
Creative Capes
Olio Co-Founder Tessa Clarke On Food Waste, Female Founders, and Business for Good
Most founders wait for the right idea. Tessa Clarke spent years doing exactly that before realising she'd been looking for the wrong thing, she should have been looking for a problem she cared about. Since co-founding Olio in 2015 with Saasha Celestial-One, Tessa has grown the food sharing app to more than 10 million users and an estimated £1.1 billion in social impact, alongside a B2B arm that now redistributes surplus for supermarkets, schools and production companies. Tessa is also a teacher at the Executive Programme at Future London Academy. Learn from her in-person: https://fla.wiki/4wZMcJ5 In this video, you'll learn: ▶ Why a two-week WhatsApp group proved the concept before a single line of code was written ▶ How Olio's most enthusiastic early users turned out to be the ones with nothing to give, and the third audience she built to close the gap ▶ Why Duolingo's streaks would never work for surplus food, and how to test a borrowed mechanic before you copy it ▶ How signing one supermarket outgrew everything the consumer app could achieve on its own ▶ How to answer a prevention-based question with a promotion-based response, and why female founders get asked them in the first place ▶ Why nobody cares about your solution, only whether you understand their problem Chapters: 00:00 Meet Tessa Clarke Co-Founder of Olio Solving Food Waste at Scale 04:56 Why Tessa Clarke Chose Business Over Charity 09:41 Why Purpose-Driven Business Attracts Gen Z Talent 14:05 How Olio Started as a WhatsApp Experiment 19:05 The Food Waste Heroes Programme That Solved Olio's Supply Problem 21:34 How B Corp Status Helped People Understand Olio's Business Model 28:37 Why Financial Incentives Backfired for Olio 34:44 How Tessa Clarke Raised $50 Million as a Female Founder 43:32 What Is Earth Overshoot Day 47:00 How Olio Measures Its Social Impact Beyond Profit 50:34 Why Olio Pivoted from B2C to B2B 56:30 How to Pitch Purpose to Corporate Buyers 1:00:25 Tessa Clarke Wants to Replace GDP as Our Success Metric






