YouSaid · the spoken record

Sara Menker

lines on the record: 122
first: 2019-08-28
most recent: 2019-08-28
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

“We publish tons of free content about what is your latest avocado. No, the latest has been driven around actually market moves, driven by U.S. government releases that shocked markets and drove market prices into downward spiral over the last week.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you literally have to kind of decide what your convictions are, and you have to live through that. But that also means that in those moments, if you become a miserable person every time you're losing money and you're only happy when you're making money, you're kind of a net-net miserable human being.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“See, I like It takes a few months of losing money month after month and your manager being like, are you sure you like that position? I'm pretty certain I do, but I'm going to go and puke right now. Yeah, yeah. I can never be a trader.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I think sometimes one thing that is hard to do as an entrepreneur is when your vision seems so crazy, you learn to tame it down at times to just kind of manage your own expectations versus kind of being like. No, this is what it is. This is what it is. I've had to learn that skill. And I think part of it is that, you know, when you work on Wall Street and I was a trader, you make money, you lose money. I'm always hedging for the downside. I'm always assuming that a journey is not linear. And so therefore, the highs can never be as high and the lows can never be as low.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What do I do really well? What makes me happy? What do I do really well? I think what I do really well is sell the vision of the company and sell the product. And I do that really well because it comes from a really honest place and a passionate place. What I do really well is product as a result because I'm constantly, you know, every interaction, every conversation I have, I'm like, my brain is like firing in 10,000 directions. I'm trying to think of what I would have done differently. I am flawless.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I I can do it too, right? There's a lot of I just think they're so stupid. But lastly, how do you as a leader, you're an entrepreneur? I always ask entrepreneurs, what is the thing that you think you did really well and is an advice to people for entrepreneurs? And what did you do that you like? Oh, I shouldn't have done it that way.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The more it becomes like people also say I can look at that, I can relate to that, and I can do it too, right? There's a lot of the confidence that people lack in themselves. I”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Finding people is a lot of work. Yes. No, I know it's one of these things. No, listen, but that's why I truly say the more of me there are.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But the question is, how do we get capital, people with capital to trust different people? You know what I mean? Like, they'll give millions of dollars to a 22-year-old guy. They will. They'll just do it. But it's really fascinating to me. And, you know, I had a very interesting argument with someone yesterday where we were talking about immigration and its impact on tech. And they were going on about HB1 visas. I'm like, not the people that will help you do what you're already doing. I said, do you know where innovation is going to come from? You don't like necessarily. And I said, I would bet there's a little girl on that border in one of those things that maybe has a cure for cancer or maybe like would create the next trillion dollar company, but she'll never get the chance. Like, why are we bad at like allocating capital to talent? Why is it such a bad system?”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wouldn't have worked because the first few million, I wouldn't have known the people I ended up knowing connected the company very, very early days. You know, you first need that just very first chance, right? And I think if you prove yourself there, then it just becomes...”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I mean, it's one of these things that I think of our journey. I think of my journey, my two co-founders, you know, it's like all of us, I think, started, like I said, from a place where we had enough confidence and we were not right out of college. And I think that helps. I mean, I have no idea what that would have been if I tried to do this right out of college. Probably.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hopefully it's really interesting because diversity is the natural way to go when you want success. You know what I mean? In farming and anything kind of stuff. And it's really interesting to me that we still have a monoculture around capital and where it's put. And it seems so analogued to me that they do it this way. You know what I mean? Like the data doesn't show this, but they don't continue to be. It's just interesting.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Examples you have, the more normal it becomes. And so it becomes, you know, like who were the people that were my role models that made me feel confident to do what I'm doing. It's if you do a little bit of that over time, I think it just naturally changes.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, but I do because A, I deeply care about the problem. Like, again, it was a problem and then technology became a solution as opposed to the other way around, which is I built this thing in and we need to find a home for it. But the second part being that it's that I think the more...”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, in some ways, I think that's why I feel a deep sense of responsibility to make this company successful. One, because it shouldn't be.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Could do it differently, and I believe this is a big topic. I want to finish up on this, not just because you're a woman, a person of color, but it's beyond that. It's that there's talent. The talent, one of the things that I was struck by someone recently said, it's not a question of talent, it's a question of opportunity and finding companies, and I just, you know, Stu K's and all Mark Doom, they're all trying to get fine talent everywhere in this country necessarily, but I was like, there's global talent everywhere and the ability to get capital to those people to think up new ideas and fresh things has been incredibly hard based on no data whatsoever. You know what I mean? Like that's what's so irritating about it is this sort of monoculture that gets created in entrepreneurship.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Never wanted to move there I don't know, you know, like I loved New York. I'd lived here and then. At the heart of what I was trying to do was also be reconnected to home. And for me, definition of home was not just Ethiopia, it was anywhere in Africa. And so I found Kenya moved there, started an office. I mean, I knew three people when I started the company there. And just figured, you know, it's about time the world kind of sees a different kind of company. And I think we could do it differently. And I believe this is a big topic.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so those individuals really were like, I have no idea what you're trying to do, but I'm in. And so as soon as I was ready to raise money, they were kind of the first money in. And then since then, we've raised about $40 million. And there we raised from highly institutional, very global funds. So the way we did describe it is we went to TPG growth as a backer of ours data collective. So we got some really good. But they really understood the problem. And they were okay with a business that from day one had really global ambitions, which is...”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Well, so at first it didn't need to explain it to venture capitalists. I think I started from a very Place of what I call a place of privilege that I had to work for, but I was relatively successful on Wall Street. I'd been there for about nine years. And after I quit, the people I quit on for the first few million dollars into the company.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our creation process was just like, what does the world need? I mean, when I quit my job, I didn't quit my job to say I'm starting a tech company. I quit my job and I said there is this really big problem I need to solve. And my boss is like, what exactly are you going to do? And at the time, I mean, he just reminded me of what my write-up was. And he was like, I think you should just take a sabbatical because this is not going to be a company. Oh, wow. Because it was so small.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't have anything for you. I am literally trying to build something that I think the system needs, and I think the world needs. And, you know, in some ways where data infrastructure and people kind of relate us to a Bloomberg.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the best part. We don't have a what. In some ways, it's the brilliance of what we do, and it's also the complexity of what we do. And when we were initially raising money, everyone wants to know the what for what. Right. And I'm like.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I know you do, but on the tractor. On the tractor, actually, yeah, I'm a little small for that. No, our ambition is how do we become the industry standard, right? Like, so to us, would you compare?”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, well, that I built a company instead. I decided I'll have another headache. I don't see you as a farmer. I'm sorry. You've been trying to be surprised how much time”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For them to do that, you need the human knowledge that helps train that, right? And so to me, it's like you need to have people that are a part of that creation process that are constantly kind of providing that feedback to do so.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You run into all sorts of walls when you're doing context specific translation about varieties of wheat. The automated translation systems don't work for that. And so you need a lot of human knowledge. They will.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's all men. Context matters. And to me, it always just blows my mind every time I'm like, hey, do we have a Russian speaker? Of course we do. And it really makes such a big difference because, you know, when you're dealing with translation, for example.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Choice, I always have two things I always say why did the products get made that get made by Silicon Valley and why did they get funded? And it has a lot to do with the people who make them and the lives they live. And so I always say San Francisco is assisted living for millennials because the things they make are all about make, do you know what I mean? Like I need my food, I need my dry cleaning. And it's all men. It's all around convenience. And then the second part is when I think about social media and things like that, I'm always like the reason why it's the way it is is because the people who made it never felt unsafe. If they felt unsafe, they would have made it in a different way. They would have created it and thought about it in a different way. And if you don't think globally around your products, it's a real problem.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the way that we're making products. And we say, if I truly have global ambition, I can start local, my design process from day one has to be built around that ambition. Otherwise, you just go completely wrong.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so to me, it's that if we don't start changing our frame of mind from the day we start these companies or making products.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And realize how important that is. But, you know, we have about 28 different disciplines. And the reality is that if you are modeling, and every tech company is an AI company nowadays, whether that's right or wrong, but it's like if you're building an AI to address a problem, that AI has to represent the world that it absolutely.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that needs to change. And as a company, we have done that very intentionally from day one. So we are about 70 people now. One in three people is of a different ethnicity or nationality in the company.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm always like used to be. Well, I think the first thing that needs to happen is that people need to start with a global perspective. So there's this idea oftentimes when tech companies start that, let me just figure out this local problem and then I can just scale it globally. And there's an assumption that that idea will just automatically scale globally”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes, exactly. The more wealth you show. Which is fascinating. And then the more developed world is shifting the other way, that meat is like, well, you know, I'm always fascinated with oyster. I love oysters. I don't know if you know. But I'm always like used to be we were on the, we were at beaches in Britain and they were covered with oyster shells is because it was the food for the poor, that it was the shitty food. And now it became the wealthy food. I just love watching food trends and how they how they shift and move. What role would technology play? And besides beyond data in the food economy, there's things like beyond meat. There's all kinds of investments being made in food distribution and stuff like that. But as you say, it's on the high end at the beginning. What needs to happen from a technology perspective?”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, they will trickle down, but they won't do it at the expense of meat that most people kind of expect. And part of it is because, again, when you think of it globally, your per capita consumption of meat in so many parts of the world is so low. People are still consuming a couple of kilograms of meat a year. And in other zero people are doing 30 kilograms. And so there's just so much more upside there because, again, this is where I said modeling demand is more difficult because culture. Like, how do you shift culture? How do you tell an African that serving vegetables is a sign of wealth?”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Consumers demographic, yeah. People are substituting one form of me for another form of meat. Unfortunately, they're not substituting it for vegetables just yet. You know, I always feel vegans are 100% right, but they annoy me. And I'm like, oh, you're right. You know, when you read any of it, you're like, correct, you are. But I do think the idea of substituting me, these trends will trickle down to others. They all do. All these food trends that start at a high level tend to, you know, who is eating yogurt until everybody was eating yogurt kind of thing.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We do. We're vegans twice a week, so I think that helps. But I think those types of products work well for, you know. High paying consumers. They're impacting a particular demographic. Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of conversations around the rights of veganism, for example. And we looked at the data and I had to send it to someone who got very disappointed because she was going out to advocate for veganism and how there were more vegans in the world. And I said, well, if you look at the per capita consumption numbers, it actually just tells you that we're eating less beef, but eating more chicken. People are substituting one form of beef for another form of meat. Unfortunately, substituting it for vegetables just yet. You know, I always feel like a vegan is a vegan.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would you like You know, their taste has gotten significantly better over the years. I will say that. I taste all of them once a year. I love meat, unfortunately. I grew up beneath Ethiopia. I'm like, you know, but, you know, I think their role is going to still be.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How do you get ahead of that? But all those things. How do you look at those things? So that's a like, I've just noticed they're everywhere now. That was at Ben's chili bowl in Washington, D.C. Would you like? How do you eat chili bowls? Well, they had both Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger, and they were delicious. But I was sort of like, what is it doing here?”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, like where it's not to say the government doesn't play a role. It's like, how do you use that money to drive the innovation necessary to start transforming the food system in a much more kind of core and fundamental way? And how do you reassess what that system looks like? People want to eat healthier. People want to eat more greens. There's like, you know, big dietary shifts that are also thematically starting to occur. How do you get ahead of that?”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You need to make the system commercial. You need to have a world where the top 30 banks have more than $20 billion of exposure to agriculture. Right, right. And to me, so they're lending.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you want to remain a food exporter, but which it will, but it's what kind of food exporter? What's the role of, again, government heavily, heavily backs the U.S. agricultural sector? It's not one that is standing on its own because it's Does it”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a secular shift like other secular shifts. I mean, I think there will be important questions that the U.S. farmer will be faced with. And I think there will be important questions that the U.S. government will be faced with because you want to.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In case To get it. What does that do because we're all so obsessed with the U.S. here in the US? What does that do to the U.S. farming? When you start to collect these data points and point them out, what do you do?”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What has started to happen is you now have bigger net exporters emerging, namely the Black Sea region. So you have Russia and Ukraine becoming very dominant forces in agriculture. So the agricultural trade system will start to look different. It will start to look different because it will be, people will start to trade with a more diverse set of trading partners, diversify your risk in case one shuts down on you. But B, people will also start trading closer, meaning you don't have to ship everything across multiple oceans to get it. What does that do?”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Redefining food security to be around diversification versus very country-to-country dependent trade. So if you look at the World Food System today, it's pretty much there are countries that are net importers and there are countries that are net exporters of just food and calories as a whole. And so far it's just been the US and now South America that have been kind of the emergent net exporters to the rest of the world, to Asia, to Africa, et cetera.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. You have to model disease risk to be able to forecast supply. We work with very weird stuff sometimes. Yes, I do work with plant diseases and animal diseases. The third big trend is a trend towards people asking questions around”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, one is, I've been saying this to the team recently, which is, you know, I can't tell if the world is just so much more messed up today or we can see so much more of it because we have so much data. I just was talking about this. You know, and I think it's the second, right? But there are some things that are happening more frequently. One is extreme climate events. So climate shocks are, whether it's droughts or floods, are impacting the world in a much more frequent level continuously. So that means actually our understanding of the system as a whole needs to definitely go up a notch as a result of that. So climate shocks are huge. Climate shocks are actually tied to disease. So animal disease and plant disease is very much tied to climate. So that means now you have disease risk that looks very different. So tracking disease in the spread of disease becomes quite critical. So those two are pretty...”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That needs to be asked. Yeah, I think I was talking about that around computer stuff is what if Huawei and everything, if they replace the vendor, you have to replace the vendor with someone else. That business is completely lost versus not. When you think about the world food, Economy. What are some of the important trends that you see from the data? When you look at all of it?”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's not a long term solution. And the big risk there becomes if China replaces its soybean demand by just going to Brazil and investing more in Brazil, what happens exactly where it's going to go.”
2019-08-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT