202020 Vision

How do you recap a whole year? And how does one start a new decade?

Exactly ten years ago, Bin was still at Timbuk2 and I was finishing up business school. We always knew we wanted to work together, but in what industry? Tech? Apparel? Media? It seems like ages ago when Bin and I sat at Tao Yin in the Mission, spitfiring ideas about our futures. We had great careers going for us, but we both felt like we had a different calling. Something was tugging at us, even then.

CULTURE IS EVERYTHING

Culture. People probably don’t know this unless you listen to our interviews and deep cuts… we are culture nerds. Like NERDS. Food, fashion, media, politics, history. You name it, we obsess over it. We would spend hours talking about how culture ebbs and flows. How does a trend start? How does a norm get created? So it began. We wanted to make any hairbrained idea we worked on about culture. It started with a pop-up, then Kickstarter, then multiple stores, then a tea company, then a factory, and now a book, show, and international expansion.

It sounds crazy to say, but when we rolled out “Bridging Cultures” as our company motto in 2012, we knew that the world was headed into a darker, more divided time. Ask our team. We would talk about this ALL THE TIME… in Obama’s Camelot! We weren’t Chicken Little. We just knew because we could feel what we happening. We could feel the pent up frustration. We could feel the lack of empathy and vulnerability. We could feel the disconnect. This was pre-2016 election. It was pre-Brexit. Pre-Cancel Culture.

We started Boba Guys with the idea that despite our differences, we can bring people together and bring out the best in each other. We can share about what makes us unique. We don’t blend cultures. We bridge cultures. Blending results in homogeneity, like a cultural soup that tastes like everything and nothing at the same time. But being pragmatic and business-trained, we knew we had to deliver a core competency first: boba. Culture as a product isn’t tangible enough.

There’s no revisionist history. It was simple: first for the first few years, we had to prove that boba could be for everyone. In 2011, that was a novel idea. Some people hated us for it. “How could you bastardize something so sacred?” You can see the early comments on Yelp and Facebook. We sold out. We made “inauthentic” boba. But we knew you all believed in what we were doing. We had you on our side. That’s what mattered. We hear our favorite artists say that to their fans all the time. We never took that idea seriously. After years of you encouraging us, sticking with us despite some controversial decisions and stances, we now know the power of that loyalty. We are SO grateful.

As we found our voice, we started to use our resources and platform for small causes you want us to fight for. We began that a couple years ago as we fought for representation— to be seen as a whole. Then we started a factory to bring jobs back to America. Our own people got mad at us for that one! “That’s like Bruce Lee bringing kung fu to Westerners,” someone said. Then we talked about single-use plastic bans. Then Cancel Culture. With each step, we emphasized dialogue. That’s the M.O. throughout these first eight years. We often thought, “If only more people could see nuance and have empathy for each other.” It was exhausting.

We struggled with our voice for a LONG TIME. A failed podcast. Remember Loose Leaf!? Products that didn’t move and a vocal minority that didn’t see the big picture. We even had a few team members that didn’t see eye to eye with our vision. We rarely talk about our failures outside of podcasts and deep cuts, but it’s there. There are plenty of things we wish we could do better, but we’re super content with where we are today.

A NEW SAGA

Now, as our Origin Story winds down, we are transitioning to a new phase of our story. Our Infinity Saga, the first saga, is over. The next phase of Boba Guys is going to be weird— mainly because we’re in the middle chapter. The second part of any trilogy is always awkward. LOTR: The Two Towers, Avengers 2, Return of the Jedi, Attack of the Clones… Empire Strikes Back is an anomaly! (Okay, we won’t debate Star Wars lore in a post.) The point is, we’re embarking on a new journey! ;)

So what’s it going to look like for us as a company and you as fans, team members, and family? Well, we’re glad you asked. It starts with building the foundation for this upcoming new saga.

The first part that you’ll see now is what we call “The 100 Year” vision. It’s something we have been talking about internally for nearly a year. As much as we say we intended to make Boba Guys into something, we were still quite conservative in our approach to growth. Our Asian parents trained us too well in that department. We never overspent. We always stretched ourselves to the next warehouse, the next van, the next piece of equipment. Grit, sometimes, has its limitations.

What the public doesn’t know is that Boba Guys needs to rebuild a LOT of our infrastructure. Many companies at our stage do. We have antiquated processes and protocol. We don’t have the right asses in the right seats. We don’t have manuals for every step along the way. We don’t even have a proper manager onboarding process. We are the first to admit that we have a long way to go. If the first saga of any company is the origin story and the last act is the finale about the resolution/equilibrium (i.e. exit, IPO, evergreen, bankruptcy), then we are in this squishy middle act where you typically lay the groundwork for the epic climax in the final act.

So what’s the most important part about this middle act? Culture. So far, we’ve winged it as most of our culture was based on one-off hypotheses we had about organizations. But as our team will tell you, we finally sat down and put together a plan to make sure Boba Guys lasts a long time. It’s all built around culture. The processes will come. The new software system will come. The new fancier equipment will come. But enduring culture is the one thing we need to lay down immediately, as intentionally as possible.

That’s why this post was originally an internal email. That’s why it’s so f*cking long! Haha. But in order to fulfill our lofty goals, we need to have dialogue and bring everyone along, not just our leadership team.

The following is the actual slide that I presented to our leadership team a while ago. The idea is that in order to lead with vision and do things that the public and team members want us to do, we need to align on how we see the world. This slide is how we will approach our journey. We’ve been dropping breadcrumbs in our IG Stories, What’s Up Wednesday, and podcast interviews. We had to make sure our interpretation of where culture is heading is the right one. Because if we’re wrong about things like dialogue or transparency, then we’re basically f*cked. We in big cities and large metros have to understand that each of those principles we list are technically debatable.

100 YEAR COMPANY

Some of you are asking yourself, where did you get this idea of a “100 Year” company? It’s kinda self-indulgent, isn’t it? Actually, it’s just a term that we took from our favorite founder and company in the world, Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia.

We just took it to the next level. So we will address this once and probably never again… what do Bin and I want to do with Boba Guys? And who has financial stake in Boba Guys because won’t they f*ck it up? In the spirit of our #RadicalTransparency, let’s address it all. (Keep in mind, no company ever does this so go easy on us.)

It’s been eight years and we are still 100% independent. We did take ~$1M of angel money from our friends and some cultural icons: Jeremy Lin, Wen Zhou from 3.1 Phillip Lim, Andrew Chen (before he was at a16z), Steve Chen of YouTube, Will Smith and family, and Dan Lin, the producer of the Lego movies and Aladdin. Together, they will own roughy 5% of Boba Guys Inc. Bin, me, and some of our early team members own the rest. No shady Trump money. No rich families (both our families don’t have money). No franchising. So once and for all… when we say we built this together from the ground up, we mean it. ;) We thought the subtle flex would work all these years, but the rumors kept growing!

There is no boba shop or even cafe chain at our scale this independent and autonomous (we’re not counting the family-run businesses that are decades old). Also, Bin and I are the only people on the board. That’s why we can do whatever we want like close down every store for team outings and spend nearly $30K on #BallsForAll for the community.

Okay, there’s the lingering question EVERYONE has been asking us lately. What do you want to do with Boba Guys?

We want to build an EVERGREEN company, just like Patagonia. We do not want to sell. Nor do we plan on ever franchising. This year, we will hit 20 stores. 20 in 2020 (Yes! That’s the meaning behind the graphic.) At 20 stores, we basically need to think about the future way more. We have a target on our back. People expect more out of us. We’re not a random hobby that turned into a business anymore. We have hundreds of people that we need to look after. And we have millions of guests and fans that come to us every year that now want us to lead the change in things like sustainability, social impact, and business practices.

We don’t make excuses for ourselves, but we are radically candid— we don’t really know what we’re doing most of the time. That’s why we hired a COO, Katie Myrick (you’ll get to know her much better in 2020). But we do know how culture works. We do know that in order to do all the things you want from us, we need to solidify the cultural foundation of our company and our ecosytem. That way, if someone tries to put words into our mouth or hijack our team from within, we would hope our company and community would eject it out of our ecosystem before anything happens.

In order to build a company that lasts 100 years, we had to ask ourselves, “will this be relevant in 5 years? Will it be relevant in 10 years? 100 years?” That’s how we come to the conclusion on which side of history we land on. It’s how we bet early on being super transparent and vulnerable. It’s why started addressing Cancel Culture earlier this year because it was hindering society’s ability to have dialogue. And without dialogue, we can’t bridge cultures, our core mission. It’s all tied together. Bin and I have been talking about it for nearly eight years. And we guess that’s now why so many businesses and fans ask us for our take. It’s why you’re reading this long ass memo from a boba shop. Btw, it’s not a memo, it’s a mission statement (my all-time favorite movie btw). An updated mission statement for the new decade.

THE PRESTIGE

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called “The Pledge”. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course…it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call “The Prestige”. - The Prestige

Pardon the magic reference, but anyone who knows us well knows our affinity for magic. We know everyone thought this post was going to be a bit more concrete. Like an announcement about the next step of sustainability. Or living wages. Boba ready before 11am! Or perhaps even Boba Guys Japan. ;)

The prestige isn’t going to be found in this post. It’s going to happen over the course of this year. Bin and I recently laid out our 2020 initiatives and we’re not going to front. It is HUGE. Everyone thinks our book is going to be the big signature statement of 2020. It isn’t.

We know the biggest criticism of all of this is that Boba Guys is biting off more than we can chew. It’s not. The reason is because culture isn’t a function of work ethic. It’s a function of one’s soul or DNA. Boba Guys is and always will be a food & beverage company. But if you’ve noticed, last year in 2019, we started making investments, like media. We also started a not-for-profit job training and rehabilition business in San Francisco, Sunday Gather. The whole #BallsForAll campaign was a test to see if we can build something larger in a few years.

The thing they say about teams our size and businesses with our revenue is that we grow out of touch and forget where we came from. That is our concern, too. But with this post, we hope to have laid enough breadcrumbs for us to come back to our long-term vision. We don’t write like this often, but when we do, we make it count. Again, we will address the tactical things like compostable cups (btw there’s a massive worldwide PLA shortage which is why we’ve been on hold since the Fall), leadership pipeline, and community outreach, but we just want everyone to know that none of it matters if the culture isn’t set right.

Lastly, if you are one of our team members or a business that we’re mentoring, we encourage you to adhere to our principles outlined in the slide above. One day, we’ll share the entire presentation with the public, but for now, please use those principles as a guide. We will shape culture together, one norm at a time.

Grace and peace,

Andrew & Bin