The Peel with Turner Novak

Forage: The Trillion Dollar Opportunity in Restricted Payments | Ofek Lavian

Apr 3, 2025

Ofek Lavian, Co-founder and CEO of Forage, shares his journey of modernizing food stamp access for 42 million low-income Americans. He delves into the history of food stamps and the market barriers that hinder online adoption. Lavian recounts his experiences leading the EBT program at Instacart and the passion driving Forage's mission. The conversation highlights the emotional impacts of food insecurity and the vital role of innovative payment systems in ensuring dignity for users. Lavian’s insights reveal a trillion-dollar opportunity in transforming government payments.

01:13:06

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Ofek Lavian

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Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Ofek Lavian discusses the immense opportunity in EBT, a program that aids 42 million low-income Americans in accessing food.

The podcast highlights Forage's mission-driven approach to overcoming barriers in online grocery shopping for underserved communities.

Lavian emphasizes the importance of nurturing a mission-driven team culture to align with the goal of helping low-income families.

Deep dives

The Unexplored Opportunity of EBT in Payments

Leading payment companies like Stripe and Braintree have overlooked the significant opportunity presented by Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT), which supports billions in transactions for groceries in the U.S. These companies primarily focus on horizontal services for a vast number of sellers across various industries. EBT’s geo-specific and industry-specific nature limits its appeal to a small fraction of their seller base, making it a less attractive venture for large players in the payments space. Additionally, the extensive compliance and approval process required to implement EBT is a major barrier, contributing to its slow adoption despite high demand from leading grocery delivery platforms.

Intro

2min

Exploring the Impact of Government Food Programs and Innovations in Payment Systems

2min

The Value of Travel and Startup Insights

2min

Evolution of the Food Stamp Program

9min

Transforming EBT Accessibility

19min

Navigating the Emotional Landscape of Entrepreneurship and Food Security

18min

Navigating Team Dynamics and Personal Growth

15min

A Life-Saving Descent from Everest Base Camp

4min

The Heart of Leadership and the Vision for Forage

3min

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

Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/

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The Peel with Turner Novak

Forage: The Trillion Dollar Opportunity in Restricted Payments | Ofek Lavian

Episode guests

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Deep dives

The Unexplored Opportunity of EBT in Payments

The Importance of EBT for Low-Income Families

Learning From Leadership Challenges at Forage

Growth and Expansion Plans for Forage

Valuable Life Lessons Through Travel

Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts