How Did I Get Here?

Neil Grimmer

Chairman and co-founder, Plum Organics
from
  • Education
  • Niskayuna High School, Niskayuna, N.Y., class of 1989
  • California College of the Arts, Oakland, class of 1996
  • Stanford University Institute of Design, MFA, product design, class of 2001
  • Work Experience
  • 1987
    Burger flipper, McDonald’s
  • 1993–98
    Artist, assistant to sculptor Alan Rath
  • 2000–06
    Designer, senior designer, Ideo
  • 2006–07
    Vice president for strategy and innovation, Clif Bar
  • 2007–13
    Co-founder, chief executive officer, Plum Organics
  • 2013–16
    CEO, Plum PBC
  • 2016–Present
    Chairman, Plum PBC
  • Life Lessons
  • “Ironmans are very similar to running a startup.”
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  • “Instead of challenging the norm, replace it with something driven by creativity and a positive outlook.”
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  • “‘It’s business, not personal’ is the most damaging phrase in business because it removes ethics and morality from decision-making.”
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  • 1989
    “I was embracing the ‘live fast, die young’ mindset—I was far more interested in punk rock than curricula.”
  • “I quit after one week and became vegan for 12 years.”
  • “Because I was a health nut, I became the food guy at Ideo. I worked with the biggest food companies in America—Pepsi, McDonald’s, Cargill.”
  • With daughters Izzy and Paxton, 2012
  • “My daughters changed everything. We reinvented the baby food category. We brought in things that parents were eating—quinoa, Greek yogurt—and then made it super-portable in pouches.”
  • In 2015, became a Henry Crown fellow at the Aspen Institute, a program for entrepreneurs from 30 to 45
  • “Someone saw my art and invited me to talk to product design students, and I realized we were all doing the same work but they were solving people’s problems. So I left the art world.”
  • Rath
    “I sold everything at my solo show and made just $5,000 from six months of work.”
  • A long-distance “wireless hug” system designed and produced by Grimmer, 2000-01
  • “I had this epiphany that it wasn’t enough to create a healthy product—it had to come from a healthy company that valued community, people, and the planet. I was also a triathlete, so I was using the product all the time.”
  • “Scale matters, so we sold to Campbell Soup in 2013. Day 1, I pitched the idea of reincorporating Plum as a public benefit corporation, which would allow us to put our social and environmental mission into our bylaws. A week later, Denise Morrison, the CEO of Campbell’s, called and said, ‘We support this.’ It was incredible.”