Ofek Lavian is the Co-founder and CEO of Forage, the mission driven payments company.
This is a special episode, because I’m an investor in Forage, and Ofek shares everything he’s learned building the company. We go deep on food stamps, also known as EBT or SNAP, the government program that provides over $200 billion dollars per year in benefits that help 42 million low income Americans buy food.
Our conversation gets into lessons from Ofek’s time leading payments teams at Uber and Instacart, building Instacart’s EBT program up to 40 employees and 10% of its total revenue, and why Ofek is so passionate about helping low income Americans.
We get into the history of food stamps, market dynamics that led to low online adoption, the days Ofek thought Forage might not make it all the way to now working with the biggest players in online grocery, like Uber and DoorDash, and the long-term opportunity Forage has to build the rails the government uses to distribute trillions of dollars of restricted consumer benefits.
Thanks to Numeral for supporting this episode, the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance. Try it here: https://bit.ly/NumeralThePeel
Timestamps:
(4:53) Forage: Helping 42m Americans buy food
(5:24) History of food stamps & EBT
(9:26) Growing up as an immigrant family with low food access
(11:39) 90% of EBT recipients are elderly, disabled, or working parents
(12:39) How Forage sells revenue to its customers
(14:15) Building Instacart’s EBT program during COVID
(18:25) Why no one built an EBT payments product
(22:13) Joining Forage as a Co-founder
(25:01) Why government payments are so hard
(30:25) Growing 15x in six months
(33:52) Underdiscussed mental health challenges of startups
(37:06) How the political environment impacts EBT
(43:20) Why Forage charges more than competitors
(45:58) Seasonality in EBT spend
(46:59) Why early investors passed on Forage
(48:10) The trillion dollar opportunity in restricted payments
(50:56) “ There's no single idea that has destroyed more business value on planet Earth than the idea that micromanagement is bad.”
(54:45) Why Forage doesn’t care about job titles
(58:51) Lessons backpacking across 28 countries after college
(1:02:09) How to travel on a budget
(1:04:24) Importance of health
(1:06:15) Saving a friends life on Mount Everest
Referenced
Forage: https://www.joinforage.com/
Ofek’s viral tweet: https://x.com/OfekLavian/status/1766950034581700697
Follow Ofek
Twitter: https://x.com/OfekLavian
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ofeklavian/
Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
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