Design for Good | Olio Co-Founder Tessa Clarke on food waste, female founders, and measuring social impact

Most founders wait for the right idea. Tessa Clarke spent years doing exactly that before realising she'd been looking for the wrong thing, she should have been looking for a problem she cared about.

Since co-founding Olio in 2015 with Saasha Celestial-One, Tessa has grown the food sharing app to more than 10 million users and an estimated £1.1 billion in social impact, alongside a B2B arm that now redistributes surplus for supermarkets, schools and production companies.

Tessa is also a teacher at the Executive Programme at Future London Academy. Learn from her in-person: https://fla.wiki/4wZMcJ5

In this video, you'll learn:
▶ Why a two-week WhatsApp group proved the concept before a single line of code was written
▶ How Olio's most enthusiastic early users turned out to be the ones with nothing to give, and the third audience she built to close the gap
▶ Why Duolingo's streaks would never work for surplus food, and how to test a borrowed mechanic before you copy it
▶ How signing one supermarket outgrew everything the consumer app could achieve on its own
▶ How to answer a prevention-based question with a promotion-based response, and why female founders get asked them in the first place
▶ Why nobody cares about your solution, only whether you understand their problem

Chapters:
00:00 Meet Tessa Clarke Co-Founder of Olio Solving Food Waste at Scale
04:56 Why Tessa Clarke Chose Business Over Charity
09:41 Why Purpose-Driven Business Attracts Gen Z Talent
14:05 How Olio Started as a WhatsApp Experiment
19:05 The Food Waste Heroes Programme That Solved Olio's Supply Problem
21:34 How B Corp Status Helped People Understand Olio's Business Model
28:37 Why Financial Incentives Backfired for Olio
34:44 How Tessa Clarke Raised $50 Million as a Female Founder
43:32 What Is Earth Overshoot Day
47:00 How Olio Measures Its Social Impact Beyond Profit
50:34 Why Olio Pivoted from B2C to B2B
56:30 How to Pitch Purpose to Corporate Buyers
1:00:25 Tessa Clarke Wants to Replace GDP as Our Success Metric

#designforgood #sustainability #olio