Meet Alexey Lee | CEO, Founder of Pinemelon.com

We had the good fortune of connecting with Alexey Lee and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Alexey, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
Risk taking has always played a tremendous role in my life and career as a serial entrepreneur. Too much risk — and I could have ended up with nothing, disappointed by entrepreneurship and broken with too much pressure. Too little — and I could have missed many opportunities which now are fully realized.

There are two useful analogies about risk taking which I always keep in mind. First is that you shouldn’t take too much risk at any point of your life,  because otherwise it’s just a roulette. You should try to build a stair, where you mold each previous step in concrete before you proceed to exploring the next height. In this case you cannot fall lower than that step. The other is that taking big risks is all about gradual training, just like muscles – you cannot get ready overnight, it takes years.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Pinemelon.com is a local-first online supermarket with strong focus on produce and with a priority for organic and local items, however we offer everyday staples too. The grocery business is hard to get into, so it’s ruled by a few incumbents who do not always follow trends and needs of modern society. By pricing quality organic produce lower than others and by prioritizing local, we support people’s desire to switch to a healthier food and to support local communities and local farmers along the way.

It’s a big bet for us. We have established a large dedicated facility for fulfilling online orders and we have our own car fleet. We believe that we need to own and control the primary processes in order to provide the best quality of products, the best delivery and service. We plan to launch in Denver first and if we reach certain milestones, we’ll be ready to launch in other cities in the US.

From my personal perspective it’s a huge leap of faith — I’m an ethnic Korean and I moved to Denver from Central Asia, which is on the exact opposite point of Earth. However, coming from Almaty – a city very similar to Denver in many ways – an up and coming mid-size city, not too spread geographically, close to high mountains, filled with very energetic people who are trying to live in harmony with nature and love their habitat – we proved our business model and decided that other promising mid-size cities across the world might need a similar niche online supermarket.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’m still new to the city, so there are not so many places which I know. Red Rocks is a default go-to place for everyone for sure. To any family with kids I would recommend visiting Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum and Children’s Museum of Denver at Marsico Campus. There are very lovely authentic places in Boulder that belong to other parts of the world — the first is called Dushanbe Teahouse and the building was moved directly from Tajikistan. The other is Sherpa’s Restaurant which is run by a well-known mountaineer from Nepal.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
There are so many kind people whose advice and guidance was very timely and helpful for me. I believe that if you freely share your ideas and then listen, people generously give you invaluable opinions, you just have to listen carefully. I think that my whole entrepreneurial journey is life-long sponging of knowledge.

Also, I owe a lot to books. Probably I’ve read all available biographies and autobiographies of all known entrepreneurs. To name a few – “Losing My Virginity” by Richard Branson, “Delivering Happiness” by Tony Hsieh, “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz, and many others.

A shout out to our leadership team in Denver, Chris Franklin, John Gengel, Sarah Young, Steve Mannion, who, despite (or because of) their extensive experience in the US grocery business, believed in this idea and joined it.

A huge shout out to my wife, Anna. Besides being my partner in life and our numerous businesses, she has always been my supporter and a person without whom many of my seemingly crazy ideas wouldn’t have been realized.

Website: https://www.pinemelon.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pinemelon_market/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pinemelon/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pinemelonmarket