Social Impact Tech: Laurie Freudenberg of Mijem Newcomm Tech On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact
The Mijem platform is built around the principle of the circular economy and building strong community ties. We provide a solution that’s in line with Gen Z’s values and make it easy for them to connect with each other at their local campus to buy, sell and trade pre-owned items to each other, find a ride share home, or a roommate to help defray the cost of school.
In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Laurie Freudenberg.
Laurie Freudenberg is CEO of Mijem (www.mijem.com), a social technology company focused on creating innovative solutions for Generation Z to connect and efficiently buy, sell and trade goods and services in a more sustainable way. She also serves on the board of Furniture Bank, a Toronto based charity and social enterprise whose mission is to alleviate furniture poverty and is a passionate supporter of the environment and animal rights.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?
I was an air force kid. My Dad was a pilot so we moved around a LOT — every two to three years on average until I was about 13. That was the point where we were supposed to move to a base way up north in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories and my sister and I begged him to turn it down. Luckily for us, he had gained enough seniority that saying no was no longer a career limiting move, so he turned it down!
Because we moved around a lot, I was always in the position of being the new kid in school, in a new place and having to re-create new childhood friendships. It forced me to become very self-sufficient and resilient. While incredibly difficult at the time, I really believe it helped contribute to my success later in life.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
It’s really about that pivotal moment where you realize that there’s an opportunity in front of you that will change your future, and you take it. When I was 17 and graduated high school, I made the decision to forego university and go directly into the work force. As you can imagine, there weren’t a lot of options available for someone with only a high school education, so I ended up working administrative roles.
I was working for an organization as their front office receptionist. Desktop computers were just coming into the office environment and on this particular day the General Manager showed up in the reception area with a shrink wrapped copy of WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. He tossed it on my desk and asked me if I thought I could figure out “how it worked”.
That’s the moment where the lightbulb literally came on over my head and I realized that if I could master this, and any other new technologies coming into the workplace, that I could re-write my future career path. I grabbed the disk, figured it out, and I never looked back.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Yes. I was working for an outplacement firm that provided job transition services to the terminated employees of organizations. As it ended up, one of the “candidates” was a former senior bank executive who interestingly enough ended up joining the organization in a leadership role.
Very shortly afterwards, he asked me to lead a strategic technology project to help transform the business. It was a complex project and a risky move. I remember his decision received a lot of push back at the outset as to whether I was the right person to lead it. Despite this, he never doubted me and made it clear that he believed in my ability to deliver. The opportunity was huge and a great resume builder, but it’s his trust in me and how it helped me build my own confidence for which I will always be grateful. We stayed in touch for many years as my career progressed and he mentored me through many challenging situations.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I don’t know if it’s a life-lesson quote, but very early on I developed a kind of self-talk mantra for when things are going sideways or when I’m feeling low. I say to myself “Laurie, when you are XX years old, ask yourself these two questions: #1… will you even remember this happened and #2 will it still matter?”
It helps me to put things in the right perspective and mostly, the answer to both questions is no. When the answer is yes, I know it’s something that I really need to address and fast. Of course, as I get older my horizon keeps moving out J
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Sure, the first two that come to mind, and which are closely related, are that I’m a(calculated) risk taker and also comfortable with ambiguity.
Much of my career has been spent in the tech start up space which is inherently risky, especially if you’re a first mover. In the mid to late 2000’s I was co-founder of a company called ADCentricity. One of my business partners, who is absolutely brilliant at identifying strategic opportunities, had a vision to create a new business model and platform that would create consolidation and scale in a highly fragmented digital media channel called digital out of home. Because no aggregation had ever been done in this channel before, it was a complete greenfield opportunity. No roadmap, no competitors, no success stories to emulate or failures to learn from. I spent a lot of time in those first few months saying “I don’t know but we’ll figure it out.” While I can’t say I didn’t lose sleep while building this company, I know that having these two traits made it much easier.
Integrity is the other trait, I believe has led to my success. It’s something for which I give full credit to my parents, and in particular my Dad. He lived by the credo that whatever things he did and decisions he made, he needed to be able to get up every morning and be able to look himself in the mirror. He instilled those same values in us as kids. A couple of years ago I was part of a multi-million dollar pitch to a potential client. I can’t remember the exact words, but at one point the ultimate decision maker turned to me and said something along the lines of “Laurie, I want to hear you say that you can actually deliver this project, because I know if you say it can, then it will be.”
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive social impact on our society. To begin, what problems are you aiming to solve?
I recently became CEO of a technology company called Mijem. We are a campus centric buy and sell social market place specifically focused on Gen Z students. Gen Z have been called the most socially conscious generations to walk the planet, and a demographic that views themselves as part of a global community. They care passionately about the environment and believe they have a direct role to play in safeguarding it. They’re also one of the most indebted generations in history with an average student debt of just under $28,000 upon graduation.
Our mission is to provide the tools to help these students save money, live more sustainably and help each other.
How do you think your technology can address this?
We believe marketplaces shouldn’t just be a place for people to get rid of things, they should be a community to find social goods and services.
The Mijem platform is built around the principle of the circular economy and building strong community ties. We provide a solution that’s in line with Gen Z’s values and make it easy for them to connect with each other at their local campus to buy, sell and trade pre-owned items to each other, find a ride share home, or a roommate to help defray the cost of school.
North America leads the global secondhand market and online marketplaces are the fastest growing sector of resale and Mijem is part of this shift. We have 10’s of thousands of students who use our app across 1500 active colleges and universities across North America.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
Mijem itself was inspired by a weekend trip to New York by Phuong Dinh. A student himself at the time, he was really troubled by what he saw as a culture of excessive consumption and a lack of disregard for the environment. He felt that his generation could and wanted to do better. So, he founded Mijem.
Personally, I share many of the same concerns and values that are foundational for Mijem. I have always been passionate about the environment and strive to make conscious decisions around my personal impact onour world. It feels good to be part of a company that is passionate about making a difference.
How do you think this might change the world?
Our collective desire to consume at ever higher levels is a relatively recent function of our culture and it’s destroying our planet. Platforms like Mijem, no matter how small, give people actionable, tangible ways to behave differently. If enough people behave differently, then attitudes and beliefs about what is acceptable, normal and of value can and will change.
Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
One criticism that is levelled against online marketplaces is that they encourage people to buy more, creating even more waste and pollution on the planet. The same certainly can be true of re-sale marketplaces, and even though our data show that most of our users tend to exchange goods in person, and those goods are usually used versus new, we would hope that they always consider the impact of their actions.
Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)
Not every idea or platform needs to be groundbreaking or BIG but you do need to have a receptive audience looking for something different. If you think about Mijem, and what we do, we’re really offering a centuries old solution, community-based trade and barter, facilitated by technology. We aren’t the only buy and sell marketplace out there, and others like OfferUp or Kijiji dwarf us in size. What makes us different and what clearly has resonated with the student community, is that we are solely focused on meeting the wants/need of the Gen Z student demographic — giving them the tools to make more sustainable choices, to connect and build communities, and at the same time, helping them save money and hopefully come out of college with just a little less debt to dig their way out of.
Surround yourself with people who are your target audience and continually ask them for their input. The Mijem team has considerably more grey hair than our student userbase, so actively soliciting feedback on a regular basis is critical for us. We recruit college and university students to be the eyes, ears and voice of Mijem at the campus level and part of my personal team is an MBA student from the University of Buffalo. The feedback on how we’re being received and what other opportunities we should be thinking about is invaluable as we think about our strategy and product roadmap.
It’s not always about having the perfect solution. Sometimes it’s about offering a better solution. Our platform includes a loyalty rewards program that our userbase can opt into. Those rewards are convertible to cryptocurrency — in this case Bitcoin SV (BSV). We’ve been asked why, if we are truly about sustainability, we would even offer this option as part of or platform. The truth is that Gen Z is already actively using and holding cryptocurrency and a number of studies show that the majority of this generation believes it will become mainstream. So…knowing it is a form of currency they want to use, we wanted to give them a more sustainable option and chose a type of crypto that independent evaluations have shown to be one of the more environmentally friendly options available.
Data is insight. At the outset and then with every subsequent dev cycle, take the time to build the systems and processes into your tech that will allow you to capture and quantitatively measure what’s working and what isn’t. It is a sobering experience to find out that the feature you were sure was going to be widely adopted by your audience isn’t being used. Get alignment on what you’re going to measure and why, and review it often.
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
Watching social media and what’s going on in the world today, it’s difficult not to get overwhelmed and paralyzed. Fight that feeling. Start by taking small concrete steps to change the world around you. Because even the smallest actions do make a difference and the cumulative effect of those actions can be transformative.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Actually there are two. Scot and Kat Blais, Co-founders of Global Sanctuary for Elephants, Brazil. GSE Brazil is a sanctuary in South America they started to provide captive elephants, many of them former circus elephants a safe and natural habitat to live out the remainder of their lives. I’ve been supporting GSE for a number of years now and am overwhelmed by their passion and unwavering commitment to these animals. Watching Maia, Bambi, Lady and the other elephants heal is salve for a stressful day. I am equally saddened that in my own country, we continue to keep elephants captive in zoos in a solitary environment and climate totally unsuited to these highly intelligent and social animals.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I post occasionally on my personal twitter account @lfreudenberg. You can best follow Mijem happenings via Linked In:https://www.linkedin.com/company/mijem
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.
About the Interviewer: Jilea Hemmings is a staunch believer in the power of entrepreneurship. A successful career revamping Fortune 500 companies was not enough for her entrepreneurial spirit, so Jilea began focusing her passion in startups. She has successfully built 6 startups to date. Her passion for entrepreneurship continues to flourish with the development of Stretchy Hair Care, focusing on relieving the pain associated with detangling and styling natural black hair. For far too long, people with tender heads have suffered in pain. Until now.
Social Impact Tech: Laurie Freudenberg of Mijem Newcomm Tech On How Their Technology Will Make An… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.