May 25, 2021 · 24m · how-i-built-this
Meet The HIBT Fellows: Dinesh Tadepalli & Jennifer Zeitler
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Guy Raz interviews How I Built This fellowship finalists Dinesh Tadepalli of Incredible Eats and Jennifer Zeitler of Let's Goat Buffalo as they pitch their eco-friendly enterprises for a $50,000 grant. The episode highlights their ingenious approaches to replacing single-use plastics with edible cutlery and managing invasive brush through natural goat grazing.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 35.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 1.6 Guest teaching 2.5 Guest disagreement 0.0 Guy pushing back 0.3
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 8:13 Dinesh playfully refuses to name the celebrity singer
In a very amicable episode, Dinesh's gentle refusal to disclose the pop singer's identity represents the closest instance of resisting the host's direct query.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 10:07 Guy challenges defensibility against competitorsGuy presses Dinesh on the difficulty of patenting edible spoons and asks how the business will defend its market share against future copycats.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 16:11 Jennifer educates Guy on goat browsing selectivityJennifer surprises Guy with the ecological detail that goats deliberately avoid harming cocoons and bird nests while grazing.
Guy holds their own ▶ 10:07 Guy identifies intellectual property vulnerability in food hardwareGuy demonstrates seasoned startup expertise by drilling down on IP protection and moats in edible cutlery manufacturing.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dinesh Tadepalli and the Inspiration Behind Incredible Eats | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy Raz establishes an encouraging, friendly rapport by asking Dinesh about the origin story of Incredible Eats. Dinesh collaboratively describes his personal journey from angel investing to discovering the environmental impact of single-use plastics. | |
| Engineering Automated Cutlery Machinery and Early Production Scaling | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks about Dinesh's semiconductor background and how he managed food manufacturing without formal culinary training. Dinesh explains the engineering innovation behind compression molding machinery to automate edible cutlery production. | |
| Bootstrapping Strategies, Celebrity Endorsements, and Retail Expansion | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Guy probes into distribution strategies and gently presses Dinesh to name the famous pop singer who supported the brand. Dinesh keeps the singer confidential while detailing his grassroots email outreach and retail expansion. | |
| Proprietary Manufacturing Defenses and Fellowship Pitch Coaching | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Guy asks a pointed business question about protecting intellectual property against copycats. Dinesh explains their trade secret mold design, followed by reflections on the pitch workshop advice from Nabil. | |
| Mid-Show Break and Introduction to Let's Goat Buffalo | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy introduces Jennifer Zeitler and Let's Goat Buffalo after the mid-show break. Jennifer explains her pivot from hobby beekeeping to goat browsing as a natural land-clearing alternative. | |
| Ecological Efficiency and the Gentle Nature of Goat Grazing | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Jennifer educates Guy on ecological grazing specifics, explaining that goats selectively avoid bird nests and cocoons while digesting invasives without reseeding. Guy reacts with genuine surprise and admiration. | |
| Scalable Operations, Tiered Pricing, and Grant Expansion Plans | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Guy explores operational logistics and cost structures. Jennifer details tiered pricing for public versus private contracts and how a $50,000 grant would purchase another converted bus unit. | |
| Jennifer Zeitler on Resilience and the Entrepreneurial Journey | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Jennifer expresses gratitude to the show for providing inspiration through flooded creek setbacks, followed by Guy delivering the closing episode credits. |
Statements from this episode (15)
Tadepalli works 9-to-5 at Intel, running Incredible Eats until 2 AM
“I worked in about five semiconductor companies right now at Intel. I still work from nine to five, and my, I take care of my business from seven to two AM.”
Tadepalli: Incredible Eats' first order was 150,000 spoons from a caterer
“Our first order was 150,000 spoons from a caterer. That's my first order. I didn't even sell a spoon before that.”
Tadepalli sold his home to scale Incredible Eats' manufacturing facility
“So that's why I sold my home. I used all my proceeds and scaling of the facility. And then I fulfilled that order.”
A Live Nation introduction led to edible spoon sales at concert halls
“And it started there, and she introduced me to Live Nation, and Live Nation introduced me to concert halls, and I sold my first few thousand spoons to a concert hall.”
Tadepalli: Incredible Eats Raised First Outside Funding From Big Idea Ventures in 2021
“Till twenty-twenty-one, I was self-financed, but in early twenty-twenty-one, we got selected to an accelerator program by Big Idea Ventures. So we got our first small check.”
Incredible Eats hit 1,000 retail stores with 95% sell-through in 2020
“And, but because of COVID, we switched to B to C now, and we got a retail order for thousand stores from TJ's group of companies, even without me having a retail box. So I just told them, please give me some time. And COVID gave me that time. I just sat back, …”
Tadepalli: Incredible Eats relies on patent-pending process and trade-secret mold
“So we did patent the process. It's still pending. But our trade secret is our mold design. The two years and 83 trials worth of effort is our design of a mold, which actually makes the cutlery. That is trade secret. No one knows about it. So we kept that cauti…”
Zeitler: Goats sterilize ingested plant seeds, preventing weed regrowth
“When goats eat, they actually sterilize everything that they're eating, so it's a really ideal way of dealing with invasive plants or problem plants or things like poison ivy that we don't want there, because that plant can't regrow from the goat's waste.”
Zeitler says 15 goats clear an acre of brush in two weeks
“So for an acre of something like raspberry plants, multiflora rose, about 15 goats could clear the acre in about two, two and a half weeks.”
Zeitler: Grazing goats discern leaves from cocoons and avoid destroying nests
“And the wonderful thing about using goats versus the method that you were just describing is that the goats eat around birds' nests. They eat around chrysalis and cocoons that might be growing on the bush. They can actually discern, like, what's a leaf and wha…”
Let's Goat Buffalo uses a converted school bus as a mobile barn
“We have converted an old retired school bus, and the back end of the bus is a barn, a traveling barn for the goats, and the front end of the bus is like a tiny home. So it has a shower and a toilet and a stove and a bed so that a herder can actually manage tha…”
Zeitler: Let's Goat Buffalo Exclusively Uses Rescued and Retired Dairy Goats
“These are all rescued animals that we're using, so these are goats that are either retired from dairy farming because they've aged out, or they have some sort of injury or illness that makes them not viable for traditional farming.”
Let's Goat Buffalo charges $2,500 per week for public-facing jobs
“Generally speaking, if we're public facing, which means we're in a park and we're managing the public, we have to have a herder on site every day. It's about 2500 dollars a week, but you can clear quite a bit of land in that week.”