Ryan Everton says he does not dwell on what his life would have been like had he got “stuck being a lawyer”.
While the 32-year-old chief executive and founder of Turn — a reusable cup washing and supply business based in San Francisco — never became a practising lawyer, he said he was already making enough money by the time he graduated that he did not need to become one.
The company, formerly known as Globelet, began while he was still a student studying law at the University of Otago.
Turn swaps out single-use plastic cups at stadiums and other venues with reusable ones, and offers a cleaning service which can wash and dry them at a similar price to single-use cups.
They are also linked to a console that rewards attendees for every cup they return — from VIP upgrades, show tickets and deals from sponsors at music festivals to in-store rewards at quick-service restaurants.
At night, the cups and bins light up to guide people to the collection bins.
Even if the cups are dropped on the ground, other people can pick them up and return them to claim rewards for themselves.
It was all about making the system “cheap enough and convenient enough” to get people on board, Mr Everton, originally of Levin, said.
“Ultimately people want to make more money or save more money, and so it has to be convenient and it has to be cheap enough in order to compete.”
Inspiration struck in 2012 at a rugby game at Forsyth Barr Stadium, when Mr Everton said he saw “plastic cups all over the ground”.
When he was washing the dishes back home, he realised the single-use cups could be swapped for reusable cups.
He began cold-calling “every event organiser in New Zealand” and racking up phone bills until he found a couple of clients who wanted to transition from single-use to reusable cups.
Forsyth Barr Stadium, where Mr Everton first conceived of the business, became Turn’s first client.
While he was studying, Mr Everton met David Quinn — a New Zealander who at the time had worked for Steve Jobs at Apple — through the university’s Audacious startup programme.
“He had convinced me that there’s too many lawyers, and you only have a very short time to live and so you should start something to try and make the world better.
“This was prior to plastic waste really becoming an issue.”
Mr Everton said business in the US was “completely different” to New Zealand, the smallest festival in the US being larger than the biggest one in New Zealand.
A single client was able to offer many festivals at once, as opposed to each being owned separately.
Live Nation, Starbucks and Liquid I.V. had all worked with Turn.
Turn had also worked closely with Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons, received investment from Ashton Kutcher, provided cups for the Austin City Limits music festival and worked on U2’s 2019 tour.
“We don’t get to work with Bono necessarily, but it’s amazing seeing a stadium full of people using reusable cups and returning them versus them all just going to landfill.”
Mr Everton said they could not even track the number of disposable cups Turn had diverted from landfill, but expected to save between 5 million and 10 million cups this year alone.
But the goalposts kept moving and Turn still had “quite a lot of impact to have”, he said.
Starbucks used about 7 billion single-use cups per year in the US, and some airlines used about 400 million a year.
Turn hoped to see all quick-service restaurants and stadiums make the “move to reuse” on a global scale, and hoped to work with Air New Zealand and other airlines.
Mr Everton said a good friend had once told him that the best time to start a business was during university due to the “unlimited” student resource, an excuse to talk to anyone and fewer work pressures.
“A lot of people think, ‘oh I’ll finish university, get a job, and then start my business’, but I think, ultimately, the sooner you can start the better.”
If you could find someone within a short period of time who was willing to give you money to solve a problem, “then you’ve probably got a business”, he said.
“It’s trying to find the product, try and get it sold, and to do it probably during university is easier than when you have a job.
“I see a lot of people who go get a job, and then they struggle because then they want to have kids, and then they get married.
“Before they know it, they’re so far down a rabbit hole it’s hard to find the time.”
Mr Everton believed the University of Otago had been a good launching pad for a business idea like Turn.
It was small enough and quite close-knit and you could almost walk anywhere to start doing research.
New Zealand also had a “really good sentiment” in the US, he said.
tim.scott@odt.co.nz
