Erik Wallin is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Northfork. Erik leads the international roll-out of Northfork grocery shopping by recipe platform, which includes building networks with retailers, publishers, and CPGs to add value for shoppers. Having a rich network within the industry Erik has a deep understanding and knowledge of where the market is moving to support the fundamental question for shoppers “What’s for dinner?”
Prior to being part of the founding team at Northfork, Erik was the founder of BagHitch a P2P transportation service.
What is Northfork all about?
Creating a hands-off grocery shopping experience through the power of recipes.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
My Father and my Grandfather were both store owners. I wanted to grow that way and build an organization that can drive change. Discovering a hitch in the growing second-hand online sales market, I founded my first startup which would provide an environmentally friendly P2P logistics service. That company started with a Facebook Group. That got some traction that I could raise capital on and after attracting other investors, I committed to resigning from that company.
Bitten by the start-up bug, I was determined to return to my grocery roots with the lessons learned from his previous companies. Together with Co-Founder Robin, founded Northfork as a spin-off of Robins’ grocery shopping platform Gastrofy. Quickly after, Erik moved into operations intending to commercialize Northfork and has seen success after success.
What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business and how did you overcome it?
We help grocery retailers create a faster, easier, and more personalized shopping experience with our API-based platform focusing on meal solutions and shoppable recipes. By combining products to meals we reduce clicks and time to check-out, which increases conversion and improves loyalty! And we have a proven partnership model.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
Locking in great talent, don’t be afraid to hire and give out equity early to compensate for limited resources.
What is one thing that you do daily to grow as an entrepreneur?
Read! There are so many great ideas that are sparked from reading what others do. Currently, I’m a proud subscriber of the NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, Bloomberg, and The Economist!
What are three books or courses you recommend for new entrepreneurs?
I enjoyed reading Randy Komisar’s book The Monk and the Riddle, on the plane back from meeting him in Palo Alto pre covid last year.
Sean Ellis needs to be on everyone’s list of must-reads, I would go for Hacking Growth.
Last but certainly not least two great guys that share a bunch of insights is Chris Yeh and Reid Hoffman’s book Blitzscaling. I love the way Chris told me about how they came up with the name of the book. Read it and you’ll know too.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
It takes time. Do as much as you can fast, however, you will not be able to rush the market, divide what you can reach independent of customers, and what you need to accomplish with customers as two separate tracks.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Communication on the back of partnerships and launches. We sell a complex product and showing that others are leading the way and the value it brings to consumers has been a big help to grow the business.
If you only had 1000 dollars to start a new startup, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would save the money for a rainy day. The first thing I would do is setting up an experiment to reach a small audience on an online platform testing my idea. I would also reach out to developers inviting them to participate in this project, without pay, but equity, if successful. If you can get people working for you for free, then that is a testament of its own that the idea attracts interest from others.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Just do it. Don’t wait too long before following your dream of becoming an entrepreneur. Having done that move, you can always turn back to working for someone else. You will be admired for being one of the people that dared to follow your dreams.
What is your favorite quote?
I love Guy Kawasaki, having an exciting background, one of his quotes is
Organizations are successful because of good implementation, not good business plans.
Besides the obvious social media tools available, what are the top 3 most useful tools or resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
Live demo on our existing customers is always the best way!
How is running a tech company different than what you thought it would be?
It can be very lonely, you need to have great hiring practices in place to find talented, hard-working colleges that support you as a leader.
How can readers get in touch with you?
Drop me a line on LinkedIn Erik Wallin at Northfork.
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