for us at Foodini it was actually understanding when we talked to restaurants this wasn’t something that they could just give us. had, know, heads of dietetics and nutrition at one of the biggest food service companies walked us through where she specifically was having challenges working with getting this data from manufacturers and distributors so that she could be accurate in giving it to us. And that’s where we really learned here, okay,
Okay, this is probably gonna take us a little longer than we wanted, right? There’s a lot of kind of data infrastructure that needs to be set up. But that was also where we saw this opportunity, which was this doesn’t exist today. So there’s no way that if you’re ordering on DoorDash or if you’re going in person, they could just tell you, hey.
Sophie Buonassisi (25:49.955)
Yep.
Erica Anderman (26:04.488)
Here’s the data. We actually have to create it. And there’s an opportunity here by being one of first to really help to document that information. Listening to the market, I’d say is another one. Like right now, for us, there’s, as I said, the Growing Food is Medicine movement. There’s this focus on…
understanding what’s in your food. The MAHA movement is big about ingredient transparency, which is good for us. There’s some legislation that just passed here in California that actually requires labeling. And so as a go-to-market leader, know, where my head goes is like, interesting. So if this now goes through and it becomes compliance software, that’s a very different go-to-market motion than trying to prove, you know, this is something that’s going to help drive new business or help drive repeat business. Now it’s something that
is actually going to be required and is a better solution than labeling every single ingredient on a menu. So there’s a lot of constantly kind of listening to those signals and adjusting as we go to figure out the right motion.
Sophie Buonassisi (27:07.21)
Incredible. That’s fantastic. I think there’s tons of learnings that others can really absorb from your story, So thank you for sharing.
Erica Anderman (27:15.476)
Of course.
Sophie Buonassisi (27:16.802)
And you mentioned you brought in a dietitian specifically for more of the data side, but I’ve also heard that, you you’ve partnered with allergy education groups and supported donation efforts and other community initiatives. And that’s a constant theme that we see and hear across vertical companies is the importance of community. I’m curious your perspective on community as a vertical company.
Erica Anderman (27:41.492)
I would just double down a million times over of how often this has been a theme, know across again every company I’ve been at not just Fidini. A few examples over the years, know, Slice, it was local pizzerias. Nothing brought me more joy than when we brought in we had your customer advisory board. I recommend them to every company. But when they’re pizzeria owners, it’s a good time. These guys are
You know, not the most tech savvy, but we ate well every time. You know, they would all bring in. Yeah, it was great. But also just listening and learning. And there’s no better way to also motivate the team internally. So that was one thing I’ve always brought as a revenue leader because revenue leaders, the title I like to say it’s customer like leader, right? It’s the voice of the customer because that’s ultimately what drives the revenue is if you understand intimately who you’re
Sophie Buonassisi (28:16.438)
I can imagine.
Erica Anderman (28:41.606)
to and I believe that comes through truly listening, bringing them forward, actually bringing their challenges, what they’re liking, kind of setting that format up. I remember, especially when we were in the office back in New York with Slice, I remember bringing them in and engineers and people who weren’t necessarily customer facing would love to come in and listen to the direct from the customer feedback, which is just always such a helpful
way to really learn and understand and kind of creating that community because they want to feel heard and when you create a platform for these pizzerias we created a conference I remember
I’ll be like five or so years in, where we brought together a bunch of local pizzerias. We brought some of the leaders in the space who were really good at marketing, like Tony Bologna in New Jersey, who was great at it. We brought in a social media guy who had started a podcast about pizza. One of the best guys who made some of the best dough, and he was like a pioneer in the Detroit style. This was fun, right? But we brought it together.
Sophie Buonassisi (29:47.054)
amazing.
Erica Anderman (29:48.444)
And they love the content. They came because they were like learning from each other. And the fact that we just facilitated a place for them to be able to meet, learn. Sometimes they did business deals together, but ultimately it just continued to really crystallize that trust in us as a tech partner that not only allowed us to obviously retain them, but grow. Because the other thing that you benefit from when you focus on one vertical and building a community within that vertical is you build that trust, which enables you to continue.
to expand beyond what you’re currently offering. So from a revenue perspective, you we started with online ordering, we later added on things like supplies. The mission was to unite these local pizzerias, you know, help them compete against big chains.
we helped them do that in multiple ways. It didn’t have to just be through the original product. There were additional ways as we grew and had scale where once we had 12,000 local pizzerias, we realized they’re paying 36 cents for every single box. While Domino’s is paying six cents, we should be able to help negotiate. And those weren’t easy things in the beginning. There’s a lot of learning new industries. I had never gotten into supplies before that.
here negotiating the price of pizza boxes. Not something I had thought I would be doing in my career, but it was actually super fun to just learn new ways and provide, launch these new products, launch these new ways. Odeco, similar with coffee shops, These coffee shops loved to learn from each other. We would do things like these cupping throw downs. I didn’t know what that was before I was in the coffee industry, but these baristas will do these latte art where they compete on like the perfect
latte art and what milk foams the best of all the alternative milks and they learned from each other and it just added more of a reason for them to continue to use Odeco and to partner with us as their supplies provider.
Erica Anderman (32:25.66)
Well, back to, I guess, for community. bringing it to where I am now, I’d say it’s one of the most important things from really learning who your customers are, helping them to meet and talk to each other. For us currently, one of the biggest levers we have is really leaning into others in the space who are also advocating for change. So my co-founder, he’s on the board.
for FAIR, which is the Food Allergies Research and Education Group, our national advocacy group, who they’re doing a ton of work with, you know, some of the big names like the Mahomes family, for example, on the Kansas City Chiefs. They have two kids with food allergies. They are super dedicated. They’ve built out this incredible stadium in Kansas City that has a ton of options for people who are gluten-free, and they help to figure out where you can go to get certain food, and that is, you know, pioneering for the industry. So there’s so much learning from each
when you really all lean into kind of who else is building in your space, shares a similar mission and refer each other, help each other out. know, one of the first people I met is woman, Betsy, who runs MenuTrinfo. They do a ton of training for allergies and she herself has, you know, lived through a chronic condition where she changed her way of eating and she’s such a good advocate for the industry and now she’s working for the government. She’s working with Maha, helping to initiate
real change in terms of creating more transparency. And so I think the more you lean into others who are also building in your space, the more you’ll kind of leverage that community and people love to help each other out.
Sophie Buonassisi (34:05.459)
Absolutely. And one of the cool things, I mean, many cool things, I think I extract them from what you just shared there is it’s not necessarily about lookalikes, it’s actually about alignment and vision. People can look and feel very different. They might not be your customers, they might be partners, but they’re on the same mission and pulling those people together is what’s valuable. Now, Erica, what do you think about infrastructure for pulling people together? You’ve done it in multiple ways. You’ve done these cupping events, you’ve done…
Erica Anderman (34:25.332)
Absolutely. Yeah. Good.
Sophie Buonassisi (34:33.958)
No, with pizza delivery and overall the pizza space, a lot of companies want to build community, but don’t know how. so their immediate default is I’m going to just put everyone into a Slack channel or WhatsApp group. How do you feel about the infrastructure community? Do you think that it’s becoming more saturated and we need to keep getting more creative or are simple group chats helpful?
Erica Anderman (35:02.536)
think it depends who…
your community is and their sophistication level. as someone who kind of grew up in SMB, small business, you’re not putting those guys in a Slack channel. Guys and girls, but especially pizza. So it needed different thinking. So there, we would bring them into the office, we would bring in a lunch, we would create this conference of which we would bring them together, send out the content. I think creating valuable content
for the community, that’s a theme that can go. And then how that content is communicated depends on who they are and where they spend their time. So sometimes it makes sense to bring them together. I think in person is always better than a Slack channel or a WhatsApp group, but it’s difficult. So you can only do that, let’s say a few times a year and it costs money, but.
It is worth it if you can create that valuable content that not only enforces your brand and the value you create, but it also helps to bring that community together. I think the trust that you create from those type of real in-person events is invaluable. But as far as the kind of WhatsApp groups or the other ways to connect, keeping it a bit smaller I think is important and also creating some sort of a framework or…
ability to create a bit of structure because no one wants to just be in a group. It’s always a bit intimidating of like who’s going to kind of speak first or you know, should I answer that question or am I, do I not have as much expertise? Everyone kind of has those fears when it comes to just contributing, not everyone, but you know, you’ve got your few loud people in the room. But I always think kind of creating a bit of structure, creating some smaller breakout of groups that are, know, examples would be
Erica Anderman (36:54.724)
With slice we would have like specifically pizzeria owners that had multiple locations in brooklyn So it was like more specific. They were going through the same types of challenges And could speak more to each other I think those type of kind of smaller micro communities call it Other examples. I mean, I think go to market right you guys we We do a good job of i’ve met so many people through go to market. They’re not all food tech We do have our little community
within GoToMarket of, you know, JG and Brandon who when I go to these things I always see them, our little group that are also in food tech and GoToMarket. But there’s also, for me, I think it’s so beneficial to me like…
women in leadership and sales, which there’s obviously more than there used to be, but we’re still a minority, and being able to create that little micro community that I can tap into when I’m specifically dealing with challenges that might be specific to things that other women can relate to. I think those kind of smaller communities where people can feel a bit more open in sharing, I think are even more valuable than just the larger formats.
Sophie Buonassisi (38:03.771)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, great advice, because I mean, you don’t get the value if you’re not actually participating. So creating that relevance creates the value. Love it. Brilliant. And you talk a lot about, I mean, the data that you’ve built out, the programs that you’ve built out at Fudini. I’m curious about your funnel, if you don’t mind me asking. Just overall, how do you think about measurements and how has that evolved over time?
Erica Anderman (38:28.456)
Yeah. So in general, I’d say funnel, I guess where to break it down, of where awareness and I break this into like pre-product market fit as well as post where I think it’s two different things in terms of how much you pour into it. I think lead gen building up that funnel.
If it’s pre-product market fit, a lot of it is partnerships. It’s understanding how to kind of get the word out about what you’re building, especially if, similar to what we’re doing at Fudini, you’re a new category. You’re a new product that has never been done. There’s a lot that’s needed in terms of getting people to understand the problem and to be able to kind of build the thought sharing side of things. So I’d say a lot of it is being a thought leader,
helping to educate others in this space, leaning into companies or partners that have a lot more distribution than you in the early days to be able to distribute that type of content and sharing.
I always caution early revenue leaders on things like spending a lot of money on marketing. think that marketing makes sense post-product market fit when you know you’ve got a measurable outcome. But I caution on spending too much money on things like ads really early on for early stage startups when you don’t yet know exactly who your ICP is and how to reach out to them. But I’d say that kind of first part would be the awareness funnel, which right now for us is a lot of kind of that thought leadership and the partnerships
we’re building within the industry.
Erica Anderman (40:09.03)
Next portion I’d say would be consideration buying side. In SMB, that was sales. So small business sales is really not product led as much as things might change over time. But for SMBs, especially restaurant owners, you have to reach out. So a lot of it for us with sales is traditional outbound sales. We alternate some in person, some inside sales, but for the most part, it was the basic sales metrics of still old
meetings held, win ratios, looking at sales cycles, but understanding kind of the sales funnel.
Growth and retention, where I started my career and I still kind of feel the most passionate of where I think the most value sometimes can be found is really in terms of understanding that customer journey. What are the indicators of where customers are getting the most value? The leading indicators is one thing I always try to pay attention to, not just looking at churn, which is a lagging indicator, but really understanding the customer throughout their
journey with you and I think a lot of it is just building out that infrastructure as you go in terms of understanding how to look at the journey, where to measure across the way.
And that’s where RevOps has been something that, especially now with AI tools, I think it’s becoming easier, which is great. Back in the day, nothing was more important to me than my partner, my head of RevOps who came with me to multiple companies because I depended on her so much. Because she was a thought partner to me and I understood that I was a better revenue leader if I had her next to me helping me to really break down each stage of the funnel and figure out what needed
Erica Anderman (42:00.8)
my attention and where to pay attention to. But I think ultimately it all comes down to kind of looking at it as an overall customer journey and breaking it down into those specific funnels.
Sophie Buonassisi (42:13.981)
Absolutely. So many nuggets of helpful tactical information there. Thank you, Erica. And you mentioned distribution through partners and so forth. And content is a big part of distribution in terms of what can be helpful to provide to partners. And you’ve taken a lot of messy data sets, which now have turned into extreme value for companies creating unique content. It’s proprietary data.
What kind of frameworks, if any, have you found helpful for taking these crazy raw data sets and actually turning them into valuable content that partners or other want to use and trust and share?
Erica Anderman (42:53.254)
A lot of, honestly, especially with what we’re doing now, this is messy. So as you said, taking a lot of information that’s offline or it’s not properly documented, it came down to finding kind of where those gaps were. And so as I mentioned previously, it was like really speaking directly with…
each of the kind of the ICPs, the target customers that we’re working with, understanding where those gaps were and taking the right approach to make sure that we weren’t taking any shortcuts. So the benefit is like, I don’t think you could have done this five years ago because there have been a lot of advancements in AI and a lot of advancements in where we’re tracking product information because we’re not the only ones who are.
focused on creating more transparency. I’ve met with founders of other companies in this space, for example, company Starfish that’s more focused on food traceability. So, a very different use case. For them, it’s trying to figure out, when we have a breakout of salmonella or E. coli, how do I know exactly where that came from? But the work that they’re doing is to help create this system of tracking within the food system that creates these single identifiers for specific products and ingredients.
which then benefits us because if we have that unified system, we all benefit. For us, it’s about creating transparency into exactly what ingredients are within those products and building the right infrastructure such that if the manufacturer changed the recipe, that I, because I have that product stored in my database, automatically change that recipe that then changes the information to the consumer instead of having to then have the restaurant be aware that the manufacturer made that change.
and then have to update me and my system. So a lot of it is through this kind of broken system for so long. We’ve really thought through what is required to create the right infrastructure for this data to be able to make sure that we have the right changes when they’re made. And I’m not saying it’s perfect yet, but that’s been a lot of our approach is how do we make sure we get this right? And how do we really build in a way that’s for scale? Because a lot of the way the industry has tried to solve
Erica Anderman (45:14.26)
for this is through short-term, in my opinion, thinking, through things like tagging. And I get why, right? Okay, well we see there’s all these people who are gluten-free, we see there’s all these people asking these questions, or there’s people who are allergic to soy, we should require them to label the top nine. And a lot of, whether it be enforced legally, state by state, or just restaurants wanting to help answer questions, they’ve started to add things like,
GF on the menu or CDR and these short-term things which cause confusion because some places have contains gluten which means this item contains gluten others have gluten free And this has become eye-opening to me going out to eat every day with my co-founder We’re going to even big chains that are best in breed like a kava. We were standing in line They couldn’t tell us if the falafel had gluten. It wasn’t on the menu It wasn’t that they had to ask like five
people while there’s a whole line behind us and so really for us it’s about or I believe is that
Ingredients are what needs to be documented. Doesn’t again need to be written out, but we have it in the back end where we tag every one of those ingredients. We know what is in that food and we just show the customer what they need to know. But ultimately that means that whether you have one of the top nine allergens or if you’re just someone who has gut health issues and you’re on a low FODMAP diet or you’re someone who has a sensitivity to ginger, it doesn’t matter what it is, if you break it down for the ingredients.
level, that’s a long-term solution versus short-term tagging. So a lot of it is just really kind of trying to think through what’s the right way to solve the problem, not just today, but as that, you know, continues to grow and scale.
Sophie Buonassisi (47:06.748)
What does the future of dining look like in that world? Let’s say Fudini is implemented at a restaurant I’m walking in or anyone listening is walking in and dining at the restaurant. What does the experience look like?
Erica Anderman (47:19.4)
Yeah. So I guess I’ll start from before they even get to the restaurant, which is because there’s a lot of conversation. Yeah, I always am fascinated, right? Especially if you look and you pay attention to where funding goes. you pay attention, lot of companies are, or two specifically, founders who get a lot of attention, Mark Laurie at Wonder, Travis Kalanick at Cloud Kitchens, both have raised billions of dollars.
Sophie Buonassisi (47:24.687)
Ooh, okay.
Erica Anderman (47:46.322)
In food companies, if you look at what they’re building, might question, looks like cloud kitchens. There’s a ton of money going into their building these kitchens. But if you actually listen to their larger visions, what’s interesting, both talk about this kind of future of health, which is where as, not consumers, but we in general, I think, are all curious more and paying more attention to our health. And so a lot of the belief is that
In the future, we are going to understand our personal…
microbiomes a lot more than we ever have previously, where instead of just saying, have this illness and I need to take this prescription medication, a lot of people are more interested in understanding their genetics. There’s a lot of also money going into genetic testing. There’s a lot of money, know, companies like Function Health that are blowing up, which is all about just testing more about your health indicators than previously paid attention to. So I think a lot of people are going to
understand themselves more, their predispositions and their nutritional needs. And what that means, I think if you look at what, you know, Wonder and Cloud Kitchens want, that means that they also are going to capitalize on the efficiencies of automation, where within these Cloud Kitchens, you’re going to be able to automate all of this food being made. You know exactly what ingredients are in there because you’re making it all within these Cloud Kitchens. And so people are going to get their blood tested at home.
and based on those results they’re going to be able to get these tailored AI generated meal plans that help make sure that they get the right nutrition for whatever they’re currently going through, whether they’re running a marathon or recovering from an illness, and that those meals are going to be tailored to them.
Erica Anderman (49:36.104)
I do think that future will exist. What I want to hope at Foodini is that what we’re going to help prevent is that people aren’t going to just sit at home and order from food made by robots. I think there’s still an appetite for people for in-person dining, for hospitality, for people to want to go out to eat, to want to order from their favorite restaurants that are made from a local ethnic restaurant nearby that opens it up because they opened up a restaurant out of their heart and because they want to cook from their know-how.
known as recipes, you know? And for me, what I’m hoping we’re going to build is the infrastructure required to help those restaurants to just properly document what is in that food so that the consumer can place that order, whether it be through DoorDash, UberEats, or whatever the online ordering, direct from the restaurant online, or whether they go in person. Right now we have a QR code that goes on the menu. That way when you’re sitting there, whether it’s online, you click a link, in venue, you go to the QR code, you enter whatever it is,
your dietary profile is. So anything from, I’m allergic to nuts to, again, I’m avoiding cilantro. You save and then instantly, here’s what you can have, here’s what you can modify, and we use exactly what the current modifiers are, and here’s what you can’t have and why, specifically. So you have that information upfront, whether it be before you place the order or when you’re there, you can then make an informed decision. You don’t have to be the awkward person at the table. You don’t have to not go out to eat because you don’t have the information you need.
And you can make an informed decision that is necessary for a lot of people for their health.
Sophie Buonassisi (51:14.075)
That just got me incredibly excited about the future and far more comprehensive than I anticipated. I mean, the tailored dietary understandings at more of the overarching level and then how solutions like Fruity Neatgy fit into that and enable that and enable actually small businesses even to participate in that is super cool. I actually just got micronutrient testing because that was a concept I was going for is how do I actually tailor it? But I can’t layer on things like
Erica Anderman (51:16.98)
I hope so.
Sophie Buonassisi (51:42.043)
training for a marathon on top of that and things like that. At least I haven’t yet, maybe you can. But there’s a lot of things that I can only imagine if we’re able to facilitate that at a greater scale.
Erica Anderman (51:54.672)
Exactly, obviously I get quite passionate about it, but it’s you know, I think it’s fun, right? And that’s another thing I’d give is just general advice to anyone is whether you know, whatever it is you’re doing pick an industry that you actually enjoy, right? I wouldn’t necessarily say most people would recommend you get into food tech. The margins are pretty awful in restaurants and it’s not necessarily, you know, huge ACV industry, but
I personally just, love hospitality, I love food, and I’m genuinely interested in the future of health. And so for me, it makes every day easier. And I think everyone is different, but if you can build in an industry that you love, it definitely makes each day a little bit more fun.
Sophie Buonassisi (52:42.501)
Great, great advice. And zooming out to the overall vertical space, including food tech, but even beyond that, I mean, in food tech, we saw toast, saw Olo, they both IPO’d in 2021. More recently, overall in vertical, we’ve seen companies like Service Titan, Rubrik, CoreWeave, and others IPO. How are you seeing the trends from the vertical space overall in comparison to any horizontal products?
Erica Anderman (53:07.634)
Yeah, I think a lot of it goes back to what we kind of talked about on the community side of things is it’s, if you focus on one vertical, you just, it’s easier to become an expert, right? There’s so many things that are easier. You know, I know Jordan Crawford, another member of the go-to-market community, listened to a lot of what he talks about using AI tools to target your ICP. He always talks, if you know your ICP.
It is so much easier. And so if you focus on one vertical from just the beginning, early days of the funnel of targeting that to learning and understanding their needs, their problems, their challenges.
It’s just, I think, easier. Obviously, it’s more limited in terms of a smaller, typically depending again on the vertical, but you can go so much deeper and I think you can really understand what problems you’re solving and you can understand, especially the more you’re within a specific vertical, the pitfalls earlier on because you have those learnings and you can learn how to build faster. For me, it’s proven
helpful in my career when I talk, you I advise a lot of early stage companies coming into the industry and you just, you help them to learn faster. Cause it’s like, you know, a lot of people, especially selling to restaurants, I always laugh when they have like a, you know, a PLG motion and I’m like, mm.
Like, you still gotta reach out to these guys. And so I think there’s just a lot of benefit when you focus on one vertical to just be able to become an expert in that, to really learn from it. And I think it just also helps to, just your career, I think, to really kind of specialize in an area. And it could be, obviously, you can specialize in a function. can…
Erica Anderman (54:58.098)
be a sales expert at multiple verticals, but I find at least focusing on one allows you to have a bit more of an expertise that you can pass on to others and to really go broader within that one vertical as you go because you’ve learned so much about it.
Sophie Buonassisi (55:17.691)
Yeah, you can go multi-product and have that community thread.
Lovely. Well, Erica, last question. What’s one tactic or strategy that’s working for you right now at Fudini? Anything we haven’t talked about so far.
Erica Anderman (56:12.232)
Yeah.
So, you know, as I mentioned before, going to the early days, it’s playing around with a lot of tools. You know, there’s a lot out there, especially right now with all the different AI tools and go to market. And so we have been kind of taking this approach of how do we think through how we can use a tool instead of necessarily the traditional way of doing things. So a few examples would be we’re doing a new B2B
marketing video. We’re doing a lot of partnering with these online ordering companies and helping them understand how we’re able to capture all of this data from their restaurant partners and instead of where previously I probably would be like, alright we need to create a video, I need to reach out to a video company to help me create this.
We’re building it ourselves and it’s shocking to me how far we’ve gotten with just using some of the tools that are available, even the free versions. Just some very real examples, there’s company called Jitter that has templates that you can create to create videos, this art grid and Higgs field which have image generation and video generation that you can create. Eleven Labs for AI voiceover where you can select all these different voices, you can adjust the speed, you can address
how they enunciate certain words. I’ve been really blown away by some of the tools available to us. So I would just encourage everybody.
Erica Anderman (57:41.906)
just start playing around. Even from a product perspective, early founders, would suggest, know, you’re as lovable, we’re using this tool called Bercel to build out this self-onboarding flow right now. And this isn’t just the old days, I partnered with design, you know, and product to be able to build things out, but you actually can build out.
web flows that you can ship out next day. And so I think we’re in a new day today where you can build much easier. So I just encourage everyone to just start playing around.
Sophie Buonassisi (58:19.13)
I can’t wait to see that video when it goes live.
Erica Anderman (58:24.436)
I’ll send it to you.
Sophie Buonassisi (58:24.57)
Well, perfect. Erica, this has been incredibly helpful. Where can people follow you or find you? What’s the best way to get in touch or just follow your journey?
Erica Anderman (58:34.472)
Yeah, Erica Anderman on LinkedIn, I’d say. I probably should post more, but you can find me there. Email, personal email, eAnderman at Gmail. I’m definitely always happy to talk to anyone, but I especially love talking to women early on in their careers. So anyone, welcome to reach out. Yeah.
Sophie Buonassisi (58:59.682)
Incredible. Super generous of you and thank you for also sharing these insights broadly here with our audience. Really appreciate it. It’s been incredibly helpful. And to our listeners, thank you for hanging with us.
Erica Anderman (59:11.344)
Of course, this was fun. Thanks, Opie.
Sophie Buonassisi (59:14.35)
Thank you, Erica.
