Daniella Granzotto – Wednesday Waffles | Turning a Viral Trend into a Cultural Shift

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. Today’s guest is Daniella Granzotto, chief growth officer at Wednesday Waffles, the app that’s redefining digital connection by prioritizing authenticity over algorithms. Daniella is leading their go to market strategy, driving growth and engagement as the platform takes on the loneliest epidemic and positions itself at the forefront of the anti social media movement. Before this, she spent eight years in senior leadership at Shopify, including as head coach, head excuse me, head of Shopify VIP, where she worked with some of the companies most influential brands and highest revenue merchants, shaping executive communications and building scalable teams that delivered multimillion dollar impact. At Wednesday Waffles, she’s bringing that expertise to turn a viral trend into a cultural shift. And she’s here to tell us how. Daniella, welcome to the show.

Daniella Granzotto : Thank you so much for having me.

Trisha Stetzel: I’m so excited to have you on today. When, uh, you and I engaged quite a while back and I was like, What is Wednesday waffles? And we got on the phone and I was very excited about what you’re building and these communities of people that you’re bringing together. Uh, and it’s lovely. And we’re going to talk about that in a few minutes. But I’d really like for the audience to know a little bit more about you. So tell us about Daniella.

Daniella Granzotto : Sure. I have a very unconventional career path in history. I, uh, am a theater school dropout, uh, by Education and, uh, spent a lot of time doing a lot of odd jobs before I eventually landed, uh, at Shopify as an executive assistant. Um, I applied seven times before they let me in. And on cover letter seven, I said, I have cover letter eight and nine ready to go, so let me know when you want them. Um, and I didn’t need them, as it turns out. And so I started right at the bottom and through the last eight years, worked my way up to, as you mentioned, head of VIP, where my team and I oversaw all of the biggest brands that utilize our platform. Um, and really the focus was around commerce, entrepreneurship and helping brands succeed in their own entrepreneurial endeavors. Yeah, yeah. And then from there, I, after eight years, decided it was time to take a leap into my own entrepreneurial journey myself and had, uh, owned a couple businesses in the past, had owned a wedding and events planning business. I owned a fake lash line at one point. Um, but when I came across this concept Wednesday. Waffles, that’s when it really spoke to me that this was the thing that I was supposed to do.

Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. Okay. So I’m sure if people are not familiar as they may not be around Wednesday waffles tell us exactly what it is.

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah. So it started by one of our founders, Zach from Australia about a year and a half ago, uh, took to TikTok to just share. Hey, my friends and I have been doing this thing. We call it Wednesday waffles. Uh, waffles in Australian and British slang, kind of means just the gift of the gab. Just chatting on about nothing. And, uh, they just waffle on about what’s going on in their day. And so every Wednesday, they would record a 2 to 3 minute video of just letting their friends know what was going on in their life. And it could be anything from the mundane to the challenging to the the winds that they’ve been having. And you just pop that in a group chat. And it allowed everyone to stay connected in a way that actually let people know what was going on in their life. And so I saw this, uh, TikTok go viral, and I was about to make a move across country, and I sent it to my girlfriends, and I was like, we need to do this. And so we had started doing it just in a group chat. And as I was doing it in the group chat, although it technically worked, there was a lot of limitations. It takes up all of your phone storage as the sender. It would look like my whole video sent, but as the receiver it would get cut off halfway through and it just wasn’t as good as an experience. But I had seen tremendous value just from the act of doing it already. And through that I was like, okay, this this is very valuable, but it needs to be better than this and it needs to be an app.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. So, uh, you had I’m assuming that you got involved because you had a need. It looked like a really great idea. It was a way for you and your friends to stay connected. So how did it go? Daniella, from just this concept of hanging out with your girlfriends and figuring out how you were going to use different tools to stay connected without using up all the storage on your phone to where it’s at today?

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah, I think as we started to do more research into what the activity of recording a 2 to 3 minute video, it sounds simple. It sounds okay. Obviously I can let people know what’s going on in my life, but the benefits of it are it’s just hard to ignore. Despite being more connected by technology than ever, 30% 36% of Americans report being lonelier than ever. The traditional social media outlets that we have today are highlight reels, and it becomes a place of, honestly, more loneliness and depression for more people than support and community. What it might have originally been intended to do, which was, you know, originally sharecropping photos of what you ate for lunch on Instagram, how it’s evolved today does not have the same, uh, outcome. And so being able to take everything out of what social media has become that we don’t like and distill it down to authentic connection between the people that you love, that want to know the mundane, want to know what’s going on in your life, and being able to share that in a close circle has been so much more beneficial than feeling performative on our traditional social media outlets that we currently have.

Trisha Stetzel: So it sounds like I record my video and I do my waffle, if you will, on my own. And then whenever my group has availability, then they can watch my waffle and reply or um, I guess, uh, have an emotion to it. I’m guessing I know it’s not social media, and we’re trying to get away from that. Um, am I on the right track?

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah, we’ve designed it in a way that we don’t want you to stay on it forever. We don’t want you to be doom scrolling. It’s not something that’s created to suck you in. Which is why Wednesday waffles. We do limit your Wednesday to recording only on Wednesdays. You can only record on Wednesdays. We do have a feature that allows you to record on Thursdays. You just have a moldy waffle if it’s a little late. Um, because we want to give people the benefit of the doubt. You know, life happens and sometimes you can’t record on Wednesday. And so but you just record your 2 to 3 minute video that day, and then you have access to watch everyone else’s waffles all throughout the week. So it’s not meant to be this. We also don’t want Wednesdays to be treacherous for you, right? It’s you can consume all throughout the week. Your friends can common, they’ll react. So you’ll be able to see in real time. If you say something funny, the laughing emoji will pop up on the screen and you can see all of your friends laughed at that moment. Um, we have a little notes section where you’re able to go in throughout the week. If something really exciting happened to you on Monday, you want to make sure you didn’t forget it. You can pop it into your notes so that it’s all ready to go. Once you are ready to record your waffle. Um, and then you can have as many groups as you’d like. We don’t. We know that every group in your life is intimate, and you might want to share different things with different people. So I have a girlfriend’s friend group I have a friend group with. I have a waffle group with my siblings. I have a waffle group with some of my really close coworkers, and that way you can maintain those relationships while not having everyone have to see the exact same side of you.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, I love this. So I’d like to kind of move into how does this play out in the business world? So I, I heard you say with some of the people that you’re close to in business, so does this play out or is it useful in business as well?

Daniella Granzotto : We have seen what’s really interesting. Some business use cases for it, in particular with stand ups. So a lot of teams will have their weekly stand up where everyone gets on a call, tells everyone what they’re working on, what they’ve got going on and projects wise. And to be able to do this asynchronously actually gives you and your team more time back, but allows you to still feel connected and up to speed with what everyone’s got going on. So it has been really fascinating to see, although we’ve definitely created it to tackle the loneliness pandemic that’s currently going on right now. Um, there are many use cases to be able to use Wednesday waffles.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, I love that. I think that’s fantastic. And I think we’re all tired of the let’s all get on a video call together and wait for each person to say what they need to, and waste an hour when we could do it in 2 or 3 minutes and then on our own time, go back and see what everybody else has going on. I love this, this is awesome. So take me through how someone would actually use the app. You talked about different groups and recording the video. What? Maybe it’s just day in the life of a user or week in the life of a user.

Daniella Granzotto : Sure. So when you sign up for Wednesday waffles, we actually have our own little waffle mascot named Wally. Um, and you’ll enter a group with him and the Waffle Gang that he has. Every waffle needs friends. And so they’ll actually walk you through exactly what waffling is, what sort of things you can talk about, um, what the concept is like and who you should invite. And then from there it will give you either a link and you can record a little video of yourself that you can send directly to your friends saying like, hey, I want to start waffling with you. They’ll get that same invite process. A lot of times when we say Wednesday waffles, the first thing is, what is that? And what does waffling mean? And so we need Wally or Waffle to be able to explain it to people. And then you’ll get a notification on Wednesday. We are very intentional about not overloading you with with notifications. Again, we don’t want it to be something that you’re sucked into. And so you get a notification on Wednesday. It’s time to record your waffle. You’ll get a notification that your friends have recorded their waffles. Um, you will get a notification at the end of the day. If you still have not recorded your waffle, you have an hour left before you know you might want to get that waffle in. Uh, and then you’ll be notified once you’ve eaten all your waffles, once everything’s been eaten and you’ve watched all the waffles for that day, you ate and you completed the task for that day.

Trisha Stetzel: Wow. That’s amazing. And don’t don’t have a moldy waffle. I, I love that.

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah. We try, we’ll get we’ll give you the pass. We don’t want to, you know, judge anyone, but it will be a little moldy, that’s all.

Trisha Stetzel: I think that’s fantastic. So we’re about halfway through and I know people are already curious. Daniella, about Wednesday waffles. What’s the best way to connect with you or even learn more about Wednesday waffles?

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah. Our app is available on both iOS and Android, so either the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. You can follow us on Wednesday Waffles app on all social media channels, and you can check out our website, which is Wednesday waffles.com.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. And so this solves the problem. Or is part of solving the problem of feeling lonely, right, where you have a place to go and connect with people.

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah, I will say the thing that keeps. I’ll speak for myself out of our team. Me motivated and and driving forward is the initial feedback that we’ve received from launch about how helpful this has been for people’s mental health and their connection. I’ve. We’ve received multiple messages from people who’ve said, if my brother had this, I think he’d still be around today. Um, we’ve also received, honestly, heartbreakingly, people who have lost someone to suicide. But the fact that they have all of these waffles of every single week, these memories with this person, has been super helpful with them on their journey. And that’s something that we are specifically really passionate about, is how can we create an environment that feels like a safe space where if you’re recording yourself every week, the people closest to you can maybe kind of pick up on some of those hints that, hey, things aren’t going as well as they would have liked, or I’m not doing so hot and being able to see the recording. I know a lot of people generally feel quite uncomfortable recording themselves on a screen, but if it’s just your intimate friend group and we can get them to a place where they can pick up on some of those nuances and maybe reach out because someone does need a little bit of extra help, rather than just sitting at home not feeling like they could reach out to anyone. We feel like if we can make that happen, even just a little bit more than we’ve won.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. That’s amazing. So I got goosebumps and even, like, a little frog in my throat as you were talking through that and being able to connect with someone who’s now no longer with us, which is super meaningful to most of us, and also it hearing just the kind words that people have shared with you about what you’ve created here. So if it’s okay, I’d like to shift to this business builder entrepreneur blood that you have running through your veins. And you said that you’ve had some other businesses even before Wednesday. Waffles. Listen, this was something a TikTok viral video that you latched on to. So how do you go from this viral video like, wow, this sounds like a really good idea to actually building a business around it.

Daniella Granzotto : Great question, I think. So having done a couple of businesses in the past, there’s a a metaphor I suppose, of. It’s going to it’s harder to create your own wave than it is to surf a wave that already exists. And so once I saw this, it had already gone viral. It means that people are already engaged with the concept. They just have either started doing it in a way that isn’t effective, or they’re interested, but they haven’t started doing it yet. And so having tested it and seeing, okay, there is area for improvement here, I can make this better. I, I’m not an engineer by trade. I, um, may have influenced slash stolen a couple of employees from my past to, uh, get on board and do this with me. And then I reached out to Zack. I found the original TikToker. It was his idea. He obviously is going to be more passionate about it than most. And I reached out to him and said, hey, I’m I’m going to build this thing. I’m going to build it with or without you. But I would love for you to be on our team and join. And he was on board after meeting all of us. And so it started with just the basics, right? What is the most painful part of doing it on a group chat? Because anyone can technically do it on a group chat.

Daniella Granzotto : And so storage was one. Um, and also being able to if you’re doing it in a group chat, you scroll and scroll and scroll to get to every Wednesday because there’s all this chatter in between. And so being able to host your videos separate from your chat and have it stored on the cloud so it’s not ruining all of your storage where our three biggest pain points. And so we started from there of like, okay, how do we solve the pain points. And then as we grew and expanded, it was how do we now make this even better? How do we make this a really unique experience that allows people to take their experience from inside the app and actually bring it outside? And so we’re now working on gamification. And if you and your your waffle group waffle every month and you hit a streak, then you’ll get entered into a draw to win a $500 Airbnb gift card. And that way you can take your friendship out of the app and into real life where it really matters.

Trisha Stetzel: Wow. Wow. That’s really cool. So I’m sitting here thinking, you know, one of the questions I would ask you is what’s next for Wednesday waffles? But we’ll wait for that until the end, because I’ll bet there’s a next. Next beyond this gamification, which sounds really cool. So as a business builder, really smart obviously that there’s a problem and you build the solution for it. So many entrepreneurs and people with great ideas go and build the solution and then try and find people that it fits. So what would you say to people who have this really great idea, but they don’t yet know who to put it in front of?

Daniella Granzotto : Great question. I think never underestimate the power of talking to people. Like, go find those people first and ask them what their problems are, because they will be so quick to tell you their frustrations, right? Everyone has them in any industry. And if you say, hey, I’m. It could be as simple of I’ll use the wedding industry because that was my previous background. I’m looking at getting into the wedding industry. You work in the wedding industry. What’s the most frustrating part about it? And someone will immediately be like, oh, it’s like I can’t keep my contract straight or vendors are so slow to respond or like nothing fits in. Everyone has their own platform and you’re like, okay. And you start to get your, um, ideas racing about what do all of these problems mean, where it can still be in an industry that you’re passionate about because that’s important, too. It’s going to be hard work and it’s going to be treacherous, and it’s going to be lonely, and it’s going to be frustrating. So you want to make sure that you have your why or something that you are very passionate about that keeps you going, but at least it’s a problem that, you know, other people have in that area that you’re interested in and not the other way around.

Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. Beautiful. Uh, we don’t want to go build something in a silo. We need to really understand what the challenges are of those we want to serve.

Daniella Granzotto : And I think to that point, one of the things that we have found the most humbling, but also the most helpful, is we did build this out in the open because the concept had already been, um, reached. People already knew about it. They were already aware. We said, hey, we’re building this thing. We got a ton of engagement and followers before we even had built the thing, because people were interested in the concept and they were like, yeah, great. And because we had interest, we built our V1 in three months, super scrappy, super fast, and it showed. We launched it and it it broke and it was there was a ton of bugs. And so then we had to get back on and people told us they weren’t shy with their feedback and we had to get on and be like, hey, we promise we’re good at this. We know, we know tech. We we did it very quickly and that was a mistake. We’re now going back to the drawing board to do it a little bit better. And thank you for staying with us on this journey. And that is it can be very humbling, humbling or even embarrassing to put something out that you’re not necessarily proud of at first. Uh, but the feedback we received as a result were people were immensely kind, sending us paragraphs of feedback of just like this button didn’t work, but I want it to work so badly because I’m just waiting to do this with my friends. And I’ve never, I don’t know about you. I’ve never sent such kind and robust feedback to an app before in my life. Like, if it doesn’t work, I’m moving on to the next thing. Yeah. Um, and so it is. I would recommend for anyone that is starting out, like put your crappy first version out fast and it allows you to reiterate and don’t be, uh, don’t be so attached to the results of it and what people think of it. It has no reflection on you and your capabilities. It just allows you to reiterate faster and get to the finish line of the product that people want faster.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, and being honest about it, and I’m assuming that’s why you got so much great feedback is because you were honest. Yes, we brought it to market. It certainly wasn’t ready yet. As you can see. We need to know from you what did it feel like? What’s broken? Right. Yeah. And being transparent.

Daniella Granzotto : The basis of what we’ve built Wednesday waffles on is authenticity, right? We want to create a friendship deepening tool that allows you to be your genuine and authentic self in an environment where you feel safe. And for us to build that with the goal in mind and not be authentic ourselves as the creators of this app and not feel comfortable to come out and say, hey, we missed the mark. It’s not that great yet. It’s going to be better. Were deeply invested in making it good. And we want you to stick around for the journey that resonates. Because if we can’t do that, then we can’t build an app. On authenticity. It just won’t work.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. So I think we have a glimpse into who your audience is, your ideal market, if you will, for Wednesday waffles. Do you can you describe who your ideal market is? So if we’ve got folks that are listening, they can either connect with you directly, or they know someone who may be very interested in using the app.

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s two different categories that we really serve well. The first is that high school university student, like going from high school to university is the first time in your life that all of your friends are no longer going to be in the same spot, right? And similarly from university than graduating out into the real world. Those are the first times where, hey, suddenly my friends aren’t just located down the street or on the same block as me, and if I want to maintain those relationships, I have to find a new way of doing it. And so we’ve seen a ton of usage from those two groups. And then the second group, where we’ve seen a lot of usage is also that late 20s, early 30s. I think particularly women, although men too. But that’s the stage where suddenly everyone’s starting to have kids. Your hangouts don’t happen as frequently as they used to. You can’t get together at the same cadence, and to be able to connect with those people still, in a way that’s light lift, low stress, it doesn’t feel burdensome. Um, has been really a target audience for us, too, that we’ve seen benefit greatly from it.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that that’s beautiful. And there’s use case for business as well. I’m just putting that out there because I can see even in my own space that this could be very beneficial to the area that I work in, uh, and even with client work could be very beneficial as well.

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah, absolutely. Having a like for coaching or mentorship, having an accountability partner, being able to create groups that hey, you check in once a week, you see how you’re doing. There’s a lot of benefits to it. And what is relatively a simple concept that we’ve made, we’ve just made better.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah I love that. And I love your authenticity. I love that you’re so transparent. Um, and sharing your story. How do you get through the hard times in your business when things get really tough and really low? How do you get past those?

Daniella Granzotto : Honestly. Great question. In the spirit of authenticity, I was having a tiny little mental breakdown before getting on this call. Um, because especially when you’re doing go to market for a new product, and I think also I’ll speak for myself. I worked for a very well known company, uh, you know, three months ago where anytime I emailed someone, I would get an email response right away. And so going through that shift again of back to nobody knows who I am, nobody cares what I do. It is a it can be discouraging. And I think staying true to your mission and being reminded of your why is super important. And then also for entrepreneurs, if you are privileged enough to be creating alongside other people who you you choose to be, your team is makes the world of a difference. And ultimately, I think if your first if you have a group of people who are committed to building something together, even if your first idea doesn’t work, if you have intelligent, hard working people by your side, you will. It will work out for you. And it could be idea one. It could be idea three it could be idea five. But that’s something I highly recommend when you are looking to start a business, be very careful about how you choose your partners. Get everything papered. I do recommend that. Don’t be foolish. However, having a team that is there to support you and lift you up when you’re feeling down is crucial.

Trisha Stetzel: Amazing. Well, I hope that. I hope that this was in your day as you came into this conversation.

Speaker4: It was. Yes.

Daniella Granzotto : It’s definitely a highlight for sure.

Speaker4: Good.

Trisha Stetzel: Uh, okay. Last question. Daniella. You gave us a sneak peek into what’s next for Wednesday waffles with the gamification. But what’s next? Next? What do you see in the future?

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah, I think so far we’re not a friendship binding tool. We’re a friendship deepening tool. And so this we’re very intentional about this is for deepening the relationships you already have. We want those relationships to be very strong. And we believe that even a few strong relationships are better than many fickle ones. And so that’s where we’ve started. And you don’t. I also say waffle groups. You can waffle 1 to 1 with one person. It does not need to be a group of 5 or 6 of your closest friends. Right. And so I think once we’ve nailed that and tackled that and been able to give people an opportunity to take their friendship in app, celebrate it out in the real world, it then takes the next step of okay, how can we become a friend finding tool as well? And what does that look like? And I think we have a unique capability to do that because we have, you know, people record two minutes about what’s going on in their life every single week. And so hopefully in the future, there’s a way for us to maybe, hey, like, this person cares a lot about knitting and so does this person over here. And they are not in the same waffle groups, but they have a lot in common. Maybe we could introduce them to each other. And so that’s next. Next. We’re not there yet. Um, but that would be the long term goal is if we can be a friendship deepening tool as well as a friendship finding tool.

Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic. Daniella, thank you so much for spending a little bit of time with me today, talking about Wednesday Waffles and about Daniella. Your story is amazing.

Daniella Granzotto : Thank you so much. It was a pleasure chatting with you. I’m happy to be here.

Trisha Stetzel: That’s all the time we have for today. Guys, if you found value in this conversation, please share it. Share it with a fellow entrepreneur, a veteran or Houston leader ready to grow. Be sure to follow, rate, and review the show because it helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours. Your business, your leadership, and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.