What is an Entrepreneur in Residence? B2B2B with Andrew Allen

What exactly is an entrepreneur in residence, and why would one of the UK’s largest food distributors deliberately plant a founder inside its business? What experience do you need, what is the host looking to achieve, and what do you actually do day-to-day?

In this episode of Curious Business, Stephen Morris sits down with Andrew Allen, a founder who built, bootstrapped and burned out through two food startups, and now bridges the gap between founder insights and enterprise strategy. Discover how a single advocate inside a large distributor joins dots, shapes go-to-market decisions, and reveals what actually works in B2B relationships when you're embedded in the system.

Whether you’re a founder trying to find growth, a leader pondering how to keep your organisation curious and creative, or simply fascinated by how big food can be a force for change, this episode explores how entrepreneurial thinking can influence the levers of scale.

Listen to this episode to find out:

• Why getting your margin structure right on day one guarantees your product never sells
• What "low barriers and high hurdles" really costs a founder 
• What an entrepreneur in residence actually does all day
• Why "what's in it for me?" is a stupid question in a startup but a completely valid one inside a corporate
• The one-seat-one-vote system that lets a risk-averse business place more bets on new products and suppliers 
• The overlooked kind of waste that Andrew says is bleeding food startups dry — and the two-hours-a-week fix

Links:

• Andrew Allen on LinkedIn:
  https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmichaelallen/
• Bidfood's Open Doors accelerator:
  https://www.bidfood.co.uk/about-us/open-doors/

• Related episode:
  Getting a Business Through the Messy Middle with Jane Hales:
  https://podcast.curiousbusiness.co.uk/e/co-founder-conflicts-jane-hales/

Chapters:

• 02:20 — First meal to last meal: the channel nobody thinks about
• 03:26 — "Start from stupid" (and why you need to)
• 04:39 — Am I done founding? The honest answer
• 06:20 — The margin paradox that kills good products
• 07:00 — Snuffling Pig, Biffs, and low barriers / high hurdles
• 08:21 — The Selfridges trap
• 12:08 — What an entrepreneur in residence actually does
• 17:47 — The supplement that almost died on the shelf
• 20:35 — Why the big players man-marking the shelf isn't winning
• 23:45 — The corporate question startups never ask
• 28:49 — One seat, one vote: how to bet 50:50 on purpose
• 30:05 — Reframing a failed launch as validated feedback
• 31:27 — Bold Bean, and the power of joining the dots
• 37:21 — The real waste in food isn't food waste
• 39:51 — Two hours a week that would change the game
• 40:49 — Should every company have one of me?

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Thanks for listening.

Curious Business is here to bring you insights, experiences and ideas from founders, leaders and experts to help you think differently about your business and its marketing.

My name is Stephen Morris and I help start-ups and scale-ups get momentum in their marketing and pipeline.

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