Exploring Life & Business with Alexander Novack of Syndicate

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexander Novack.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Our story is very different. I have been a professor of philosophy at Cal Poly Pomona for many years, with my area of concentration being game theory and scientific rationality. In particular, I’ve studied how complex systems develop in nature among individual organisms, where each agent is pursuing a strategy to maximize preferences but which, comprehensively, an equilibrium forms that benefits everyone. I also am a lifelong coffee/bakery junkie. So, I decided to do “field research” and put together a coffee/bakery under a business model based on game theoretic principles. The key was to build it so that each program had sufficient variability and fluidity to evolve in whatever direction the environment directed. I.e.., we started with no concept, and we allowed the concept to make itself. Little did my partner Erin Ritter, and I know the severity of the test, starting just a few months prior to the start of Covid.

Happily, against all odds, we survived and thrived, winning two “Best of LA” awards, and evolving a third program so that we are now a coffee/bakery/kitchen. Our coffee program is a 3rd wave type. All three programs build almost everything from the ground up, with our coffee syrups/sauces/caramel/ganache all made in-house from scratch; our bakery making every laminated (croissants, etc.) pastry and every pastry, preserves, curds, etc. all in-house from scratch; and our kitchen program curing our own fish, baking our own bread, making our own salsas and granola and sauces, etc., also in-house and from scratch. This very strange, yet very biological way of doing business has energized our creatives and inspired us to grow by leaps and bounds.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
As just mentioned, our biggest struggle, besides the normal startup headaches (and there were many, including a flood caused by the upstairs tenant in our opening week, a split with my first partner, and imposter chefs who turned out to have no idea what they were doing), the Covid shutdowns and disruptions were brutal, not to mention the supply chain shortages, labor shortages, inflation, and other adversities of this period. It no doubt would have broken us, being a nascent enterprise, but I credit our resilient, evolutionary business model and our stalwart, vanguards-of-the-vision team for carrying us over the valley of the shadow of death.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Syndicate?
The term “Syndicate” was chosen as a name because it is a good way to describe the game-theoretic arrangement of agents in our system. Of course, a crime syndicate is the go-to example of a syndicate, but there are as many ‘syndicates’ as you can shake a stick at in the natural world. In a crime syndicate, you may have a safe-cracker, a getaway driver, a consigliere, and so forth. Each person is essentially a freelancer and is in it for their own betterment; however, they naturally coordinate to create a composite that has capabilities greater than the sum of its parts. So, too, with our (non-criminal) Syndicate, though we have added features plagiarized from the 4 billion-year-old phenomenon called “life.’ At the heart of our model is a proprietary mathematical algorithm, but what makes it GO is the passionate and prodigious artistic hearts in the chests of our fine creatives. We have forged a unique synthesis of science and art. The fact that we have lines out the door every day is a wonderful testament to our unique vision and our capable people. Our OG customers describe us as: fun, approachable, creative, and vibrant. — Hopefully, we will soon have the opportunity to scale up to a larger Syndicate with more programs.

Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
Being that “directed mutation” is our middle name, we encourage our customers to get their fill before new items disappear. We have a heavy turnover of offerings, so FOMO is apropos here.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/syndicatecoffeebakery