If you went out onto the street and you asked a hundred random people, what is the point of a business? I think something like 98 or 99 of those people would tell you the exact same thing. They would say that the point of a business is to make money. If they're feeling intellectual that day, they might tell you, no, the point of a business is to maximize shareholder value, or something like that. And I always found that really fascinating that we all somehow have the exact same default answer to that question. We talk about it like it's some God-given commandment that the point of a business is to make money. But when you really think about it, this is kind of a recent invention, relatively speaking, you know, back in the thirties there was this debate between these two guys, burl and dod, and one of them argued that the point of a business is to maximize shareholder value and to make money. And then the other guy argued that no businesses can be much more complex than that. And there's a responsibility to society, there's responsibility to your local community. It can be about creativity, all of these other things. But over the last few decades, it seems like one of the sides clearly won that debate, especially in the seventies and eighties. This sort of Milton Friedman style view of business emerged where the only thing you could be about was trying to make as much money as possible. If I'm being honest, I think the wrong side won that debate. I'm not against making money, I all, for everybody making as much money as they can, but it just feels so binary that if you wanna be in business, if you wanna be a business person, you can only care about making money. And if you wanna care about anything else, then you should probably go start a nonprofit. Human beings are way more complex than that. Ambition is way more complex than that. You can want to do more than one thing at one time, and that's why recently I've been looking for entrepreneurs that I think do that really well, that allow themselves to own all their complexity, all of the different things they wanna do all at the same time. And that's how we came across Sun. Ana and I grew up in a very similar part of the world. We're the same age. We moved to America at the same time. We started our businesses at the same time. We, at the time, the Sun and I started our businesses, it was very common to have a nice gauzy mission statement on your website. But as the years rolled on, most of our companies, those, those mission statements just slowly slipped off of the website. But Sun Mission statement stayed on and it got deeper and deeper and deeper into the business. Almost a decade in Ana's company is more serious, more real about their mission than they were when they started. Ana's mission has been to build a more ethical spice trade, and she has consistently, for a decade, put her money where her mouth is. When you hear Sana talk, you might feel at first, like you get it and you're like, oh, you know, these people, the people like these, this are great, but they're just very idealistic. This doesn't really work in the real world. I, I would challenge you to find another entrepreneur that could pull off a business like the one that Sana is running with all of its operational complexity and all of its challenges. Sana is a real business person. She's, she's a killer. But she's also very real about everything else. She's real about her creativity, and she's real about the mission. She's real about wanting to connect with her community. When you hear Sonna talk, you experience a full complexity of human ambition and the full richness of human spirit. I could not be more proud to have Sana on the podcast. And with that, I bring you Sana Jri Kri from wefunder's office on Mission Street in San Francisco. This is warm intro. This is the first episode where I'm wearing a hat.'cause your hair was not herring this morning because my hair wasn't doing it. And so I I it's You picked a good hat. Thank you. Okay. I I thought that was a good nod to heritage. It was like, you got cool points. Thank you. It's it. I, as soon as we walked in towards the water, I actually clocked it and I was like, that was a smart choice. Well, I, I did pick it for, for this one in particular.'cause I, you and I both grew up with this brand and I think like it. Speaks to what something I really like about your work, where the whole philosophy of this brand, I, I have a royal infield that you do for, for people who are listening. It's a, it's a motorcycle company. It's an Indian motorcycle company, and they just have this real philosophy of making beautiful ough products. That the average person could afford. Mm-hmm. And, I just, I'm also wearing a Titan watch. I just love this sort of approach to making things. Mm-hmm. And it's proudly Indian. Exactly. I feel like royal field has always been a very Indian brand. Which feels really good. If you ever watch one of their like, maid in Chana ads No. They, they make, they make you tear up. Really, really. They're just so beautifully done. But Ana, thank you so much for, for being on the podcast. It's good to be here. We do this thing for every episode where we try to come up with one word or sort of one sentence that for us really kind of captures, the guests that we're having on. Okay. And, um, for you, I kind of kept coming back to this idea of,, morality. I don't know if you feel this way, but I, I think it just sort of tinges everything you've done you've had this strong moral compass through every stage of your career. I wanna try to understand sort of the origins of that. Mm-hmm. Take me back to, to Mumbai circa 93, 94, may, maybe 95, 96. What's, the world that you come from? Describe that. I mean, I, I definitely always lead with the coming from privilege. Mm-hmm. You know, I grew up to upper class parents and I grew up in very much the 0.1% of India. Which I, I unfortunately find a lot of, like urban privileged Indians don't disclose. Like they come to America and they're like, I'm a brown woman of color. And I'm like, girl, like I know what you are at home. Sit down. Okay. So I do feel like that disclosure needs to be the beginning and,, I am Hindu, Muslim Gen. Which in 1993 was not common. Oh my God. So I was born during the Hindu Muslim riots and my dad is half Hindu, half Muslim, and then he married a Jan woman. So I have two generations of love marriages, that were inter cast into religious Wow. Which both caused a lot of conflict and made us very different and often the other. So, you know, at school, I think I was like one of two part Muslim or full Muslim kids in my whole class. And, the only mixed kid at all. And I went to a very popular privileged, like fancy school. So that just tells you how segregated, environments get in India. I think the, like more privileged things get, or maybe, I think the point is that like at every section of society, especially growing up in Mumbai, there was such intense, like religious segregation and therefore being the mutt, that didn't fall into any camp was like a deeply confusing experience. I relate to how many, very wealthy Indians mm-hmm. Will not acknowledge how wealthy they were., It's apparently everybody was fucking upper middle class.'cause the, I'm like, you weren't, we just weren't. Exactly. What you need to earn to be middle class in idiot. Yep, yep, yep. It's, it's a massive reality check for, for most of us. I, I mean, I think I know the number. It's for your family, you're making under 40,000 rupees a month. Wow. And that's not a lot of money at all. You know, what's the math on that in terms of dollars?$500? Is that true? Yeah, that's literally true. So to be middle class in India, you have to making under$500 a month. AKA, like every international student at Cal, at Pomona, at Stanford, where we went to school, it was not middle class, was not middle class, you know, and it's worth just clearing that up from the get go. Well, so this is, this is a perfect setup for what I want to try to understand. So you grow up, you know, mixed religion, mixed cast kid in Mumbai, which is, I, it's kind of hard to explain until you've been there, like how in your face inequality is in Mumbai, right? Yes. What was your. What are kind of the, the origins of your moral compass? Like what, to the degree that you can even articulate this what were your parents trying to teach you? What were you learning by osmosis right. From the world around you? So there's three parts to the answer. One is you're trying to articulate like what that inequality looks like. So like we lived in an apartment building that my grandfather was the architect for, which is why he got this apartment. And, there was a swimming pool and a beautiful garden that, you know, he designed'cause he went to Berkeley. And right next to us was, one of the biggest slums. Right on the waterfront and like in the monsoon. They didn't have toilets and the waves would actually like, crash into their homes. Wow. And we would be like, oh my god, chai and pakos and Oh my god. Monsoon vibes. You know, so like the equality is not, was very obvious. Mm-hmm. And and I don't wanna say, but I wanna make sure it's an, and both my parents are architects and they were educated. They went, got their masters here in the US and they made a very conscious choice in 1992, no, 9 91 to go back to India. Because there was this feeling that, you know, India has just neo liberalized, it's opened up to the world and they had been given some of the best educations that their parents could like muster for them. So now let's go back to India and like be of service. My dad's mom started Save the Children India. Wow. Which for a long time was one of the largest NGOs in India. Mm-hmm. I think there's a lot more now, which is wonderful. Mm-hmm. So I think at least on my dad's side, the family motto was, okay, we have privilege now, how can we be of service? And that was told to me from a very young age, is you have so much privilege, you're being given access to the best education in the world. What are you gonna do with it? And. At the time, I don't think I realized how iconic that was. Mm-hmm. Because I have friends from who I grew up with who went to the same schools as me, who are now very happy living the, like South Bombay like kitty party. Mm-hmm. Like AC card, ac apartment life. And that's fine. And I, I'm fine with that, but, but I was raised very differently than that and I really, I guess, value my parents for doing that. I'm stunned by how many of us in that sort of mini sub generation mm-hmm. We were raised with these like values of kind of globalism and this sense of responsibility that you have mm-hmm. Towards the world. And I'm, I'm really struck by how kind of that was like a blip in time that it seems like it's sort of gone away now. Totally. I think it was 92 to 95. But I think it was because there was this hope that India was gonna join the rest of the world. And that like we were the future. And I think it's why you and I both also subscribe to a little bit of this nostalgia for the proudly made in India. Yes. It's like the Titan watch the world on field hat. I'm wearing these cardamom earrings. It's like wanting to both represent where we come from and be part of the global conversation and not do it in a deeply shitty way. Do you have any memories of for the first time feeling that privilege, feeling like you, I have something that not everybody has. And that I have a responsibility because of that privilege. What, what's the earliest memory you have of that idea? The privilege comes later, right? Like then I can go back like retrospective 2020 and be like, ah, yes. Like when I saw my grandfather's Mercedes-Benz. Sure. But I wasn't, I was like, it was a nice green car. Sure. But I think really my childhood was more defined by analyzing difference. So it was that, at my daddy's house mm-hmm. We had, full fat buffalo milk. Wealthy Punjabi. My grandfather was doing very well. Mm-hmm. And then at my nanny's house, there was like the lowfat skim cow. And at our home, there was no yogurt at all because my mother was like California lactose intolerant. or like my aunt and uncle had like like Nestle yogurt that came in a can or in like the plastic bucket at home. And that was the most aspirational. And it was kind of because they like had the fancy new money coming in. Whereas we were like the old money with help at home making it for you. And I was tracking that, where I was like, what is going on with all these different yogurts? So I think for me it was more the easiest point of trying to understand like, all the complexities of our family was through food. Mm-hmm. And, So when I then came to America. 20 years later, how I navigated America was through this same lens of, going to the grocery store and being like, so why are they making yogurt pretzels? They're like, what are those? Have you heard of the Big Mac index? Yes. Yes. You just did a version of that, but with yogurt. You just did a full readout of, of socioeconomic differences in India through the lens of yogurt. But I, I do find that like food is, especially in a, in the context that you and I grew up with it's so political and it carries a lot of meaning. This is just a random example and we can cut this out if it's too big of a diversion, but I am very comfortable double dipping. Mm-hmm. And I'm very comfortable, if we're sharing from a, a big thing of fries, I'll grab a few and I don't care if my hands touch more than the fries that I'm grabbing. And this bothers my American wife and, my American friends. But at the same time, they'll share, drinks. Right. They'll share. Mm-hmm. Like it'll go around. Well, sometimes your apples they'll, they'll, because your apples, they'll take a bite and then, and they'll give it to somebody else. And so, I, I should say before I say the next part, I agree with the science of how Indians do this. Uhhuh. Okay. I think it. You wash your hands, man. I don't know what's going on with your mouth, Uhhuh. Like I, and so I agree with the Indian approach to this, but I, it wasn't until recently that I realized the reason that so many Indians, the, the, the root cause of, not wanting to share food, it comes from the caste system. Right. As does so much stuff. And so, and that's so ingrained in me. I mean, this is, it's ingrained at a level of disgust, right? Where that's really, really, really deep. Well, the like, upper surface layer is that it is like dirty or unhygienic. And then that has been rooted in science. Who had access to science. Upper cast, Indian Americans or upper cast Indians who had access to go to medical school. People like my grandma, who then proceeded to be like, yes, you can like, touch my food and you cannot, or, you know, the staff must have like separate plates than me and my family. Mm-hmm. But like the true root of all of that fluff on top. Was casteism of your hands just by being darker and from a certain subgroup are dirtier and inherently dirtier than me and my family's hands. So yes, my daughter can't lick her fingers, but like she definitely can't eat on the same plate as you. You know? So I don't think people get into that nearly enough even the term you'll see this to people that haven't been to India, pure restaurants will call themselves pure vegetarian. Pure is a very interesting and it's, it's casteism 1 0 1, like the, the Pure Association is that like we are a clean establishment where like good people go who are good people, good people are upper cast people. Tell me, tell me a little bit about your relationship with food. So, and'cause I, I think these are sort of the two things that I've been weighing as I've been preparing for this. On one hand I think you have just this really acute eye for morality and like how it shows up in in these sort of what others would read as a kind of like mundane social situations. And then I think on the other hand. I just think you've always had this very rich understanding of food and, and what it means. Mm-hmm. And kind of how it, like how people, how different people eat and how, how they d how they grow their food and what it what it tells you about them. So tell, tell me about your relationship with food for a second. What was, what were the meals like? You touched on this a little bit. What were meals like,, at your house mm-hmm. Who was cooking them? I mean, I was the kid who at my preschool graduation, nobody could find me because I was in the kitchen even eating everybody's snacks. I have always been this kid, my dad had a very certain budget for fish in the house when I was younger.'cause fish was, I think the most expensive thing we brought into the home. But at two, I was like eating through his entire fish budget. And he was really stressed about it. So I, I feel like I've always, I was born this person where I love food and I thrive on it. And I love navigating my family through food, like navigating my Gujarati Muslim grandfather and Punjabi, Pakistani grandmother and Jan grandmother, and like how I got to eat varied. And I have a manor, like cousins and their family. So like just getting to navigate like delicious meals through all their houses. Ugh. It makes me so happy. I just got back from India like three days ago and it was joyous. Oh. And I think that it all actually ties into queerness. Mm-hmm. So John Birdsall, who's this incredible author, has been writing a lot, and he just wrote a book about the queer origins of the food industry. Mm-hmm. And basically to me, queerness is two things, right? One is it's like noticing difference within yourself. And I think Ocean Vong has some quote quote where what queerness demands of you is innovation because you're looking at a system that you don't fit into. And you're trying to figure out how you can make it work for you or how you can rebuild the system to survive mm-hmm. This brings up something interesting and I wanna kind of get your take on this.'cause a take I've heard mm-hmm. Related to food, is that the cultures of the world that, and I'm not saying I agree with this, but I wanna get your take. The cultures of the world that were,, relatively impoverished and didn't have access to the best ingredients had to get better at the techniques of cooking and had to, the standard example people will take is a oxtail. Right. Okay. And having to work with not the best cut of meat Sure. And needing to learn to make it really good. Like scarcity demands innovation. Exactly. And that the cultures that just had a nice piece of rib eye. Never really had to get very good at cooking. Mm. Is this, do you fuck with this take? What do you think of this? No. No. Okay. I disagree with that take because, well, pre colonialism, south Asia was a very wealthy region. There was like tremendous inequality. Yes. Mm-hmm. Then and now. Mm-hmm. But, and our cuisine was like, incredibly well developed, you know? So, I, I don't know. I think this idea that you have to suffer to then innovate and make something beautiful. Mm-hmm. I actually think that's like Christian guilt and that's some colonial like rebranding. Y'all suffered and then you innovated so well. Wow, guys. You're welcome. I don't think that's necessary. Nobody gotta suffer for things to taste good. Does that mean we should look down upon cuisines that like created beautiful things out of like scarcity? No. You know, and I think maybe that's the reframe is is like taking things like snail or off cuts of meat or dried beef and creating deliciousness. Mm-hmm. And the reframe is that that needs to be celebrated and honored. Whereas right now it's looked down upon. But I don't think intrinsically saying that like we all need to suffer for delicious food is, no, I'm walking away from that. Let's fast forward a little bit in the story, right? You have this like really sort of rich and complex upbringing. Fast forward, how old were you when you moved out? To the us? To 18. 18. Right. To go to school. And what was your sense of your life at the time? Did you think you were, this was a temporary thing and you would be coming back to India? Or did you know that this was it? Now you're gonna be living in America? We have to backtrack to being 14, unfortunately. Okay. So when my mom I think she started doing better and she, with her career and she wanted to do what she thought was best for me. And so she sent me to, from my like fancy but like normal school to Rabiah and Bonnie, which is like a very fancy international school with a capital F. And it was like new Money City. It was co-ed. I used to go to an all girls school. Mm-hmm. And I think the simple reality is that I was a queer kid, raised in a very progressive family, and I went to an environment where I didn't fit. And it ended very poorly, in that like I was being bullied. I had a very abusive relationship and I started using Oh, so at 14 to have all three of those things happen. Not good. Wow. And eventually the decision that my family and I took together, which was wonderful, was that I would just leave school and homeschool myself. So ninth and 10th grade, I literally hung out at home with I-G-C-S-E textbooks. My parents both work. Wow. Like they were at work all day. And then like I taught myself how to photograph'cause I was bored. And started photographing, like doing dark room stuff. So I had been living like in isolation for two years. I then applied to the United World Colleges, which is this like really magical high school that is all over the world. 200 kids, a hundred different countries, full scholarship. Mm-hmm. I thought I would get into the one in India, which has more spots for Indians. I magically got sent to the one in Italy, like on the Adriatic coast in a castle. Oh my God. Like bloody game changing. So this bullied sad kid who has spent her 14, 15, 16 talking to nobody my age, like pretty much only hanging out with my mom, my dad, and like my mom's gym trainer for company. Now gets to go to one of the best like schools and international schools in the world in a castle. So life changed drastically. And I got to completely reinvent myself. I got to work on a farm as part of my work study. I was working on vineyards and olive groves. It just I just cannot overstate how transformational it was to get the hell out of south ba. Man, it changed everything. So then at 18 when I came to California, I was already like, what this amazing progressive high school had molded me to be. And UW C'S home motto is using education and, like this really di diverse environment to create like future leaders who push forward social change specifically, where they're like, we're giving you the best education ever use it for good. Or, you failed at the Matrix, you know? Mm-hmm. So it's not the kind of bougie boarding school where they're like, get into an Ivy League school and then make your daddy proud. You know? Like it was a very different experience of high school. And so. I joked to this day that like the work that I do today is exactly what UWC trained me to do. Like they said to do it. And I was like, okay, i'll make you guys proud. Thanks. No, you came to America with a fully formed like a mission. Yes. That's, and I came to college being like, I want to work in the food industry. I know that I'm gonna adjust my major to weave my skillset together. And I literally majored in what I do now. So can I take an aside quickly to tell you about what I was thinking about when I got to America? So, you and I are the same age when I got to America. I, I went to Berkeley and I wanted to study mechanical engineering and, I had two numbers in my head at the time. I looked up how much the average Berkeley mechanical engineer made after graduating. The number was$72,000. And the second number I looked up was how much a cherry red Mercedes C class convertible cost. And that number was$32,000. And all that mattered to me was that the first number was higher than the second number. That's what I came in with. Okay. So you were about 25 years ahead of me in any kind of sort of moral understanding of the world. You seem to have caught up just fine. I'm trying, I'm trying. I I never bought the red Mercedes, for what it's worth. I figured. I hoped. Yeah, exactly. What would've been incredible is I should, I should have just stayed focused and I should have just, if I had just locked Insana, I could've had the red Mercedes. You could've had the red Mercedes and then you would've had no problems in life. Exactly. I think the most criminal part of all of that is actually the cherry red. I think that's, that's the part I should be the most embarrassed of. I feel like that's like such a, divorced second wife Daydream. Like, where did you, did you get that from? Desperate Housewives? Hey. We need to, this is all, can we do like a therapy session afterwards? Okay. No, no, no. Right now I cry, fairly often. Mm-hmm. But the part, the, the crying that I'm most fascinated by is when it catches me off guard and nothing catches me more off guard than how I cry at ads that are specifically target towards men having a midlife crisis. So I'll cry at a Mazda commercial where a man buys a convertible after he sends his daughter off to college and I'm 30 years old. Why is this hitting me like this? It's, all the dots are connecting. You are a straight man. Yes. Having your quarter life crisis Yes. Because you didn't develop your identity when you were 15. Yes. Whereas like I was a gay little kid who was bullied all the time, so I had to develop my identity when I was 16. So if the moral of the story is be gay is better, fuck you just figured it out for me. No, but what I like about those ads uhhuh, what I like about these cars. Even I don't, I own a very normal battle. Do anything like that? Sure. It's not cherry red, it's maroon. No, I'm kidding. No, it's, it's, I own just a regular SUV, but it's, I do think that there's something about it that's not, I think, exclusive to man. It's, it's just a very human thing of like you, this deep sense of responsibility that so many people move through life with, right? Mm-hmm. And for a lot of people, you know, you constantly optimize for practicality and responsibility at every stage of your life. And then you get to this place by the time you're in your early fifties, mid fifties. Mm-hmm. And I, I know a lot of men, I know a lot of women who have gone through this, and it's the first time that you're really able to do something for yourself. And I think that moment speaks a lot to me. That is my intellectualized version of liking trashy cars. But uh, let's, let's bring this back to you. So when you, when you show up to America, what was that? Tell, tell me about those early months. What, what did that feel like? Oh, man. So I remember just thinking that like I was gonna get to America and like my parents, I would, it was just all gonna work. Mm-hmm. I was gonna make my cool progressive friends. I was gonna discover who I am and instead I like showed up in SoCal suburbia. I went to Pomona College and I was just like. What in the Kleenex, vodka, yogurt, pretzels. What is all of this and why am I here? And I also thought that I was going to the set of the oc. And instead pomona College. It was not none of the above. And it was certainly not the oc. There was no ocean. The ocean was two hours away and I didn't know how to drive. Yes. So it was a lot of culture shock. This is a major part of false advertising with California. Right. I am a big California chauvinist. I think California is amazing. Same. I live here the rest of my life and, and we were lied to. We were lied to. Everybody was lied to. It's'cause if you show up in Modesto, it is not what you're expecting. So my phone number to this day is 9 0 9. Okay. Which refers to the Inland Empire. And if you had a 9 0 9 area code and you lived in the inland, inland Empire, you were cool.'cause now it's 9 5 1, I think. Mm-hmm. But the thing is it's cool for tattoo artists and truck drivers and me. That's my subgroup. Yes. And that's where I like start, came to America. So it wasn't maybe like the best place for me. But what I did is I was able to take a year off of school and I went to New York and my parents were like, you wanna take a year off? That's on your dime, bro. And I,, worked at an urban farm. I waitressed at a fancy restaurant and I started like working as a baker and a bakery. And it was hilarious to realize that at 19 and not knowing shit, people were so desperate from like my manual labor that they would hire me and pay me 20 bucks an hour. And I was like, y'all wanna pay me? I don't know anything. I've never had a job before. But they were like, yeah, yeah, please, come bake for us. So I was like, commercially baking, like Brooklyn blackout cakes and peanut butter cookies for this bougie bakery at 19 years old. And I think it gave me a real okay. I now understand how like capitalist food industry, America works. I've worked in a farm that didn't work. Like they don't make money. I work in a bakery. They don't, that doesn't seem to work either. I work in a restaurant. That's terrible too. So how are people getting fed and how can I get a job that like, doesn't burn me all over my arms? Mm-hmm. Or I'm like working from sun up to sundown for no money. So I do think that then I applied my last two years of college to being like, I just have to figure out the equation. I want to work in food. I want to make a semi-decent living. My bar was so low, it was like, if I make 40 k I'll be fine. That is more than what it cost to get a cherry red Mercedes. So, so I was Okay. At what point did you just know that it's gonna be in food and,'cause it seems like by this point you've already decided you're gonna be working food, you're just trying to figure out what part supply chain. So that was by the time before I came to college, I, I think s spring break of my senior year of high school, I worked on an olive grove. And I just loved it. And I was just like, I wanna do this. I wanna make kale soup and I wanna grow olives and press them into oil. This sounds great. So, but then the reality of you don't have land. You don't know how to make a living. You have no marketable skills. Mm-hmm. So then college was really just an exercise in, I'm surrounded by really smart people. Surely if I like, ask enough questions, they'll help me figure it out. And I started the comp diaspora, nine months out of college, so I was like, trying to figure it out, you know? Kind of all along. I, again, I'm just, I'm so impressed by, how clear of a sense you had of what you wanted to do, and it was just a matter of time before you figured it out. Part of that I think it sounds nice. Then back then I like felt like I was a hot mess. Really? I was. I mean the, the, the, I was definitely a hot mess too. I'm thinking about me working in the mission in my early twenties and I'm like, oh God, that was so bad. Oh, really? I, I think, yes, compared to other people in their early twenties. I was on a path. Mm-hmm. And I think externally people saw that. I know I talked to one of my close friends, but then Mentor Ek, who ran the People's Kitchen Collective. And she was like, Zanna, you graduated college and like you moved to San Francisco. And like we could all see you had a plan. It was terrifying. But I didn't perceive myself that way. I perceived it that I was like a fucking mess. And that I didn't have my shit together. And I think my mom was very hard on herself and she definitely like mm-hmm. Downloaded that into my brain anatomy. Mm-hmm. So I was like very, like pushing to keep it moving. I can really relate to that. I started my company, when I was 21, 22. And we have some interns. That I'll work with every once in a while. And they're 21 and 22. And I look at them and I, I hope none of them listen to this, but I genuinely, I feel like. Oh my God, I would never trust you with millions of dollars. Why did anyone think that was a good idea to do that? But the point being, I, I didn't feel it at the time. I, I also felt like I was all over the place and but, looking back, yeah, it was, it was nuts how much had more of your shit together and then you think Right. Exactly. But I also, the the other thing that I'm really struck by what you're saying is how much that sense of responsibility that we're talking about mm-hmm. It, the two types of people I've seen that be very heavy in are Indians and Catholics, have this deep sense of duty and responsibility. And unfortunately the thing that that does seem to come with is this deep sense of guilt that you're never doing enough. That you're not, you're not put together enough that you're not focused enough on helping people and all that. But let's, let's talk about diaspora. There's antidepressants for that. I highly recommend. I, I'm told they are. Yeah. Uh,, So you, you started diaspora nine months outta college. You're 22 years old. 23. I think I was 22. And tell me about the, the origins of, of diaspora. What is the, sort of the insight about the world, or what is this feeling that you had about the world that led to it starting and what was the first version of diaspora? Like? Just gimme the, the, the early. So I think there's like the, what was the problem we were trying to solve and what was the like space I was trying to create in the world? Two separate things. The problem was I was working at BuyRight down the street from here and on my commute from 16th Street Bart Station to BuyRight, to the office. I would pass by like coffee shops and tea shops. And I kept seeing golden milk in the like. Menus and I would be like, what is that? Why is that$8? This was the rage in 2016, man. It was like flying. And so I think one day I was so homesick'cause, you know, first job outta college, didn't have money for a flight home yet. All of those things. And so I like actually paid the$8 and tried one. I was like, what is this? And then I, I think after that I went into the store by Right. And walked around the spice shelves and I was like, wait, we like source, like the best peaches known to mankind from Masi Moto Family Farms, which is currently peach season. Mm-hmm. We source like the most beautiful California citrus and our spice aisle is kind of grim. Like it's, you know, those little, green boxes of spices that like mystery origin. Mm-hmm. You have to pay$3. You don't know why. It's just like powders you add to your food. So I think there's this like a little ding of. I'm seeing things being sourced beautifully, but when they're coming from the global south or when they come, or when they're placed in the ethnic food aisle, they are sourced poorly. So that was like, the problem I wanted to solve, it was like, I don't see things being sourced very well. I don't see good spices and I am like in the nicest like grocery store I think in, maybe in America. So there's gotta, we should fix that. But I think on the other side, I was seeing the beautiful, bean to bar chocolate company is the,, third wave coffee companies. There was a lot of like beautiful stuff being sourced, especially here in San Francisco. But the people that. That grew the food or grew the ingredients that grew. The coffee beans always looked very different from the people roasting the coffee beans. Or making the chocolate bar. And,, there was an aesthetic Right. It was like white with a beard. And had access to a lot of millions of dollars. And often liked talking about like Ethiopia as an origin or, I don't know, Tobago as an origin for either coffee or chocolate. But do we know anything about like why Cho, like why coffee is so good coming out of Ethiopia? No, you know, there was, there was just like complete removal of cultural understanding of like, why are the most beautiful beans in the world coming from Ethiopian and what is it about the Ethiopian people soil terror art culture that is responsible for that? And you don't. Take the interest to tell those stories unless you are from that culture or you deeply love them, you know? And so I think when I started talk, thinking about telling stories about spices or like ingredients coming outta South Asia, and I love South Asia. I'm obsessed with this land we come from. That is so, diverse and fertile and beautiful. And so I wanna tell my turmeric farmer story, and I have been telling his story for the past nine years with a level of obsession because, I think he's the coolest ever, you know, and I just think his family is beautiful. And the food that they make is mind blowing. So that's the stories I wanted to tell. And I just felt like nobody else would do that. And run a spice company, you know, they would like slap a. And Prade origin. Tasting notes off like burnt fig. But not talk about who grew it and why they grow it, and like why it's the best variety and like why it's indigenous to those hills in that soil. So that's the cultural piece. I, I kind of ranted, sorry. No, beautiful rant. I think to remove the person from the product is one of the most criminal things that, the sort of the industrial revolution did, right? Mm-hmm. And, I was coming up my sort of early years of my career. One thing I think we're gonna realize people listening to the podcast realize is you and I have lived somewhat parallel lives. Yeah, yeah, but you know, I, I was in that world and I was working for a direct to consumer coffee company. In 20 15, 20 16. And I remember they would talk about this fact all the time. They were like,, the country that drinks the most coffee in the world is Finland. And I was like, well, Finland hadn't grown a fucking one coffee bean in the last several hundred years. Okay. And I, I remember that, that fact just stuck with me a lot. Mm-hmm. They would talk a lot about Finland and Berlin's coffee culture and all this. And I just was like, it's such a crazy divide. Between, where this is being made and how it's being consumed and how it's being consumed. Where is the best chocolate in the world made? Oof. I feel like I'm gonna get this wrong. Where is it? Where is the best chocolate made or where are the best cocoa beans grown? Exactly. That's, you know, to ask the question. Okay. Right. Nobody else knows to ask the question. Oh'cause they'll say Switzerland or Belgium. Exactly. It's Switzerland, Belgium, France makes the best chocolate. They don't grow cocoa beans. They don't have cocoa beans. They barely know how to roast them. What their innovation was, they added milk.'cause they have cows. You know, so yes, they make the best milk chocolate in the world because they got milk. Mm-hmm. But Mexico has had chocolate culture dating back thousands of years. But because of racism and colonialism, we don't talk about Mexico's cacao growing and chocolate making culture, which is profound. Granada makes beautiful chocolate'cause they grow cocoa beans. So I feel like so much of the work I'm always thinking about is one, making consumers stop to ask the question you just asked. Mm-hmm. Okay. Are you asking where the best chocolate's made, or do you, are you asking where the best cocoa beans are grown? Yeah, because there are completely different things. So that's like pause number one, and then pause number two is. Why is that the case? Like why is it that the best belt like chocolate comes from Belgium? Oh, I think'cause they were colonizers. They had all the money. They took everybody's jewels and they spent it on making milk chocolate. That's not even a joke. You know, that's money translated. Like I went to give a talk in the Netherlands and like they have this beautiful, museum in Amsterdam and I had to give a talk at the museum. And I was giving a talk about decolonizing the spice trade. Oh my God. And I was like, the irony is really rich guys. And I asked the audience, I was like, do any of you know why it is ironic that me, a brown Indian girl is standing here giving you a talk about decolonizing the spice trade to the Dutch No, none of you. Okay. All this entire museum was built because the Dutch committed genocide against the Indonesians for spices. We are aware of that? No. Okay, babe. Bigger honorariums. So anyway, I'm ranting now. We should talk about No, no, no. The journey of the company. No, no, no. This is, this is what matters. Okay. It's, it's great Spices. Go check out dpr, go buy'em all empty out the shelves. All of the, all of the above. What I care about is, is Ana. And so, it does, it seems like actually that original sort of kernel of an idea mm-hmm. Has stayed pretty consistent all the way through. Has that, has that evolved at all for you, your conception of the company? So, when I started the company, I was a baby gay in that, I had just come out, I was not on great terms with my family. I was like literally going to all the like queer parties, like trying to find love. Mm-hmm. And really starting diaspora was also about community. I was like, hi, like I'm sending out my little signal. Can I create space in the world for us to exist? And that has been beautiful and luckily, like the world changed, I think for the worse and for the better in that I have community, I have a partner, I have established space in my industry., There are a lot of other queer food founders now, so there's not as much like daily like emissions for love me. Mm-hmm. I need space in the world. Like we have, we have power and we've established space. Right? Yeah so I think that's changed by which I mean we were doing like queer mixers in the early years, you know? I love that. I'm definitely not unfortunately hosting queer mixers now. I'm like trying to make my p and l work and give my team raises. Like that's more my, I I am more a traditional CEO now than I was in the early days. Mm-hmm. In the early days. I think I was a community organizer who sold spices on the side. Mm-hmm. I am now a spice dealer who is the CEO of a mid-size company. So that is definitely a difference. I've tried to maintain the idealism through that process and maintain the like. Be self-aware enough to not turn into all the horror stories you read about and heard about or worked for. Yeah, I try, I think I like get it right sometimes. And then I think the other pieces, when I started it, it was an art project. I was an art student who's senior thesis was that I studied the Spice Trade and the tea industry and I wanted to create like an installation around that. And then I was like, okay, the like coolest like rendition of that art installation. My senior thesis would be to like actually sell the product. Mm-hmm. Like the final form of the art project is to sell the thing and engage within capitalism for it. And that meant that I was like collaborating with artists and, you know, it was beautiful because it allowed me to create this like really vibrant, strong brand. And. Luckily, my like, Gura jeans were good enough that the math, math, I'm so glad that as an art major, my like basic pie chart math still mathed that our like cogs were good. They're better now. But I think now I do have to think a lot more about, okay, like spotlighting this artist is wonderful, but also from a supply chain operational point of view. What is the most effective way to get beautiful spices to as many people as possible. I'm just dealing with the like deeply complex supply chain of it all. Whereas before I was like, I sell some turmeric on the side and then I mostly do art installations. So that's the transformation I, this is gonna get very like D two C, nerdy for a second Uhhuh. And this has been something that I've observed about diaspora from the outside. We all had that same diagram on our website, right. Of, it was like, oh, the, the farmer and you, and then the two lines. Right. And it went through, and most of us still do, but yeah, we all kind of started from there. But as we as companies have had to be out in, make contact with reality mm-hmm. And like with the atmosphere more and more, what's slowly started to become obvious is how much people really meant that chart, each of us individually. And for a lot of companies, that was the first thing to go that, that that mission of being direct trade. Connecting you to the producer was, I mean, the second funding diet, it was like, get that the fuck outta you. And it was, we are a brand and we do that. And it just, it all sort of shifted. But I've always been really struck and impressed by how much diaspora code was. And it, I think it has to do with the fact that. You were an art student who felt these issues and felt,, othered at times and felt, you know, connected to these issues in a very, sort of, authentic way. Mm-hmm. And then built a business around that. As opposed to, like a banker that is looking at the fucking market and being like, a director consumer seems to be taken off. Let's apply that to spices now. And I, because in 2017, those two people started businesses that looked very similar. Yep. But in 2025, I, at least somebody that's been in the industry can look at one and look at the other and tell you which one was what. I wanna give the bankers some credit though. Sure. Just a little bit. I don't like to give bankers too much credit. This is the most unexpected thing you're gonna say on this podcast is you, you giving bankers credit is a very unexpected thing. Warm intro is brought to you by Wefunder. Wefunder created this thing called the Community Round that lets you raise money directly from your community. So instead of going to VCs and rich people, angel investors, you can go straight to your friends and your family and your customers. And you know, this is not a traditional ad read. I used Wefunder for my company three times. We ran three rounds on Wefunder. We raised over a million dollars, and I found that it completely changed how everybody felt about our business. Our customers all of a sudden didn't feel like they were just customers. They felt like they were owners in the business. They shopped with us more. They told their friends about us. My team felt like what we were doing was important because our community had shown up to invest in us. I tell every founder I can find to go raise away fund around. Especially for companies that care about community, there is nothing greater you can do than letting that community invest. Go to wefunder.com/join to check it out because I knew that like our value proposition and like our social impact to farmers was always gonna be my number one. Like I started this to make a good living for myself. Mm-hmm. But I've been very public about saying that this is not the business that will make me rich. That is not the point of this company. I would like to buy a house someday, but like my aspirations with what wealth this business can give me, kind of end there. Mm-hmm. But as a result of that being the baseline always, we never took financing that would put that at risk. Right? So for the first five years we were completely bootstrapped. Then we raised around from a family office that was very values aligned. And to this day is, and I have had our back. Then, when we needed a second round of financing, I went to 65 operator angels. And again, to them I was like, these are our politics. This is our like, social impact. This is the goal I'm trying to attain actually is our farm workers all earning above the living wage and I need to scale the company 10 x in order to attain this goal. So what you're funding is not really like your four x exit, you're funding me 10 xing the business for the farm worker goal. So I was always very clear and that put off a lot of people and it meant that I couldn't go to vc, I couldn't go to PE because we are, our funding goals were not aligned. Right. If I had taken VC money, I would not still be the CEO of this company in 2025. Mm-hmm. Like I would've gone bye bye a long time ago because they would've had to make a return. And exit and get out. So I think, the type of money you take or don't take determines what, when you're allowed or able to adhere to your values. And I think a lot of like young bipoc founders don't know that. Mm-hmm. And I think people are very opaque about that. So like the banker knew, that when they were taking, the 7 million in PE funding in 2017, there's a three year like horizon on that, right? Mm-hmm. And if by 2020, like shit wasn't magical, like all the bells and whistles and all the supply chain fru has to go away for that exit to happen. On the, like we all knew that unfortunately the consumer doesn't know that, but like we know that on the backend. So I think, even now when I am advising founders. I try to be like really cut and dry about it, where I'm like, you wanna make a hundred mil and exit next year? Like I love that for you. Go, you, I love the ambition, let's go. Mm-hmm. Take PE money. Don't talk about farmers' values. Or try to make everything like equitable and magical. Like social impact work is like generational work. I don't know, a social impact business that has made tremendous intergenerational impact in under five years that just doesn't exist. Like I actually don't think I have a single example of that. There was all the like. I don't know, pure water. There's all these like businesses where they were like, you buy coffee from us, we'll, give clean water to everybody. Mm-hmm. And like in two years, like the Toms model, right? The Toms model just replicated infinitely. Toms is like still existing and like they didn't sell in two years, you know? So I think if you're basing it on impact, you have to be playing the long game. If you're not interested in the long game, don't talk about impact. Separate things. Oh man, I, there's so much good stuff in, in what you said. I think this is this is gold. This is the juice. Profound. So this, this is really fantastic. I think the first principle, if I could just, just spelling it out more than you already did you synthesize I drink water. Okay. Well one, one really core idea of look, you can start a values based business and you can stick to your values or you can start a completely commercial enterprise and you can remain a completely commercial enterprise, but know which one you're doing. And be clear about it. And I think that was the thing that a lot of businesses did not do. In the sort of the era that we were coming up in. And I think that that's one thing, and that's you sign yourself up for a world of pain. I don't even think it was that the founders were lying to customers. I think they were lying to themselves mm-hmm. About what they were really about because, you know, to, to trace this back a little bit, I think a lot of this comes from this very eighties Milton Friedman sort of conception of business, right? Where, it is, I think if you've picked at the average American, just on the street average person, honestly at this point, and ask them what is the point of business? What is the point of a business? They would say the point of a business is to make money. To make money. A hundred percent. I don't even wanna really debate that point. But I think there is no other variable in that description. Mm-hmm. There is no concept of okay, well maybe the point is to make as much money as you can while also serving this other goal, right? Mm-hmm. Maybe the point is to make enough money so that you can serve this other goal. It is an extremely flattened out description of what a business should be. Mm-hmm. And that is what a lot of entrepreneurs of our generation came up with. And so to me, yeah, they can talk a big game about values, but what matters is you will reach a point, every single founder will reach a point Yep. Where your professed values come up in contact with your sort of commercial interests. Mm-hmm. And, that's when you find out what you're made of, that's when you find out who you really are. That's when you find out how good the turmeric really is. Right. But, and again, I think that this is something DCO has been really great about. I want to actually specifically double click on a couple of decisions that you took and I want to try to understand them. I'm scared. No, they're all good things. What did I do? It's all that I think would be crazy for me at this point in the podcast to pull out just dirt. To pull out the dirt. But tell me about the decision to pay for, farmers' Healthcare, in, in those early days. Where did that come from? Presumably you didn't have a ton of money to do that with. How did that, that I never have money. How did you think to do that? So I was at the turmeric harvest, I think in 2019. I might have my years mixed up. And,, the women who harvest, the Casini Farms turmeric are just wonderful. But I was noticing that every one of them was ailing in some way. Either diabetic complications or cancer or straight up malnourishment or, you know, the, like compounding effect of doing all of the physical and emotional and house labor, for three generations just causing like debilitating illness. The average, pay for a farm worker in across India is 350 rupees per day. That is$3, four. Four,$4.20 a day. I think,, in order to be above the poverty line and thrive, you need to be above$5 a day. So the goal is$5 a day. When we did the math on what it would cost our farmers within this like really broken system to pay all of their workers$5 a day, year round, it was not possible. Which is a really sad reality. So to this day, that is not the norm on our farms. They're not earning$5 a day. Wow. And therefore, when I talked about the investment I took in order for us to be able to pay our farmers enough and give them enough business in order for them to pay all of their workers$5 a day, we have to, to the revenue that we are today, we have to 10 x in size. Wow. Because only with 10 xing in size can I give those farmers enough scale to justify paying their labor fairly. That tells you how broken the system is on every level. I think I run like a pretty, good operation. We pay all of our people well, like our math. Math, and we still can't fix the system without scale. So therefore, like the only way I could think of to temporarily solve a little bit of the system, but not even that much was, alright, what is it gonna cost to get health insurance for these 30 workers? Actually in India, not that much, you know? Mm-hmm. I think it's 18,000 rupees per person., So 18,000 is what, like 250? It's actually exactly 200,$210 now. With the exchange rate has gone Woo. So$210 per person multiplied by 30. That's not much. So actually it's cheaper for me to provide the health insurance than, solve like their salary woes for the rest of the year across all of my farms. Not to say that I shouldn't try to solve like the systemic salary problem, I am just one person and they just cannot solve as yet. So I, I saw the healthcare as like a stop gap, you know? Unfortunately, the healthcare program ran from I think 2019 to 2020. Mm-hmm. Four. And we stopped doing it. And the reason we stopped doing it is because the workers that BU was working with, he was able to bring them all full-time. That's right. And so he was able to move them from this like seasonal work model where he was only like hiring them sometimes to, he was like, actually I need 15 people full-time now I have enough work to justify that. And as a result, they're being paid enough, like their needs are met. And he was like, they can actually somehow afford their own medicines. Like they're okay. Mm-hmm., So. The system stopped needing that intervention. And so now we're taking like the farm worker fund money, which used to be the healthcare money and we're applying it to build,, segregated bathrooms for men and women on the farm. For the workers. So it's okay, well where's the next place that we can use What in the US is a small amount of money? Five to 10 K to have a very large amount of impact in India. And I think there, the mistake a lot of American companies make is like us with our like fancy degrees and our English speaking bullshit, think we have the answers and we absolutely do not have the answers. And so we had to hire somebody who spoke the tribal language or like a certain regional language that the workers did or spoke. Have them have like separate like talking and survey sessions with the workers away from their employer in order to understand what their biggest need was. And then our job, like with me as the buyer, was to rally the farmer to make sure that the farmer's needs were being met, you know? Wow. So it's, it is a multi, multiple step process and I feel like we have to limit how much we do of that, because that would take away from my full-time job of actually selling their spices. Mm-hmm. But that's the job to actually do it well. Wow. Can you explain to me a little bit of the, let's, let's get in the weeds a little bit Okay. What Diaspora Co is today. Yeah, tell, tell me about it. How many spices are you selling? How many farms? Presumably you can't tell me the total scale of the business, but just tell me about what is happening. On a daily basis, the kind of miracles that you all are pulling off. Okay. It's a very complicated supply chain. Sure. So we have about 30 spices and then 10 blends. Those 10 blends have anywhere from seven to 17 ingredients mm-hmm. That we have to source to blend them. Those are all being blended in Mumbai. Mm-hmm. But we have all of our spices get manufactured on farm. So that's an important distinction because most people when they work with farms, they'll buy like fresh chilies or like fresh turmeric, or I dunno, a thing of ginger. Mm-hmm. And then they'll transport it fresh to a factory somewhere like a centralized factory and process it and turn it into powder and sell it to a consumer. Our thinking was if we like empower our farm partners to, process themselves, we can pay them an extra dollar per kilogram. And again, we did the math and I was like, I can give them a 5K loan to build a mill on their farm and then pay them$1 more pillar per kilogram to own the means of processing. Mm-hmm. And what that that is great from an impact point of view, but it is also great from like a quality and final product point of view. And that is what like most like Milton Freedom Friedman Stone cold capitalist miss is when you buy a raw material and you process it yourself and then you sell it. The farmer is not responsible for the final product, so there's no sense of pride or responsibility for what gets to the customer, and they can just be like, oops, you must have messed it up at some point. You know, our farmers are giving our customers what they cook within their kitchens, so they take a great deal of pride in what they're processing and creating because they know that there's no intervention between like when it left the farm to when it got to the customer. Mm-hmm. So that has actually been one of our strongest quality control tools, which in turn make more money. So that's nitty gritty number one. Mm-hmm. Then what is the structure of the business? We started with one farm. We now work with 140 Wow. India in Sri Lanka. All of them. All India and Sri Lanka. And why India and Sri Lanka? It's because we're able to go deep, right? Our team speaks almost every single language of the farmers that we work with. Wow.. Whereas if I was bringing in ingredients from Vietnam or Indonesia, both incredible spice growing regions, I don't speak Vietnamese. I don't know anything. So I can't like problem solve with them as deeply at all. Therefore I can't have as much impact, therefore my product will not be as good. So we have definitely chosen to go deep. So why, if we have 30 spices, why 140 farms? It started out that it was like one spice one farm. Mm-hmm. Right. But as we scaled, we had to create micro co-ops. Mm-hmm. So for example, we now source turmeric from three farms. So Pabu, our original farmer and two of his cousins. Mm-hmm. We source, cinnamon from a central farm that we have always worked with. Mm-hmm. Who then they have these five ladies who are their sourcing ladies mm-hmm. Who basically like source from all of their neighbors mm-hmm. And do physical taste tests at the factory Wow. Where they're tasting cinnamon from neighbor's farms to check whether it like meets the diaspora quality standard off cinnamon. The fatigue from that is outrageous and they're like experts at it. So, you know, that becomes a co-op of like 30 farms supplying to us. So mm-hmm. That's the supply chain. And then I think the piece that has changed the most is when I started I had sayad, my, my dude, he's our director of India operations and he's been with me since day one of the company. And I had almost nobody else in India. And then we built out a team here and we had everything from like customer service, sales, marketing, everything here. And over the years, I just found that that didn't work. Where our team of storytellers, our team of, customer service, everything actually needed to be closer to farm, then it needed and closer to origin and the story we're trying to tell then closer to market. Okay. And so we have a six person team here. We're very small here. Mm-hmm. And we have a 25 person team in India. Wow. So my entire marketing team, except for me, sits in India and they just do a phenomenal job. We have three designers on our team. They're incredible. We have, our sales team is in India and here, ops is India. And here, finance is India. And here I, okay. This is, I'm gonna talk some shit on your behalf. All right. Okay. There's this kinda, on my behalf, there's this thing because it's, it would be as the CE of the company. I don't think you could do this. Okay. But, there's this sort of, argument okay. That I see a lot online where when people hear, folks like you and folks like me with, with, you know, kind of more progressive, I would say, more liberal values, right? There's this sort of knee jerky reaction. That a lot of, I think like it's kind of a boomy reaction. Okay. To be like, oh, you know, that doesn't work in the real world. That isn't, that's not mm-hmm. You know, it's like dudes with like school of hard knocks and education in their like Facebook profile. To be like, you know, they don't come and contact. That's not how business works. That's not how the world works. And I fucking dare anyone, I dare any one of those dudes with school of hard knocks in their Facebook profile to go out and run a business as operationally complex as yours.'cause I across two time zones that are 12 and a half hours apart. No. That is a beast of a, of a business. That's ridiculous. That is an insane business to run and to do it, it's operationally insane. It's, I mean, I mean that it would in, in a good way, in a respectful way. No, no, I actually. That, that's the thing, like the most impressive operations I have are the most insane operations have, right? It is an operational beast of a business to run. And, the job that you all do with the marketing and the storytelling is so, I mean, you just have your auteurs about it and you're, you're just so, so, so refined and so good at it. And so I, I think this is, gets lost perhaps sometimes. And when people hear the values of, of the business, they miss how just fucking like jro dreams of sushi, like perfect precision you need to have to be able to do this kind of thing. Well, so just, I just wanted to give you the flowers there. I appreciate that so much. But I, and I have an addition where my partner is a surgeon. And like his whole world is they all went to med school when they were in their early twenties, and they like lived the conventional track. Mm-hmm. And so when I'll be in like these, like hospitaly stanfordy environments and they'll be like, mm-hmm. Oh, you are in a spice business. Oh, that's so sweet. You know, and they're like, I think there's like a feminization of it. And there's just like a inherent looking down of it because it's like, it's in the realm of like cute stuff. Not like we cut bodies for a living. And it, it usually takes and I have to be like, hi. Hi. Of course. And it usually takes 15 to 20 minutes for the penny to drop for them. And I'm, I. I feel like I can just be straight up a modest about it where I'm just like, in 15 minutes they figure out that I run a very legit company. And I'm like, a very legit CEO, mm-hmm. Running like a very impressive operation, quite frankly. And especially for the men, usually I think the women are more tolerable about, tolerable about it, but like the men will go from being like, oh, hi sweetie, what's your hobby? And like almost not making eye contact with me and like choosing to talk to my partner Sure. To then being like, oh, oh, to talk business to me, bro. Yeah, let's talk about p and Ls, man. Yeah, yeah, and like immediately start like broing and manning me. Mm-hmm. And I'd be like, yeah, I can bro out with you about a p and l dude. Yeah, you could have talked to me about that 15 minutes ago, but you put me in a box, I'm like, you missed the opportunity entirely. So I do think that as a measure of being in the food space, being a female founder and it's sounding cute. Mm-hmm. People don't understand the sheer slog that is our job. Oh, totally. I, it, I, sorry, sorry to cut you off. But I, it's okay. I just, this is evoking small, strong emotions for me. I, I remember,'cause you know, people would think, and of course I think you definitely got a much worse version of this, but people would think that I was running like a cute sort of'cause it's creative and it's you know, we care a lot about design and it's, you know, it's like people are shopping with us, like, how rough could it be? And people would tell me, be like, oh dude, you must have so much fun. I was like, you know what I'm dealing with right now? A fucking container got stolen. Okay. Somebody stole a container worth a hundred thousand dollars and I'm talking to seven different police departments in the country right now. Okay. It is as uncut as it can get. Or we would enough, we had to drive through the Los Angeles fires in order to rescue this year's pepper harvest. Jesus. So if we did not drive literally through LA fires that like. Destroyed homes. Nobody would've had pepper this year. That's not cute. Nothing about that is cute. Yeah, it's horrible. God, it's, we, you have to deal with demerge and tariffs and container ships and I mean, we had a c chocolatier on the podcast. And I don't, I think he'd be comfortable with me sharing this. You know, his job is viewed as very there's so much beauty and so much grace to it and all that. And if you talk to him, I asked him, I said, on the podcast, you know,, Todd, what are your, what do your days look like? Like how do you plan? And he said, I go into my day with no plan. I go in, I have learned, I have adapted to this mode of living and work where I. Expect nothing off my day and I just go in and, oh, I guess the freezer caught on fire or whatever. I guess. I guess all the inventory got stolen. Yeah, I guess the supplier got kidnapped. That's, I'm adding that last one on my own, but point is that we have like fraud happening on the cardamom farms. We have like politicians I don't know, threatening people. There's all kinds, there's money laundering left and right, like there's all kinds of drama. It's really funny that you mention Todd and Dandelion Chocolate because I work in the industry, right? Like I, and I would argue that me and Todd's jobs are not dissimilar from each other. Actually very similar. And yet I get the dandelion Instagram and marketing messages, and I think that the dandelion team must be like, frolicking through feels of chocolate. So even I fall for the bullshit, you know? Even though I'm meant to see through it. Because like I see their like whimsical, magical marketing with the most beautiful packaging known to Mankin, and I'm like, wow. Like they're just, their life must be like drawing astrological illustrations for their,, what is it? Their, advent calendar? Like their viral ad. That's what I imagine Todd's days. And obviously Todd is like really hustling and dealing with fires. But yeah, exactly. It's, I think, we also had a had a chef on who's our age. Mm-hmm. So he is early thirties and he has two Michelin stars. And,, after the bear came out, this is not gonna be surprising to anybody but. That's another job where so much beauty on the plate. It, the people's experience of that job of, as consumers of it is, is only as an art form and oh my God. So wow. They're doing poetry on a plate and meanwhile back in the kitchen, it is as rough a job as you can imagine. It's,, this whole thing, like shooting this stuff, gaffers, do manual labor. I one time to save money on a shoot, I was like, I'll be our, I'll be our gaffer and I'll carry stuff around up and down New York. I've never worked out. It was like CrossFit doesn't come close. It's, these are any, to make anything beautiful requires, such extraordinary effort. And I'm like, I'm always struck by that. And to me that doesn't make it less beautiful. Mm-hmm. To me, like mm-hmm. And this is, might as well be. You know, out of the diaspora brand book to me, the deep human effort needed. Mm-hmm. And the attention to detail, the painstaking attention to detail needed to make something beautiful, makes it more beautiful, not less.'cause that's what farming is, you know? And that's kind of the whole point is like mm-hmm. We get these like little orange powders or like little powders called spices that we like sprinkle onto our food and we have no idea that it was grown in the ground harvested at a particular time of year, painstakingly processed. You know, like you go to the saffron harvest and you're just like, which completely mentally ill person came up with the idea to harvest three stigmas out of a saffron flour. And turn that into a spice. Why? Like you didn't wanna just I don't know, use orange juice. Like you didn't, you need to use the flour juice. So yeah, this is you,, we will link this, in the show notes. People should just go and watch Saffron get you, everybody that's oh my, why is Saffron so expensive? Watch how it's made, dude. Because you'll want to pay double for it. It's, it's crazy. I've seen some of diaspora's videos on it too. Mm-hmm. It's, it gives you such an appreciation for this stuff. And I think bringing this back to, I think what,, what you're doing and what, where, I think it does really relate to what's happened with coffee, right? Mm-hmm. With third wave coffee, like there was this conception, I think if you asked, in the eighties, maybe even nineties, the average Americans experience of coffee Folgers off of a supermarket shelf was of it almost as an. Inorganic substance. I, I mean, yes. It wasn't, they didn't read it as something, as a plant that was ever alive, right? Yes, it would. They read it as like a rock that existed, and I think they still read spices that way. Exactly, exactly. People think that turmeric is like a pow, like a chemical compound that just appeared precisely, and I'm like, no, it was a plant and you harvested it and then did the book. E Exactly. Yeah, no, you, you, you beat me to the punch that, that's exactly that. I think with spices, our understanding is still very second wave, and I know the moment I bought first wave, right? Oh, first wave. Yeah, you're right. Very deeply. First wave the. I know the moment that I tasted really good coffee for the first time, that wasn't Folgers. Actually, you know, what am I doing? Talking shit about America? This was my first experience of coffee. Okay. Wasn't that like Cafe Coffee Day or B Barista? Oh God. You were Boer than me, than Santa. My parents gave me. Espresso. I would stay up late and, and work at night. Mm-hmm. Or like study. And my parents gave me this coffee machine that was gifted to them, during their wedding because they, nobody in my family drank coffee. Okay. So I had a 25-year-old coffee machine and they were like, oh, here's a bag of coffee somebody gave us like, I think five years ago. So I, the first coffee I really started drinking was I would brew it in my room. I would brew black coffee. That was five years old. And I was like, I love it. I don't even know what it had left at that point, drugs, but but I remember the first time that I tasted like true good coffee. Mm-hmm. And I think everyone owes it to themselves to have that same moment with spices. I think people owe it to themselves, to, I went to Carla, last year and I brought back some, I was there three days ago. Oh, look at that. It's for people that don't know, that's where, that's where Pepper is originally from a, along with a lot of other spices and, oh my God, the experience of. Like you haven't really tasted any of these spices mm-hmm. Until you've tasted them, from that part of the world and you've tasted them fresh. It's. You've been working with like rough approximations of what these flavors are and not the actual thing ever. So growing up, for me, black Pepper was the thing that came in, like the cardboard tube that said catch. And it was pre powdered. And. The only use I thought there was for Black pepper was that on the, like once a week when my nanny made tomato soup with croutons? Mm-hmm. We would put like a little compulsory thing of black pepper on top. And that's just because the British clubs used to do it that way. You know, they had the canned tomato soup with the little croutons and like a little thing of black pepper on top. And I would always like, what is the black bits and why do we have it? I didn't know even know that it was supposed to have flavor. I thought it was like just a visual thing that you're supposed to have the black flex on top of the tomato soup. Mm-hmm. And I was like, it tastes like blah. And then like then the experience of like our black pepper, which is like vine ripened and, beautifully harvested and basically like a fully ripe fruit that has like notes of like fig and jam. Mm-hmm. It's just like different complete universes off pepper dim. No, it's going from a one dimensional or zero dimensional thing on the, those little packets they give you at restaurants are like, the fact that it gets packed in with the plastic fork knife and a napkin should tell you everything. I mean, it's tells you the level of industrialization that, that like product has gone through to get to you. There's this, diner in San Francisco and the, this is an unnecessary, this story's not gonna have payoff. There's this diner in San Francisco called Silver CREs Diner. It's owned by this. Greek man who's I think in his mid eighties or mid nineties, and their claim to fame is that they're open 24 hours. Mm-hmm. They do not need to be open 24 hours. Nobody's there most hours of the day, but it is a beautiful relic of a place. And they've been around for 50, 60 years and he is asleep at the counter most of the time until you walk in. But if you get coffee from him, Uhhuh, he'll give you a pack of coffee. And just from the branding, you can tell that this was made in the eighties or nineties, and I think that one day we will wait. The experience of drinking that coffee is how I hope will one day feel about spices, the way that they're served to the average American. Right. You're, you're working on it. But I want to actually let's, let's bring this back to you now Enough with my thoughts on cardamom. Which by the way, actually, I guess two more thoughts on card. Okay. People should listen to, I think Camille, non Gianni had, have you seen this bit of his, where he talks about, he's look, Americans, you can use turmeric, it's fine. You can use card, but please use it. Right? Like you're just, it's not turmeric, not supposed to go in sweets. What are you doing? And it just, anyway, great. People should check it out. But I wanna, I wanna make the, I wanna bring this back to you. So you were 22 when you started the business. You were 30. 31 now. 32. 32. Just very candid. Do you ever regret spending your twenties doing this? Do you ever feel like. You could have had more fun, you could have done something lighter. No, never. I had so much fun. No, I mean, I think I just grew so much and when I started the company, the thing that I said, it, so when I told my dad that I wanted to quit my job at BuyRight, and he was like, if you leave such a good job that, you know, aligns all your interests, like six months in, you are always gonna quit. You'll never stick with something. And I was like, dad, I'm just bored. And I just, I want a job where I'm not bored. Mm-hmm. It's been nearly 10 years and man, have I never been bored? And you know, I, I, I wake up every morning and I have to solve. Really, really, really big problems. That I don't know the answer to at all. And usually just barely have the skillset to solve for. You know, and that's really fun. So I do think that I also like naturally have the risk tolerance of an absolute psycho. Mm-hmm. And so this business is very well suited for me. And my COO bless her heart runs this business, has the risk tolerance of a small field mouse. And like the difference of those risk tolerances. It is the secret sauce. Because she and I are always pushing the tension of the risk tolerance really tight. Mm-hmm. Where I'm like, we're just gonna leave. And she's we're gonna make 12 plans. And that's what makes magic happen. Sana, if, if you were a spice, what spice would you be? Ugh. Have you been asked that before? So much. Fuck man. I thought that was so, I just, I didn't, it's not original. It's not original at all. Cut it, cut it, cut it. Cut it. Cut. Cut it. Don't answer it. Okay. Now actually answer it please. People haven't heard this. Okay. Good question. We're gonna cut out the part where you said you've been asked that it's gonna go straight to Oh, good question. I feel like nowadays I'm Team Tan Masala. Okay. Art Masala has 16 ingredients in it. Mm-hmm. Including Saffron, which is like a bougie edition that nobody needs. That, but I'm, I'm like, woo saffron. Okay. And it's also it's smokey and spicy and umami. Mm-hmm. So I feel like it's very well-rounded and I'm into that because the other ones like. I'm not turmeric, I'm not like yellow. I like, I like that you had this like very abstracted out explanation for the, but for turmeric it's just yellow. It's very practical. Okay, sure. Here's a little one note. Or like pepper is like a little too like all purpose for me, you know, like I'm definitely a little bit of a required taste. So I just feel like then the, especially after you taste it, it applies. Okay. I, I love that. And thank you for asking what I would be, I think I was contemplating whether to ask it right now. Sitting here being like, do I need to ask him back? Or can we just move over from this? But you want it to be asked back, so please tell me I am. Shattered right now at the fact that you've been asked this question before. I thought I was killing it. That was, this is gonna be the highlight of the episode for me, was asking you that. I don't know what I would be, I'd probably be like salt or something. I have no idea. Nobody cares. Okay. Let's, let's come back to you. Okay. I have one final question for you. Right. So years from now, you and I have both become, we're both dirt just being used at a cardamom field somewhere. Okay. Okay. What do you, what do you hope your work is remembered as? How do you hope you are remembered? Yeah, that,, I just got on the drive up here, I was on a one and a half long hour long conversation with my mom about the patriarchy and emotional labor. Mm-hmm. And so I think that's like fresh in my mind right now, but I think. In my childhood there, despite having progressive privileged parents, there was a lot of constraints on what women could be and what young girls were allowed to dream about doing. And even to this day, like I see the imagination of my peers specifically who are women or like fems, being curtailed by what they see is possible. Or like what their families expect of them or what their partners expect of them. And so I think if the, like narrative shift can be to towards being a femme presenting woman who is also independent and ambitious and loving and able to be maternal, and parent and run a company. But not do it in a way that is like self-sacrificial or like. Involves martyrdom or involves a complete lack of sleep and you know mm-hmm. An abandonment of like, all self-care. I think that would be really wonderful because I think that would provide a model that we could move ahead with that is just a lot more equal and fair and feminist. So right now that's top of mind. I think long term I just want my kids to feel loved. Really. I don't really care about the business of it all. But that's beautiful. Jenna, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thanks. This was wild. I feel like we went on like a 90 minute, like woo. That was great. It was really fun. I could, the only reason I ended it was because IG one gimme the, you saw the time, you like brought this shit up. No.'cause Yeah, you got, you got Warm. Intro was produced by G one Moon Audio and video Jihan Production help by Danielle Ibarra, hosted by me. Chime.