How I Built This with Guy Raz - Meet The HIBT Fellows: Dinesh Tadepalli & Jennifer Zeitler

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

As a part of the 2021 How I Built This Summit (At Home) we have selected 10 Fellows, and we'd like to introduce you to all of them. In this episode: Dinesh Tadepalli is the co-founder of Incredible Eats, which he hopes will reduce plastic use, and reinvent the way we eat. Also, Jennifer Zeitler founded Let's Goat Buffalo, to offer a natural alternative to harmful chemicals and heavy machinery for land management; that solution: goats.How I Built This Summit - information and tickets at:http://summit.npr.orgSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It had tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. Hello everyone. So the How I Built This Summit at Home is happening right now. And over the last couple of weeks, we've been introducing you to some of the How I Built This fellows that are part of the summit this year.

We picked 10 of them, and as part of a pitch competition, one of them will walk away from the summit with a $50,000 grant. So far, we've heard from eight of them, and today we're going to hear from the final two. First is Dinesh Thadipali, co-founder of Incredible Eats. Imagine eating chili out of a bread bowl. You can eat the chili, you can eat the bowl, but you're still left with this metal or plastic spoon. Well, imagine a spoon you didn't have to throw away. That's basically incredible eats. It's like a crouton shape in the shape of a spoon.

So instead of crouton topping, you just eat your spoon as you top it. So edible cutlery, right? Because you go to take out and you get that little plastic thing with the plastic fork or the spork, and you throw it away. And we've been doing this as humans for decades and decades. And you're like, hey, you can eat it. Let's eat it. That's where I actually got this idea. When I went with my young son and daughter to get an ice cream,

I had an ice cream with a plastic spoon, obviously, and I throw it. And I saw so many of the plastic spoons and cups in the dustbin, in the bin. And I was like, I am a person who was aware of the plastic pollution and what issues it causes. And still, I did not act on what I know that it's harming the environment, and it's going to harm my kids and my future. So that's the seed of thought then we realized, okay, I need to make something that makes people think twice before they take the next plastic spoon or spoke in their hand. So this idea kind of came to you in a eureka moment, or did it come to you over time?

I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I had that itch, to be frank, but obviously I had to secure myself from my finances and we come for a master's here and then a job. So a general immigrant journey, then as an angel investor, I invested in a couple of startups. But one of them failed. And that gave me a realization. If I'm going to waste some money on it, let me waste on myself. Let me do the entrepreneurship because I already had that itch and learn it. Even if even if it's going to, even if I'm going to lose some money, let me experience that and learn it. At around the same time, this event happened where I went to the ice cream shop and had this realization. And I went into depression. I was like, why did I use so many plastic in my life?

I'm knowing that, I mean, I've going through a lot of documentaries, I have plastic pollution and And like latest uses that even the baby's placenters have microplastics in them. So all this, knowing all this, I was still using that. And that led me to this company. So tell me, what were you doing at around that time when this idea came to you? What were you doing professionally? Oh, yes. I have been an engineer by background, electrical engineer.

I worked in about five semiconductor companies right now at Intel. I still work from 9 to 5. And I take care of my business from 7 to 2 a.m. Wow. So, okay, so you tell me about the process. I mean, you are a semiconductor engineer, so you have an expertise in a certain area. I don't want to make any assumptions, but I am going to assume you're not an expert in food products or food manufacturing. Maybe you're a really great home cook.

I love cooking. But I wouldn't know how to make a spoon that can withstand hot and cold and doesn't crumble. How did you start to build this thing? I started this journey to find the best alternative to plastic. So I met my founder, Krivel in India. He was also trying to do something in the terms of edible cutlery. I came across this concept a few years ago, but it was not able to commercialize or mass manufacture edible cattle. I saw some small number of people doing it.

Then we went and realized what's the problem with it. The machinery is what is lacking. And we are engineers by background. So we put our brains together and we figured out the way to make a machine that can automate the manufacturing of edible cuttery. So that's our strength. So we have a trade secret mold and a patent printing process, and that automated the edible cutlery. So you made the machine to make the cutlery, right? And presumably it's got to sort of push through this stuff, all the raw ingredients,

through some kind of mold that dries it. And so really it sounds like the trick wasn't coming up with the ingredients. It was coming up with the machine to make it. Yes, yes. You got that right. So we use compression molding. So the flour and after it gets mixed, it gets compressed and we heat it through baking process, like a regular breaking process. And what is the spoon and the cutlery? What is it made out of?

Oh, it's the base ingredients of wheat, oat, chickpea, brown rice. It's basically like a mixture of flowers of grains to produce this dough that is protruded, right, or extracted. I don't know the word. And then it makes the spoon. The spoon is baked or heated? It's baked. And then you got it. You got the edible spoon.

By the way, what flavors do the cutlery, do the spoons and forks? And what flavors do they come in? On the sweeter side, we have chocolate and vanilla. And on the savory side, we have oregano chili, black pepper, and plain. Nice. And it's like a snack. It's like your post-snack, snack. Yes.

You get your bowl of chili, and then you've got your chili oregano spoon to eat after. Yes. And we had challenges too. For example, we couldn't scale. Our first order was 150,000 spoons from a caterer. That's my first order. I didn't even sell a spoon before that. Wow.

So when I introduced that, I had to scale immediately. So that's why I sold my home. I used all my proceeds and scaling up the facility. And then I fulfilled that order. That's, I mean, 150,000 spoons for your first order is incredible. I know you're an engineer and you probably managed to save some money. So you finance this yourself. But this is not cheap.

I mean, right, to build the machinery. How did you, how are you finance? this? So I thank my dad for making me very financially strict and disciplined. So we have budgets every month, including a charity budget. So those budgets helped me save quite a bit since my 10 years of work, including me buying a home around 2013 area when the house price is very low, like kind of low in the Bay Area. So by the time when I came to 2019, the house price was shot up and the entire profits, I just invested back in the machinery. And whatever savings I have, like, it helped me bootstrap in the last two years. Wow.

So let's talk about how do you distribute this? So far, you've been in business for two years. This is your side business. You still have a full-time job. You're not quite ready to jump into this full-time yet. But it is your passion, clearly. Where are you initially? Where did you start to see traction?

You mentioned caterers. Where else have you reached out to? Where have you had success in getting people to use the product? So we started, introduced the product in 2019. That's my first show. I went to a cater source. That's where I got the first order from the caterer. So for me, since I was not in the food industry, I need to understand how the food industry works. You can't learn that from Google because it's a very traditional industry, right? So you can't learn from any

books or anything. So I decided to go to 10 trade shows in the entire 2019. I won five awards, and I in fact convinced some of the trade shows to give me a free booth because this helps the planet. And I got the free booths. I just used some frugal and wacky marketing practices. And And any pitch competition, I used to sign up and I won some awards. And that gave me free PR. And all these shows, the free PR awards all helped us sell to 25 ice cream shops across the US in about three states, three to four states. In the weekends, I used to go to door to door in the Northern California and the Bay Area to ice cream shops. And I sold them.

And a huge premium ice cream chain brand. They started doing a trial with us like February of 2020. But unfortunately, because of COVID, my entire attraction. in the B2B food service section got paused. Yeah. It didn't stop, but it got paused because it was doing very bad. Yeah. And one more interesting thing is I used a technique to approach a huge celebrity,

which is a very famous pop singer. Who is the pop singer? You got to tell us. I don't have the permission to disclose it in public, so what is very famous. All right, we'll just say famous pop singer, but how did you approach the famous pop singer? Like, how does one approach a famous, I mean, you can't just walk to them on the street because they're usually surrounded by a phalanx of people. Yeah, so the fun part there is,

I heard her on one of the late night shows saying that she wants to make all her concerts, plastic free as much as she can in 2020. I reached her to PR agencies. They are like, oh, give me like this many thousands of dollars per month. Like, I don't have that money. I'm not going to do that. So what I did was I googled her managers

and I just made some combinations, 50 combinations of emails, and I just sent emails to them saying that, they have an amazing product. I just heard the singer saying that, she wants to reduce plastic. Do you want to take a look? And in three days, I got a mail back saying, send me a pitch. That's it, just one small sentence. And it started there, and she introduced me to a live nation, and live nation introduced me at concert halls. And I sold my first few thousand

spoons to a concert hall, all this without spending a penny on marketing. Well, have you had any investors come aboard, or are you entirely self-financed? Till 2021, I was self-financed. But in early 2021, we got selected to an accelerator program by big idea ventures. So we got up for small check. So I don't have to spend my savings anymore. So that's a good thing. And because of COVID, we switched to B2C now. And we got a retail order for 1,000 stores from DJX group of companies, even without me having a retail box. Wow. So I just told them, please give me some time. And COVID gave me that time. I just sat back, read some books, designed my own packaging, made my own website. I used my

cousin who was an UX grad. He helped me to make the packaging, all the elements. I told him what needs to be done. And I read books, got some feedback, and went live into the retail stores. And by end of 2020, we are in thousand stores with a 95% sell through. And how do you make sure? I mean, I have to assume that you can't, it's hard to patent the idea of an edible spoon, right? It's probably very hard to do that. So how do you make sure? Because they're going to be, as you grow, they're going to be competitors. They're going to be other people who are trying to do the same thing. How do you make sure to stay ahead? one we have the process can be patented obviously the design people can tweak it and can't really claim

anything there so we did patent the process it's still pending but our trade secret is our mold design the two years and 83 trials worth of effort is our design of a mold which actually makes the cutlery that is trade secret no one knows about it so we kept that cautious and the rest of it is patented i know dinesh that you have attended a bunch of workshops as part of the as part of your fellowship you went to the perfecting your pitch workshop. I was there too with Jennifer and Nabil. What stood out for you from that workshop? So something that really hit me, hit me like,

I liked a lot as Nabil mentioned that we need to be kind of natural. Don't be too prepared for a pitch because it shows out, right? It shows as if you're reading something or memorizing something and getting it out. And there's this fine line between being practiced and feeling practice. And so I would try and mix up the words you use during that same, all the same things. I would try to mix up the words as the way of trying to have you come off a little less practiced in that pitch. It doesn't mean that you have to react and get derailed every single slide. But you want to find at least one moment or two moments and start it back and forth with them.

Keep them engaged over time because it is, there's a little bit, it's storytelling. There's a little bit of theater along with just telling them what you want to do. So that's something I always do myself. I mean, to be frank, I don't have the time to practice a lot. So I just go extemporor. Just go, like, just talk and just give the pitch on the spot. That kind of give me a boost that, okay, it's not a bad thing that I'm doing. Maybe it's for the good.

If you win the competition, how will you use the $50,000 grant? Part of it, I would like to purchase my purchase order, sorry, purchase orders and working capital. And part of it, I would like to start hiring an intern or two, because, I have to start sleeping well. So I need help. That's Dinesh Thadipali, co-founder of Incredible Eats. When we come back, we're going to hear from another How I Built This Fellow, whose employees are kind of famous for budding heads.

Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Fellows Edition from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Fellows Edition from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So Jennifer Zytler is the founder of Let's Goat Buffford. And her main focus is on land management, like clearing a hillside of overgrown brush or getting rid of weeds and plants that don't belong. But instead of using heavy machinery or harmful chemicals, Let's Goat Buffalo has a different solution. We are using the planet's oldest technology, goats, just a hungry herd of goats, no heavy equipment, no pesticides or herbicides, just hungry goats.

Goat lawnmowers. Goat lawnmowers. So you are trying to get people to use goats instead of gas-powered lawnmowers or other gas-powered equipment to clear poison oak or weeds or other invasive species on someone's land? Precisely. When goats eat, they actually sterilize everything that they're eating. So it's a really ideal way of dealing with invasive plants or problem plants or things like poison ivy that we don't want there because that, that plant can't regrow from the goat's waste. All right, before we get into the logistics of this, let's talk about how you came up with this idea. How did you come up with the idea where you're like, you know what, let's use goats to replace lawnmowers.

Let's see if people will want goats to do this. How did the idea even come to you? So for me, my story doesn't start with the herd. It actually starts with a hive. So I was doing some hobby beekeeping, which was a way that I felt like I could help do my part to boost pollinator. and help the planet. And so I had set up some hives on some vacant land, and I needed that land cleared so that I could access the hives and build the apiary. It was very overgrown with brush and pricker bushes and raspberry bushes, things that people have a really hard time getting in and

managing. And I knew I couldn't spray pesticides because that would kill the hives. And to bring in heavy equipment to have it cleared, the bill for that actually ended up being higher than the cost of the land itself, which blew my mind. So those two options. were out for me. So I started asking fellow beekeepers, what can I do to clear this land that will be safe for the bees? And unanimously, I got, oh, just you got to run a couple goats through there, which to me was like mind-boggling. This was something I did not know about. So of course I had to Google what is this deal with goats and eating brush. And I pretty much never turned back. I went down the rabbit hole and I became very obsessed with how ideal goats really are for the plants,

for the land and then for dealing with problem plants that I was having trouble with. So first of all, let's say you've got, I don't know, an acre of brush to clear, okay? A machine can, you know, pretty much with enough people there, can clear that in a day. It's very expensive. It could cost tens of thousands of dollars. How many goats do you need and how long would it take to clear it? So for an acre of something like raspberry plants, multifluor rows, about 15 goats. could clear the acre in about two, two and a half weeks.

It doesn't take very long. And the wonderful thing about using goats versus the method that you were just describing is that the goats eat around birds nests. They eat around chrysalis and cocoons that might be growing on the bush. They can actually discern like what's a leaf and what's a cocoon and leave that alone. What? Yeah, they give turtles and frogs and small mammals time to get out of the way and then come back. So they're doing all this great work without damaging the...

surrounding ecosystem. I didn't think I could love goats more. They're amazing. I got to know a goat up in Sonoma County, near where I am now in the Bay Area, recently. And this is, and I just, I can hug this goat. You just pet the goat and very gentle animals. They're very calm.

They are domesticated live spec species, so they're very social, they're very intelligent. They love people. It's a comfortable method to have on your property. So besides having effective land clearing, They're very enjoyable to be around. All right. Let's talk about how this works practically because we know how you get a lawnmower somewhere or heavy machinery.

You just drive it in. How do you get a herd of goats anywhere? So we have a unique method where we have converted an old retired school bus. And the back end of the bus is a barn, a traveling barn for the goats. And the front end of the bus is like a tiny home. So it has a shower and a toilet and a store. and a stove and a bed so that a herder can actually manage that job very easily right from the bus. So a human could live in that part and then basically the goats live in the back and then the human drives around to different projects.

Right, right. And so we then, we have a ramp that slides out from underneath the bus. The goats can get on and off very easily. We unroll a net electric fencing that keeps them in the areas that they're supposed to be eating and they get off in the morning and eat all day and go back on to sleep at night. So they're not, they're pretty decent working conditions. They're not working 24-7. No, these goats are very happy.

And these are all rescued animals that we're using. So these are goats that are either retired from dairy farming because they've aged out or they have some sort of injury or illness that makes them not viable for traditional farming. We're able to take those animals and give them sort of a happy, healthy retirement doing what they really would naturally do anyway, which is eat all day and hang out. All right. Before anyone asks, because I know people are, you guys, going to ask, they're going to say, wait, do you also have buffaloes? But it's not, there's nothing to do with buffalo's animal, the animals, right? It is, you are in Buffalo, New York. That's

why it's called Let's Go to Buffalo. We're in Buffalo, New York. So, and then, of course, anyone that's been to Buffalo knows that we have the Buffalo bills. And our slogan around here is let's go Buffalo. So for us, let's go to Buffalo. Got it. Kind of a no-brainer. Presumably, you want to expand this out. You want to have, let's go to Chicago. Let's go to Atlanta. let's go to Omaha, let's go to Los Angeles one day. Yeah, that's the plan. That's a plan. So tell me about the vision.

How do you scale this? It's honestly a very scalable model because of the bus. So I don't have the goats at home in my property. I actually board them at a local dairy farm, a local organic farm. It's another woman-owned business. And so I'm able to pick them up, take them out on jobs with the bus, and then for the winter season, board them on the farm. That model using the bus can really be. replicated anywhere. We've been very successful in very urban environments, suburban environments,

parks, public spaces, private spaces, because the bus is such a self-contained traveling unit. When we're on the job, that bus is solar powered. We don't have to plug in. You have everything you need right there. And it makes it really easy for someone else to step into that hurting role in any city across America. So let's talk about cost. I mean, anyone who's cleared land, who's done it with professionals knows it's very expensive. If you do it yourself, it's very, very hard and onerous and time-consuming. How much does it cost to have goats clear an acre of land? It really depends on the property.

It depends on the density of the plants and the length of time that we need to be there. Generally speaking, if we're public-facing, which means we're in a park and we're managing the public. We have to have a herder on site every day. It's about $2,500 a week, but you can clear quite a bit of land. in that week. So it's actually competitive when you take a look at other landscaping methods. So we end up coming in underpriced. And you also have to consider that goats can go places that humans can't. So rocky hillsides, poison ivy, things that wouldn't be easy for other landscaping companies to come in. So we're very competitive that way. That's a little steep for a private job. So we deliberately priced down for

private jobs where we don't have to be publicly facing. We don't have to have a herder there all day every day. We're able to bring that down to a base rate of 1,500 a week. And then still, if a family is not able to participate in that price range, we do our best to co-op with the family so that if they are wanting to participate in observation of the goats or their care, we will pro-rate that rate to help as many families as possible be able to make a greater choice for their property. So, all right, let's talk about financing funding. How are you funding this now? me you got your so so do you own the goats or do you rent i own the goats i own the bus now if you scale this out the vision would be that you would have multiple converted school buses full of goats

in every city that you can get into precisely if you win the competition and you you get the 50,000 grant what will you do with that money so what's really awesome about this model is that it is very deliberately low tech. So for $50,000, we can purchase an outfit a brand new bus. We can hire a full-time herder, and that person can then go and sustain their own unit of Let's Go Buffalo. So that is going to be self-sustaining right down the line. So it's a one-time investment with a very long-term effect and was going to be able to service for many years. Jennifer, thank you so much. Thanks, Guy. This has been amazing. The whole experience has been amazing. And I have to tell you, just from day one to now or entering into our third season.

I have spent so much time out on jobs listening to how I built this as encouragement. Because sometimes when you're starting now, and especially with this process, there was a lot of things to learn. And there were so many things that went wrong. You know, for example, I can think of a time where we had fencing along a creek. And there was a terrible storm and a tree fell and flooded the entire area. It was something we couldn't predict. And I thought to myself, like, oh, my gosh, like, what am I going to do?

do you show up everything's underwater and i i literally thought to myself that's okay these are the kinds of stories that when you end up being interviewed on how i built this you can tell him about this and how you moved through it and what solutions you came up with so it's those moments that you really need to hear other entrepreneur stories to know you know what if they got through that i can get through this and i just need to keep moving forward and it's those stories that actually build resilience for the entire organization so thank you so much for that it's been super meaningful for me. That's Jennifer Zitler, founder of Let's Goat Buffalo.

To learn more about the How I Built This Fellows, you can visit Summit.npr.npr.org slash fellows. And to find out more about NPR's live events, go to nprpresents.org. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard, with music composed by Rumpteen Arablewe. Thanks also to Janet Ujong Lee, Gianna Capadona, Bruce Grant,

Farah Safari, Liz Metzker, El Manion, Joanna Palovska, John Isabella, Jessica Goldstein, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This Fellows Edition from NPR.