Advice Line with Nick Green of Thrive Market

Guy Raz (0:00)

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Hello and welcome to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show who will help me try to help you.

Joining me today is Nick Green. He's the co-founder and CEO of Thrive Market. Nick, welcome back to the show.

Nick Green (3:41)

Thanks for having me back.

Guy Raz (3:43)

It's great to have you back. You were first on the show in 2024

Of course, you told the story of Thrive Market. You and your co-founders originally wanted to combine Costco and Whole Foods, but as an e-commerce platform. You had all kinds of challenges building the platform and trying to raise money. You actually ended up taking small investments from hundreds of health bloggers, but eventually you launched Thrive in 2014 I think by last year, I think you did over $700 million in sales with more than a million and a half members, which is amazing. Congrats on that.

Nick Green (4:16)

Thanks so much. Yeah. I mean, we talked about the early challenges back in the day, but the challenges, of course, never stop in business. I think one of the jokes we used to have early on was that we almost had a new business every year or two, and you would think that would slow down, but it really hasn't. I feel like our business has transformed even since we met in 2024 We've, in some ways, doubled down on things that we were already doing, for example, serving parents and families.

We've built a whole feature and really expanded our recurring offering, where members can put their Thrive Market orders on autopilot, add it in at full control of the products that they purchase each month, but make it even simpler to reorder. And we're now seeing over 60% of order volume coming from that. We've, of course, doubled down in AI, which was already starting to be a thing in 2024, but has like, you know, exponentially changed. You know, our first orders now, members can get help building a cart with an AI cart builder that's just transformed the way the onboarding happens for new members. You know, 90% of our member service inquiries now are self-service through AI.