Gabi Lewis

Gabi is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Magic Spoon, a high protein, low carb ‘childlike cereal for adults’. Magic Spoon is backed by some of the top consumer VC’s, including Lightspeed, Collaborative Fund, and Melitas Ventures. Prior to Magic Spoon, Gabi co-founded Exo Protein.

On his morning routine.

I roll out of bed (often slower than I’d like to admit) around 7:30 am, chug a large glass of water bleary-eyed, then do some easy stretching while the kettle boils.

For years, I de-prioritized stretching even though I exercised a lot, so now I make sure to get in at least 10 minutes first thing each day. Then I’ll make a cup of coffee.

Right now, in quarantine, I’m being a predictable Brooklyn hipster and spending far longer than is reasonable trying to perfect the art of the pour-over.

I’ll enjoy it while I crank through 30m of proper, distraction-free, work before I check my phone or emails.

Then I’ll shower, get dressed, and start the day. Ironically as the founder of a breakfast cereal company I actually don’t eat for the first few hours, but I’ll usually pour myself a bowl of cereal around 11 am.

On fitness and mental health.

I’m borderline obsessive with working out and have been since college.

For a while it was CrossFit and I was doing that 5 to 6 times a week, then I briefly got into powerlifting, and for the last couple years I’ve mostly just done my own thing at the gym. Of course, everything has changed now.

Luckily I got myself some home gym equipment (before everything sold out) to stay sane, so I’m still doing full body workouts a few times a week but with different implements.

I snagged a weighted vest, pull-up bar and rings, and a couple kettlebells. 

On the mental side of things, my family and many of my friends are back in Scotland where I grew up, so I try to spend as much time catching up with them as possible.

During the old days of commuting into the office, I’d try to call someone new each day on my walk from the subway.

Now without a commute breaking up the day it’s too easy for work to expand into every hour, so I schedule an early evening break most days to take a walk and call someone to catch up with.

On his nutrition regimen.

The first few hours of the day are nothing but black coffee. I’d say that I’ve been doing this before intermittent fasting was trendy but nobody would believe me!

Then of course I’ll have a bowl of Magic Spoon for my first meal of the day, sometime late morning. 

I love food and beverages too much to stick to any kind of restrictive diet long term, but I’ve experimented with basically every diet at various times from paleo to vegetarian and everything in between.

Nowadays, my diet is pretty low carb during the week but on weekends I’ll eat whatever I want. 

On the future of trendy diets.

Every popular diet is going to decline in popularity at some point. We saw that with Paleo, and we’ll see it with Keto one day in the future too.

That’s not to say that the overall macro trends underlying diets like Paleo and Keto are going away anytime soon though.

We know now that too much sugar is bad, fat isn’t quite the enemy we thought it was, and protein is important.

So even if it’s under a different name or brand of diet, I expect this movement to keep growing stronger and stronger.

It’s also worth pointing out that as a diet, Keto is unique in that once you start, you can’t pause.

Meaning, once you restrict your carbs for long enough to enter ketosis, if you just have one “cheat meal” you’re no longer really doing keto.

That makes it harder to start than most diets, but it also creates a kind of cult and community once you’re fully in it that we haven’t seen with prior diets, since the incentive not to break, even once, is so strong.

And I think that’s part of the reason why the growth of Keto is so far beyond what we’ve seen previously with trendy diets, and also why it won’t go away anytime soon.

On influencer buzz.

We realized early on that it’s hard for the brand to do the trust-building itself, so you need to leverage others to do it for you.

In our case, that’s meant leaning heavily on influencers from the start, and we’ve done that in a few different ways.

Our first round of financing pre-launch included a lot of health and wellness influencers who invested because they loved the idea and early product samples, and their promotion through various channels on launch day was instrumental in building trust with the consumer, establishing legitimacy, and creating buzz.

On top of that, we send out a lot of samples to influencers of all sizes every day.

We’re never paying these influencers, just sending cereal, and so if and when they talk about it, it’s usually clear to their audience that they genuinely like it. Influencer marketing has gotten a bad wrap recently but that’s only because some influencers are hawking products they don’t care about, and often charging exorbitant amounts of money for it.

But in the broadest sense, influencer marketing is just people telling other people about a brand, and encouraging that in an authentic way is always going to be important.

On building consumer trust.

On a more individual level, we build trust with our customers just by talking to them and listening to them.

In the world before social distancing, we’d invite groups of customers to our office to hear about their experiences with Magic Spoon and what we can do better for them.

Now, we’ve replaced that with phone calls — but the idea is the same. We’re always trying to learn about our customers as well as from our customers.

And a small thing which we think is really appreciated, we make sure to respond to every Instagram comment and message, good or bad — and not just with a wink or emoji — but with a thoughtful response.

On navigating co-founder relationships.

Greg and I met during our freshman year at Brown and immediately became close friends.

And so when we started our first company, Exo, together during our senior year, there was already a huge amount of trust & understanding underpinning the business relationship. 

At the beginning it was actually quite difficult to define our individual responsibilities since we’re fairly similar.

Unlike conventional wisdom for picking a co-founder, we don’t have different and opposite ways of thinking that somehow come together in a perfectly balanced vision.

In reality, we have quite similar personalities, skills, interests, and ways of thinking.

Early on it wasn’t clear who should do Marketing, who should do Operations, and so on, since either one of us really could have focused on any area.

That’s actually proven to be quite helpful over the years though, as we can each chime in on all parts of the business — while still having clear delineations of responsibility — and we also rarely disagree on important points in ways that very different co-founders might. 

In terms of tactical advice, we’ve found it very helpful to do monthly check-ins on our co-founder relationship.

We’ll give each other candid feedback, reflect on how we’re performing individually and together, and above all make sure we’re both having fun.

And so whenever little things come up day to day, we’ll just note them down and address them during the monthly check-in together, rather than engaging in the moment.

On his nightly routine.

In general, I try to avoid any habits that I can’t do without — the idea of not being able to function without coffee, or not being able to sleep without a specific unwinding ritual, or not being able to focus without certain tools or environments, makes me uneasy.

So I’m always conscious not to over-engineer this stuff.

That being said, I do try to end work at least a couple hours before going to bed, and force myself to read a book, stretch, cook, watch an episode. Really anything to switch my mind off work.

I also try to take one day a week where I don’t allow myself to work at all. No emails, no calls, not even thinking about work.

If I can do that on a Saturday or Sunday, I’m always massively more productive the next day. And if I’m so busy I can’t take a full day in a given week, I’ll at least take an afternoon and stop working at lunchtime.