Pod Insights How I Built This with Guy Raz Meet The HIBT Fellows: Dinesh Tadepalli & Jennifer Zeitler About this episode 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.
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0:00 Guy Raz? Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2 a.m. kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people? So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is. If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan,
0:46 Guy Raz? build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea, what separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt. We get support from U.S. Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't.
1:32 Guy Raz? Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions. Gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems. But here's the thing. Path A, you keep going like that. End of the year, you're sorting through statements, trying to figure out what went where. You've left hundreds, maybe thousands on the table in rewards you never earned, money that could have gone back into the business. Path B, you pause and get The US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card.
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5:12 Guy Raz? 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 Thaddei Palih, 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.
5:55 Guy Raz? Well, imagine a spoon you didn't have to throw away. That's basically Incredible Eats.
6:02 Speaker 01 It's like a crouton shape, in the shape of a spoon. So instead of crouton topping, you just eat your spoon as you're topping.
6:08 Guy Raz? So edible cutlery, right? Because you go to takeout and you get that little plastic thing with the plastic fork and/or the spork, and you throw it away. And it's just crea-- 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.
6:24 Speaker 01 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 that 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.
6:58 Guy Raz? So this idea kind of came to you in a eureka moment? Or did it come to you over time?
7:04 Speaker 01 I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I had that itch, to be frank, but obviously I had to secure myself for 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 I'm going to lose some money, let me experience that and learn it. 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? Knowing that, I mean, I've going through a lot of documentaries about plastic pollution.
7:47 Speaker 01 And like latest use is that even the baby's pleasers have microplastics in them. So all this, knowing all this, I was still using that and that led me to this company.
7:57 Guy Raz? So tell me, what were you doing at around that time when this idea came to you? What were you doing professionally?
8:04 Speaker 01 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 nine to five and I take care of my business from seven to two AM.
8:16 Guy Raz? 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. What was, how did you start to build this thing?
8:42 Speaker 01 I started this journey to find the best alternative to plastic. So I met my founder, Kriwell, in India. He was also trying to do something on 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 cutlery. 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 cutlery. So that's our strength. So we have a trade secret mold and a patent printing process, and that automated the edible cutlery.
9:19 Guy Raz? 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.
9:38 Speaker 01 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 baking process.
9:49 Guy Raz? And what is the spoon and the cutlery, what is it made out of?
9:52 Speaker 01 Oh, it's the base ingredients are wheat, oat, chickpea, ground rice.
9:57 Guy Raz? It's basically like a mixture of flours, 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?
10:10 Speaker 01 It's baked.
10:10 Guy Raz? 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?
10:19 Speaker 01 On the sweeter side, we have chocolate and vanilla. And on the savory side, we have oregano chili, black pepper and plain.
10:25 Guy Raz? Nice. And it's like a snack. It's like your post-snack snack.
10:29 Speaker 01 Yes.
10:29 Guy Raz? You get your bowl of chili and then you've got your chili oregano spoon to eat after.
10:34 Speaker 01 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. So when I introduced that, I had to scale immediately. So that's why I sold my home. I used all my proceeds in scaling of the facility. And then I fulfilled that order.
10:53 Guy Raz? 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 financed this yourself, but this is not cheap. I mean, right, to build the machinery. How did you, how are you financing this?
11:12 Speaker 01 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 was 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 helped me bootstrap in the last two years.
11:39 Guy Raz? 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 not quite ready to to jump into this full-time yet. But it is your passion, clearly. Where are you initially? Where did you start to to see traction? You mentioned caterers. Where else are you? Have you reached out to? Where have you had success in getting people to use the product?
12:06 Speaker 01 So we started, introduced the product in 2019. That's my, the first show I went was CaterSource. 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. It's you can't learn that from Google because it's a very traditional industry, right? So it's 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 booth. So I just used some frugal and wacky marketing practices. 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
12:49 Speaker 01 sell to 25 ice cream shops across the US in about three states, three to four states. I, in the, in the weekends, I used to go to door to door in the, in the Northern California, in 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 traction in the B two B food service section got paused.
13:13 Guy Raz? Yeah.
13:13 Speaker 01 It didn't stop, but it got paused.
13:15 Guy Raz? Yeah.
13:15 Speaker 01 Because it was doing very bad.
13:16 Guy Raz? Yeah.
13:17 Speaker 01 And one more interesting thing is I, I used a technique to approach a huge celebrity. She's a very famous pop singer.
13:24 Guy Raz? Who is the pop singer? You gotta tell us.
13:27 Speaker 01 I don't have the permission to disclose it in public, so.
13:30 Guy Raz? How did you even approach? All right, we'll just say famous pop singer. But how did you approach the famous pop singer? Like, how, how does one approach a famous? I mean. You can't just walk up to them on the street because they're usually surrounded by a phalanx of people.
13:43 Speaker 01 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 twenty twenty. I reached out to PR agencies. They're 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, fifty combinations of emails, and I just sent emails to them saying that, hey, you have an amazing product. I just heard a 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 Live Nation and Live Nation introduced me to concert halls. And I sold my first few thousand spoons to a concert hall, all this without spending a penny on marketing.
14:27 Guy Raz? Well, have you had any investors come aboard or are you entirely self-financed?
14:33 Speaker 01 Till twenty twenty one, I was self-financed. But in early twenty twenty one, we got selected to an accelerated program by Big Idea Ventures. So we got our first small check. So that's, so I don't have to spend my savings anymore. So that's a good thing. And but because of COVID, we switched to B to C now. And we got a retail order for thousand stores from DJX Group of Companies, even without me having the retail box.
14:55 Guy Raz? Wow.
14:56 Speaker 01 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 a 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 twenty twenty, we are in thousand stores with a ninety five percent sell-through.
15:17 Guy Raz? 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 there are going to be, as you grow, there are going to be competitors, there are going to be other people who are trying to do the same thing. How do you make sure to stay ahead?
15:36 Speaker 01 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.
15:58 Guy Raz? 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 Nabeel. What stood out for you from that workshop?
16:12 Speaker 01 So something that really hit me, hit me like, I liked a lot, as Nabeel 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.
16:27 Speaker 02 And there's this fine line between being practiced and feeling practiced. And, 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 a 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 a 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.
17:02 Speaker 01 So that's something I always do myself. I don't, I mean, to be frank, I don't have the time to practice a lot. So I just go extempore, just go do like, just talk and just give the pitch on the spot. That kind of give me a boost that, okay, it's not, it's not a bad thing that I'm doing. Maybe it's for the good.
17:18 Guy Raz? If you win the competition, how will you use the $50,000 grant?
17:22 Speaker 01 Part of it, I would like to purchase my finance order, 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.
17:37 Guy Raz? That's Dinesh Tadepalli, 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 butting heads. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Fellows Edition from NPR.
18:03 Guy Raz? Does your team want a website that looks and feels handcrafted but is still fast to ship? Well, Framer is built exactly for that. With Framer, you design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, hosting, and a CMS built in, so the work is production-ready from day one. And you can get it done with help from Framer's AI agents. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. AI agents and humans work together.
18:45 Guy Raz? The agents bring speed and scale, and people bring taste, judgment, and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. AI isn't just opening new business opportunities, it's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on.
19:30 Guy Raz? NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together, and that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a new expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI To reshape work across your entire organization and how to position your business to prosper from it.
20:15 Guy Raz? If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. Netsuite.com/built. Stripe is built for whatever comes next because the pace of change has never been faster than it is right now. New business models, new currencies, and new expectations for speed, reliability, and scale. Stripe builds financial infrastructure that helps businesses start, grow, and operate globally. From payments and billing to fraud protection and cross-border payouts, Stripe is built
21:00 Guy Raz? to support the new pace of commerce. They're trusted by the companies building at the frontier, from 86% of Forbes AI 50 to global leaders like Salesforce and OpenAI. In fact, more than 1.6% of global GDP flows through Stripe, with Stripe's users processing a combined $1.9 trillion last year. So if you're already thinking about what's next for your business, see what's possible at stripe.com.
21:37 Guy Raz? Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Fellows edition from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So Jennifer Zeitler is the founder of Let's Goat Buffalo, 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.
22:04 Speaker 03 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.
22:14 Guy Raz? Goat lawn mowers.
22:15 Speaker 03 Goat lawn mowers.
22:16 Guy Raz? So you are trying to get people to use goats instead of gas-powered lawn mowers or other gas-powered equipment to clear poison oak or weeds or other invasive species on someone's land?
22:35 Speaker 03 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 plant can't regrow from the goat's waste.
22:49 Guy Raz? 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, let's use goats to replace lawn mowers. Let's see if people will want goats to do this. How did, how did the idea even come to you?
23:05 Speaker 03 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 pollinators 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,
23:49 Speaker 03 what can I do to clear this land that will be safe for the bees? And unanimously I got, oh, just you gotta 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.
24:19 Guy Raz? 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 to clear it?
24:39 Speaker 03 So for an acre of something like raspberry plants, multiflora rose, about 15 goats could clear the acre in about two, two and a half weeks. It doesn't take very long.
24:50 Guy Raz? Yeah.
24:50 Speaker 03 And the wonderful thing about using goats versus the method that you were just describing is that the goats eat around bird's 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.
25:05 Guy Raz? What?
25:05 Speaker 03 They, 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.
25:16 Guy Raz? I I didn't think I could love goats more.
25:18 Speaker 03 They're amazing.
25:19 Guy Raz? I got to know a goat up in Sonoma County, near, near where I am now in the Bay Area, recently, and this is, and I just, I can hug this goat, just pet it, pet the goat, and very gentle animals.
25:32 Speaker 03 They're very calm. They are a domesticated livestock 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 lawn clearing, they're very enjoyable to be around.
25:45 Guy Raz? 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?
25:57 Speaker 03 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 stove and a bed so that a herder can actually manage that job very easily right from the bus.
26:18 Guy Raz? 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?
26:27 Speaker 03 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.
26:42 Guy Raz? So they're not, they're, they're pretty decent working conditions. They're not working 24/7.
26:47 Speaker 03 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.
27:09 Guy Raz? All right. Before anyone asks, because I know people are gonna ask, they're gonna say, wait, do you also have buffaloes? But it's not, there's nothing, nothing to do with buffalo's animal, the animals, right?
27:19 Speaker 03 No.
27:20 Guy Raz? You are in Buffalo, New York. That's why it's called Let's Goat Buffalo.
27:24 Speaker 03 We are 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 Goat Buffalo was kind of a no-brainer.
27:36 Guy Raz? Presumably, you want to expand this out. You want to have Let's Goat Chicago, Let's Goat Atlanta, Let's Goat Omaha, Let's Goat Los Angeles, one day.
27:46 Speaker 03 Yep, that's the plan.
27:47 Guy Raz? That's the plan. So, so tell me about the vision. How do you scale this?
27:51 Speaker 03 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.
28:35 Guy Raz? So let's talk about cost. I mean, anyone who's cleared land, who's, 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?
28:51 Speaker 03 It really depends on the property. It depends on the density of the plants and the time that 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
29:36 Speaker 03 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, well, we will prorate that rate to help as many families as possible be able to make a greener choice for their property.
29:56 Guy Raz? So, all right, let's talk about financing, funding. How are you funding this now?
30:02 Speaker 03 Me?
30:03 Guy Raz? You got your, so do you own the goats or do you rent?
30:07 Speaker 03 I own the goats. I own the bus.
30:09 Guy Raz? 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?
30:20 Speaker 03 Precisely.
30:21 Guy Raz? If you win the competition and you you get the $50,000 grant, what will you do with that money?
30:28 Speaker 03 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.
30:56 Guy Raz? Jennifer, thank you so much.
30:57 Speaker 03 Thanks, Guy. This has been amazing. The whole experience has been amazing. And I have to tell you, just from day one to now, we're 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 out, 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 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? You show up, everything's underwater. And I literally thought to myself, that's OK? These are the kinds of stories that when
31:39 Speaker 03 you end up being interviewed on How I Built This, you can tell them 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 entrepreneurs' 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.
32:06 Guy Raz? That's Jennifer Zeitler, founder of Let's Goat Buffalo. To learn more about the How I Built This fellows, you can visit summit.npr.org/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 Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Janet O'Jung Lee, Gianna Capadona, Bruce Grant, Farah Safari, Liz Metzger, El Manion, Joanna Palowska, John Isabella, Jessica Goldstein, Niva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This Fellows edition from NPR.
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