Jake Aaron Villarreal: I'm Jake Aaron Villarreal, born and raised in Silicon Valley, and here to take you behind the scenes to share what it's like to be a startup founder, the journey they're on, the problems they face, the products they build in an effort to make our lives better. I'm excited to have with us today Page Schult, co-founder and CEO of Topanga. Page, welcome to the show.
Page Schult: Thank you. Excited to be here.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Well, we're excited to have you. You're in a space that I think a lot of people will be interested in. Uh, a little bit more about Page. She's not just the leader of the company, but uh Topanga is a kitchen intelligence technology company transforming food service through high ROI software. With a background in digital strategy and e-commerce, she's focused on building tools that help culinary teams reduce waste, save money, and streamline operations.
Why is this important? Well, the cost of food is rising, and the impact of tariffs will impact almost all industries, including the food industry. So the timing couldn't be better to explore cost-cutting applications and tools that drive better outcomes for the food industry and culinary in general. So excited to talk about you. Before we do that, where are you joining us from today, Page?
Page Schult: I am based in Los Angeles, specifically Mar Vista area of Los Angeles.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Hundreds of AI startups are launching every month, battling to build their founding teams. As a leader, your job is to get results. When it comes to hiring, that's where it gets tough. So, you go out and you try a recruitment firm, but they don't understand your story. They're off target, and when they send you candidates, it's a waste of time. We believe you should never have your time wasted. That's why we launched Match Relevant, because your story is more than just an open role. It's your founder's journey, the problem you're solving, the product you're building, and why it matters. When we work with companies, we make sure we understand your whole story. So, we go out and do a search, we're on target, it's worth their time, they're interested, and more importantly, it's worth yours. And when it comes to hiring engineers, we work to make sure we get it right by deploying a team of seasoned CTOs that have built some of Silicon Valley's best companies. They can collaborate with you in the technical interviewing process. They can be a sounding board or they can run it for you. When it comes to building teams, there's no time to waste. Let's make it count. If you have a role that needs to be filled, book a time with a hiring guide at matchrelevant.com and learn how we do it.
Very cool. We're not too far from there. I love that area. Before we jump in and talk about your company, let's go back a little bit. Want to maybe share a little bit more about your origin story. Kind of how did you start in in business and technology and ultimately now you're an entrepreneur. Kind of walk us through your background a little bit.
Page Schult: Yeah, absolutely. So, I graduated from college and went into a pretty generalist uh consulting job. Through that, I got to learn a little bit about a lot of different industries, but most importantly, I was kind of on the startup team within our bigger consulting firm. And I realized that building things was very exciting. Solving problems, developing strategies, and figuring out how to go and execute was really what I loved to do. So, I knew I wanted to continue working more within like project launches and product launches. So started working in the media and entertainment world. I was working with Fox film studios and a lot of other kind of film studios here in Los Angeles to help them strategize how to launch new movies in theaters.
And similarly, what I loved about that, it was like every six weeks we were like launching a new product almost. It was like we're building a go-to-market strategy, defining the audience and determining like how we're going to get the most people to show up to the theater on opening night. And that was super fun. And I realized within that that I love that kind of go to market process and thinking through that, but really wanted to work in a realm that had a little bit more personal tug for me which was sustainability, food and beverage. Starting to get into that space. So I started working with the sustainable products CPG company, Repurpose, also based here in Los Angeles. Loved getting to be really brand side in the business again, continually working with smaller and smaller companies. And it was really from that work that I started taking some graduate courses at UCLA and ultimately started Topanga. So I've gone from big broad company to smaller and smaller sustainability-focused companies.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Thanks for that background. You know, companies that launch products, especially if they're software components or products that are serving a purpose. You know, the first question we like to understand is what problem is it solving and is it worth paying for? You started off your company. Maybe just give us where kind of where it started in the B2C side and then kind of how it transitioned to the B2B, and we'll talk a little bit about that as well.
Page Schult: Yeah, it's definitely been an evolution from that initial problem set to the one we're looking at today. I think it really started from a very macro problem solving perspective which was: "Hey, we have a lot of food and packaging waste. We're increasingly as a society getting food to go, but that means that we're increasingly spending money and adding packaging to landfill that is kind of just a means to an end." You know, like disposable to-go packaging isn't something that you love as a consumer. It's just a way to get your food. So, we really started from that problem set of how do we design a better system so that waste isn't an inherent part of it, but we can actually reduce waste and save money. And then since that initial kind of like B2C focus, we wanted to be a milkman style organization that was really helping eliminate packaging waste from to-go orders. We've really started to evolve to a much different set of problems and needs that are really more specifically user-driven versus kind of this macroeconomic problem set.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Got it. So you're going from containers or sustainable products that we're going to dispose of and it's going to make our environment better by using a better product or technology or material. And then there was a shift there, and the shift was less to consumer but more to the businesses of culinary. And what made you make that decision and what problem are you solving there now today?
Page Schult: Yeah, definitely. And it's kind of like taking a step back from what Topanga specifically is doing and just kind of also the startup journey is... so we were running this kind of like B2C milkman style market. It was bootstrapped. We'd built this technology ourselves and we were really just like thinking "Okay LA, how can we help reduce packaging waste in the city of Los Angeles?" And we were running that, me and my two co-founders, for about six months. It was going well from the perspective of like, our revenue was growing and we were proving that our mission like was attainable and achievable. But we also sat back and started realizing "Hey, what's making this special is the technology that we built to power this market. And what is a way in which we can kind of bring that special problem solving magic to people beyond Los Angeles or to organizations beyond just our own Topanga supply market?"
And that's really where we took a step back. We realized, okay, technology is our special sauce. In order to scale technology, this is probably better off as a venture play than a bootstrapped kind of mom-and-pop play, which we've been doing. And really started looking at, okay, if we're going to be selling technology, then we need to understand the problems that like the food service industry is facing broadly, which yes, is packaging waste and impact. They care a lot about the sustainability opportunity, but more so it's challenges of labor and thin margins and "how can we do more with less?" And that's really what today we're ultimately solving, is technology that helps you do more with less.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. You know, you've raised a Series A, total funding I think is roughly in the 12 to 13 million. Is that accurate?
Page Schult: Correct. Yeah.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Okay, great. And then in terms of the market you're going after, how big of a market is it?
Page Schult: Yeah, so that's a great question and the world that we live in today, like we're really just focusing on the US. We have a handful of clients in Canada, but it is a very large market. If we think about food services, it's about 8% of US GDP, which is within this food service realm that is underserved by technology and kind of plagued with the same labor waste issues. So that's trillions of dollars that are on the table to not just make but to help deliver back to our broader economy's bottom line.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Let's dive in a little bit to the customer base and the companies you're serving. Give us what's the segment you're focused on today.
Page Schult: Yeah. So today we're really going after that kind of like enterprise food service space, which is a big word but largely means organizations that do a lot of like bulk cooking. So think colleges and universities, think large Marriott hotels, think healthcare systems, organizations that are serving kind of cafeteria style foods. That's the world we're going after today. Largely because that's a huge chunk of the market and it's a great opportunity to really drive a lot of impact and get implemented super quickly. One of my co-founders, he was an early employee at Sweetgreen. We talk with folks in that world a lot. We talk with folks in the grocery world from my background. There's huge opportunities kind of all those sectors, but today we're really starting with like the big picture opportunities.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Such a big market. You know, I uh, our family owns a resort and we've got a kitchen and we have guests that come and go all the time throughout the summers. And there's always a question of how much we need to order in terms of food, how much we have to prepare, is it going to be consumed? What do we waste? What's our profit? All these things come into play and we don't really have a good system to manage it. Well, what does your system do that's different than what the market has today?
Page Schult: Yeah, that's a great like perfect example of the types of questions that our customers are like asking themselves daily is like, "Okay, I have these like eight different areas where I need really helpful data from so that I can make a good decision. But today, a lot of this data is done on clipboards and pens and eight different tech stacks and like getting all the insights to give you one decision is really hard." So that's ultimately like what we're trying to do, is we're trying to say, "Hey, we'll be your data and technology layer. Let us take in these 20 different areas of inputs. Let's automate them as best we can so the data is accurate and let's give you solutions."
Today, we're really starting by integrating within menu management systems. So if you're, you know, a campus, let's pretend you're UCLA. We don't work with them, but we'd love to. And you have your menu management system which houses all of your recipes, all of your purchasing for food. It's really like the brain of how food enters your kitchen and exits your kitchen. We are trying to say, "Okay, let us now use our technology, use our streamlined product which is an AI smart scale that helps you automate those insights. And that way we'll know exactly how much you prepared for the day, how much you overprepared. So how much you made the full recipe but you only sold 50% of that." Why is that? Is that because like you made the recipe wrong? Is that because students don't love that menu item? Let us kind of ingest all that data and then give you a recommendation next week for how much less to purchase and what menu recipes to adjust.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's really cool. God, we got to try that product for sure. You know, you think about AI and it's everywhere. It's impacting almost every sector in a good way, in some ways, questionable in others. What is it that the AI is doing for your application? You kind of mentioned it a little bit, but let's go deeper. Say you're ordering, you know, 50 pounds of meat. You're a Mexican restaurant and you want to make sure that it's being served well and on time and you're not overbuying and, you know, underutilizing. What's the, how does that, how does your data help that decision maker that's running that restaurant?
Page Schult: Yeah, that's a great question. And so I think too like when we think about it like yes AI is impacting every industry. Is it impacting it very effectively is maybe like the questions we should all start asking. Like, are we using AI for the sake of it, are we using it because it's actually going to drive the outcome? And so if we think about the kitchen space today, there will always be people. Like there is a reason that people are cooks: they love food, they can taste food, they can chop and get food on the line. So like we are not replacing the role of people. What we're doing is replacing the need for people to be data analysts, right? Not everybody is working in a kitchen because they want to analyze how much food to buy next week. Largely, they're working in a kitchen because that's exactly what they don't want to do. They want to prepare food, serve great experiences. So, essentially, what we're replacing is the need for line cooks and chefs and operators to spend 20 plus hours a week in spreadsheets measuring how much of this taco beef at the Mexican restaurant they bought and didn't sell. How much of this taco beef will still be good next week? How much of this taco beef did they have to throw away because they over-salted it in the kitchen? All of those elements of like what did you do with the things that you bought?
We're ingesting all of that through our AI image recognition system. So, you take the taco beef that you prepared early morning on Monday to serve throughout the day on Tuesday. You measure it at the start of your shift. You measure it after your shift. And then you can kind of deduct from there. Um, okay, which menu item is this? We'll take images. We'll send that to our backend. We'll say, "This is the taco beef. You meant to prepare 50 lbs. You only served 20 lbs and this is what to do with the leftovers or how to adjust it next week." So, we're really being data analysts.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. You're also informing a business owner or, you know, large schools or enterprises of how to just operate their business better. Who cares most about this though when you're going and doing your outreach campaigns to sell to these organizations? It's, it sounds like it's an enterprise sale. There's probably more than one person making a decision. "Should we bring this technology in? Should we try it? You know, should we do a proof of concept?" But in the process, who are you selling to?
Page Schult: Yeah, it's a great question. So, we're largely... it is a multi-step process, it's true enterprise SaaS for better for worse, but there's usually two core stakeholders. One would be like a Director of Operations, somebody who's really just like, they're looking at the P&L and they're trying to figure out "how can I make more money and where can I cut costs?" And we're really coming to them with, "Hey, we're going to help your kitchen be more efficient." Similarly, the second core stakeholders is chefs. They care about a lot of the same things of "I want to have an efficient kitchen," but also like, "I want to make sure that my team's time is going towards preparing food and not going towards collecting data and analyzing data, right? Like I'm trying to train my team to be the best culinarians there are, not to be the best data analysts." So those are usually our two core stakeholders. We do sometimes engage with the sustainability folks, right? Like there is a reason to make a positive impact and there is opportunity from an environmental perspective to try some of our products, but by and large we're leading with the cost savings opportunity because regardless of who you are, like that matters.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Really cool. You know, we work with a lot of startups and they're growing and they're hiring and we help them make sure we find the right people. But as they grow, oftentimes they go through pivots. And pivots are something that in some ways we kind of think that if you're a healthy company, you've probably gone through them because you were smart enough to make the choices and the decisions to go from left to right to left to make sure you're staying on market or going after a new opportunity that maybe you didn't start with. In that experience of going through a pivot, what was that like for you to go B2B then to B2C? How long did that take and what were the challenges?
Page Schult: Yeah, it's interesting. I like that what you said on going through a pivot can be a sign of a healthy company because it means that you saw what was around the corner or you saw the other opportunity. In terms of like our initial pivot, so when we went from being this market to really being the technology company, that was probably like, we made the decision really quickly to be honest. Like that was probably a one month of consideration, start to plan, execute the pivot. And I think that's where I really credit having a great co-founding team, but especially our CTO Adam, and like being decisive. Like that's such an element of success in a startup, is just making a decision and executing and knowing what you want to see happen because then that allows you to very quickly say, "Okay great, we tried something else, we learned something else, and either it's great or it's horrible and we need to keep trying." So truthfully it was about a month of a pivot and I would say like the biggest thing for us that we learned and continue to do even as we think about like the trade-off of new features, you know, it's not a full pivot but it's a trade-off of time, is decisiveness and understanding what we'd like to see on the other side. So that could be revenue, that could be market size, traction, you know, however you want to measure it. But I think being decisive and having a clear outcome is really what has helped us succeed.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Really cool. You know, we had a call a few weeks ago and correct me if I'm wrong here, one of the founders is or co-founders is your husband. Is that accurate?
Page Schult: Correct. Yes.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Okay. That's great. We don't hear a lot of that in the market, but what we do, and we do hear it, there's either a lot of success and a lot of growth, or it didn't quite work out, we went different directions, but we stayed together.
Page Schult: Yeah.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: What's that experience been like for you? What have been some of the benefits of building a company with your husband?
Page Schult: Yeah, so it's, my husband is one of our co-founders and then our other co-founder is one of his best friends since high school. And so the three of us all have like longstanding personal relationships. And it is like, I wouldn't recommend it for everybody. Uh for us it works really great because at the end of the day what it means is that like, we all have absolute trust that we want what is best for the other two. And so leading with that kind of helps make every conversation, whether it's giving feedback or suggesting like a different way we could go or learning just like how to communicate as business colleagues not just friends and wife, it roots it all in like we know we want what's best for everybody. This, and so nothing's like competitive or coming from a bad place. So I think it, it's kind of the same as the pivot of like, understand the shared outcome, understand where you're trying to go. For us, it's been like an amazing experience. But I would like make sure that everybody who's considering getting into business with a friend or more than a friend really understands what the outcomes and what the learning lessons will be because learning how to communicate in new ways is always a challenge.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. I love the fact you kind of kept focus on the communication because it's so key. You know they say when you are picking a partner for business or in life, it's kind of the same. Like it's a long-term venture. You want to make sure compatible communication is good, you have similar interests or similar visions, and you're able to collaborate and work through the ups and the downs that we'll all go through and you grow from that. And sometimes you grow together and sometimes you grow apart. But you know, I think it's great to be able to have that type of experience together. And you know, if it succeeds, I mean, what a great story, you know, at the end of the day for your kids and your generational wealth, for your family and everything else that could come along with that. So really exciting to hear that.
As you look at the company today, you've raised capital, you're growing, you've got a good vision, you're going after the product-market fit that seems like it's working well. What's the biggest challenge you're going through as a company today?
Page Schult: Yeah, it's a great question. I think, I mean it probably does come back to communication as well, which is just kind of like, we... with our recent fund raise, you know, we've almost doubled in size in a few months from 15 employees to now we're close to 30 or 32. And with that means that like, so much of this element where so many people were jacks of all trades and like we're all innovators and we were all like working on getting to the next milestone. Now there's kind of like, taking that magic of like "we're still an early stage startup, we still have so much to innovate and prove," but adding this element of "everybody needs to be a little bit more in their swim lanes and we have a little bit more measurable targeted revenue outcomes or feature requirements that like we have to start to deliver upon." And so I think it's just kind of like matching the early stage magic of like "no wrong answers, let's build and innovate" with the kind of later stage diligence of "we have real things to deliver on now."
We're a remote-first company, but we do have a growing presence in Los Angeles with office space here. And I think continuing to like get people in person and just converse and communicate where possible is going to be a huge help to us.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. You know, the benefits of AI and being part of that whole evolution that's happening is incredible. We haven't seen anything like this since, you know, there was the dot-com boom and then there was the cloud and then there was mobile and now AI is here. So to be part of that's great. It also is challenging to get above the noise of all the AI companies and what's real, what's not, is it truly a part of your product or is it just a tool that's added on to it? There's a lot of different unknowns that happen until you really dive in. But it sounds like you're integrating it really into your product, which is great. You know, there's hundreds of AI startups that are launching, you know, it seems like every month right now. And so the challenge of talent is, you know, not going away. You think it kind of would, but it's, there's more jobs than people. There's more skill set that's needed with the newer AI engineers, which, you know, you're talking machine learning, you're talking, you know, different data scientists and backend and front end. And you know, the tools, the AI tools oftentimes now we're hearing "we want to hire engineers, but if they aren't using the tools that help them do 80% of their coding, we don't even want to talk to them because they're already behind." So when you look at hiring, what's working for you, maybe not only technical but just in general when you kind of start the process and you've come to an outcome and you feel like it's a good start? What's some of the learning lessons you can share with the audience?
Page Schult: Yeah, definitely. And this is where like hiring is such an art and a science because it's hard to know. Somebody can be amazing in conversations and then you throw them in a team scenario and it's like, "Whoa, that's not what I anticipated." So I think one of the things that is true for us is like, we do, we are ultimately a mission-driven company right. Like we have this huge environmental impact opportunity that we're going after and that really kind of does at least make the playing field a little bit smaller when we're in the recruiting and we're in the hiring process of like, "Hey, are you just trying to work for a technology startup or like, you specifically interested in what we're building?" And we do over-index for that because again, in the name of pivot, it's who knows what product we might be trying to tackle 8 to 12 months from now. So like it's important that you're buying into Topanga, not just like Machine Learning Engineer Number One, which is different but important.
And then I also think too like, we've done our best throughout the hiring process to ensure that there's some piece of a panel interview. And ensuring that like, there's space not just for a one-on-one conversation with the hiring manager and the team, but space to have like an open, kind of thoughtful conversation on "you know, hypothetically, you know you're going to create our next feature. How would you go about it?" And us to just brainstorm live in this interview process so that like we really understand what type of skills beyond what's on a resume somebody can bring to the room each day when we meet.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Got it. That's really cool. Well, you know, if you look back when you started the company and you know, just early days and where you're at today, what's something that you would have changed knowing now what you know about how the company's evolved?
Page Schult: So hard. What would I have changed? I think that, again, like I'm, I'll probably go back to communication. But I think that we probably could have gotten ahead of some of the feedback loops... is maybe not quite the right phrase, but ensuring that like our product team and our designers are really lockstep with our growth teams and our go-to-market teams. I think like when we are small, a lot of that happens organically. But the organicness allows you to not have to like create intentionality behind like, "Oh this information share is really great." So I think I would have loved to have gotten a bit more proactive on ensuring that we're not just like delivering things and shipping them out the door, but we're really building those robust like upstream conversations on who's going to use this, why they're going to use it, not just "this is the cool next thing to do."
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Got it. Well, certainly very mission-driven in the culture, in the people you hire. Important for anyone who joins the company moving forward. As the company's evolved, how have you evolved as a leader?
Page Schult: It's a good question. I think I'm trying to always get better. Of course, there's so much growth opportunity. I think for me personally, one of the things that is important to us as a company and one of the things that like is on me to set the example is having a culture of feedback. So ensuring that I'm continually asking for feedback and giving a safe space from the team to provide that. But also ensuring that like we're creating the mechanisms for that to happen organically across managing to direct reports, to one team needs to collaborate with on another team. I think really ensuring that I'm setting the tone for feedback and the best ways to gather and share that is one of my biggest opportunities to continue to grow into throughout the next year. More people, uh, more conversations.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, there we go. I love that. More people, more conversations. Well, as you look, you know, we're almost heading into midway through 2025. What's on the roadmap and what are you excited about as a company?
Page Schult: Yeah, it is crazy that we're heading into the halfway point. We have a lot of exciting stuff. I think one of the things that I'm most excited about is to really bring our food waste and production optimization suite to market more fully. We work with a lot of amazing partners in the college and university space. We're starting to break into healthcare and hospitality. So really just seeing how we can prove out what this broader kind of food service intelligence platform can be is super awesome and a big thing on our mind. And then we're also starting to do a lot more with other ways we can apply our AI image recognition to other ways to support kind of optimization within the kitchen. So today we're looking at single menu items. Maybe tomorrow we can analyze post-consumer plate waste or support with hospital meals and ensure there's no allergens on the plate going out to the patient. So, we're starting to do a lot of ideating on how to use AI for good in this world.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. Well, I love the mission. I like what you're building and you know, give a shout out to some of the roles. I know you're still hiring. What are some of the roles that you're looking to bring on? And if anyone's listening that wants to apply or maybe connect with you, they can... we'll give them a link how to do that too.
Page Schult: Yeah, absolutely. So, I'll give a shout out to two big areas. One is all engineers. Any machine learning engineers who are eager to kind of join a mission-backed team and really help innovate the image recognition solution that we're building, please holler. And yeah, we're also always looking for great kind of content writers and content strategists to help us tell the story of what we're doing as effectively as possible.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. Well, machine learning engineers, if you're out there, you can holler back. Page, where can they find you? Where can they find your company, Topanga?
Page Schult: Yes. So, you can always reach out to me, page@topanga.io, and I'm happy to chat. And then honestly following us on LinkedIn is probably the greatest place to see roles, new product launches and all of that good stuff. So topanga.io on LinkedIn.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Perfect. Well, I can't wait to see what happens to the sector of culinary and the food services industry in general and how AI impacts that and how Topanga impacts that. Excited that you came on the show and I've learned something new and hopefully others have too. I'm sure they have. I want to thank you and also thank the listeners for listening. It means a lot to me you spent your time with us. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now. We can't wait to catch up with you all in the next episode. Until then, Page, the world take care. If you like what we're doing, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen. Follow us on YouTube where we go behind the scenes to learn what it takes to be a startup founder.
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