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)
1995Podcasts
35:1707: How Honest Tea’s Seth Goldman is Changing the World One Tea Bag at a Time [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
“But when you put organic and fair trade certifications in place, you actually embed a premium that goes back to these communities. And there too, we can have dramatic impacts on these communities around their access to healthcare, to education. And so these are things that really do help in a way that government wouldn’t necessarily do it.”
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
