· David Senra, Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S0: Are you able to recruit from other food companies? Because like you're so different. Most of these companies haven't been founder-led in, I don't know, half a century, if not longer. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. We can and we do. There's a lot of good experience they have. You just sort of have to baptize them when they come in. So that's where the onboarding process is really critical. [00:00:00] S0: You baptize them? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: What does that mean? [00:00:00] S1: You just have to teach them new beliefs, new values. If you just sort of throw them in, they're just going to take what they know and apply it. And so you really want to- Have them assimilate to the culture in a way, and so a very thoughtful onboarding process where you learn the values of the company. You learn entrepreneurship. We pack boxes, you learn humility, you learn all these things. It's really critical. [00:00:00] S0: Are the most talented people in your company the ones with no experience, though? [00:00:00] S1: The most talented people in our company are former founders. [00:00:00] S0: Say more about this.
· David Senra, Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S0: Say more about this. [00:00:00] S1: Convincing a founder to not do their thing to join a greater company is a really strong signal of the opportunity we have ahead. Basically, I would position it as like, this is a platform for you to go do your thing. You could do your thing with amazing technology, you can do your thing with resources, and you don't have to deal with the bullshit of raising money, all the bureaucracy that comes with the different stakeholders. And I think you see this in AI, where a lot of founder talent goes to those platforms. Convincing them to join a founder-led company without bureaucracy and for them to be able to fill their vision is... [00:00:00] S0: Do you specifically target founders? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, for sure. Because they have agency, they have courage, they have humility. Yeah. And they're not ruined by corporate America or school. School ruins you, too. You have to follow procedures. You're not thinking outside of the box. You're following a playbook. There's no playbook in entrepreneurship. You just have to think from first principles, understand the fundamentals, and fucking just go. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah, we just had Luca Ferrari on this, and he started this crazy company called Bending Spoons. He's doing it from Milan, not exactly like a startup hub, and he's talking about being isolated was super valuable to him because he can't even copy the startup mantras because he doesn't know them. He's immune to them. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah.
· Peter Rahal, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: And his point was just he prefers young graduates, or even people that didn't graduate, to over-experience. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: He's just like, "I don't want your bad experience." [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: "I know what we're doing. Let's just take high-agency, young, smart people that want it really badly." And I think he said he got something like 800,000 applications last year for 350 positions, because he's in markets where there's smart people everywhere. There's no great jobs for them. Their economy's terrible. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: And he's just like, "I'm just optimizing for this, and then I'll come in and indoctrinate them into how we're running the business," which is completely different than school or a company that's like a mediocre company.
· David Senra, Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S0: And he's just like, "I'm just optimizing for this, and then I'll come in and indoctrinate them into how we're running the business," which is completely different than school or a company that's like a mediocre company. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. Yeah, because the thing with experience is really valuable, but there's a consequence to it where you'll naturally reason through analogy or reason through your experience, which can be the right call, but you're not going to ask the dumb question or naturally think through first principles because you've already done it, so you're just going to move faster through leaning on your experience. And for me personally, I started a company with no experience, really. I fundamentally don't think it's that important if you have good reasoning skills and have the right ability to learn. So the best is some inexperience, I find, and then some damage, some chip on shoulder. There are individuals in our company that you can't compete with them. They're not giving up. They have something to prove. And those are the most powerful people who you want to organize around. [00:00:00] S0: Tell me more about them.
· David Senra, Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S0: Tell me more about them. [00:00:00] S1: It's all childhood. They got something fucked up in their childhood. You know what I mean? There's one kid on our team, he's going to die before he fails. And he didn't have a comfortable life, and this is different for him. So, you want many of those people, but too many probably break things. So in general, you want a balance of those crazy chip on the shoulder, some people to balance out the team that are very rational and pragmatic and more conservative. You want a good team design, but the people driving the company are usually those maniacs that have a chip on their shoulder, high agency, and more entrepreneurial. [00:00:00] S0: Was this person happen to be a former founder? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. Mm-hmm. [00:00:00] S0: How long did it take you to recruit them? [00:00:00] S1: Well, when we bought EPG, he was a victim of us acquiring that. [00:00:00] S0: A victim? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, because we bought up all the supply. So, he was a customer of the Epogee business, so recruited him to join us and do it here. [00:00:00] S0: Victim. I love that you just said that. Okay. So let's get into this, because this is one of the... Again, I've been hearing stories about you for a long time, and then this is the story that other founders repeat so much that's very Rockefeller-esque. Explain what that is. What is it? [00:00:00] S1: Epogee. [00:00:00] S0: Okay. [00:00:00] S1: So in March of 20- [00:00:00] S0: Don't go to the acquisition yet. Talk about the fact, what this thing does, why it was a picture of business.
· David Senra, Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S0: Don't go to the acquisition yet. Talk about the fact, what this thing does, why it was a picture of business. [00:00:00] S1: Cool. [00:00:00] S0: And then we're going to go to the fact that you victimized everybody else. [00:00:00] S1: Epogee makes EPG, esterified propoxylated cholesterol. Basically, it's a modified triglyceride. So olive oil is a triglyceride. So triglyceride has three fatty acids attached to a cholesterol backbone. Your body can't digest this unless lipase comes and clips these fatty acids off. What the company did is they figured if they can lock these fatty acids in, lipase can't break it down. And so what that means is you can have the taste and mouthfeel of fat without the caloric, metabolic impact. Why that's a huge innovation is because most of the calories in food are coming from fat. They're twice as much as protein and carbohydrate. This technology was naturally misunderstood, like most food technology, and so it was sitting there, and it's really amazing. You can have your cake and not have the caloric consequences. So think of it as high-intensity sweeteners, like stevia, monk fruit. That sort of level of innovation. So anyway, we were using it for David, and then we were buying. We were like 90% of the company's sales, and then all paths led to litigation. [00:00:00] S0: Hold on. So this is a patented technology? [00:00:00] S1: Yes. [00:00:00] S0: Correct? So you had one source where you could buy it from. [00:00:00] S1: Yes. [00:00:00] S0: You just said you were 90% of this company's overall sales. [00:00:00] S1: Yep.