In the first episode of Create the Future, Georgetown Entrepreneurship’s podcast, host Jeff Reid talks with Dan Simons, co-founder of Founding Farmers Restaurant Group, and Bill Creelman (C’96), founder of Spindrift. Both share a love of high-quality food and a commitment to running companies grounded in values.
Creelman traces his path from a Georgetown entrepreneurship class taught by Walter Benson to an early seafood brand, the cocktail mix company Stirrings and then Spindrift, which uses real fruit in sparkling water. He describes the hard tradeoffs, such as whether to use real lemon juice, that test a mission. Simons explains how Founding Farmers’ ownership by American family farmers frees the business from quarterly pressure, and why it invests in employees’ mental health. Their shared advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to “align on what’s important early” and hold to it as the business changes.