Episode 08: Joey Zwillinger on Allbirds, Biologica, and What He'd Do Differently

This episode went to tape before Allbirds made headlines this month for selling its footwear assets and announcing a pivot to AI infrastructure under a new name — roughly two years after Joey Zwillinger stepped down as CEO. 

That timing makes the conversation you're about to hear all the more useful. It’s a candid, firsthand account from the co-founder who took Allbirds from a kitchen-table idea in 2015 to a $4 billion IPO in 2021, and then through one of the more publicly scrutinized post-COVID turnarounds in consumer retail. 

Joey sits down with Emmanuel for a wide-ranging conversation about the decisions that worked, the ones that didn't, and the framework he's using to build his next company: Biologica, a women's hormonal health brand he co-founded with his wife Liz. 

About Joey Zwillinger

Joey Zwillinger is the co-founder and CEO of Biologica, a women's hormonal health company he launched in December 2025 with his wife and co-founder, Liz Zwillinger. He is best known as the co-founder and former CEO of Allbirds, the sustainable footwear brand he built with Tim Brown starting in 2015 and led through its 2021 IPO at a roughly $4 billion valuation. He stepped down as CEO in March 2024, two years before the company's 2026 sale of its footwear assets and pivot to AI infrastructure. Before Allbirds, Joey ran the chemicals division at TerraVia (formerly Solazyme), a biotech company engineering microalgae to replace petroleum-derived materials. He's an engineer by training and co-founded Good Friends, an early-stage venture firm.

About Biologica

Biologica is a women's health company that makes stage-specific nutritional support for women's three hormonal phases: the reproductive years, perimenopause, and postmenopause. The products are science-backed, effervescent daily drinks designed around the principle that women's nutritional needs shift meaningfully across hormonal stages — a gap the traditional supplement industry's one-size-fits-all approach has largely ignored. The company launched in December 2025 backed by $7 million in seed funding from Addition, Greycroft, Hawktail, and True Beauty Ventures, and is informed by a 1,000-woman health study the founders commissioned before launch.

What you'll learn in this episode

This conversation is a rare, firsthand look at what it actually takes to build a consumer brand at scale, from the decisions that worked to the ones that didn't. Joey walks through both chapters of his founder journey, including the decade at Allbirds (from kitchen-table idea to IPO to turnaround) and the playbook he's now running at Biologica. 

Along the way, he gets specific about the mechanics most founders don't hear about: how post-COVID consumer signals can mislead you in industries with long product cycles, what it actually costs to be a subscale public company, how to lead a team through a multi-year turnaround, and why the feedback loops that served you as a first-time founder quietly break the second time around.

Whether you're a first-time founder making your earliest hires or a later-stage operator thinking about capital discipline in a frothy funding environment, this episode offers an unusually candid look at the decisions that compound — for better and for worse — over a full company lifecycle.

Episode timestamps

[00:00:00] Cold open: From a million dollars in first-month sales to the day COVID hit
[00:00:40] Intro: Why this episode is dropping early amid Allbirds' pivot to AI
[00:02:55] Welcome and the reunion: How Joey and Emmanuel first met in 2019
[00:04:02] From biotech to a cobbler: Joey's non-traditional path through science, climate, and consumer brands
[00:10:01] The slope of ignorance: Hiring world-class executives for the roles that define your competitive moat
[00:13:40] From a $4B IPO to misreading the signals: What actually broke at Allbirds post-COVID
[00:20:06] The real cost of being a subscale public consumer company
[00:22:39] Why Allbirds went public in the first place — and the decision Joey and Tim didn't dogmatically rule out
[00:24:17] Leading through a turnaround: Building a two-year framework when people can't stand ambiguity
[00:27:24] The CEO transition: How Joey and Joe Vernachio planned the handover for a year
[00:30:07] What Joey is doing differently at Biologica — and what AI-native companies get right
[00:34:34] Working with your spouse as a co-founder (and what actually impacts the relationship)
[00:36:31] The second-time founder's trap: Why you have to work harder to find honest feedback
[00:39:44] Buying vs. building in the AI era: Why a consumer brand developing its own tech is "a fool's errand"
[00:42:19] What most founders aren't paying enough attention to: "Take this money and spend it like you don't have it"
[00:44:33] Wrap-up and Bubble announcements

Key insights from this episode

Hire world-class executives early — but only for the things that define your competitive moat

Joey calls this the "slope of ignorance." Identify the one or two capabilities that will actually create a defensible business — for Allbirds, it was sustainable material innovation and brand — and hire the best executive you can possibly afford for those roles on day one. They will do a better job than the founders ever could. For everything further down the list, delay senior hiring until it actually matters. This principle applies even more today: AI is making the tedious work easier, which raises the premium on senior expertise to guide the strategic direction. At Biologica, Joey hired a staff doctor from nearly day one to lead clinical research.

Be extraordinarily judicious with capital, even when money is cheap

The advice Joey got from his first investor in 2015 — "take the money and spend it like you don't have it" — is the lesson he says he didn't fully absorb at Allbirds and is now obsessive about at Biologica. In an R&D-heavy business, raising when capital is cheap is important, but the natural entrepreneurial optimism to actually spend it is what gets companies into trouble. The music stops. Markets shift. Fixed-cost investments are easy to make and very hard to unwind. Position yourself with a war chest and extreme spending discipline, because momentum can reverse faster than product cycles can respond.

As a second-time founder, you have to go out of your way to get real feedback

Second-time founders get the benefit of the doubt — which is both the advantage and the trap. Investors are more forgiving, vendors pick up the phone, advisors are generous with their time, and the truly tough feedback ("here are 50 reasons you're wrong") becomes harder to come by. Joey now builds structured mechanisms to compensate: weekly expert calls, anonymous market research he's not in the room for, observed focus groups, and a deliberately assembled board of advisors who he respects enough that there's "no bullshit between us." It requires more discipline to maintain, not less.

Lead turnarounds with a clear multi-year framework, not reassurance

Most people — even sophisticated executives — don't operate well in ambiguity. Joey's approach during the Allbirds turnaround was to map out the full two-year plan and share it broadly: here's what to expect, here are the milestones, here are the big initiatives, here's how we'll resource it. That kind of transparent framework lets people self-select into the journey. And when things are hard, you find out who was motivated by momentum and who's actually committed to the mission. Celebrate what's working, be circumspect about signals that look too good to be true, and give your team the context they need to make good micro-decisions without you in the room.

Buy modern software, don't build it — unless technology is your moat

Joey's consistent bias across both companies: If your competitive advantage isn't technology, don't try to become a technology company to support it. The modern software landscape — Shopify, its surrounding ecosystem, tools like Bubble — has gotten so capable that building your own base-level infrastructure is "a fool's errand" for a consumer brand. The upside is that by buying the best modern tools, you inherit all the AI capability their vendors are building. The result: smaller, more talented teams doing more with less.

Resources 

• Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove — The classic Andy Grove framework Joey references on navigating existential industry shocks
• Good Friends — The early-stage consumer VC firm Joey co-founded with the founders of Warby Parker and Harry's
• Allbirds names Joe Vernachio CEO (March 2024) — The CEO transition Joey walks through in the episode
• After sale of its shoe business, Allbirds pivots to AI (April 2026, TechCrunch) — Context on the company's post-Joey trajectory and it’s most recent big announcement
• Biologica launches with $7M seed round (December 2025, Inc.) — Background on the new company Joey and Liz Zwillinger co-founded
• Buildprint webinar — RSVP for the Agent live demo and YouTube Q&A on April 20, 12 PM ET with George Collier and Lucas Bennington

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