I Hate Paper

It's Baton Rouge: Out to Lunch

Although we live in a digital world today, most of us – both at home and at work - have too many pieces of paper still stored in file cabinets, boxes, and in piles that we have promised ourselves we’ll go through one day soon. But, as we all know, "one day doesn’t" always come. And that’s a problem that not only puts us at risk for information theft, but also clouds our ability to organize our finances, and our lives.

Jay Babb has a solution for you. Jay is the owner of Secure Shredding and Recycling, a local company that provides document destruction and shredding services on site at your office or home, as well as at its plant-based facilities in North Baton Rouge and, since 2019, Lake Charles.

Jay founded the company in 2009 and has grown it over the years. Today they shred some 250 tons of paper per month for clients that include government offices, businesses and individuals.

As its name suggests, Secure Shredding and Recycling recycles all that paper it shreds, into alternative fiber products. So the company is protecting the environment while also protecting its clients from information theft. Jay has a background in information management and was involved in several successful ventures before founding Secure Shredding and Recycling, which was listed in 2019 on the LSU 100 list of fastest-growing Tiger-owned business.

Ryan Greene also has a hate/hate relationship with paper. Ryan is founder of I Hate Receipts, a new app that, as its name suggests, enables users to snap pictures of their paper receipts and store them in a secure, cloud-based “vault,” where they can be easily accessed, tagged and categorized.

Once digitized, the data in your I hate Receipts account can be used in several ways. It can help you better understand your purchase history and manage how and where you spend money.

The app can also be used to electronically submit receipts for reimbursement, cutting down on the time and hassle that employees spend filling out expense reports for employers.

Ryan, who is a commercial real estate broker, conceived of the idea for the app while walking through the Atlanta airport in 2018, saw a kiosk that offered a scanning feature for paper receipts and thought, there must be a better way.

"There's gotta be a better way" is the mindset that drives many successful startups, if not all of them. It wasn't all that terribly long ago that Apple started out as a simple idea: to build a better computer than the then dominant IBM PC. So it's worth paying attention to our local entrepreneurs as they grow their businesses. You never know where the next big thing is going to come from. It just might be Baton Rouge.

You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur on our website. And check out Stephanie's conversation with ex LSU and NFL quarterback Matt Flynn about his startup, MyHy.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.