Pat Brown | Hustle Con 2018

About this video

Pat Brown, founder of Impossible Foods, explains why he left his dream job as a researcher to create plant-based meat alternatives. He details the environmental devastation caused by animal agriculture—which uses more land than North America, South America, Australia, and Europe combined—and argues that the solution isn’t convincing people to give up meat, but making plant-based products that consumers prefer on taste, nutrition, affordability, and convenience alone.

Key takeaways

• Pat Brown shifted from environmental concern to market-based business solution, recognizing that appealing to environmental morality won’t change consumer behavior; instead, he’s building products consumers decisively prefer regardless of origin
• Brown’s early idea to harvest heme from soybean root nodules failed after spending over a year and ~$1 million, but this ‘failure’ was valuable for team-building and learning; they eventually produced heme using yeast fermentation
• At the time of this talk, Impossible Foods’ plant-based burger matched conventional beef on multiple criteria after ~6 years of R&D while using a quarter of the water, an eighth of greenhouse gas emissions, and one-twentieth the land—and the technology is still improving while animal agriculture is not
• Brown argues that when you identify a major unsolved problem, don’t assume someone else is addressing it; if no one is, it becomes your responsibility, and solving big problems often creates business opportunities

Episode details: published August 10, 2018 · 850 views · 26:59 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. The business ideas, figures and results discussed are the hosts’ and guests’ own claims, shared as brainstorming and entertainment — not verified facts and not investment advice.

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