Jonathan Neman
person on 5 shows · 18 statements across 4 episodes · said 10 times in 4 episodes since 2022
My First Million 7 
20VC 7 
All-In 2 
How I Built This 1 
Masters of Scale
On the record as a speaker too: Jonathan Neman across every show, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year, every show
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20VC 7My First Million 7All-In 2How I Built This 1
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 9 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode
every mention on every show, scene by scene, with the transcript →
18 statements about Jonathan Neman, every show
Neman: Sweetgreen was built to reach 3,000 locations like McDonald's
“The vision was we want to be the next version of McDonald's. So we had, we built it to be that. It was never built to get to two 50. It was built to get to 3000.”
Neman: Opening physical restaurant locations lifts existing delivery business
“Well, what's interesting is I can have delivery coverage in an area, and then I can open a restaurant there, and the whole thing lifts. So the physical presence of an actual, a place is Actually can help lift your wholesale and the rest of the business.”
Neman: Consumers rank health fourth behind taste, convenience, and value
“What we've learned is, while a lot of people say they care about health, when it comes down to making a decision about what they're gonna eat, it's taste, convenience, and value. Your health is kind of there, right, you know, right in the number four range.”
Neman: Wingstop added sandwiches to lower costs by purchasing whole birds
“Wingstop didn't introduce sandwiches until like two years ago. And by the way, the reason they did it was not from a customer perspective. It was from a supply chain perspective because they realized that if they introduce sandwiches, now they can buy whole bi…”
Neman: Sweetgreen's Entire Top Executive Team Quit Within One Year
“Yeah. I remember, like, the last one where we thought it couldn't get any worse, and I get the text from someone, and it's always like the worst text when someone says, hey, can you talk? And then, so, the last person quits, and we're just like, oh god, what a…”
All three Sweetgreen co-founders are children of immigrant entrepreneurs
“We were all kids of immigrants, kids that had come to this country, parents that had come to this country and built businesses. They were all entrepreneurs.”
Operational difficulty creates a restaurant company's defensible moat and long-term value
“How hard it is, is what makes the moat, and what makes it so valuable and powerful over time.”
Sweetgreen pitched 250 people to raise $300k from 50 investors
“We ended up getting about 50 investors in that first round to raise 300,000 dollars. That means we have to talk to like 250 people.”
Sweetgreen raised capital individually for each of its first three restaurants
“And each one, we actually, we raised money individually for them. We had no corporate team. It was just the three of us, three, three guys, three restaurants. Imagine each of us effectively managing one of the restaurants.”
Sweetgreen rejected a 100-location licensing deal when it had three stores
“If you go back when we had three restaurants that we got an offer for a very, you know, we got, we always got franchise requests from day one, you know, one off franchise requires probably a thousand of them. But at one point we got an offer from like a very l…”
Scaling startups need specialists but must keep generalists as culture carriers
“Because when you start, you know, you have small team and everyone's a generalist. You need just generalists that do everything. And as you get bigger, you need more specialists. And that generalist may not have the experience of a specialist, but there's such…”
Sweetgreen avoids public brand commentary outside food, health, sustainability, or staff
“We are going to focus on if it's an issue related to food, Health, sustainability, or our people directly, we will do something. We may comment internally about certain issues, but as a brand, we do not believe it's appropriate to make comments on any of those…”
Corporate leaders should speak up personally, but brands should stay silent
“I think it's important for leaders to speak up on those things, but I think it's inappropriate for the brand itself to speak.”
Neman: Young founders succeed because naive fearlessness reduces perceived risk
“There's a reason so many of these, like, transformational ideas get started by kids. It's because they don't know any better. They're willing to take the risk because it doesn't even feel like a risk.”
Sweetgreen's founders pitched 250 people to secure 50 initial angel investors
“We probably spoke to 250 people, and we got at the end, we got 50 people to say yes.”
Sweetgreen paid its general contractor in equity after a $50,000 shortfall
“We ended up raising almost 300,000. And it did cost about 350,000 dollars, so we were short 50,000 dollars or so, which means we owed the contractor 50,000 dollars at the end, which means the contractor owned a piece of our company at the end.”
Sweetgreen never franchised to maintain tight supply chain and cooking control
“It's never been part of what we wanted to do because you just can't control what we do, and what we do from a supply chain and scratch-cooking perspective, we were just always scared of franchising our business and have never done it.”