Feeding Hope

Chapter 8Failing Forward

When I think about Goodr, I don't immediately think about the wins or the recognition or the moments when things came together against the odds. I think about the fact that I am still standing. I think about the number of times I failed versus the number of times I succeeded, and if I'm honest, it often feels like the failures far outweigh the wins.

Maybe that's because my definition of success has never matched the traditional playbook. Success to me has never been revenue milestones, big fundraising rounds, or landing the cover of a magazine. For me, success has always been simple: people eating. When tens of millions of Americans still don't know where their next meal is coming from, it's hard to feel victorious. It's hard to feel like I've won anything at all. What I've built has been meaningful, yes, but the magnitude of the problem has always been larger than the progress.

In the early years of building Goodr, failure felt heavy in every direction—emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically. Emotionally, there were days when the fundraising journey drained everything out of me. I took more than 200 investor meetings in those early years. I heard no so many times that the word began to feel less like a decision and more like a verdict. Sometimes it felt personal. In many rooms, I knew I wasn't understood. I was pitching to people who had never experienced hunger, never seen a refrigerator that held only hope and air, never sat with a mother ...