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Growth Without Doing It All
EO QUEENSLAND | FOUNDER STORY
Raina Kumra Gardiner • Founder of Spicewell and EO Accelerator participant
Building a business can leave you carrying every decision, even when you have plenty of experience. For Spicewell founder Raina Kumra Gardiner, moving from Los Angeles to Brisbane meant learning to delegate more deliberately, finding a new community and being honest about what growth should make possible.
Experience does not remove the need for support
Raina had already worked in technology and investing before she started Spicewell. At Omidyar Network, her work focused on impact and technology ethics. Later, she helped bring experienced founders together around early-stage investing in Los Angeles.
The money mattered, but so did the people around it. Founders who had built and exited businesses could offer practical experience, introductions and perspective to those just starting out.
WATCH OR LISTEN
Hear the full conversation with Raina Kumra Gardiner on Inside EO Queensland.
Also available as video and audio. New conversations released monthly.
Raina saw how that community helped younger companies find customers and grow. It was a lesson she would return to in her own business: experience is valuable, but having people around you changes what you can do with it.
A new business can begin with a problem close to home
Spicewell began during the pandemic, when overlapping family health challenges pulled Raina away from her usual work. She spent more time in the kitchen, experimenting with vegetables from the garden and adding them to everyday meals.
Those experiments eventually became seasoning blends. She shared them with friends and neighbours, listened to their responses and decided to put the idea into production.
ABOUT THE PARTNER
Raina Kumra Gardiner
Raina Kumra Gardiner is the founder of Spicewell and an EO Accelerator participant based in Brisbane. Her entrepreneurial experience spans technology, investing and consumer products. Her story explores delegation, accountability, community and the relationship between business growth and personal satisfaction.
Starting a food business surprised her. She had wanted a break from technology and something she could make with her hands, but she had not planned to become a food founder. What held her attention was the chance to build something useful around an everyday habit.
For another business owner, the useful question is whether an idea is solving a problem people recognise. Early conversations and small tests can give you something more concrete than enthusiasm alone.
Delegation made the move possible
Before moving to Brisbane, Raina spent a year preparing Spicewell to operate remotely. The supply chain needed to be in place, other people needed to take responsibility and the business needed to keep moving without her physically doing every task.
That required her to step back from work she had been doing herself. The move created a practical reason to delegate, rather than leaving it as something to tackle when business became quieter.
She says she now prefers running Spicewell from Brisbane. That flexibility took planning. It also required recognising that different businesses need different kinds of involvement: her investment work still benefits from being close to founders and investors.
The question is useful at any stage of growth: which parts of the business need your judgement, and which still depend on you because you have not handed them over?
Honest numbers make accountability useful
Raina knew people in EO before arriving in Queensland. In Los Angeles she had a strong network. Moving to a new city meant starting again, and she arranged to join EO Accelerator before she arrived.
It gave her events to attend, people to meet and an accountability group with a regular rhythm. It also helped with something less visible: the loneliness of carrying responsibility as a solo founder.
Sharing her numbers with the group felt uncomfortable at first. She was used to showing them to investors, rather than to a group of fellow business owners. What changed her view was the value of being open about what was happening.
A difficult month becomes more useful when you can identify the problem and talk about what to do next. Trying to make the numbers look better than they are gets in the way of that conversation.
For an established EO member as much as an Accelerator, there is a practical test here: who can see enough of the real picture to challenge your thinking and help you act?
Different businesses still share familiar problems
Raina initially hoped to meet more founders building physical products. Many of the people she encountered were in services and property, with businesses that looked different from hers.
Yet the accountability conversations still had common ground. Hiring, growth and the pressure of responsibility did not disappear because the products or customers were different.
There is room for both kinds of connection: peers who understand the detail of your industry, and people outside it who can help you see a familiar problem differently. Raina remains keen to connect with other product founders, while finding value in the wider group around her.
Growth should leave room for satisfaction
When asked about success, Raina makes a distinction between achievement and satisfaction. She has experienced success that did not bring much satisfaction. Spicewell may not yet be the biggest business of her career, but she is happy with its direction and the parts of the work she enjoys.
The move has also brought friendships, children who are thriving and a quality of life she values. Those outcomes belong in the picture alongside business growth.
She talks about focusing on the one or two growth measures that matter, rather than being pulled in every direction. That does not make the work simple. It helps her decide where her attention belongs.
For business owners at different stages, her story leaves three useful questions: what can I hand over, where do I need to be more honest, and what would make the next stage satisfying as well as successful?
Who is helping you build your next stage
EO Queensland brings business owners together to learn, share experience and find perspective on the challenges of growth. Explore EO membership or EO Accelerator to find the pathway that suits your business.