Long Journey To Realize a Vision: Limeade CEO Henry Albrecht (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after that?

Henry Albrecht: So, I was quite jaded by the world of business. I wanted something with more meaning. Luckily, I was admitted to Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure I wanted an MBA or to be in business at all, but I don’t have the temperament or patience to be a novelist or any of the other things I thought I wanted to do when I was young. Mentally, I was well-equipped to be in business, but I wasn’t committed until I went to business school. I fell in love with marketing, technology, and human capital. I liked thinking about teams and people in business the same way I think about teams in sports. How do you get people all aligned and going in the same direction?

This was the dot-com era, so there was so much electric energy pouring into innovation and technology. To me, marketing was revolutionized by the Internet and applying a lot of interesting economic models to how new technologies were being adopted in the marketplace. I totally fell in love with it. I knew I had to work in Silicon Valley and at a great company that, not only has technology, but also has the power of a brand and team.

Sramana Mitra: What timeframe are we talking?

Henry Albrecht: I went to school in 1997. I finished in 1999.

Sramana Mitra: You’re landing in Silicon Valley right in the middle of the bubble.

Henry Albrecht: I was. I was really glad I chose to go for a bigger company.

Sramana Mitra: Where did you go to?

Henry Albrecht: I joined Intuit. The founder of Intuit was Scott Cook. I’m not a big hero believer but if I had a business hero, it would be Scott Cook because of the company he built and because of how intentional he was about building a great company. That’s what I wanted to learn. I wanted to be a great product manager and ultimately beyond all that, build something lasting and great.

Sramana Mitra: What function did you work in at Intuit?

Henry Albrecht: I started as a product manager. Then I expanded in other management roles where they had to take a lot of consumer packages and think about not just the product and technology but the brand around it and how people feel about it when they use it.

Sramana Mitra: Intuit is one of the few companies from the earlier era that is successfully selling into the small business market. Very few companies of that generation have been successful in doing that. Now, it’s changing. There are a lot more companies that are using all these online marketing techniques like Google PPC to sell into small businesses.

Henry Albrecht: I remember that. There were aren’t a lot who really knew how to get into the small businesses. More than anybody else who tried to attack their market, Microsoft went after them many times. They weren’t as obsessed about the customer as Intuit was. That was another great lesson I learned there. Not just to think about it as a brand and technology but be obsessed about the user and understand not just what they’re buying and doing but what they’re thinking when they’re clicking on something and how they feel when they’re walking in the retail store looking at your product.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay at Intuit?

Henry Albrecht: I was at Intuit for about four and a half years. I left in the Fall of 2003.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do next?

Henry Albrecht: That was the time when my family and I moved back to Seattle. After moving away at 18, I moved back at age 35 and I took a job. I was the VP of Product Management at a venture-backed enterprise software company called Bocada. That helped me see some interesting contrasts. It helped me re-ignite the idea that I had while at Intuit. If Intuit can build a system that helps you measurably improve your financial well-being, what if there’s a software system that can measurably improve your overall well-being?

At this job, I was arguing with my wife more than necessary. I was not loving every aspect of my work. Then this idea came to me. What if you took your passion for marketing, analytics, self-improvement, and evidence-based approaches and you build a company around this idea that you can measurably improve well-being in the world. It sounded really crazy. It sounded a little absurd to my Iowa farm boy father but I managed with enough cash and curiosity to eventually get him to be one of the first investors of the business. I quit my job and started working on the problem.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Long Journey To Realize a Vision: Limeade CEO Henry Albrecht
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