NOTE: Personal Take Coming Up. This is for Catalyst customers who are wondering what, exactly, is up at Swift. If you want to avoid some goopy emotions, a rollicking soap-opera story, and some behind the scenes juice, then skip on to our next blog post!

From Emily McIntyre, Swift's Decidedly-Unusual  CEO

I Actually Left Coffee.

I thought I left coffee. Left it hard, vanishing behind me in the rear view where other heartbreaks belong. 

I doubt it surprises anyone who knows me: after going through the wringer all of 2023 and into 2024 as the face of a public failure like Catalyst Trade, after the exhaustion and exposure of building it from scratch with my partner Michael and our Ethiopian partners, and after experiencing the ultimate entrepreneurial downfall of personally guaranteeing millions of dollars in trade finance, I simply couldn't comprehend another enterprise that traded coffee. Period.

Once proudly a "coffee lifer", I left coffee in the Spring of 2024. I made no public statements (in fact, I've been quietly Executive Editor of STiR Tea and Coffee Magazine all year), but I placed myself in other rooms.

Partnerships Opened a Way—to AI & More

I hit the speaking circuit, mentored by the inimitable Frankie Russo, and spoke for clients like Goodcents and UMKC Bloch School of Management.

In the past 18 months or so, I've had the privilege of serving as an unofficial Chief of Staff to Seth Talbott, and with him have in the last year been instrumental in a variety of businesses ranging from real estate development to a new platform to support independent filmmakers to designing a celebrity cafe. A massive takeaway for me from this period is how AI is here to stay, and that smart businesses can optimize their operations using modern tech in a way we couldn't even dream of years ago. 

I Missed Coffee.

I began to get an itch under my skin.

It was a lot of things. Yeah, I missed coffee, and I missed coffee people. I missed the sun on my head in Peru and the scent of frankincense in the air in Ethiopia. I missed the absolute devotion to quality, whatever it might hold. I missed the way life bleeds into the cup in this industry. I missed my friends.

But also, I started to see a way to build the architecture I'd been sketching out since, oh, at least 2020. As Catalyst Trade's CEO, I was constantly visualizing being able to solve sticky issues (like, for example, the 57 or so steps it took to release a coffee, with a guesstimated 10% room for human error) in the importing trade. 

One of the reasons Catalyst failed was we had to hire (a lot) more people as we scaled. Obviously we hired the best, and I still miss them—but that overhead was unsustainable! I dreamed of instead building software, but when I interviewed existing enterprise solutions they were laughably off the mark. And I didn't know how to set up my own projects with dev teams.

The rapid development of AI + my intense apprenticeship with the technical/business genius of Seth, was what I'd missed. The itch grew as I started designing User Interfaces and leading dev teams. I missed not just coffee but I missed the chance to actually solve some of the problems that still niggled at me.

The Right Moment Occurred

And then circumstances aligned. Resources, Partnerships, Vision. The vision for Swift awoke in me and I was HUNGRY for it. 

It’s insane that I’d start a new importing company just two years later. But it also makes a symmetrical kind of sense.

The time is right: with the world crumbling around us, a new business that is hungry, efficient, and grounded in experience has a real chance to succeed.

I guess I never really left coffee, only went outside the paddock for a bit to learn some new skills and start to see how industries fit into the greater picture.

Welcome to a New Importer: Swift

Unlike Catalyst Trade, Swift is risk-managed from day one, lean, and smart. Tech-enabled, but (as you can see from this handwritten blog post) leaning on humans where it counts.

In a world where most legacy coffee companies have questionable practices, where many new players struggle and fold (just like my last enterprise did), it's a gift to get the chance to do it again, better, with resources (and with an absolute rockstar CFO guiding our financial risk from day one!)

Not a redemption arc. Ego doesn't need to play here—I have nothing to prove, nothing to redeem. 

But an exciting endeavor which I know will add real value to the world, while giving me the chance to revisit old ground in a new way. 

Thank you for joining me in a rather mawkish dive below the surface. Let's explore the next great coffee importing story. I'm here to make your dreams come true: we can do it together.

This business is built to solve customer problems. So text me your pain points at 913-730-5865. Text me whatever frustrated you most from your last purchase of green coffee. I promise I’ll stick it in the queue of problems to solve.