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00:00:00
00:00:01
Yael Shemer
47 Plays7 days ago
Thanks for listening to our episode with Yael Shemer.
To keep up with or connect with Yael:
✨TULU’s Website: https://www.tulu.io/
✨Yael’s Substack: https://yaelshemer.substack.com/
✨Yael’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yael_shemer/?hl=en
✨Yael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yael-shemer-2984a6141
To stay in touch with Meredith and Medbury:
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
Follow Medbury on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/medbury_agency/
Subscribe to the Medbury newsletter: https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
Email Meredith: Meredith@MedburyAgency.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Yael Shimmer and Tulu
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello. Meredith. I am so excited to get to have this conversation with you. Thank you so much for agreeing to be on Content People and for making time for this. Absolutely. I'm excited to be here. For anyone who doesn't know you, can you say who you are and what you do?
00:00:16
Speaker
Hi, everyone. My name is Yael Shimmer. I'm the co-founder of Tulu. We are a circular economy startup based in New York City, operating in 600 buildings. And I'll get to more about what Tulu is, but I'd like to call myself a builder, an entrepreneur, and also an activist.
Journey to Entrepreneurship and Sustainability
00:00:33
Speaker
I want to ask a lot about everything you just said. But before we get into Tulu, can you say up till starting it, what was your journey? What did you think you were going to do? What did you study in school?
00:00:44
Speaker
really curious. I started Tulu back when I was 25. So I really do feel like it was a whole different life before then. It's been eight years since. Prior to Tulu, I was always really interested in the environment and I knew I wanted to go into the sustainability field. And while traveling around the world and being in university, I really realized that the world of sustainability is also the world of cities and we need to make our cities much smarter.
00:01:11
Speaker
So from being a student, I realized that I actually don't feel excited about my career and I wanted to start my own company. And I heard about this program at MIT where I decided to apply to knowing that I have very small percentage of chance that I can actually get accepted into.
00:01:28
Speaker
But I took a leap of faith and that's where I met my co-founder back in 2018. And slowly we started working together and founded what today's Tulu. It's so impressive and wild that at MIT, I mean, so many cool things come out of it, but that eight years later, you're still building and still
Entrepreneurial Identity and Lessons Learned
00:01:47
Speaker
in it. How is Tulu? What was it when you were in school compared to what it is now?
00:01:54
Speaker
Back then, i didn't know much about entrepreneurship. It even took me time to call myself an entrepreneur. But I realized while talking to a fellow man, he would tell me he's an entrepreneur and he would describe the things he's doing. And I realized that I'm also an entrepreneur. I've been advocating for more recycling programs, more pedestrian-friendly cities, things like that. And I realized that I wanted to take my belief system and actually...
00:02:21
Speaker
follow up with action and start a company in that world. The MIT fellowship I went to was really focused around smart cities and really focused around developing a product that's more early stage and then learning how to scale it. But it's kind of like asking you to imagine what it's like to feel happy. You have to feel happy. So starting a company, you can't really imagine what it would be like to hit different stages.
00:02:44
Speaker
It's a ton of learning while going and making a ton of mistakes. So the beginning stages were very exciting because I felt like I was so naive. I had no idea what to expect. I've never talked to investors before starting the company. I've never managed people on a professional sense. I've only managed people as a waitress and as a shift manager.
00:03:04
Speaker
So it was a lot of first time for almost every single aspect of my life back then. Wow. What parts of it came intuitively for you? Were there some things that you were like, actually, I'm pretty good at this?
00:03:15
Speaker
I think everything that has to do with people have always come more naturally to me than what I've learned to others. And that's something cool about discovering your own gifts. Yeah. and People walk around the world thinking that their gifts are just, but everyone has those gifts. And also sometimes people don't know that their gifts are actual gifts. And for me, my empathy and my people skills was something that I just like, oh, I'm just social. I guess I can just get along with people. So After a couple of years, I realized that i really do enjoy talking to our customers and I really do enjoy making relationships with our vendors and with our investors and with potential business avenues.
00:03:54
Speaker
And I realized that was a skill that came more naturally to me and actually built my entire role in Tulu around that. Really? Can you say more about that? That's really interesting. Like you structured it so that your relationship skills are really serving the business. Yeah, I took the Enneagram test oh back a couple of years ago and I got number two. Are you familiar with the Enneagram? I am, but I get a different number every time I take it.
00:04:19
Speaker
So the Enneagram system is a wonderful personality system. It's a very deep system and my coach is working with it. And the idea is that there are nine type of archetypes and every archetype either regresses to an archetype or grows into a different archetype.
00:04:36
Speaker
And I got number two, which is the people pleaser. Now, people pleaser as like an archetype has beautiful strength. or You always look at others, you consider others' opinions and emotions, and you can lead also to the detriment where sometimes you kind of ignore your own needs. But while taking that test, I realized that I do care about customers and I do care about the wellbeing of our users and the user experience. So instead of avoiding that and trying to be more, let's say, marketing oriented or data oriented, i realized that I was good with people and good with operations. And I slowly started taking on more projects in the company that I could lead from those strengths versus trying to beat those strengths and do something else.
Understanding Tulu's Access Economy Model
00:05:20
Speaker
That's so interesting and very cool. Can you break down a little more about Tulu and what you all do for those who don't know? So imagine you live in a big city and you don't have much space in your apartment because you're renting your house. So you also know you're probably going to move in a year or two.
00:05:35
Speaker
This is the story of our generation. We move away. We live a very dynamic lifestyle and we live in smaller spaces than the generation before us. So Tulu is a solution to that. We call it the access economy.
00:05:47
Speaker
It's essentially a beautiful platform, a physical unit inside the building that people can go downstairs and they can get access to plenty of household items, starting from a vacuum cleaner to a projector, to a drill, to a scooter, to even there's a beverage, a fridge and ice cream and feminine products. But the real specialty that we do is we offer people to rent on demand the items that they need in their daily lives instead of having to own them.
00:06:13
Speaker
So... What we've done is we've created this whole system where via an app you can go to your lobby, unlock an item from our system, use it and return it. This whole process saves a ton of waste because so many people buy things and then return them or discard them.
00:06:31
Speaker
So Tulu is really closing the loop on that. But we're also thinking about the building as a whole. In a building with 500 apartments, so many people share similar lifestyles and they need the same things. So we're centralizing a demand of people.
00:06:45
Speaker
We are now active in 600 locations in 60 cities around the world, a quarter of a million users. We are tailoring it very much to the Gen Z and millennial spirit who are already getting used to renting their houses via Airbnb, renting their cars via Uber, renting their clothes via Rent the Runway and Nuuly.
00:07:04
Speaker
So we are now saying everything in your daily life can become a service and we're enabling it with our unique technology. It's so cool When I was reading about it, I was thinking how often you go on an app like Amazon to order something that you know you only need to use one time, really.
00:07:20
Speaker
And what a waste it is and how incredible the way you guys When we moved to New York, you my co-founder and I raised around and we moved to New York and what we kind of heard was like no one in New York is going to rent their vacuum. It's New York. And no matter where we launch and we are pretty much all over North America, all over the UK and eu vacuum cleaner, cleaning appliances are still rating number one because behavior change is really stems from necessity. And when people don't have the space, they start changing their behavior and like the mindset shift is there. But then you create the infrastructure.
Daily Operations and Life in New York
00:07:57
Speaker
Yeah. So can you walk us through what a day in your life is like? I'm sure that no day is the same, but I guess I'm looking to understand the shape of it and what you're focused on. And also curious about the non-work things too. Like, are you a morning person or do you work out? or Tell us all about your day.
00:08:13
Speaker
It's really interesting to look back at my schedule in the last eight years when you are an early stage founder. Every day is different at the beginning because you're building the business from scratch. It's what we call zero to one.
00:08:25
Speaker
You literally carve out the path for every new domain of the company and then you work at it and then you recruit to it. And now after eight years, my day-to-day is more repetitive than it used to be.
00:08:38
Speaker
Just at a higher scale, I focus on a lot of our customer operations. So pretty much every single customer that we sign go through my team in my department. I handle escalations, contracts, fun things like that, but also really think about the creative side of the business and how can we make the sustainability collaboration stronger on our business? How can we make sure that people work at Tullo feel connected to the company?
00:09:02
Speaker
So the day-to-day is mainly working from the New York office. I spend a lot of time working with my teams. I also spend a lot of time working with our customers, doing customer calls, customer discoveries, meeting new people that sign with us.
00:09:15
Speaker
So that's very much a computer work, but I really do try to have at least once a week, a day where I leave the office and I go meet customers in their natural environment. So luckily I live in New York City and I'm able to go visit customers in New Jersey or Brooklyn or financial district. Do you feel like you're going to be a lifelong New Yorker? Do you love it there?
00:09:35
Speaker
Oh, that's a very timely question right now. I don't know. I do love New York. It's such an incredible city. And mainly when you make friends, I feel like I have my base here and I have amazing friends that are my everything. They're my chosen family.
00:09:50
Speaker
So i don't know to tell you where I'll be, but I do love New York very much. I wanna go back to something you said when you were talking about being a two, and is it the regression of the two that's a people pleaser? So a two rises or grows into a four, which is also called the intense creative. So a healthy two is a two with boundaries and a two who's pursuing their wants.
00:10:14
Speaker
So if I start a career that's kind of against what I want, that's a tool in regression. But if I keep asking myself, what do I want out of life and I pursue it, that's a tool in a growth to a four, to the intense creative. A two in regression is two to an eight.
00:10:29
Speaker
An eight is an active controller. There's, by the way, many names to each archetype. But the eight is more of the leader, the controller, the boss. An active two, if a two feels a loss of control, they go into micromanagement and also microaggression sometimes, passive aggressiveness. If you have people pleasing tendencies, but sometimes resentment can build up. And then every number does have its own good and bad things. Like you could be amazing as a people pleaser or a resentful. people pleaser.
00:10:57
Speaker
So a two can also regress into resentment. I think that it can be such an incredible gift to an organization for a founder or any leader to really be emotionally engaged in building relationships, listening, supporting team members.
00:11:17
Speaker
But I also think there's the potential for it to start to feel heavy and to start to feel like you're a little henpecked and your energy is so kind, but i feel like you've got great boundaries, do you?
00:11:30
Speaker
Can you talk about that process? Yeah, I love the topic of boundaries. I guess you start building boundaries once your boundaries are being crossed.
Establishing Personal and Professional Boundaries
00:11:38
Speaker
I have an amazing coach and she introduced me to the world of Enneagram. But I remember a couple of years ago, we were talking about my role and my day-to-day. And actually, it's a really good thing to audit your day-to-day because sometimes you have this whole idea about who it is that you are and what you do. But then if you audit your day-to-day, you're like, oh my God, I spend so much time doing those other things. It's not really aligned with my perception of who I am.
00:12:01
Speaker
But I spoke to my coach and I spoke about all the things that I have to do, kind of the things that pile up on my desk as an executive in the company and as the co-founder. And I said, I guess those things are things I once said yes to.
00:12:14
Speaker
And I really like the quote, you get what you tolerate. So the things you say yes to appear because you said yes to them. And then from that autonomy, because I realized that it's not a coincidence, I said yes to this. So now it's my task. If I don't want to work at it, I can either build an alternative solution at the company, have a conversation, but it's also up to me to change it.
00:12:38
Speaker
So the boundary gets created by always auditing where you think your boundaries were crossed and why were they crossed. i mean, the worst is when someone's not listening to you, but did you ever put it as a boundary? And I think for me, the answer was, wow, like I've actually never said it out loud to anyone in the company. I've actually never offered to change it. I just kept saying yes to things.
00:13:00
Speaker
i love this. Kind of on the people side, you have hired and grown a lot. Can you talk about what the process of figuring out what the right type of hire for you all looks like, what you value and look for in employees? I know that's something that so many founders and teams struggle with when they're starting to grow a bit.
Tulu's Hiring Process
00:13:20
Speaker
Yeah. In product management, there's a sentence I like that says, build for your customers, not for who you wish your customers were. And a lot of the time we kind of sugarcoat or we think of the best version of our customers when we build things for them, but it's not actually how they drink their morning coffee or it's not actually how they clean their house. And for us in Tulu, we really try and be honest with ourselves and very critical.
00:13:45
Speaker
Same goes for hiring. People will give their best impression at an interview. so that really goes to show that it's about the questions you ask, but then also about the first month or so.
00:13:56
Speaker
yeah We are really looking at the first month as an opportunity to assess everything about our interaction with someone. I do look for ah social fit. I do look for people that I feel like I'm going to have ah great chemistry with and I'm going to enjoy working with. But putting that aside, because that's a really wide umbrella, i think that if you're looking, for example, for someone who is customer facing, you can ask questions like, what does it look like for you to go the extra mile?
00:14:23
Speaker
Tell me of a story about how you solved a conflict you had with your customer or how you navigated this very hard problem that came to your desk. So you really want to let people show you how they think and kind of describe to you their thought process.
00:14:39
Speaker
And also when we give house exams or we ask people to give us presentation, we really try to get into their brain and see how they think. We also always say, knowing that you use an LLM, CLOT or CHAT GPT or Gemini, We always get curious, like, oh, which AI tool did you use to solve this?
00:14:56
Speaker
Oh, you didn't use any tools? Why not? Or like, oh, you did. What was the prompt? What was challenging with the prompt? Did you like the first result? Was this the first result you got? So I think it's important to look at someone in their emotional intelligence aspect, but also how they work and really kind of...
00:15:12
Speaker
confront them on things that you would confront them if they were working with you. Thank you. i love all of that. I love what you said about the first month in particular, because I'm thinking back to roles where I was doing a lot of hiring for the same type of role for a long time.
00:15:25
Speaker
And I think one gets better and better at it. But I also think to your point that I know there have been times where I made the wrong hire, less so now, but in the past. And I beat myself up about it like so bad. I love the way you're framing it because I know that's something where if I make a mistake, I still feel like I really screwed up.
00:15:46
Speaker
You know, it's kind of impossible sometimes to truly predict how it's going to work with a person. So for other people listening who maybe have felt that, I hope that they all hear your perspective on that too.
00:15:57
Speaker
There's a few things that can be adapted in a more practical level. One of them is if you work with a recruiter, you can add a clause that says like we will pay our recruitment fee if a month goes by successfully. yeah You can actually build that in into the process. You can let the person you hired know, hey, the first month really matters to us. We want to see how you show up, how you engage with everyone around you, your ownership.
00:16:20
Speaker
And the other thing is let people show you who they are, not who they say they are. And that first month really matters. And sometimes the first week really matters. You really can't know everything by an interview. And it's important to try and work together. Those are all such great tips. I feel like you're building so thoughtfully and with such presence. Are there other areas that you're passionate about that you feel like, oh, I've got some really good advice for listeners? Yeah, I've made a ton of mistakes building Tulu and i have an amazing co-founder. So that was a really big plus starting a business with someone that complements my skills and someone who i admire and look up to and i value and think they're really smart.
00:17:00
Speaker
But beyond surrounding yourself with people that challenge you and make you feel better, i really like the sentence, you don't find yourself, you create yourself.
Personal Growth through Reflection and Journaling
00:17:09
Speaker
And I always try to vision who I want to become and ask myself, why haven't I become her yet? There were so many limiting beliefs for me at the beginning.
00:17:21
Speaker
Even when I started the company to say, oh can I even build a successful company? And then you look around and you see people that are building successful companies. So why can't you build a successful company?
00:17:33
Speaker
So I really try and be reflective of that and challenge myself on my own limiting beliefs and then just keep journaling and really, i don't want to use the word manifesting because i think it's a step before, but it's actively participating in creating who I am on a daily basis.
00:17:50
Speaker
It's funny. I'm taking notes in my journal as you write it. This is also where I take notes. And I was going to ask, I was like, are you a journaler? Because I'm getting journaler vibes from you. Are you morning pages or what's your process? Morning pages a couple years ago was such a big catalyst for me to go into. i took improv classes because of that. I really tried expressing myself a whole lot more because julia cameron talks about the artist date like the weekly date and morning pages and running are my two things that i do to kind of get in my body i now don't do only morning pages i journal whenever i can i have my notes up always open if i have a thought i always write it down so it doesn't have to be the three pages that you do but when i did my artist way 12 commitment, I really found Morning Pages to be the most transformative tool that I could have asked for.
00:18:41
Speaker
I love them as well. Are you doing Morning Pages right now? I do almost every day, but there'll be one or two days a week where I don't. And then sometimes I'll end up doing it like a little later in the morning if I just need to get an early start on work. So I try to give myself a little grace with it. But I've been poking around on your sub stack and I think it's very cool.
00:19:00
Speaker
What ah inspired you to start a Substack? You're writing about such fascinating things, but it's not totally work-related. What's that process like for you?
Creative Expression through Writing
00:19:09
Speaker
Substack for me is it's such an amazing outlet to create and connect with other individuals. And most of my subscribers are my friends and my loved ones. But it's really cool every once in a while to see people I don't know. And I do feel like I write really personal essays.
00:19:24
Speaker
i like stories and I like the metaphors from nature. and Because of my background in environmental science, I always feel like we can learn so much from nature. And I very vividly remember from a couple weeks ago when spring started and you see the flowers blossom after such a long winter. And I'm like, oh my God, that's what I'm going through. The magnolias represent my growth. And then I wrote about the similarities between a tree coming back to life or coming back from hibernation and my own soul coming back from hibernation. So
00:19:55
Speaker
It's just an opportunity to build in parallel. I do feel like I am the same person at all times, who I am at work and who I am outside of work. But writing about life helps me live life more fuller.
00:20:08
Speaker
and just gives me ideas. So I decided to start my blog on Substack two years ago. And I remember i went on a hike with my girlfriends and we challenged each other to dream big. And one of the things I said, you know, I've been wanting to open a Substack for such a long time and I don't know why i haven't been doing it And then the next day I opened it.
00:20:30
Speaker
Wow. Like you don't need to plan the whole year in advance. You don't even need to plan the whole month in advance. Think about the next thing you're going to do. And my advice for people who are creatives and maybe want to even go deeper in their creativity is Don't be overwhelmed by planning or like building your brand and make sure it's cohesive.
00:20:49
Speaker
Start with what you have right now. Write about the first topic you want to write about. Make it 500 words, but do it and then do another one. So that was what saved me and made my commitment to my essays feel really consistent. And it's been such a joy of writing it.
00:21:06
Speaker
I love that you're doing it. You mentioned manifestation a little bit before. Are you into manifestation? you have a practice? Would you like to talk about that? I'm curious. How are you manifesting all of this?
Achieving Goals with Visualization and Perseverance
00:21:17
Speaker
So i am definitely a manifester. i made the Forbes list two years ago. and the 30 under 30 list. I'm 33. When I was 23, my mother called me and she was like, Yael, have you heard about the Forbes list? And I was like, yeah, of course. And she was like, well, you should be on it one day.
00:21:39
Speaker
Back then I was in school. i was like, but what for? And she was like, well, you care about the environment. You do all those things. I saw another woman who made the list and she has an environmental background.
00:21:49
Speaker
And it was so cool my mom said it because she's not in the tech world. And it's those glimpses of realizing that you have what it takes, even though you're not sure how you're going to get there. And I nominated myself three times.
00:22:03
Speaker
And three times I haven't heard back, nothing happened, kind of like went into the abyss. And then the fourth time i nominated myself, but actually a good friend of mine also nominated me and he was like, well, listen,
00:22:15
Speaker
You've got to have a strategy. if You need to ask at least five people that were on the list to nominate you. It's like a whole thing. So we did that. But I just remember envisioning what it would feel like to open my phone and getting the news that I am on the list. And it really mattered to me at the time.
00:22:31
Speaker
And sometimes you catch things that really matter to you and you don't know why. But that really mattered to me. And I kept just feeling in my body what it would be like to open my phone and getting the news. So then again, a few months go by, I haven't heard anything.
00:22:45
Speaker
i was like, okay, that's okay. I'm turning 30. I actually went to Miami to celebrate my 30th birthday. And we went to a club. didn't have my phone on me. I turned 30 at midnight. We partied. it was around 5 I opened my phone and I got an email that I made the list.
00:23:02
Speaker
Oh my God. And I looked at the phone and I was with my friends and I just felt so happy. And I was like, oh my God, it's just like the same feeling that I had. And it's just those things that just because it's not happening doesn't mean it's not going to happen.
00:23:15
Speaker
And just because the actual accolade or the award is not the same one, have patience. And that was... Seven years after i first heard of it and I kind of released it, but I still applied myself. And I'm sure you know this and I'm curious to hear about your experience, but all the great things in life, like a lot of the actual business opportunities, you need to create them for yourself. You need to be the one nominating yourself. I got covered in an amazing but women's magazine a couple months ago. I wrote an article about myself.
00:23:45
Speaker
I sent it to the editor. I said, here's an article about me. If you're interested covering my story, I'd love to talk. I already wrote the article for you. And i heard back and they did a full cover about me. They didn't use the article I wrote, but it's just like you need to help people picture you with them. You need to help them manifest with you. yeah So it's like a co-creation. You need to help bring people to the vision that you're trying to create of you in the world.
00:24:11
Speaker
I have to say also congratulations. I know you're on the Inc. 500 female founders list. I think that's the list where I first saw you. What was the magazine where they had you on the cover? It's an Israeli magazine for women's health. It's like I would say Elle magazine.
00:24:25
Speaker
Congratulations. And I do appreciate what you're saying about you really have to reach out. You have to put yourself out there for these opportunities. And I do think sometimes, and I feel like I fall prey to it, even though it's not real. There's this idea, especially maybe for a woman in business who's just like so aligned and just such a magnetic presence that everything good just comes to her and she does not have to do anything. And then sometimes when things do take caretory, effort or nominating yourself, it can feel sometimes mentally I'll be like, oh, is this all taking so much work because I'm not like in alignment? And like, why is this feeling like it's taking so much grit and energy?
00:25:06
Speaker
But then like the good stuff happens anyway. You know, i love what you said. And I was actually thinking for our sub stack, we should do a send that's like, these are all of the lists that you could or should nominate yourself for. You're a woman in business. Yeah. That's really interesting around co-creation. I mean, it's cool because your energy and your vibe is so humble and grounded.
00:25:29
Speaker
And I think some women would just feel like, oh, it's braggy to even think that I should be on the list. They should come to me. But it's not braggy and you have to do it. Yeah. It's time to shift the perspective on being braggy and you can humble brag, of course, but we're advocating for ourselves and we need to be our own greatest
The Power of Self-Promotion and Storytelling
00:25:49
Speaker
cheerleaders. And now with content, you can really write stories and be a storyteller about who you are and your gifts to the world. And i think people that view those things as braggy should have seat with themselves. As coaches said, you got to call yourself to the dinner table and have a discussion with yourself and'd be like, we are shifting the conversation from braggy to self-advocacy and to storytelling. And we're going to do what it takes to be successful. Or another way is to actually look with Claude at all the actual lists that are relevant for your business and start applying for them.
00:26:22
Speaker
Yeah. and Today, you just need to be eager enough and nudge the system enough and eventually things will happen. I'm obsessed with everything you've said. I thought you were cool before this conversation, but I'm really so enamored of you. Is there anything that I haven't asked that you'd want to say or advice that you'd want to give before we wrap up?
00:26:40
Speaker
I really enjoyed talking to you, Meredith. I'm very open to connecting with other listeners that are looking to nominate themselves or have questions or trying to open a company or a startup. I want to see more female founders and general founders in the world of sustainability and environment.
00:26:57
Speaker
So I'm very much open to connecting with people. And I think we should all try to live more boldly and then the world will be better. Love that. All right. Well, if you're listening in the show notes, we will put your LinkedIn profile.
00:27:11
Speaker
We'll put your Substack link. We will put the Tulu link. Is there anywhere else that we should send people? yeah my Instagram is pretty public. I try to publish as many fun things around my work and around my writings as well there.
00:27:24
Speaker
All right. Thank you so, so, so much. I'm really happy to have met you and to got to interview you. Thank you. Likewise. Thanks for having me.