Seth Goldman
Executive Chair of Beyond Meat, Co-Founder of Honest Tea
Beyond Meat, formerly with Honest Tea
Education
Harvard University
B.A., Government
1987Yale University - Yale School of Management
(MPPM) Management
1995Podcasts
0:35:1707: What It’s Like to Start a Tea Brand With Seth Goldman, Honest Tea [Main T4C Episode]
Seth Goldman, co-founder of Honest Tea*, dipped his tea bag into the world of entrepreneurship when he started Honest Tea with one of his Yale Business School professors, Barry Nalebuff. That was way back in 1998 in the kitchen of Seth's Bethesda, Maryland home. Today, 20+ years later, Seth is..
Career Path
Interview Highlights
“I do have a lot of energy and I need it. You know? And, and I think the last piece would just be optimism because you can have the energy, you can have the passion, but every entrepreneur has to bring some optimism to it because you have to see the world in a different way or what it could be and believe that you will make it happen. Even when it seems the facts seem to be against you.”
Best Career Advice
“Build this business like you were going to own it forever. Don’t try to build it to flip it.”
Career Challenge
“The beverage distributors, the folks distributing Arizona or Nantucket Nectars or Canada Dry, Ginger Ale, they weren’t interested in working with us cause they thought our product was too much of a niche. And so we were at the risk of being pigeonholed into the small niche that was a nice, quaint business but not a growth business. And we were always serious about democratizing this concept of organic and healthy drinks. We wanted to make them available everywhere. So the aspiration was there, but the business wasn’t. It just meant a lot of rejection from distributors and challenges there.”
Skills
Leadership, Entrepreneurship
Professional Interests
Peter H. Diamandis, David L. Katz, Lucie Basch, Tom Monahan, Harvard University, The Coca-Cola Company, Yale School of Management
