Can Any Company Be A Tech Company?

The profitable salad chain Sweetgreen was on track to IPO. So why did its founders decide to pivot to tech?

- Burt Helm

When they were still undergrads at Georgetown University, Jonathan Neman, Nicolas Jammet, and Nathaniel Ru weren’t yet superfriends. They knew one another because Ru sat behind Neman in Accounting 101, and Jammet’s freshman dorm room was next to Neman’s. But after they graduated, in 2007, they decided to try opening a 560- square-foot salad and frozen yogurt shop: Sweetgreen. Their friendship grew with the business. By the time the company had 20 locations, from D.C. to Philadelphia, and they were raising money for a national expansion, the three had become so chummy that it made their potential investors nervous. Were this brothers-in-salad for real?

“It was unusual, and quite frankly, a concern,” recalls Steve Case, CEO of Revolution and a Sweetgreen board member. “They were co-CEOs who shared the same office and, when we invested, at least two of the three shared the same apartment.” (Ru and Neman lived in a townhouse in Georgetown. Jammet lived across the street.) “On one level, it’s like, isn’t that sweet? How Kumbaya. On the other hand, when push comes to shove, how are decisions going to get made here? How is that really going to scale?”