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00:00:01
Jessica Heinzelman
57 Plays10 days ago
Thanks for listening to our episode with Jessica Heinzelman
To keep up with or connect with Jessica:
✨Throne Lab’s Website: https://thronelabs.co/
✨Jessica’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-heinzelman/
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.co
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Transcript
Introduction and Throne Labs' Mission
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, Jess. Hi, how are you? i am good. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm excited to get to have this conversation with you. Thanks for having me. except For anyone who doesn't know you, can you say who you are and what you do?
00:00:14
Speaker
Yeah, I'm Jess Heintzelman. I'm one of the co-founders and COO of Throne Labs. And we are expanding access to public restrooms and just making better bathrooms everywhere.
Recognition and Opportunities for Women's Spaces
00:00:28
Speaker
Can you say more about that as someone who I feel like constantly has to pee? I was interested when I saw, and I should mention that the reason I came across you and reached out was because you were on the Inc. 500 female founders list, which was so cool. And when I read about your work journey and what you're working on now, was, oh my gosh, she sounds so cool. I wonder if she'd come on. So thank you.
00:00:48
Speaker
Yeah. And such an honor to be on that list and the opportunities like this one that it's opened up to talk about things. I love, i love female forward spaces and what you're doing, helping women see what others are doing because I went to, I'm a proud women's college graduate and just feel like women's spaces are so important to lift each other up and inspire one another.
The Importance of Restroom Access in Communities
00:01:11
Speaker
um Yeah, so ah Throne really is it it sounds funny, but we strongly believe that restroom access is one of the keys to creating community and livable cities. And so if you think about it, a lot of people are truncating their time. in parks, at little league games, out enjoying picnics with friends, shopping around downtowns because they have to go to the bathroom. There's actually a lot of research that, um I think it's something like 26% of people skip events because they're concerned about bathroom access or 50%, I think it's around roughly 50% of people with baby in arms or mobility issues
00:02:01
Speaker
drink less and eat less when they're out and about, specifically trying to avoid having to go the
Founders' Inspiration and Personal Experiences
00:02:07
Speaker
bathroom. And so it's not something that people talk about. And so I think it's really...
00:02:14
Speaker
under, yeah, it's really under-recognized what a big impact that has. And I think from my perspective, my journey was exactly the same, which is I have a really strong bladder. I rarely have intestinal issues. I am a white, middle-aged, well-dressed woman who looks like she could buy a latte. So people let me use their restroom. Yeah. And my co-founder, Fletcher Wilson, um has lived a life ah that he says his GI system is his worst system. And he would be out and about with family or friends in cities and just terrified that he wasn't able to find a bathroom when he needed it. And so that was the inspiration to
Political and Logistical Challenges in Restroom Solutions
00:02:54
Speaker
Throne. But my me and my co-founders, we all have either grown up in or spent significant time in Silicon Valley doing kind of design work and design.
00:03:04
Speaker
So we started from the beginning and we said, okay, we don't want to just create a better bathroom. We want to create a restroom solution that can help cities and others meaningfully expand to access throughout you know and quickly and effectively.
00:03:21
Speaker
And so what does that look like? like how what are the How does that manifest in bathrooms? Yeah. So we basically looked at why there aren't more public restrooms. And there's a deep political history that I won't go into at great length. But effectively, in the seventy s there were pay toilets. And there was a movement that basically tried to stop all pay toilets. There was actually a gender argument to it that women had to use a restroom and men had a little bit more flexibility in choosing whether or not they wanted to go inside a brick and mortar building to do. But ultimately, about 17 states passed laws that if public funds were put towards
00:04:08
Speaker
public restrooms that they could not also charge for them. What that did effectively was make it almost impossible to maintain restrooms which have a cost. And so a lot of cities ended up closing their amenities.
Cost and Construction Challenges for Restrooms
00:04:24
Speaker
And so we started from scratch and said, what is it that's preventing more cities and transit agencies and other public sector entities from providing restrooms? And the answer was twofold. One is the cost of building, cost and time of building brick and mortar restrooms. So that is driven heavily by connecting to water and sewer. So you may have read about the $1.7 million dollars restroom in San Francisco, which is at the top end. But even in smaller cities across the nation, you'll hear buying a prefabricated restroom and installing it can take years and $400,000, $500,000, $600,000. And then the second piece, which i think is the more interesting one, is how do you
00:05:12
Speaker
create publicly available private space and manage that. So a small percentage of people mess up public restrooms for the rest of us and make them kind of the restrooms of last resort. And so we looked at both of these challenges and said, what kind of technology, new and old, can we use to allow cities to address this problem, but in a way that is easy and achievable and cost-effective?
Collaboration with Transit Agencies and Community Impact
00:05:44
Speaker
So are most of your clients cities where you're like consulting and advising or who is your who's the person who contacts you guys and pays you essentially? Yeah, it's typically transit agencies, cities, parks, districts. So anybody that is managing public space.
00:06:02
Speaker
So thank you for the good work you guys are doing.
Jess's Career Journey and Community Mindset
00:06:05
Speaker
Yeah. And, ah but it's, I'm so curious, like how, what was your career journey from, let's say graduating college up until starting this? What was that like for you?
00:06:16
Speaker
Yeah, I've always chased challenges and been intensely curious. And so it is not linear whatsoever. I started after college in political strategy and grassroots organizing. So I actually started running campaigns for tax elections. So parcel taxes, bond measures, and what I was doing there. And I think the thread that followed throughout my career journey was working with communities to make them better. So in that case, it was working with parents and teachers associations and other community groups to get a tax pass that would fund public resources. And I did that for a while, tried some land use. at some point decided to travel and decided to have people pay me to travel. So I went back, got a master's in international development. So worked a lot with government funded programs, USAID, RIP. And in that role, really specialized in technology. So looking at
00:07:22
Speaker
how we could use new technologies like social media, like mobile phones, like sensors to take what agricultural programs or health programs abroad were doing to help individuals and communities, but do so in a way that increased the impact and scale of those programs. And then transitioned that, came back home to the Bay Area where I'm from, tried to work in big tech for a little bit, didn't find it to be a real cultural fit for me. And on my journey of figuring out how do I use technology and still engage in communities to make something better, met my co-founder, Fletcher, who yeah who introduced me to the unspoken challenges of GIs and problems. That's interesting. Where...
00:08:13
Speaker
have lot of questions off the back of that. It seems like you've always been drawn to things that were like pursuant of supporting the community and you're like civically minded. Where do you think that comes from?
00:08:27
Speaker
Oh, that's a good question. um
00:08:38
Speaker
I think maybe it comes from a mix of just enjoying people and having
00:08:46
Speaker
empathy, but also probably gratitude. I think I was raised in an upper middle class household where we weren't flush, but I definitely was never wanting. And my parents were very cognizant and intentional about exposing me to different things.
00:09:08
Speaker
lifestyles and ways of being in the world. And as an example, in junior high, when half of my middle school went to private school, it was very clear that was not aligned with my path. And I was going to public school and then really invest. They also really invested in ensure that I got exposed to different people of different backgrounds through school as well as like extended community, whether it was immigrants coming to
Systemic Thinking in Restroom Solutions
00:09:38
Speaker
the U.S. or just people that grew up on the other side of the town I lived in.
00:09:44
Speaker
Wow. Yeah, just trying to, i think it it is that recognition of not everybody was as lucky as I was from birth and wanting to even the playing field a little bit.
00:09:57
Speaker
That's super interesting. Were your parents also like politically active locally or civically active in their communities? Somewhat. We always had two different lawn signs. We were a split household. Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah. But I think I'm of an age where I think my parents' generation was still affected by their parents' experience of the depression. and yeah, I don't know exactly why. My dad had worked a lot abroad in his early years, mainly trying to avoid going to Vietnam, but at the same time was...
00:10:33
Speaker
Worked for McKinsey on one of their early projects where they were working with the Tanzanian government to create economic development programs that prevented people from moving from the rural areas all to the crowding to the cities, trying to give people livelihoods where they were and things like that post-independence. So I think we and my mom was a stay-at-home mom, but my brother is developmentally disabled. So spent a lot of time, her time working with communities that needed additional help navigating systems and advocating for their children that that had similar challenges as my brother.
00:11:13
Speaker
hu It's funny to say, as I was, I'm always like jotting down notes when people are talking and I wrote down for you, systems thinker question mark. Yeah, very much. Very much. Yeah, I think I, i My parents are interesting because my dad's very analytical and my mom is very emotional and empathetic. And I think we all get both good and bad elements of our parents, which I definitely have both. But I think i
00:11:44
Speaker
very much embody both of those things together. So I can, I'm empathetic, but have the ability to step back and be realistic and say, you know, if we really want to get to this end goal, there might be compromises that need to be made along the way, or there might be choices that are enabling or disabling what
Designing Welcoming and Safe Restrooms
00:12:06
Speaker
we're trying to do. I actually think a great example, like from Thrones perspective is a lot of times
00:12:15
Speaker
The public restroom issue is discussed as a homeless issue. It's discussed as homeless people needing restrooms. And while that is true, um cities funding isn't necessarily as sustainable if you're only serving the unhoused because you don't then have taxpayer support that are getting value from those resources at their pickleball courts or their little league fields.
00:12:43
Speaker
And so i was talking to a city official the other day who you know made it very clear to me that they're only interested in the downtown area where there was a homeless problem and they were most interested in access and reducing public defecation. And I said it would benefit to also put, to have those down there, the taxpayers who are ultimately the ones that are contributing to campaigns, who are activating politically and knocking doors for candidates are also familiar with them and see them as a resource for themselves. And that's why we've also designed Throne to feel really nice and like an indoor public restroom It nice wallpaper. It's flushing water, running water sink. And we want parents to feel like they can take their toddler in there and know that they're going to touch the walls and not be icked out. And that's very intentional so that we can actually scale this model and have better bathrooms everywhere and have the sustainable support for that.
00:13:43
Speaker
That's super interesting because I have to say when I first s think public restrooms, I'm thinking of I live in Boston, like around Harvard Square, and there is one and it's not very nice. i would it's What did you say? You used a great term earlier, like last resort or something. The bathroom of last resort.
00:14:00
Speaker
Yeah. Do you have one instance that sticks out in your mind as like the worst reveal ever? Yeah. Not really. It's just also to the bottoms, you can see feet.
00:14:13
Speaker
Oh yeah, it was the Portland Lou. yeah Okay, there you go. So what I end up doing is if I have to pee, I'm like, all right, I know all the cafes around here that what you said earlier, like, all right, are you like a well-dressed middle-class lady who looks like she could buy a pistachio latte? Like you can come on in And I'm assuming too, that does like for, there's a Tate, which is like a popular cafe around here. And there's always a line there because everyone's doing what I'm doing. And I'm sure it's putting a burden on their cafe.
00:14:41
Speaker
As well, because there's so many folks who come in just to use the restroom. Absolutely. Small businesses love us. And we actually did and we did a a report in D.C. where we had a consultant basically interview 30 different small businesses and.
00:14:57
Speaker
So many of them said the restroom was a huge drain because their staff was having to be a bouncer for the restroom instead of actually focusing on making those lattes or making sandwiches or the core business elements. So something like 97% of them said they wanted more public restrooms. But yeah, you're right. I think like the Portland Lou is funny because it...
00:15:21
Speaker
We both of our companies come at it as how do you create a restroom that can survive and be treated and yeah survive public space. And they've really gone the route of make it indestructible. But I think what it does then is it feels a bit like a prison cell. So somebody like you or me is maybe I'm going to ah go to this cafe where I can. Yeah.
00:15:47
Speaker
be let in based on my privilege.
Incorporating Behavioral Science in Restroom Maintenance
00:15:49
Speaker
Whereas we have created more, leaned into behavioral science, leaned into technology, and then also created something that's hyper modular so that when something does get vandalized or broken, we can quickly repair it on site and use a lot of data and actually feedback from our users to drive our operations.
00:16:15
Speaker
Okay. I want to ask what a day in your life is like right now, but before we do I'm really curious. Are there any like weird little factoids about the psychology of bathrooms that you know that most people don't know? like wallpaper. When you said wallpaper, I was like, oh, wallpaper.
00:16:32
Speaker
Oh, i love that. That's bathroom you can trust. i love our wallpaper. So it's a leafy jungle pattern. It feels like it should be in a hip hotel, um but it's really thoughtful. First of all, I think we took inspiration. There's this garden bathroom in Japan. Apparently it's, I actually need to make a pilgrimage there. It's at a bus station somewhere in the middle of nowhere and you like enter the door and lock it and then you walk through a garden and get to this glass enclosed restaurant. And you're just surrounded by this, by beautiful greenery. And so that's part of the inspiration behind it, but also you worked with some architects and who had, and designers who had a background in designing restrooms. ah
00:17:25
Speaker
And because it's all sorts of different colors of green and lots of different lines and the colors are changing, if you have a pen, like a black pen that you might write on a bathroom wall, call Meredith for a good time. It's not going to show up.
00:17:41
Speaker
So have anti-graffiti coding on it. But also if you're just like trying to write something, it's not a neat canvas that allows you to do. That's interesting. And so that deters a ton right off the bat.
00:17:54
Speaker
And then we do see in l LA we were where we have learned a lot about vandalism. People burn gang symbols into the vinyl or they slash it. But with the leaves, we're actually able to just have these pre-cut leaves where if our cleaner comes in and sees that somebody's done that, they just slap a leaf patch over it and it's nearly indestructible in a single second. Yeah.
00:18:19
Speaker
And, you know, it's not. limited to bathrooms alone, but this behavioral science theory of kind of the broken window theory. So if something is deteriorating, people are less likely to treat it nice. So if they come into a nice space that's clean, they're more likely to leave it as they found it. As soon as it starts deteriorating If there's a broken window or if there's a lot of trash, people are more likely to just drop their trash or break something else and be less thoughtful.
Jess's Transition to Management and Strategic Focus
00:18:50
Speaker
And so what we're able to do is by being able to fix things or clean things really quickly, people treat the space differently.
00:18:58
Speaker
more nicely over time on a whole. And so we're kind of leaning into that. All right, cool. Thank you for that. And yeah can you tell me, i know there's no average day in anyone's life, especially a founder, but what does a normal-ish day look like for you?
00:19:15
Speaker
It's pretty boring to the general listener, probably. i am childless by choice. And so I get up, I make some coffee and I usually start taking calls We're doing emails around 8.30 in the morning. We're bi-coastal leadership team and and we have operating markets in all time zones. So...
00:19:41
Speaker
getting going early here on the West Coast. And then, yeah, I'm saying I think I'm in a transitional period where, you know, when we started the company, I was doing a lot of the work myself.
00:19:54
Speaker
We're now at a point we just raised our series B and growing the team to have more management layers. and So I'm doing more a mix of sales and management and still like to build in some projects. I actually get to do things because that's what I love.
00:20:15
Speaker
But typically just a hodgepodge of
00:20:21
Speaker
different tasks. I'm overseeing sales, marketing, PR, and HR. so there's an account management. So really just those just those kind of spans. And I think the thing I love about the account management stuff is we're, because we do operations as well, we we provide the restroom, but we also do all the cleaning servicing,
00:20:46
Speaker
repairs, maintenance, I still have a very strong tie to the the service delivery side of things um by continuing to oversee account management and making sure that what we're promising to deliver is actually being delivered and we're communicating that to our customers so that they really do see the value of providing these restrooms.
00:21:09
Speaker
I feel like anytime you're adding in new management layers and they're like getting their feet and you're like, all right, they're doing this thing. at least in my experience, it's always like a weird month. of It's like, all right, what do I do now? And the options are micromanage down or and then you find the new things that you should really be focusing on. I don't mean to project my experience onto yours, but what's your, what is this new stage like as you just step into having a bit more of a robust management team beneath you? And these are for all these departments. Yeah.
00:21:46
Speaker
Yeah. I think it's been iterative. And I think one of the things I've learned is the importance of hiring. One of the things we've gotten very good at as a company is hiring because I,
00:21:59
Speaker
I do default to micromanaging when I don't trust somebody to be doing quality work. And I've been blessed right now to have an amazing team that does allow me to step back and spend more time thinking big picture. So some of the recent initiatives that now I've been freed up to do is think about our pricing structure or think about our next our next product that we want to provide and solve some of the problems that I experienced when I was doing it, but didn't have enough time to do it and both solve that problem. So I think as an example, our pricing structure
00:22:42
Speaker
and which might sound boring, but I'm like super geeking out at recently, is we actually provide bathrooms as a service. So we're providing the physical structure and the hardware itself, plus all the the sensors on board, the monitoring. We monitor those twenty four seven with a team of remote monitors. We're looking at what cleanliness ratings people are sending in, all of that. But then we're also running the cleaning teams, the janitorial.
00:23:10
Speaker
the technicians who are going out and fixing a faucet or fixing a soap dispenser, unclogging a toilet, um, And oftentimes were pricing it as like set monthly let's say, but we would get compared to just the price of building a toilet. So like the Portland loo that you mentioned, would be like, oh, can put in a loo for $400,000 $500,000. And that only gets us years throne. that doesn't
00:23:42
Speaker
feel like a deal that doesn't feel cost effective but what is oftentimes getting missed then is all the servicing and all the labor time and all the consumables and all the cleaning products yeah and so it's not apples to apples and so we're actually unbundling it basically and saying okay the hardware rental is this is an upfront kind of annual fee. And then the longer, the monthly is this service so that people really have that distinction in their mind when they're comparing and we don't get compared against just the
Hiring Philosophy and Cultural Fit
00:24:16
Speaker
build. That's fascinating and super interesting.
00:24:20
Speaker
When you talk about hiring, what do you think has, what have you like learned that you feel has made you better at it? two things.
00:24:31
Speaker
One, yeah, I'm very clear. um One is never higher out of desperation. i think there are many times where I'm like, I need help. We need to get this person in. yeah And taking on an extra six or eight or 10 weeks of pain pays off in the long run to get the right person.
00:24:57
Speaker
Okay. That's one. That's one. Two is really understanding your company values and using that as a tool for hiring.
00:25:09
Speaker
So an example with Throne that all of our teams use is one of our values is iHeart toilets. It doesn't mean that you necessarily love the porcelain fixture itself. What it means is you appreciate the vision of this company and what we're building together.
00:25:26
Speaker
um And it's a great filter. If you just want a nice title and say, I'm a director at a startup when you go to cocktail parties, that is not the person we're looking for. We want the person that's going to cocktail parties and saying, yeah, I work for this rad company.
00:25:43
Speaker
toilet company and we are revolutionizing revolutionizing the way that cities provide bathrooms and really be proud of
Advice for Female Founders
00:25:52
Speaker
that. And so a lot of times when we have a hiring pool, we're like, this person's great. They have an amazing CV.
00:25:59
Speaker
incredible experience, but they don't heart toilets and they don't make it to the next round. They don't heart toilets. I like it. I love it. what you are working on is cool. I get it. Like, I really appreciate your time. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you feel like you'd want to say maybe from the, could be anything, but maybe from the perspective of like advice you'd give other female founders out there who are couple years behind you?
00:26:28
Speaker
And if that's an annoying question, you can skip it because I always find that question hard. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know their situation. but Yeah. It's hard to come up with stuff that's not cliched, but I think it's ah cliched because a lot of it's true. Maybe it's just solve real problems.
00:26:47
Speaker
Like I look around, i still live in the Bay Area and there are so many startups that are trying to solve problems. a problem where they actually have to explain what the problem is first. and like Half of their challenge of making a sale is convincing somebody that there's a need.
00:27:06
Speaker
and and I think when you identify a real problem, product market fit just comes super easily. you know And it makes your life so much
Closing Remarks and Personal Touch
00:27:21
Speaker
easier. it makes your business so much easier.
00:27:24
Speaker
And it feels good. Yeah. I think that's good advice. Thank you. Great. One final question. can you tell me about the dog in the painting behind you? Is that a dog in your life or is it just a made up creature?
00:27:41
Speaker
It is a painting. i think it's actually a crayon drawing painting. by a nine-year-old child of a friend of mine ah who in art class was given the directive of making a portrait of Frida Kahlo and at the time was obsessed with pugs and drew Frida Puglo.
00:28:03
Speaker
And I saw it and I was like, this is brilliant. And so I went to the flea market and found a gaudy gold frame that would elevate it to its greatness.
00:28:15
Speaker
had to know. I couldn't get off a call without knowing. It's so cool. I love it. It's like the best can like the best thing to have in my background because people always ask about it and love it.
00:28:26
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you so much, Jess. I really appreciate it. You're a fascinating interview. i admire the work you're doing and I'm really – like thanks for taking the time to talk to me. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I hope you need to use that Portland Lou very often.
00:28:38
Speaker
kind of Thanks.