Table of Contents
- Recommendation
- Take-Aways
- Summary
- Tim Brown built the successful Allbirds brand on comfort, design and sustainability.
- Brown proved naysayers wrong by remaining curious, determined and trusting his gut.
- Brown applied lessons he’d learned as a footballer: Focus on what you do well, and build a diverse team to do the rest.
- Brown’s clear sense of purpose bolstered his resilience in the face of setbacks.
- About the Podcast
Recommendation
Since 2012, New Zealander Tim Brown and his co-founder and co-CEO Joey Zwillinger have built Allbirds footwear into a global brand that stands for comfort and sustainability. In a lively conversation with academic Ravi Belani for Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders speaker series, Brown discusses what inspired and frustrated his entrepreneurial journey and how his career as a professional footballer buoyed his success.
Take-Aways
- Tim Brown built the successful Allbirds brand on comfort, design and sustainability.
- Brown proved naysayers wrong by remaining curious, determined and trusting his gut.
- Brown applied lessons he’d learned as a footballer: Focus on what you do well, and build a diverse team to do the rest.
- Brown’s clear sense of purpose bolstered his resilience in the face of setbacks.
Summary
Tim Brown built the successful Allbirds brand on comfort, design and sustainability.
Kiwi Tim Brown studied design at the University of Cincinnati and then played professional European football for the Wellington Phoenix before heading to business school in 2012. He started to develop a wool shoe while still playing football, and in 2014, after putting six years into development and prototyping, he invested $700 to launch a Kickstarter campaign. The Kickstarter blew up: Within four days, sales hit $120,000.
“The best ideas are the most simple, and they are hiding in plain sight.” (Tim Brown)
Allbirds is known for combining comfort – Time magazine called it “the world’s most comfortable shoe” – with attractive design, and a dedication to sustainability. The company is a certified B Corporation and has over 1,000 employees.
Brown proved naysayers wrong by remaining curious, determined and trusting his gut.
Prior to the Kickstarter, Brown received little support for his idea of a wool shoe. Many experts told him it wouldn’t work, and a professor said it was “the worst idea he’d ever seen.” What kept Brown on track in the early days: curiosity – and a determination to prove his naysayers wrong.
“If you’re feeling something, and you see something, and particularly if experts are telling you that it won’t work, trust yourself and follow that.” (Tim Brown)
Brown had no practical business experience going into the founding of Allbirds. However, he did have a master’s in management from the London School of Economics and an entrepreneurship program at Northwestern.
Brown applied lessons he’d learned as a footballer: Focus on what you do well, and build a diverse team to do the rest.
Brown compensated for his lack of business experience by applying lessons he’d learned in sports: Focus on what you do well, build a team and persist. You don’t have to do everything well; you only need to excel in one or two areas. Focus on building those strengths, so they become your competitive advantage, and create a team that you trust to do everything else. Find people who are different from you.
“Go look for the poets, the storytellers and the filmmakers to round out your ability to impact the problem that you might be going after.” (Tim Brown)
Don’t underestimate what you can accomplish if you stick with a project. As an entrepreneur, you need the ability to keep persisting even after you fail. You probably have more of that ability than you realize.
Brown’s clear sense of purpose bolstered his resilience in the face of setbacks.
Brown’s curiosity and determination to prove his naysayers wrong sustained him through the development of the shoe, but they weren’t enough to make Allbirds more than a side hustle. Then Brown met Joey Zwillinger, who would become Allbirds’ co-founder and co-CEO. Zwillinger provided the missing ingredient for Brown: the understanding that sustainability was going to transform the world. This insight gave Brown a sense of purpose that inspired him to give Allbirds his total commitment.
“To work at something for a long period of time, at least for me, it needs to fit into a larger sense of the world and what it means.” (Tim Brown)
Early on, Brown and Zwillinger created a vision of what the company would look like in 10 years. At the time, the exercise seemed “soft” and not necessarily the best use of his time, but Brown now considers it “the best thing we ever did.” Brown also credits Zwillinger for helping him to keep going despite the challenges, loneliness and negative feedback that come with entrepreneurship.
About the Podcast
Tim Brown is the co-founder and co-CEO of Allbirds. Ravi Belani is a lecturer in the Management Science and Engineering Department at Stanford University. Stanford’s Speaker Series, Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders, hosts discussions with leaders who share their entrepreneurial journey of setbacks and successes.