YouSaid · the spoken record

Nikhil Arora

lines on the record: 114
first: 2021-11-08
most recent: 2021-11-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I remember that same thing. He emails to both of us. And the next vivid memory I have, this was, I want to say February, Alex, it was maybe a month before spring break at that point.”
2021-11-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I said, hey, that sounds pretty cool. Do you have any more information? What was interesting is kind of crazy, right? Coffee wasting coffee waste has been part of my culture. My grandparents in Columbia had traded coffee. The fact that That sounded like weird magic. Like, how do you take coffee waste and grow mushrooms on it? That's weird because I loved coffee and I've always loved coffee.”
2021-11-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I think I ask myself that question a lot over these years, and I think for me, it was just kind of focus on sustainability and recycling. It was all the summers when my grandparents who had this beautiful garden in a small town would grow all their own food and hearing something about growing food. My parents teaching me about kind of just my dad always in my ear about recycling. And I think all of those experiences over the course of that point, two decades made that relevant to me at that moment and said, that's really cool growing food off of waste. And I think going through my mind was like, is there something here? This is a really cool idea.”
2021-11-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was business ethics class professor Alan Ross. This is a lecture, what, I mean, 100 plus people in this class, which is crazy. We were both in the same classes, both undergrad business majors. And we both remember each other in different classes, but somehow never connected, never shook hands, never said hello to each other. And one of the classes are a professor. He's talking about different ideas around sustainability. And this idea gets brought up in one sentence about how you can grow mushrooms on coffee grounds. And he went on to some other topic right after that. And I don't even remember. It was a whole series of different ideas about sustainable business practices, sustainable ideas. And Alex and I both after class independently email our professor for more information.”
2021-11-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, guy, I know this goes counterintuitive to a lot of the narratives, but they didn't. It wasn't like you have to be a doctor, an engineer. I think you just wanted to see me and my brother working hard, which I think that in so many ways too, that downstream gave me, I think, in the back of my mind the space, the confidence to keep on exploring new things, which I think that was kind of the energy I grew up with and I'm just grateful for them for that.”
2021-11-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's a huge part of my experience growing up was just, and I've realized this more as I've been older, just how incredible it is and the amount of, and you even think about entrepreneurship, like to me, immigrating is the ultimate form of that of taking risk and sacrifice in search of something better. But leaving all of their family, all of their friends back in India to kind of pursue this new journey. And I think what they found in Southern California was the community of a lot of other Indian immigrants who had all done the same thing and really that all became family for them.”
2021-11-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did, yeah. I mean, I was the luckiest immigrant to have come to a town like Papa. The entire town rallied around me, so the entire basketball team shaved a head. The entire school started shaving their head at another friend of mine, Mackenzie, who did prayer chains. So the entire school did prayer chains and she glued one by one and created a whole chain. And she took to the day-long chemotherapy sessions, just a lot of love around me.”
2021-11-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you mention it, the memory that comes to mind is When the doctor called and my mom had already gotten the news and she just turns away, hands me the phone, and I said, hey, doctor, what's going on? And he immediately says, Alex, you have cancer. And as I'm hearing those words, I'm processing my mom. Take her head and start pounding it against the kitchen wall. And my immediate first question was like, well, am I going to die? And thankfully the doctor said, no, you're not.”
2021-11-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So much so that the day in which I was put in front of the class the first day and apparently they asked me where is Columbia and my teacher Mrs. Schumann she brought out a you know she put me to the front of the class I was so scared and then she makes me point to the the country where I'm from some My intro is me making gun noises gorillas, gorillas, 11-year-old from Papa, Michigan, he thought, I was talking about gorillas with guns in Columbia. And he's like, whoa, this kid comes from a place where gorillas have guns. That was my intro to my fifth grade class. But the culture in Pawa and Midwest culture is so warm. I never felt like I was an outsider.”
2021-11-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We moved to, so I'll start off by saying basically when I was on the plane, it was like, you're now called Alex. They won't know how to pronounce Alejandro. Basically, as soon as I got to Michigan, I changed my name, didn't speak a word of English, and landed in a town called Papa, Michigan, a town of about 5,500 people. And I was the only Hispanic kid. So you were in London.”
2021-11-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The home gardening business, things like seeds and potting soil. And this year, the company says it will reach one hundred million dollars in sales, all from an idea to grow mushrooms on coffee grounds. Nikilaura grew up in southern California. His parents were immigrants from India. Alejandro spent his early childhood in Medin Colombia, where he experienced firsthand the political violence and terrifying guerrilla attacks that were happening at the time. As a young boy, he and his grandparents were briefly held hostage by the violent Colombian guerrilla group FARC. But when he was about eleven American serviceman and the family moved to Michigan.”
2021-11-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Around Berkeley and Oakland to a warehouse they rented near the airport. They grow mushrooms and sell them to the local whole foods in a few other specialty food stores. Their guide to farming? Mainly YouTube videos and trial and error. But what's truly remarkable about their business model is that even though it wasn't making a ton of money, it was profitable from the very beginning. Nikil and Alejandro, who also goes by Alex, would get paid to haul away the used coffee grounds, then they'd get paid for the mushrooms they grew on those grounds, and after that they'd sell the nutrient-rich coffee soil that the mushrooms had grown on. But as the co-founders eventually realized, there's only so far you can go with mushrooms and coffee grounds, so eventually they dropped the mushroom growing business entirely and moved into”
2021-11-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He had the perfect business idea, an online social network for lawyers just for lawyers. I know, I know, imagine how exciting it would be to connect with other lawyers. Anyway, you get the picture. Sometimes you need to come up with and then try one idea to get to the real idea, which is how the home and garden brand back to the roots began. Nikhil Aurora and Alejandro Veles originally planned to sell mushrooms, which they grew on used coffee grounds. The idea came from a class they took together at UC Berkeley, and believe it or not, even though neither of them knew much about agriculture or farming, they managed to build a pretty successful small business around it. For several years they would haul leaky bags of spent coffee grounds from cafes.”
2021-11-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got the contact info that day to Randy DeCommon, who was in produce coordinator for Whole Foods. And we ended up getting a call scheduled by him.”
2021-11-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Back to the Roots: Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT