We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jessie Young. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jessie below.
Hi Jessie, thanks for joining us today. What’s the best or worst investment you’ve made (either in terms of time or money)? (Note, these responses are only intended as entertainment and shouldn’t be construed as investment advice)
Investing in connection is the highest yield, compound investment I’ve made. More specifically, investing in my relationship has been the best investment I have ever made.
Here’s why:
My husband and I met when we were thirteen years old. Over the better part of two decades, we have ridden the breadth and depth of human experience together. We’ve ridden highs and lows: marriage to each other, birth of our gorgeous nieces and nephews (losses of our own), family deaths, career triumphs, sporting misses. Each week, for almost the last 1,000 weeks, we spend at least an hour on a date. It’s not always complex or sophisticated. It could be as simple as walking alongside each other in the sunshine and sharing a coffee. The point is singular: connection.
The time compounds; companionship, loyalty, shared experience, love. Irreplaceable, irrevocable, and necessarily high yield. It becomes the foundation upon which all other decisions are framed and made.
Money is simple: diversification across different risk profiles and industries. Our exposure in property post recession, pre-covid yielded tax free gains which we continue to benefit from. This enables us to leverage our assets to sweat for us and work harder into deeper diversity.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a commercial leader with deep experience launching and scaling new lines of business and marketplace models to the first $Xbn.
Currently, I’m one of around 20,000 Aussie’s living to their edge in New York. Here I am the Global Lead of Strategic Operations at Uber, and a lawyer with a background in management consulting and strategic finance. I stewarded Uber through its IPO from Australia and then launched our global Grocery business. Most recently I launched and now run Uber’s Quick Commerce efforts, including M&A and equity partnerships. I also lead Uber’s new and restricted items catalogue, including “sin stocks” (tobacco, cannabis, alcohol), pharmaceuticals and the retail catalogue, including pet and baby.
I love my job because I love solving difficult pioneering puzzles. In terms of vocation, I am:
– a student of philosophy ,
– a lawyer in my early career working in corruption and advocacy in APAC,
– a former management consultant turned finance leader,
– with a host of failed and flourishing start-up experience as both a founder and an advisor.
Today, this coalesces in a rich life outside of Uber in venture capital, start-ups, corporate governance and advocacy, I am a start-up advisor at High Alpha Innovation, venture partner at Republic, and advisory board member at Everscore. I am a passionate advocate for women: an ambassador for WomenTech, speaker, podcaster and commentator, founder of a mentoring community, “halo”, and board member of a not-for-profit that advocates for family and child safety. I’m also a yoga teacher, amateur surfer and lover of coffee and red wine.
I believe I’m here to experience the depth and breadth of life, so I have an irascible itch to solve problems. My vocational path reflects that.
In terms of community, I am:
– a proud wife, sister, aunty, daughter, friend; and
– deeply passionate about bringing together communities to connect and create advantage through support.
My family is on a place called the “Sunshine Coast” in Australia, and that lexicon reflects my worldview: I must have sun, and my community are my warmth.
I’m insatiably curious, and a hungry consumer of learning and life.
Here are 5 ways this manifests:
1. I’m always a student: at the moment, I’m learning Italian with my husband – as I write this I am sitting on a balcony in Lake Como – and just finished my sommelier course.
2. I’ll nearly always have a book in hand: I started a book club in NYC, and love to write fiction myself. I usually read a few at once that complement each other and what I want to know, experience or feel – at the moment, I’m reading “The Power Broker” and “People we Meet on Vacation”.
3. I never need reminding to move: I was a runner when I was younger, and my husband was an Australian waterpolo player. We move everyday – running, weights, boxing, spin, yoga, pilates (you name it!) – and it sets the frequency for the day and always gives me information about where my body is at and what I need. This morning was plyometrics in a garden in Bellagio.
4. I’m dreaming of what could be: I’m usually incubating an idea. At the moment, I am working on an idea to better empower new parents with their bub essentials.
5. I’m up for the adventure: I’m usually planning a trip or an adventure with my best friend, my husband. This year, we set the goal to climb as many peaks as we can (metaphorically, but also literally). We’ve done a few national parks in the US (Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Zion) and some bucket-list peaks in Norway (Troltunga, Priekestolen).
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I was launching Grocery delivery in Australia when the COVID lockdowns hit in March 2020. Within 48 hours, we were on calls with the C-suite of Australia’s biggest retailers and government officials about how to bring food to the people of Australia if lockdowns needed to continue. Within a matter of weeks, we went from piloting a proposition in Australia to launching a new Grocery product globally that grew almost triple digits over 24 months. I launched this product and then managed this new vertical across 5 countries, and worked across almost every major timezone from my living room in Sydney.
As my career grew, I literally withered.
In the space of 3 months I lost 40% of my body-weight and ended up in hospital with a heart arrhythmia. At almost 6ft tall, I was 42kgs. I replaced food with fury and adrenaline; sleep with zoom meetings; and a myopic focus on growing the business with depriving myself.
The business flourished, but as a leader I floundered, and certainly as a partner and friend I fell far short, especially to myself.
What did I learn?
1. When valor preys on reason it eats the sword it fights with. Shakespeare said it, I lived it. Ambition and ability are key for hyper growth, but intention and investment are key for sustainable growth. Set your gaze long and your sites near. Do not lose site of the present, and your immediate sphere.
2. Trust and vulnerability are predicated on each-other, in equal measure. Most of us understand intuitively that in order to be vulnerable, you must trust. I learnt that equally, in order to trust, you must be vulnerable. Integrating your shadow is one of the most powerful ways to step into yourself as a person and as a leader.
3. Perfect is not a position to defend. In business, perfect is the enemy of good.
Take bets, fail fast, and grow. In personal life, perfection is an unattainable standard, and a false performance. Instead, aligning intentions rather than outcomes up-levels your performance flaw without setting unachievable and arbitrary standards for the value you bring to others.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
Know the “what” and the “why” of your channels.
There has been a paradigmatic shift in retailers’ “channel strategy”. At the turn of the last decade, channels were defined by “offline” and “online” modalities. Online was a complementary adjacency which represented a small percentage of total business. At the turn of this decade, online was not simply complementary. It was becoming an integral part of core retail. While the pandemic accelerated adoption, online is expected to constitute +50% of total sales across large format retail.
This has a few implications, which is essential for understanding how to grow your B2C business clientele via DTC models – whether you’re an online hegemon like Amazon or Uber, or pre-seed or series A start-up like my business Halo:
1. Service customers at their use case, not their modality: Channels will increasingly be defined by use-cases across online and offline modalities. Customers increasingly seek different goods based on need or use case: is it emergency, need-it-now, convenient, big-basket, or scheduled? This will dictate the channel and delivery method, rather than the channel dictating the use-case.
2. Own part of the value chain, not necessarily all: Large retailers are increasingly forward integrating or partnering with aggregator services like Uber Eats and DoorDash to gain access to new customers and increase their footprint.
3. Use data to advantage your customers and your platform: The digitalisation of physical stores provides retailers with richer data than ever before. Those retailers who are driving step-changes in engagement and retention are using insights into consumers’ total wallet behavior for greater personalisation across all channels.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.halo-group.io
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessie_c_young/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-young-nee-peterson/
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/finding_halo/
Image Credits
Nil