Vikas Garg:

Hello, Ella.

Ella Magers:

Good morning to you.

Vikas Garg:

Hi. Hey, good, good morning. It’s 5 59 in the morning here, so I am trying to look as decent as I can. I just jumped out of the shower.

Ella Magers:

I’m impressed. I am impressed. Last, was it the same time last time, but you it, the daylight savings, because it was, I

Vikas Garg:

Think, yeah, so we just shifted, right? We just shifted daylight savings. So it was ar I think it was around the same time. I think it was around 6:00 AM or my time, maybe. I think it was

Ella Magers:

Maybe been earlier,

Vikas Garg:

Maybe an hour earlier for you, or maybe it was like five 30. Doesn’t matter. This is actually a really good time for me because yeah, I’m usually very relaxed and chill, but lately my daughter has been this little nagging cough, and so she comes into our bed at around like 1230 at night, and then she’s coughing her brains out and then she, Aw, she’s kicking me and all this stuff. So it’s fun. It’s fun having a kid.

Ella Magers:

She’s four.

Vikas Garg:

She’s four. Yeah. Yeah. You have kids.

Ella Magers:

I have a 16 year old Chihuahua that is my child.

Vikas Garg:

16 year old Chihuahua. Wow. Yes. My goodness. How, how’s a boy or a girl?

Ella Magers:

She’s a girl. She’s doing pretty damn good for 16 years old, but I do have my, that’s incredible. Younger sister who is lives five minutes down the road, she’s got a two-year-old, a four-year-old, and a six-year-old. So I get to be auntie, which is Akay with me,

Vikas Garg:

My dog. My boy would be 15 this year. 15 this year in July. And mean, it sounds weird to say this, right, because people say this about their spouses, but I, he will always be one of the great loves of my life. That bond that you have, it transcends everything we kind of know and understand about communication and love and everything. You don’t even speak the same language, and yet it’s such a powerful, that bond that you have between you and your dog is one of the most powerful relationships you’ll ever have in your life.

Ella Magers:

No kidding. I hear

Vikas Garg:

I used to call

Ella Magers:

You.

Vikas Garg:

Go ahead. You been through a lot. Yeah, no, she, she’s been through a lot.

Ella Magers:

She’s been through a lot with me. You know what I mean? I’ve been through a lot. So she’s been through a lot over the last 14 years. I got her from the county shelter 14 years ago, and since then I’ve moved probably, I don’t know, seven times. I’ve been through three different relationships and boyfriends, and she’s just, she’s been through it all. So yeah,

Vikas Garg:

I hear you.

Ella Magers:

It’s a big deal. And I remember when I first got her, and she’s nine, like nine pounds, but she’s not like a skinny chihuahua. She’s like a CrossFit body chihuahua. That’s how I call her. And she would run two miles with me.

Vikas Garg:

She run two

Ella Magers:

Miles,

Vikas Garg:

Two miles, two

Ella Magers:

Miles, a nine pound chihuahua. She was a little athlete

Vikas Garg:

At what speed?

Ella Magers:

I mean, as quickly as I could, as I could run really?

Vikas Garg:

Which

Ella Magers:

I’m not a good runner, which I’m a terrible runner. I’m a good, but I’m a terrible runner. So now it wasn’t like sprinting, but it was pretty fast. I was like, yeah, she’s a badass.

Vikas Garg:

So our dog, Wally, and we named him Wally after the Disney movie. Wally. See, I don’t watch if you’ve ever watched that. The one where there’s like, he’s a robot and there’s no, oh, right. There’s no plants. There’s like no life. Humans have destroyed the earth with trash. So they all live in space, and then he discovers a plant can actually grow, and so the Earth’s population comes back. But anyway, we thought the film was really cute, and we got it, got him when he was three months old and in a typically chaotic New York City relationship when we probably would’ve broken up a hundred times if it weren’t for that dog. And that dog kind of became the glue in a typical otherwise 20 something New York City relationship. And then finally when we moved to California, shortly after we got married, my wife and I, and he was so fit in California, I would take him on runs. He would walk at least two hours a day. He was just nuts. And he lived everywhere. He lived all around the world with us. So he came to Singapore. We moved to Singapore eight years ago, and he was like our child. We moved with our child to Singapore, and then we had the human baby here. So yeah. Yeah, they’re such a big part of our lives.

Ella Magers:

Well, quick story, since you mentioned that the reason I got her was because I was in a relationship that was very unhealthy, but he had a chihuahua that I loved that stayed with me most of the time. And so every time we would break up and I knew it was the right thing to do to break up, I would miss this dog chichi so bad that I would get back together with him. So eventually I was like, you know what? I got to get myself, I’ve got to get myself one so I don’t keep going back into this thing. And it worked. So yeah, she’s a special girl. Well, great. I’m excited for this.

Vikas Garg:

Yeah, me too. Me too. I am excited to chat and field your questions. Don’t be too hard on me.

Ella Magers:

I will try not to and

Vikas Garg:

At six in the morning

Ella Magers:

On Friday. Fair enough. Fair enough. I won’t interrogate you too hard. Are

Vikas Garg:

I’m, I’m ready. I’m actually, I’m ready. I’m good. I’m good. Fire away.

Ella Magers:

All right. Well, let’s do this. And I am especially excited about this conversation because it is going to give our listeners also such direct actionable opportunity to make a positive impact on the planet and to give back. So I think that’s just really special and important. And I want to kick things off with a little lightning round, if that’s cool with you.

Vikas Garg:

Sure.

Ella Magers:

Okay. So I’m just going to give you some questions. They’re not too tough. There’s six of them. Okay. All right. You get one for the rest of your life. Veka, tofu. Tempe or Emami

Vikas Garg:

Tofu.

Ella Magers:

I’m a tofu person too. Okay. Three ways you keep yourself on the path of holistic health and wellness,

Vikas Garg:

Family sleep, and listening.

Ella Magers:

It something that was painful at the time, but looking back, you’re grateful that it happened.

Vikas Garg:

Getting kicked out of high school.

Ella Magers:

Oh, I didn’t know this about you.

Vikas Garg:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Ella Magers:

All right. Working out. We’re going to get to your story. So we’ll put a pin in that. What message would you put on a billboard for a billion people to see every day?

Vikas Garg:

That’s a tough one. Nice. Go vegan.

Ella Magers:

Yeah. A quirk or fun fact that most people probably don’t know about you.

Vikas Garg:

I love baking.

Ella Magers:

Baking is tough, man. I don’t know. Okay.

Vikas Garg:

It’s like my weekend. Therapeutic. Yeah. Mindful activity. Yeah. I do a lot of baking on the weekends. Very

Ella Magers:

Cool. What has you feeling especially inspired right now?

Vikas Garg:

My wife.

Ella Magers:

I like it. Okay. So I’d like us to weave in the theme of why mindfulness and compassion starts with what we put in our bodies kind of into your life story. So can you share, and let’s kind of stop along your path to talk about the impact of the events that have shaped you and your business. So start us off from the beginning.

Vikas Garg:

Start us off from the beginning. Yeah, just in terms of my history. Yeah,

Ella Magers:

Your boy. I know. I know.

Vikas Garg:

Oh, man. Bored corporate. No, no.

Ella Magers:

I mean, you have an interesting story, I think You don’t think you do, because I’ve heard you tell it before and you kind of were like, eh, whatever. But it’s actually really interesting.

Vikas Garg:

Okay. So yeah. Hi everyone. My name is Vaka, and I’m the founder of a company called A Billion. And most people know us because our company has a product called the a billion app, which helps people around the world find the best vegan options, whether that’s at restaurants or that’s at products. And we have a really great little flourishing community. So it’s a bit of a social experience mixed in with kind of a marketplace and really fun. So yeah, please check it out. It’s called A Billion, and you can find it in the app stores. What we’re really trying to do is help people around the world discover the best vegan options because if they have better experiences, they’re more likely to do it again. And at the same time, we want to help really connect them back to the impact that those choices have in the world, the impact that those choices have all around them. So we have an amazing group of partnerships with organizations like Farm Animal Sanctuaries, and we have, as a company, we’ve, through this gamification in our product that basically creates mindfulness, to your point, creates this connection between what people are consuming and the impact that that’s having. They actually earn credits to donate to Farm Animal sanctuaries. And as a company, we’ve donated over two and a half million dollars since we started a few years back. So really, really excited about that.

Ella Magers:

But you’re starting at the end.

Vikas Garg:

Yeah. Oh,

Ella Magers:

You’re doing this on purpose?

Vikas Garg:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. I mean, I thought I’d give an intro with my name. Got it,

Ella Magers:

Got it, got it. It. Well, yes. And I’m going to do a whole intro at the beginning, just so you know. Oh,

Vikas Garg:

Okay. Okay, great. Fantastic.

Ella Magers:

When we’re going to professionally produce this as a real podcast, so I’m going to give the whole Yeah. So just be from the beginning. Edit

Vikas Garg:

That, edit that out, however you want, right? Yeah, if you want to take it out completely. Yeah. Thanks, Ella, for the question. I guess my story would start with India. So I’m originally from India. I was born in town, which is now a city called Jab War, which is right at the heart of a state called Stan. Like when you think about India, when a lot of people think about India, they think about camels and deserts and princes and princesses, and a lot of the very rich Indian food that when we go out to Indian restaurants, usually in America, a lot of that food comes from the part of India that I’m from, north India, northwest India, the desert, and it’s kind of the very sort of romantic deserty part of India with lots of farms and castles and deserts and very storied. It’s very, very, very pretty and beautiful.

And the place I was born, which is my mother’s hometown, is kind of the center of all of that. So really beautiful part of India. If anybody hasn’t been, I’d definitely recommend you go to India and check it out. It’s beautiful. And then I moved to the states with my mom and dad and my brother. When we were four, I was four. And so I’m the youngest of two siblings and really very, very proud product of the New York City public school system. When we moved to New York, we did the obvious thing for anybody who’s watched coming to America. We basically got off the plane at J F K and took a taxi to basically the center of Queens. Actually, if you’ve seen that movie, and you remember the McDowell’s, which is this McDonald’s on Queens Boulevard. We lived really close to that, and so did the obvious immigrant thing, settled in Queens or Brooklyn and grew up.

So I grew up in Queens, and that was in the 1980s and 1990s, attended school in Queens and Manhattan and grew up way too fast. Started going to the city, going to Manhattan when I was 13 years old, attending high school. So I think I grew up way too fast. My brother went to college in the city, so I began staying in his dorm room on the weekends and going to nightclubs beginning when I was 13 years old. So New York was awesome. It was incredible. Growing up in the city in the 1980s and the 1990s, the things that were really prevalent back then, the things that everybody was talking about were the H I V AIDS epidemic, the sort of crack cocaine epidemic. And that was really a big part of growing up in the city. There was a lot of violence. New York was not such a safe place, but it was home for us, and it was an incredible, we loved it.

So all along that journey, I think one of the things that always really unconsciously, we never really thought too much of it, not the way that I think about my vegan lifestyle right now and how important that is to me. But as a kid, my mom and dad raised me vegetarian, and it was always very, very clear, and it was clear that we’re vegetarian because we don’t want harm other life. We don’t want to take a life for food. And that was always really clear to us. So one of the cool things that, again, not my choice, not my decision, but one of the cool things that came out of that was wherever we went and we were by ourselves in America, or when we went to the store or we got invited to a friend’s house for dinner, or we’re staying somewhere for the weekend, or we’d go to a restaurant, my brother and I would always have to ask two questions, three questions about whether something was vegetarian.

And funnily enough, in the 1980s and nineties, what vegetarian meant different things to different people. So depending on where you were, vegetarian meant fish too. Fish was, or even meant chicken, sort of the concept of white meat being vegetarian. And of course it certainly meant dairy, which I think most people still accept as being vegetarian. So yeah, it was really interesting and was, I was very grateful to my mom and dad who kind of instilled this and kept this up and kept a lot of our values. So I grew up going to always with India in the rear view mirror, thinking that we were moving back to India. So it kind of grew up very Indian in America. So yeah, that’s my background, and I spent the better part of my career in a totally different industry than what I’m doing right now. I mean, I have a

Ella Magers:

Question.

Vikas Garg:

Yeah,

Ella Magers:

If you don’t mind. So going back to those days when there weren’t a ton of, I mean, vegans back then, yeah, most people didn’t know what that was. Vegetarian, I think people got, but what was your experience like in your peer groups, and did you just take that as, this is who I am, and it was very much ingrained, so it didn’t occur to you to be, do you know what I mean? I’m curious just how you embodied that and what that was within your community in New York and your peer group.

Vikas Garg:

We obviously, our most close kind of community was our friends in the Indian community, and most of them were also vegetarian. So that was always kind of a big part of our identity. But outside of that, nobody was No, nobody at all, and you never expected it. So what that meant was growing up in New York was great because you know, could always go anywhere. You could always find a slice of pizza anywhere, and you could always find a bagel with cream cheese. I grew up eating a lot of dairy. I’d say my food pyramid was basically a slice of pizza and grow. Growing up, I didn’t think twice about it. So easy. And I think I ate pizza every day when I was going to school and what’s not to love? So yeah, it was really a big part of our identity. It wasn’t something that we consciously thought about too much, but we’re always asking the question and having to explain to people and ask two, three questions.

And as I got a little older, I started to get more involved in the animal rights movement. But it was always, I think I’ve been an activist at heart throughout my life and career, and I’ve been very passionate about education and equal opportunities around education. And growing up, I think I saw a lot of the inequity in education. So much of it had to do with what your family life looked at at home, on top of that, the neighborhood that you went to school in, and even in the public school system that mattered. And I always felt like a lot of that was unfair. So we were really lucky to have, I was, my brother and I were really lucky to have a father that was really, really well educated. And so he really spent the time to make sure that we were kind of up to speed. So that was, I guess, so growing up, that was also a really big part of my life.

Ella Magers:

Got it. And did you have any sense of wanting to encourage others or inspire others to be more compassionate? Or was it No, not

Vikas Garg:

So much. Not really. I think I was pretty shy. I was pretty introverted as a kid. I would definitely say I’m very extroverted now, but I was definitely an introvert, and I definitely was more on, I don’t know, the apologetic side. Oh, I’m inconveniencing people, or I would basically have to accept that I have to take whatever I can get because there might be one option. But that being said, one of my favorite things, one of my favorite things when I was a kid was a McDonald’s Happy Meal. We would, because of the toy, and it used to come in this box, it used to come in this little paper box and have games all over the box, and you could color it, but they’d make me a happy meal with no meat. So it would basically be the bun, two pickles, a slice of cheese, and a little bit of ketchup and relish, and it was fries and a soda.

And what more could you want as a kid in the toy? So I, I’d say that most people, most, I think New York, one of the cool things about New York City is it’s so ethnically, culturally, racially diverse. So there is definitely, I’d say it’s a lot easier than a lot of other places. And just for example’s sake, if we crossed the river and went to New Jersey, it was totally different. It was, there was meat in everything. The only thing you could get was a slice of pizza. And anybody who’s ever had pizza in New Jersey knows you don’t get eat pizza in New Jersey, so if eventually, if you’re a New Yorker. So yeah, it was, I think New York, New York was being, growing up in New York City definitely made it easier.

Ella Magers:

Got it. Okay. Yeah. All right. So getting into your career, I know you start started your first hustle at the age of 16, right? Is that correct? I know, I think I heard

Vikas Garg:

You say that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I always wanted to work. My father is the OG I look back at at my dad. My dad has been working from home since 1985. Wow. When we lived in India, he used to go to the office every day. When we moved to America, he had a home office, and he would go away for all of his meetings, and he would have to do a lot of road trips to see clients. So he would be driving all around America, but for the most part, he just worked from home. And so my dad was always around, and I think that that was a huge inspiration. And he kind of got us involved tinkering in his business. I was using Microsoft Excel. I was learning how to use Microsoft Excel to make invoices for him when I was like, I don’t know, eight years old, and he’d give me a penny for every photocopy or fax I would send and all this stuff.

So I would always say that was really great. That was really, really great. Having my dad there to teach us the value of money and teach us how to stand up on our own feet. And so when my brother and I were, we have these long summer vacations, so just as soon as we could, we wanted to work. And so for me, I was always really intrigued by all these people in suits and ties and walking around talk looking very important. And that’s what I wanted to do. And so we were pretty good at math, and I started working, I started working on Wall Street when I was just a kid, and it was because my brother was in college, so I used his, they called it Career net. I used his career net to log on and start applying for jobs for college students.

And I was just 13, 14 at the time. And I would get an interview and I’d go there and they’d like, look at me, who, that you’re this tiny little kid. But then eventually somebody would give me a job and I’d work for free. I’d work for basically lunch in a subway to two subway tokens. And that was what I would do every summer and or I’d come up with idea. I started a website and I was really into backpacking, and I’d never been mountain climbing, but of course I was into mountain climbing gear when I was a kid and growing up. And so I would buy and sell a lot of that stuff online. So my first business was buying and selling North Face backpacks online. And then I disrupted my own business, I disrupted my own website. I moved that business to eBay, and then I had a pretty flourishing business on eBay all throughout high school and college. And that was basically helped me pay my way through college. Amazing. Yeah.

Ella Magers:

All right. So what was next for you in the career world?

Vikas Garg:

Yeah, I mean, just on the eBay point. Yeah. As my brother was giving the best man speech at my wedding in Mexico, years later, we got married at the end of 2012. I actually had an eBay auction closing that paid for our honeymoon. And it was, and I still do it. I still randomly, I don’t know where I find the time, but I still randomly buy and sells on eBay here and there, just for kicks. Yeah. So sorry, your next question.

Ella Magers:

Yeah, no, just your next step on the entrepreneurial or just the career path

Vikas Garg:

Finance. Yeah. So I went all in. Yeah, I went all in and after college, went all in on that, went all in on Wall Street, and spent my whole career on Wall Street and loved it. I, it was a really exciting place to be in my twenties, and there were so many great opportunities to succeed and work on really cool things and get a lot of responsibility as a young person. And I liked working hard, and I liked having lots of deadlines, and I liked being under pressure. So that was great training ground. And for anybody considering a career and wants things like that, I’d still say that the industry can offer a lot of interesting opportunities.

Yeah. Mean, for me, that was living the big dream that I always had. And the dream that I had was to become a hedge fund manager and be trading markets all around the world and traveling around and meeting companies. And that was what I was focused on in my twenties, was to get there. And I finally got there in my thirties and I moved from New York City to California and from California, it was funny, the state pension fund of California hired me as their youngest ever fund manager, portfolio manager. And that was really fun. I lived in Sacramento, California for two years. So for anybody who thinks California is all about tech and Hollywood, it’s the last thing that people think about. If you go to the state capital, it’s all about farming. And that was actually really interesting. And that was really eye-opening for me because we were basically living within an hour of some of the world’s largest CAFOs factory farms.

And it was something that I’d never seen before in my life. I mean, I had known, but then driving past them for a mile or two on the highway, and just seeing all these animals, definitely, I’d say over and over again, just left an impression on me at the time. And then eventually I moved to Singapore. We were talking about this, moved to Singapore, my wife and I, and our dog moved to Singapore, and that was eight years ago. So eight years ago, moved here, same kind of industry, same career. I was at a hedge fund here. And then in 2016, in November, we had the US election. And that happened, and that just kind of stirred something inside of me that I felt like a lot of the misgivings, a lot of the issues that the financial services industry was facing, I felt like wow.

Tech was kind of recreating that environment and these big social media platforms that basically started off as these great enablers and connectors of people around the world. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook had become these cesspools that were spreading misinformation and leading to violence and leading to things like election interference. And they were taking our data and they were selling our data to companies that were then basically eliciting these kinds of responses in society. And I just felt that that was really irresponsible and that something needed to change. And so I just became kind of obsessed about it. And something happened years before that made me go vegan. And I kind of like the light flipped for me. I, as much as I loved animals, as much as I considered myself an activist, as much as I saw thought, I knew the issues. I loved dairy, I loved cheeses, and I didn’t think twice about it.

I loved leather. And I didn’t think twice about what kaf skin meant or Napa meant. I had this, I don’t know if it’s what you call, romantic is the right word, but I had this thought in my head that a cow just dies in the forest, and then that’s where the leather shoes come from. And it was just so stupid and naive and negligent, but that’s what I thought, right? In spite of all of the knowledge and everything. So when I became vegan, I literally, it was this instant in thought stream of consciousness, and that was something that then led me to take this risk and completely screw up, change my career. And overnight, I basically decided, Hey, I’ve got to do something about this. I’ve got to create something. And I immediately thought of how much going vegan has had a massive impact on my life, even as a vegetarian. And I said, I want to bring that to the masses. I want to figure out how we can get billion people around the planet to go vegan. And so that was something I just became obsessed with that question. And

Ella Magers:

What was it that flipped that switch for you?

Vikas Garg:

Well, it was for me. Oh, you mean in terms of for the

Ella Magers:

Vegan?

Vikas Garg:

Yeah, yeah. Oh, to go vegan. Yeah. I watched Earthlings. Okay. And at the same time, my mom and dad both got really sick, my mom and dad, who are these incredibly devout vegetarians and overall pretty healthy. They both got very sick. And I started to really think about the role of food for the first time. My dad had heart disease, my mom had breast cancer, and I started to really think about the role of food, specifically dairy, in contributing to a lot of that. Things like diabetes and heart disease and cancer. And a lot of what we know now. That was, there wasn’t as much information 15 years ago, but there was still a lot of information. And it led me to say, Hey, you know what? I’m going to do this. And yeah, it was really just in, that film was so powerful from the beginning, how it talks about, even just talks about the pet industry at the beginning, and then it was after that it was Donald Trump getting elected.

And I’m not a Republican or a Democrat. I’m not political. I have more of a, I guess a values-based approach to my beliefs that kind of guides me. And even in my choices, I do vote, but I try to vote for who I think is the best candidate rather than anybody if along the party line in a way. So I very much consider myself independent, and it wasn’t about him winning, it was about how the election was won and everything that we learned after that. And I just felt like I became obsessed with this question that is it possible to design algorithms to actually spread social impact and sustainability and social good and benefit instead of spreading fear and violence and all the stuff that we react to? Can we build something much more positive than that?

Ella Magers:

Okay. So is a huge shift going from the finance to now you’re talking about very technical stuff here. And well, first of all, what did your wife say when you said, I’m changing all this? I’m curious about that.

Vikas Garg:

Sonya was super supportive. She’s been incredibly supportive. It’s been almost six years since I, it’s, sorry, it has been six years. So it today’s March, March seven, 17th here in Singapore. It’s March 16th where you are. But it was about a week ago, or two weeks ago, six years ago that I started on this journey. I enrolled in a coding bootcamp. I had left, I kind of left the full-time role and enrolled in a coding bootcamp that was this three month on coding bootcamp. And I was just talking to my mom and dad. It’s my mom’s birthday tomorrow. But I was talking to my mom and dad yesterday, and we were talking about that time, and my mom was like, my parents were actually in Singapore. They were on a trip visiting Singapore when I made that decision. And then when I made the move and my mom, mom was like, Papa, Papa was so scared. And every day when you would be leaving the apartment with a backpack and a computer going back to school, and it just felt so weird. And look at how much at how far you’ve come. So yeah, my wife and my family have been incredibly supportive throughout this journey.

Ella Magers:

All right. So how clear was your vision when you had this vision of what you wanted and then were like, okay, let me go to a coding bootcamp, how that’s just pretty wild. So how clear was that vision for you? What did that look like then? Has it changed much? And then tell us a little bit more about what that process was to create

Vikas Garg:

Thing? Yeah. So I had never, I had never really built anything in tech before. And so what I did, the conclusion that I came to very early on was that I didn’t need a lot of fancy or very sophisticated people at the beginning. I needed young, scrappy, hungry people who were good and were really, really hungry to build something, wanted to build something, had the kind of personality for that. And that just went back to going back to when I was 14 years old and going and applying for those jobs and trying to convince a guy on a trading floor to give me a job. And that was, it was the same thing. I’m going to find that person. And so how do I do that? And I also knew that I didn’t know the first thing about engineering. I didn’t know the first thing about coding. I didn’t know the first thing about working with coders. And I knew that, Hey, okay, let’s start by acknowledging that they speak a completely different language.

How do you bridge that gap a little bit? And what I do know is I had a experience really early in my career. We had invested in a company in India. This is when I was 21 years old. And I got sent off to India to help manage the development work on this business because they were developing a product for us. We had invested in the company, and then they were making this piece of software for us. And they were, the investors thought it would be a good idea for me to help manage that process. I didn’t know the first thing about any of that. And so it was like this trial by fire, and it was a total disaster, actually. It was a total failure. But I remember that time and I said, how do I make sure that I don’t repeat those mistakes?

So I said, okay, well, maybe it’d be a good idea for me to learn the basics about coding and not. So I had no premonition about sitting there and coding away and building this in my apartment, but I said, Hey, I could probably build some relationships with people. I could probably get to know a room full of people who are trying to learn, and if I get lucky, maybe I can build relationships and show these people that I’m intelligent and I have interesting ideas, and maybe I could get lucky and hire the person who I start the company with. And so very foolish dreams. But that was kind of the idea. And that’s exactly what happened, right? That’s exactly what happened. Basically that there, it was very clear three days in who was going to do really well in the course. It was hard. Three was months behind.

It was awful. And I remember the career coach coming in about two weeks into the course. It was three month long program. This is before covid. So every it’s classroom, it’s like nine to 7:00 PM three days a week, five days a week. We didn’t have kids. My Sonya was completely supportive. Yeah, sure, you want to do this, go ahead and go do this. So I would walk to school every day from my apartment because it wasn’t far. It was a 20 minute walk. And I was the oldest person in the program. I was the oldest person in the room.

I just stuck out and I was still doing stuff with markets. And my old jobs, I’d be on my computer. I was there to learn. So I showed up every day. But I also knew that when I went home, I couldn’t do the homework assignments and all of that stuff. I also had to take care of the other side of my life. So yeah, I put as much as I could into the course, and I got lucky. I managed to convince probably the top coder, the top. And he was a kid. I, he wasn’t exactly a kid, but prior, his job prior to learning how to code was he was a cook at a Mexican restaurant, but he had built a game and he really was very passionate about it. His name’s Jonathan. And so Jonathan and I started the company together, and then we didn’t know the first, we didn’t know anything about each other. And so that was three months later, and that was the how billion kind of got started.

Ella Magers:

Amazing. And it’s come so far in such a short period of time, and I know these are things that take time to communities, take time to build. How has that process been? And let’s talk about what you’ve been able to accomplish in this short period of time with this company.

Vikas Garg:

So we’re really trying to build this kind of almost like fitness app for sustainability. And at the heart of sustainability, I think all of us listening would agree that at the heart of sustainability, it’s the simple choices that we make every single day that add up to the biggest opportunities, the biggest failures that we have for a more sustainable planet, and what are the choices that we make every single day? Most often? Well, of course, they’re the things that we eat, the things that we feed our family, and then all the other things too. What we wear, how we travel, how we commute, the kinds of things that we buy for the home, the kinds of things that we buy for our wellness, for our beauty. And all of these things are really, really important when it comes to more to just increasing consciousness and increasing sustainability.

And sustainability means so many different things. It means everything from our human health to animal welfare, to our financial independence, to the social equity, to a lot of issues around water and land and conservation and greenhouse gas emissions and all of that. So we feel like it’s changing the way that we eat and improving that really creates the biggest opportunities for a healthier planet across the board. So then the question is, well, how do we do it? Nobody’s tried to do something like that. The platforms that inspire us are companies like platforms like Strava, which if you’re a runner or you’re this incredible community and platform that helps people, their mission is to just get people on the road more or totally different end of the spectrum from being an athlete is enjoying wine. So if you’re into wine, there’s like this review app called Vivino that lets anybody review wine anywhere in the world really easily just by taking a photo of the bottle.

And then of course, you can see other people’s reviews and see where you can find it and buy it and what the best prices are and compare. And it’s funny because this company doesn’t make wine, but they’ve become probably the most impactful business in wine for people like us consumers. And they’ll probably become the most valuable wine business in the world, and they don’t even make wine. And 20 years ago, there were platforms like TripAdvisor, which really created a lot of transparency for the hotel industry. And even before that, Amazon, we can even think of Amazon as giving the average guy or guy or gal the ability to review a book, which before Amazon came around, everybody was reading the New York Times book review. And that’s where you got your book recommendations from some snooty critics. So for us it was how do we give consumers a voice?

How do we get them on this flywheel, this treadmill of choosing sustainably? And how do we fill in the gaps? And the gaps are that people want to live more sustainably. People are interested in, let’s say, eating healthier, eating more green foods, but they don’t know how. They don’t know what’s good or bad, and sometimes they have bad experiences that kind of throw them off course. And so how do you back create all of that? How do you arm them with the best choices? How do you give them a voice? How do you allow them to create impact every single day and make that connection that, oh, wow, this little thing, what I’m eating is making a really big impact in the world and that matters. And helping them create that mindfulness around these small little things that people do every single day. So that’s really been the whole goal and mission of our company.

It’s in the name of the company. We want to inspire a billion people to live more sustainably. We want to inspire a billion people to go vegan. We want to create billions of options for those people around the world. And we want to create a billion better options for people by working with businesses around the world and showing them, wow, look, this is how you can improve. This is what people are saying, et cetera. And we want to impact billions of lives, which of course also include billions of animals by swapping out kind of what’s on the table and making that a much better experience for everyone. And we want to donate billions of dollars to save animals and put kids in school and feed hungry children. So big ambitious kind of questions and challenges and trying to fail quickly, trying to fail fast on that journey and try to see what works. And one of the really cool things about what we’ve done is we’ve built this in a way, social technology and community. And we’ve had a product out on the market. We started the company in July of 2017, and we launched sort of our M V P, our demo that November on World Vegan Day. And then we launched our app the following May. And since May of 2018, we’ve just been iterating, iterating, iterating, seeing what people are doing on the platform and just working to make it better and better and better and better and better.

Yeah, it’s been a pretty awesome journey.

Ella Magers:

Well, yeah. And let’s give people an idea what this is when they sign on and become a member of a billion and what opportunities they have to donate without spending a penny.

Vikas Garg:

Yeah, thank you. So we, we’ve done something really interesting. I mean, we’ve created an impact program and brought to, so in the beginning we were, the challenge for us was, well, how do we grow? Sure, we can create something, but how do we grow? And we are a platform where kind of what people call user generated content. So Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or TikTok, everything that you see there has been created by somebody else somewhere in the world, so well, but how do you get that flywheel going where people find out about you and not just find out about you and say, oh, I’d like to use this app to find vegan food, or I’d like to use this app to meet somebody, but they actually have that core utility of before that somebody needs to come and create that content. And so that flywheel is incredibly hard to get right. And that’s really where most startups fail. And usually it’s because they’ll go and spend a ton of money on advertising and the product’s not very good, et cetera. And I just always felt that wasn’t the right path for us, that there was another way. So one thing that I’ve been going back to, again, my childhood, I’ve always loved animal sanctuaries. I’ve always worked and volunteered with animal sanctuaries and supported animal projects and supported projects for street dogs around the world and other things.

And so I started talking to sanctuaries and farm animal sanctuaries, because farm an farm animals are the ones that are disrupted the most by all of these choices that we make. So I started talking to farm animal sanctuaries and saying, Hey, we’re going to create this gamification where when somebody eats vegan food and then they post about it on our platform, going to give them a lifesaving credit to donate back to you. And most of those organizations were like, can’t you just donate to us? That sounds like a lot of work. And I was like, no, but this is, we’re our theory of change. We want to bring people closer together with consumption and the impact that that can have in the world. And so our first partner was Laurel Lee Blanchard. And Laurel, if you ever hear this, I just want to say thank you.

Laurel Lee is the founder of Leilani Farm Sanctuary, which is a farm sanctuary in Hawaii. And in the beginning, we were probably donating $10 a week. To her, it wasn’t a lot, but she believed in us. And fast forward to today, where we have over 60 partners around the world, we not only, of course, support farm animal sanctuaries, which is most of what we do. And we do that everywhere from Argentina up to the US and Canada and Mexico, all the way down to South Africa and Australia and New Zealand, and really around the world. So we’ve created this international coalition of organizations and really grassroots organizations, but we also support education. We also support organizations that are planting trees. We also support organizations that are feeding the Hungary. We are starting to work with Seth Tit, who’s the founder of Tofurky. Seth is, Seth is now working with a nonprofit in Uganda and a nonprofit in Ukraine that is feeding, feeding the hungry vegan meals, something that we’ve been very passionate about. And it’s great to join forces with people like that.

Yeah, so that’s been it like, and I’d say fast forward from those $10 every couple of weeks, we’ve donated over two and a half million dollars since we started the company. And I think we’ve created a model which is very different in the industry, especially in tech. And that money has come from our investors. And so we’ve managed to convince a lot of financial investors that doing good can pay and try really trying to create a new kind of business model. We’ve even launched a marketplace where anyone can become a seller. So if you’ve got something, if you’ve got a product, if you’ve got something you make, Ella, you can get on a billion, you can download the app, and within a couple of minutes you can create your first marketplace post. And when that sells, every sale requires a percentage that the seller allocates to impact. It could be 1%, it could be 90%. We see on average sellers on our platform actually allocate about 20% of the sale to donations that the buyer then gets that money back in their wallet and is allowed to donate. So we’re creating impact in a lot of different ways now, and it’s just been really exciting to work on building this kind of international coalition. And through that, that’s how we’ve grown to have all of these people around the world who are coming and creating that content and contributing

Ella Magers:

Amazing. And for each person that comes on just by leave leaving a review, what happens

Vikas Garg:

Just by leaving a review? Two things happen, Ella. One is they get equity in our company. So I think we’re really very future forward when doing this for a year. And it’s really simple. If you eat vegan food, and 60% of our users are meat eaters, identify as meat eaters. So they’re like, somehow they’ve gotten switched on to the idea of eating less meat, and then they discover us when they’re looking for something that might help you able to help them. But so we want to really help these people, and what we do is we say, Hey, look, when you make that choice, that more sustainable choice, or you buy a beauty product that’s not animal tested, or you buy clothes that are not made out of animal, animal based materials, and you post about that on a billion, you create a review that’s helping somebody else discover those options or learn about those options and pick between what’s good and bad.

If people have better choices, they’re more likely to do it again. So you’re helping build this community, and you’re helping create that change and helping drive more people to have better experiences around a vegan lifestyle, which is very important. We all know that if we want people to be vegan, we have to make it a great experience for them. And then at the same time, then we connect that back to this really positive impact by giving them two things. We give them equity in our company, so they really feel that we want, we want to do something very different than the Facebooks and Twitters of the world where the control and the wealth created by these platforms was concentrated in the hands of a few people, and wealthy shareholders said, Hey, you know what? We’re building this community. What if we gave this community ownership in our business? So we do that. And then the second part is we give you a credit to donate. And so you can earn, basically with every review, you can earn up to $2 between the equity that we give you and the credit that we give you to donate, and then you can choose from 60 or 70 different partners on where you want to create that impact that day.

Ella Magers:

Amazing. It’s such, it just feels so brilliant and so powerful and something that everyone is, we’re eating anyway, and it takes an extra 30 seconds to leave a review that helps spread awareness, it helps other people make choices, and it gives you money in the bank right there inside the app to immediately donate and to sanctuaries and other organizations. I know I got on there towards the beginning, and I’ve seen it grow so much. I’m excited to be a part of it and do some more collaborations with you. And thank you, Ella. Yeah. And so I’m really, really excited about everything that you’re doing, and I thank you. Thank you for the impact you’re making, for sharing it with all of us.

Vikas Garg:

Oh, thanks Ella. And for anyone listening, yeah, please, please check out the app. We’re the only reason we have a chance to survive and one day thrive and build this into something that really challenges, kind of like the conventional notions in Silicon Valley and in tech is if our community, we’re able to build our community and really grow this into something that really is creating tremendous impact for people around the world. So we’re not perfect, and we have a long way to learn, and we’re trying to really tackle some big challenges. So we need everybody’s help. Really get out there and tell us and share your ideas. You know, can find me in the app just by my first name, and message me directly through there and tell me what you think and how we can make it better.

Ella Magers:

Yes. And I love that Earthling Ed’s involved too. He’s amazing.

Vikas Garg:

Earthling Ed is one of our advisors. Yes.

Ella Magers:

Yeah. So cool. Well, big guys, thank you so much again, and for getting up so early in the morning.

Vikas Garg:

Yeah, no problem. So the sky is starting to brighten, and it looks like it’s going to be a nice sunny day here. So Yeah. Excited. It’s, it’s Friday, so get through today. And I’ve got, I’m, I’m taking my daughter to Disney on ice. Ooh,

Ella Magers:

That’s exciting.

Vikas Garg:

Yes. Tomorrow. She’s very, she’s obsessed with Moana right now, so yeah, I’ll be spending the, with my four year old tomorrow, which is super exciting.

Ella Magers:

Oh, that’s fabulous. Yeah. Amazing. Well, thank you.

Vikas Garg:

Yeah, thank you. I’m grateful for you, Ella. I appreciate your time today.

Ella Magers:

My pleasure. All right. We’ll see if we have any questions before we go. I know one of our attendees, Doy, has her own micro sanctuary at her home. Oh, really? And she volunteers at a sanctuary. She’s amazing. In the very cold climate. So she’s, she’s always

Vikas Garg:

Out. Where Do you know where

Ella Magers:

Dossey, where Dosie. Do you want to come up, hop on really quick? Maybe. Do you want to say anything?

Speaker 3:

Oh, hi. Hi.

Vikas Garg:

Hi Dsy. How are you?

Speaker 3:

Hi there. I’m good. Was and involved Animal Sanctuary.

Ella Magers:

Yeah. I don’t know if they’re on the app, but yeah. Dossey’s out there with a broken toe going on out in the freezing cold in the Blizzards. And she does it all winter. It’s, she’s amazing.

Vikas Garg:

Yeah, Eastern Washington in March. That you, I can only, Ima like, what’s the temperature right now? Is it like below 20?

Speaker 3:

Oh, no, it’s really nice today. It’s like 50 right now. I’m outside on my own Piggys right now. Yeah.

Vikas Garg:

Wow. Okay. All right. I wasn’t expecting you to say 50, but that’s great. Yeah. Sounds like a beautiful day.

Ella Magers:

Well, thanks for being on and listening. Dsy,

Vikas Garg:

Very nice to meet you. Thank you

Ella Magers:

All. Awesome. Alright, I guess that wraps it up as when I figure out the date, then let’s, here I stop the recording.