Ep. 198 - Who’s Still Hiring in Alternative Protein? Noga Golan on the Future of Food
SHOW NOTES
Is alternative protein really a distressed industry, or are we simply judging a decades-long transformation on a Silicon Valley timeline?
Noga Golan has an unusually good vantage point from which to answer that question. She’s the founder of Food Impact Partners, an executive recruiting firm focused on food innovation, and Food Impact Careers, a free job board connecting people with opportunities across alternative protein and the broader food system.
In this conversation, Noga shares what she’s seeing from inside the food-tech labor market. Despite years of layoffs, shutdowns, disappointing exits, and declining investment, companies are still hiring, and candidates remain particularly interested in newer technologies like fermentation and cultivated meat.
Noga argues that one reason alternative protein appears to have struggled is that investors applied software-style expectations to an industry that still has to manufacture physical products, build supply chains, achieve price parity, and change consumer behavior. In her view, the boom and bust of the past few years may ultimately look like little more than noise in a much longer transition.
We also discuss what food-tech companies get wrong when hiring, whether mission alignment actually predicts employee performance, the pros and cons of remote work, how people can break into the industry, and why Noga says she’s happier than ever—even while making less money than she did earlier in her career.
And, naturally, we end by discussing the business opportunity the world may not yet realize it needs: Brofu.
DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE
Food Impact Partners’ recent State of the Job Market report (for Alt Protein & Food Innovation)
Article about Noga’s Work: Who’s hiring the most right now in food tech?
Noga recommends Principles by Ray Dalio.
Our past episode with author and venture capitalist Nick Cooney.
Noga and Paul recommend Nick Cooney’s four books.
Tofu sales are growing in America (more here), Finland, Germany, and more.
GET TO KNOW NOGA GOLAN
Noga Golan is the founder of Food Impact Partners, a firm that works at the intersection of talent, market intelligence, and food technology. The company partners with founders and investors to build leadership teams, bringing a cross-market perspective on how the food technology sector is evolving.
Having observed a pressing need for specialized leadership recruiting in the rapidly evolving food innovation space, she introduced a “no-nonsense” approach shaped by her background in investing: efficient, results-driven, and relationship-focused. Noga holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
TRANSCRIPT
Noga Golan 0:00
I'm probably at my happiest that I've ever been. I'm making the least amount of money that I've ever made.
Paul Shapiro 0:07
Welcome to the Business for Good podcast, where we spotlight people making money by solving some of the world's most pressing problems. I'm your host, Paul Shapiro, author of a nationally best-selling book on food sustainability and CEO of a company in the same space. On this show, I speak with founders, investors, and thought leaders who prove that doing good and doing well can go hand in hand. The biggest challenges facing humanity are solvable and are often profitable too. My hope is that this podcast informs, inspires, and maybe even helps propel you to build a business that makes the world a better place. I'm glad you're here. Hello, friend, and welcome to episode number 198 of the Business for Good podcast. Those who've been listening for a while may remember that on episode 100 we had legendary venture capitalist and billionaire Steve Jervetson as our special guest for episode 100. Well, we got episode 200 coming up, and there is another special guest coming on that episode. So stay tuned. But we have a great episode 198. And first, as always, here is your random wild fact: Did you know that Americans are now switching jobs about as infrequently as they did in the aftermath of the Great Recession? We've gone from the Great Resignation a few years ago to apparently the Great Staying Put, according to a new Wall Street Journal story. Okay, now on to this episode. Is alternative protein really a distressed industry, or are we simply judging a decades-long transformation on a Silicon Valley timeline? In addition to being a friend of mine and an all-around great person, Noga Golam has an unusually good vantage point from which to answer that question. She's the founder of Food Impact Partners, an executive recruiting firm focused on food innovation and Food Impact Careers, a free job posting board connecting people with opportunities across alternative protein and the broader food system. In this conversation, Noga shares what she is seeing from inside the food tech labor market. Despite years of layoffs and shutdowns and disappointing exits and declining investment, companies are still hiring, and candidates remain particularly interested in newer technologies like fermentation and cultivated meat. Noga argues that one reason alternative protein appears to have struggled is that investors applied software style expectations to an industry that still has to manufacture physical products, build supply chains, achieve price parity, and change consumer behavior all at the same time. In her view, the boom and bust of the past few years in alternative protein may ultimately look a little more look like noise in much a much longer transition. We also discuss what food tech companies get wrong when hiring, whether mission alignment actually predicts employee performance, the pros and cons of remote work, how people can break into this industry, and why Noga says she's happier than ever, even while making less money than she did earlier in her career as an investor. And naturally, we end by discussing the business opportunity I love to discuss that the world may not yet realize it needs brofu. That's right. What's brofu, you ask? Keep listening for your next great business idea. All right, as always, here are your three key takeaways from this episode: One, alternative proteins downturn may be more of a timing problem than a technology problem. Food isn't software, and Noga argues that investors expect a transformation on an unrealistically short timeline. Two, the hiring market suggests that the sector is shifting from invention toward commercialization. Sales, business development, marketing, and other commercial roles are growing while Canada interest remains especially strong in the fermentation and cultivated meat spaces. And third, and finally, mission alignment does not necessarily predict performance as an employee. Noga and I both note that highly mission-driven employees are necessarily automatically more productive, and that companies may benefit from hiring people who don't share the same ideological alignment. All right, I will let Noga tell you the rest of her story. Noga, welcome to the Business for Good podcast.
Noga Golan 3:46
It's great to be here. Thanks, Paul. So, yeah, one of the reasons it's actually really exciting to be on this podcast, and not only am I, you know, a listener of your podcast, but about maybe four years ago, you had an episode with Nick Cooney that I listened to, and I ended up reaching out to him because of that episode. And I was still, you know, trying to figure out what can I do in the industry, how can I make a difference, what should I, you know, should I join a company? And I met with him for coffee, and one of the things that he said to me was, "If you want to make a real impact, start something that if you didn't start that thing, it wouldn't have otherwise been created, and that really stuck with me. And that's, I mean, that's the beginning. Like that was one of the seeds that led to me starting Food Impact Partners. So it's full circle to be on this on this episode.
Paul Shapiro 4:39
Nice to hear, and I'll tell you. You know, at the end of every episode, I always ask each guest if there are ideas for new companies that they think should be started, and it always is very gratifying to me when people say they started a company based on something that they heard on the podcast. So I'm thrilled to hear that that this show played a small role in in this trajectory in your career, and indeed, I view Niko as a real authority. These matters and his books are great. If you haven't read them, I highly recommend reading them. And we'll link to that episode with Nick Cooney on the show notes for this episode@businessforgoodpodcast.com. You know, the most common thing, oddly, the most common thing that people ask who listen to this show is not great insightful questions about each guest. It's usually I want to get a job in whatever sector some episode was about. Do you have any suggestions or people you can point me to? And in this case, I do have somebody that I can point people to. It's you. So I'm so glad that we're talking, and I'm I'm eager to hear more about the job board that you have. But first, tell me a little bit about Food Impact Partners. Why did you start it, and then let's get into what services you guys are offering.
Noga Golan 5:44
Yeah, well, I started it because I saw a need in the market. I might so to take a step back. My background is not in food; it's in investing. And a few years ago, almost a decade ago, I got really passionate about the food system and improving the food system, and I spent a lot of time talking to companies and to startups and to founders and executives to understand what were some of the needs. There was kind of you know twofold: one, you know, a lot of people looking for jobs and not knowing where to start, and it was sort of like this black box of if you know somebody, then maybe you have a chance, but if you don't like, good luck with that. And then on the flip side, a lot of founders and startups and executives said, you know, it's really hard to find talent, or it's really hard to find good talent. And recruiters don't really get it. Like it's a new space. Recruiters are just, you know, they they just want their fee, and they don't really understand it, and they're not, you know, it's really it's not that great. And so seeing that void, I looked to build something that would be a little bit different-a very niche-focused recruiting team that really cares about the space, is really excited about food innovation, alternative protein, and you know builds this deep network of people. So that's that's the background of it, and if you're looking for a job, want to get into this space, obviously I'm going to recommend our job board, which is foodimpactcareers.com. That's you know the first place to go just to get a sense of the types of jobs, the types of companies that are hiring. But I wouldn't wouldn't you know stop there. Obviously, you apply for a job, and that's you don't know what you're going to hear back or when you're going to hear back and you need to have the relevant skills.
Paul Shapiro 7:26
Well, you know, as somebody who runs a company in the alternative protein space, I can tell you, literally, not one day goes by that we don't get people who are job seekers. Not one, and we're not a big hirer. You know, we only have 18 full-time employees. Like this is not a big hire, and yet we still get people 365 days a year contacting us. I was looking at Food Impact Partners job board, and it says that you've identified 661 protein employers that were hiring last year in 2025, and in the first half of this year, 2026, the data covers nearly 60,000 job views and about 35,000 application clicks. So, who are all these people who are hiring? Like, who are these companies that are hiring all all these jobs?
Noga Golan 8:11
Yeah. So, those are that is candidate demand. What you just mentioned, the 60,000 job views and the 35,000 application clicks are from candidates, but there's there's a lot of companies. There are later stage companies that are trying to be innovative and realize that they're they will be left behind if they're not at the forefront of innovation. And then there's a lot of startups, and this is a global global job board.
Paul Shapiro 8:37
So right now, if you look at alternative protein, the the general consensus around it is that it's a distressed area, right? That they've had huge numbers of layoffs and shutdowns and really bad M and A, like you know companies being acquired for nothing or for pennies on the dollar. But there are people hiring. So who are they, right? If there's huge demand, 10s of 1000s of these people looking on your site, but who's actually hiring right now? You're saying it's later stage companies worried about not being innovative enough. But what are the companies or the sectors that you think are right now the biggest opportunities for candidates?
Noga Golan 9:12
Well, I think to take a step back for candidates, one of the things that if if it's if you don't have a relevant a direct relevant industry background. One of the things I would suggest is try to get some background, and it can be in an adjacent space. And so I wouldn't worry too much about you know if you really are just like generally interested in alternative protein or food innovation, and you don't have a specific area that you're already specialized in. Don't be afraid to work in something that's not you know your dream job, like a rotational program at General Mills, for example. Not very sexy, not very exciting. But if you know if you're trying to break into the industry and you have some transferable skills, doing that will make you a a lot more of a. Compelling candidate later on, and so who is hiring now? I mean, it might change in two years from now, but I wouldn't be too focused on that. I would be focused on what are the skills that you can get that can be even more transferable in the future to your dream job.
Paul Shapiro 10:16
So you've said in this new report that you all have released, and we'll link to this and businessforgoodpodcast.com in the show notes, but the way to theta show that commercial roles these types of food tech companies have risen to 34% of all the job postings, while technical roles are only about 24% You interpret that as like a move toward commercialization. So what's happening here, right? Are people needing less tech roles and more commercial roles, and why?
Noga Golan 10:44
Yeah, I don't know that there's a lower volume of tech roles. I would just say that there's a higher volume now of commercial roles. That very much fits into what we've been seeing on the recruiting side. It's a lot of companies that you know they spent a bunch of money and time on the R and D. They're getting pressure from their investors or just external pressures to show revenue and commercial traction, and they need an expert to work on it. You know, the internal resources are no longer sufficient to commercialize at scale. You're going to need to hire hire people. So yeah, we've seen a lot of marketing, commercialization, sales, VP sales, business development, partnerships types roles.
Paul Shapiro 11:29
Okay, it's interesting because your data show that fermentation and cultivated meat jobs attract substantially more candidate interest per opening than just conventional plant based roles, and that's interesting because these are the companies that are less likely to be commercializing right now, right? There's so much biotechnology that's going on, so much R and D that you know essentially there's nearly no cultivated meat for sale in America or much around the world, and the same is less true, but for fermentation, but certainly you know that compared to conventional plant-based meat, that's certainly true in plant-based milk and so on. So why is it like why are these jobs at cultivated meat and fermentation companies so much sexier? Do you think to to the candidate to the candidate I should say?
Noga Golan 12:12
Yeah, and I'll say I you know I think both you and I live very much in like this deep bubble of people working in alt protein, and so we keep hearing like the whole protein sector is distress, and there's a lot of rumble around that. But I think outside of our bubble, there's not that much of that sentiment. I mean, there is some noise in the press, but I'm saying this because we took on a search about eight months ago that was a leadership role, a commercialization role for a cultivated meat company, and I was nervous about it. I mean, I knew we could fill it. I was just nervous about, like, you know, I'm going to talk to all these candidates, and they're going to like be laughing at me. But I don't think any of the people that we spoke to were negative. I think almost everyone, you know, obviously, I think the negative people self-selected into not wanting to speak with us. But we had so many candidates that were really, really qualified, that were very excited about it, and it's not that they were, you know, naive and weren't aware of the the issues and the hurdles and like the you know the public the public issues and the news and stuff like that. They just thought, you know, like this is noise. This is kind of how companies start, especially new technologies like novel technologies. The more breakthrough they are, the more you know, like controversy there is. And this is going to be really exciting. And like in 50 years from now, I want to be able to tell my grandchildren like I was part of this revolution. You know, remember once you know we we hear stories about once you used to slaughter animals. Isn't that crazy? Like I was part of the revolution that created what you're eating now, which is obviously not from slaughtering animals. So yeah, there was a lot of a lot of a lot of excitement around that. A lot of candidates are excited about
Paul Shapiro 13:52
it. Yeah, I think that's true. That's what I have noticed as well. And so that's interesting because obviously there are you know plant based meat is now available in every Walmart, every Costco, every Burger King. You know, every big box grocery store has multiple SKUs of plant-based meat. Whereas, if you look at the fermentation-derived ingredients or the cultivated, it's you know not even a rounding error of plant-based meat or plant-based milk, right? And so, it is interesting that those would still be sexier from a candidate's perspective, than these other thing, than these other more conventional plant-based products. But you mentioned Noga that we live in a bubble where people are saying this is a distressed space. So let me just ask you, like, what, why you think that is? Like, is it distressed, and if so, why? And then let me go back. Like, let's say you were mentioning you were getting really passionate about food systems innovations a decade ago. If somebody had told you a decade ago that today there would be essentially no cultivated meat on the market whatsoever, and plant based would still be less than 1% of the total volume of meat that is sold, right? Like again, plant based meat is. Ibiquitous, it's widely available, but if you look at plant-based milk, it's about 15% of the fluid milk market in America, and yet plant-based meat still suffers at less than 1% of the total meat market. If somebody had told you a decade ago that a decade hence that's what will be plant-based will basically be less than 1% barely a rounding error in the meat demand, and cultivated will be 0.0% Would that have surprised you, or would you have said, "Yeah, I think that's probably a likely outcome"
Noga Golan 15:25
Yeah, I don't know. I I don't really like to make these predictions without a lot of real data, and I would say that I I probably have more ability to predict now, a decade into the future that I did a decade ago, not knowing.
Paul Shapiro 15:43
Let me rephrase. Let me rephrase the question and ask you not what you would have said 10 years ago, but knowing what you know now that billions of dollars have been invested 10 years on. We're now 13 years since the first cultivated hamburger was debuted in London. Does it surprise you now that the alternative meat industry has not made a bit in total meat demand yet.
Noga Golan 16:03
I think I have a much longer term view, and I think you know it makes sense. We're all impatient. We want to see progress, and you know we're working on this all day long, and we you know we we think about it when we wake up, and so we want to see progress a lot faster. But in reality, progress takes time, and I think maybe one of the reasons why a lot of people see you know alt protein industry as in distress is because in a way it is. If you look at it from like a VC investor software perspective, it is. It didn't take off in the same way that many you know tech companies would have in that timeline because it's not it's not actual tech, and I think that's that might be a little bit of the problem in terms of the perception of why alt protein seems distressed. There was a wave of mission driven capital followed by some you know very excited capital and this expectation that the returns would come quickly, but alternative protein and food innovation-it's-it's still food production. The supply chain still needs to be there. The distribution, the marginal cost isn't-you know-it'll go down a little bit, but it's not like software. It's not like most technologies, and so it just it takes time. It takes time to get there from a cost perspective. It takes time to get there from a consumer adoption perspective. And I do I absolutely think that we'll we will get there. And I can talk more about about why I have such high confidence. But I'll pause there.
Paul Shapiro 17:37
Yeah, I'm I'm quite eager to hear that. And you know, I I recently read a quote and a story from someone who was basically diagnosing the problem for the cultivated meat companies that he was alleging that essentially the reason why they have not done as well, the reason they've struggled, is because they built all this capex, but there wasn't demand for the product, and I thought, how could that be? It's not for sale. How do you know there's no demand? You know, like it's not like this was on Walmart shelves and nobody bought it, right? This isn't for sale. Like even if you look at fermentation derived, you know, corn Q U O R N is 99% of all of the mycoprotein that's sold on Earth is corn, and they're selling several 100 million dollars of revenue every single year. The company was acquired in 2015 for inflation-adjusted more than a billion dollars today. You know, corn seems like a really big success. The problem, though, is that if you look at subsequent exits for alternative protein companies, you know, Beyond Meat had a very successful IPO in 2019. Of course, they've suffered in the market dramatically since, but in 2019 to 2021, they were flying very high as a publicly traded company. In 2021, you had an Otley exit that was also good at the time, although now it's also suffered tremendously in the public markets. But there really hasn't been any real exit, either a great acquisition or a great IPO in alternative protein in the last five years, and I think this is one of the reasons why VCs are less interested because you know they want hope, and when there are no exits for any of the companies in five years that are worthy of instilling hope, it makes it tough for them to invest. But you said that you have a diagnosis why you think this is happening. So tell me, do you think that what I'm saying is right, and is there something else? Even if it is right, that that you would diagnose.
Noga Golan 19:23
I think it's it's right. It's also a little bit like this is short term view for an industry and a product that is just not on that short term horizon, and so it's applying the wrong lens to an industry that doesn't have that horizon, and yes, in the short term there is going to be noise. There might be more noise. Depends on the administration. It depends on you know if the cattlemen association decides to hire more lobbyists and there's more you know negative press and stuff like that. You know maybe some TikTok influencer will eat cultivated meat on land like. There's going to be a ton of you know excitement. It's hard to predict where the hype is going to go, but I think the way I see it is this is more of a long term bet, right? Like in the long term, we currently we we know for a fact that we will not be able to feed the population of humanity as on its current growth trajectory with the land and resources that currently exist on planet Earth, and so you know, assuming we're not going to Mars or like duplicating Earth in some way, we have no choice but to innovate. Add on top of that, like the climate change, and you know, call it climate change or just volatility in climate that's becoming increasingly unpredictable, like geopolitical issues and wars that are you know really putting pressure on supply chain diseases that could also come you know both for plants and for animals. There's real uncertainty, and you know this is something that I hear about a lot from the bigger food companies that I talk to. Like this is like the scariest thing: the reliability of ingredients, both the supply and the price. Like cocoa prices for Mars is like the top. It's like top of their mind. It's all they can think about. And so having that like reliable supply chain and reliable price is something that's on the minds of a lot of these big food companies, and then on top of that, you have these many countries and nations that are seeing the supply chain disruptions due to whatever and wanting to be self-reliant and not wanting to have to rely on other nations to buy their food, and so that's why you're seeing, you know, Saudi Arabia, a lot of the countries in the Middle East, really investing heavily in, you know, whether it's fermentation or cultivated for protein because they don't have a lot of variable land and they don't want to be dependent on other nations to import food and to be able to feed their population, which is like the most basic thing. Yeah.
Paul Shapiro 22:00
So you are describing Niko why you have hope for the future because you think that circumstances are going to force us to innovate and find essentially animal-free ways to produce food for an increasingly hungry population. Right now, we have eight and a half billion humans walking around. If if the trajectory continues, we're going to have 10 billion of us 25 years from now on the planet, not only are there is that an additional one and a half billion humans, but the humans who are in that 8.5 billion are also going to want to eat more protein. We're seeing just protein demand skyrocketing around the world. So you're making a case as to why you think it will be necessary to innovate with animal free proteins, but why do you think this space has suffered in the last five years? Like, do you think it's just you know VCs have? I'm saying VCs have not seen real exits, and so they're walking away in some regards. You're saying, and trust me, I think it's more multifactorial than that. I've written about this. I can share some of my commentary on here. But what do you think is the reason why in the last five years, you know, we saw you know in 2021 it was huge amounts of money in the space, great sales for the products. But since then, it's not just that VCs have largely walked away; it's also that revenues have often contracted. Like the total plant based meat volume that is sold has gone down over the last five years. Why? What do you think happened?
Noga Golan 23:18
Yeah, well, I guess what I'm saying is five years is just not a lot of time, and so there can be small things that can create a lot of noise. Like for example, VCs with this short time horizon and different expectations. It's a lot more impatient capital going in and getting very disappointed. A lot of people that I speak to, a lot of investors are feeling very burnt from the alternative protein industry, and so they're very bitter. But if you look at like even the tech industry, you know, if you if we were in 2003 or 2004, you would say like there was all this hype around you know the.com, and it just bursts. Like why is that? Like what's going to happen? You know, and it you know there's over excitement, and and then you know people invest a little bit more, and then the market corrects itself, and then it overcorrects itself, and then it comes back. And at the end of the day, over a time span of 2030, years, it's all noise. And so we're just experiencing that noise right now. Is is how I and I I'm not confident about a lot of things, but I am extremely bullish about the time that in in time we will be producing meat, animal products, and food in ways that are very different from how we've been producing them in the past, because we will have no choice. The question is, how soon can that can that be, and what can we do to make that happen faster?
Paul Shapiro 24:31
Yeah, I I think that that is right, and if you look at you know tech, like the time to invest in Amazon was 25 years ago, when they lost 95 percent of their value, you know Amazon. I don't know how many people remember this, but there was a time after the IPO, their share price went down 95. Now, you know, Beyond Meat has gone down 99. Is now the time to buy? I'm not suggesting that, but I am suggesting that as a sector, not one one company, as a. I do think that valuations are so far down. This is the time all these companies are on discount. Investors can pretty much name their price. Like investors can name their price. Why? You know, this is the best time to be investing. Not not back in 2021 where there were totally outrageous valuations that almost assured the investors that even if there was an exit, which there hasn't been, but even if there was, they would not really make much money.
Noga Golan 25:20
I mean, I remember when I was an invest. I was in the investing world. I was deep in it, and I remember when Amazon and Facebook were a joke. I remember when it was a joke, like you know how people are talking negatively, perhaps about Beyond Meat, and you know I'm not saying anything about Beyond Meat, but you know that's how Amazon was perceived like you know amateur investors are going to buy this Amazon stock because they don't understand the stock market. Like that's how it was described, and it's just more of a long term game, especially in food.
Paul Shapiro 25:51
Okay, so it's a long term game. Let's talk, Niko, about Food Impact Partners briefly. So, how does the company make money? You started this company. You are helping people. You're helping connect candidates with companies, especially executive candidates. Who pays you for this? The company, the candidate, like where? Where are you making money?
Noga Golan 26:09
Yeah. So the job board, which is what we're most known for, Food Impact Careers, does not make any money. It is it's something that we do to just give back to the industry, but it's also a way for us to really be in touch with what's going on with the candidates, with the supply and demand in the in the in the job market globally. We make money from our recruiting arm, and we do almost almost only executive recruiting, and we do some you know mid level recruiting as well, and that's that's how we make money. We're a traditional kind of very similar to a traditional recruiting model, not the contingency, but a retained, but a retained recruiting model.
Paul Shapiro 26:47
So a company pays you, or the candidate pays you, or or pays us. The company pays you to go out and find executives for them, and if you find somebody, you also are getting paid some portion of their first year salary is that the way the business model works.
Noga Golan 27:03
That's how some recruiters work. I, you know, after doing a lot of research up front, I found that that wasn't the best model. That doesn't align the our incentives best with the companies. So that's not exactly how we work. We have a fixed fee. You know, we're not incentivized to tell the company to increase the salary of the of the executive, for example, or paid, you know, in in stages as we're working on the search. But yes, for example, a company cultivated meat company comes to us and says, you know, we want to we want to expand our sales globally. We have no idea where to start, and we'll help them figure out. You know, do you need an advisor? Do you need a chief commercial officer? Do you need local sales folks? And then, you know, we'll work through that strategy with them, and then we'll go and execute the actual search as well and find people.
Paul Shapiro 27:53
Very cool. I noticed on your job board that only about 6% of the jobs that you're tracking are remote. Yet, of course, remote jobs get more views than the ones that aren't remote. I have a lot of opinions on this, but I want to ask you your opinion about remote work. It was in vogue. Now it seems far less so in vogue. But what have you found?
Noga Golan 28:14
Ah, that's a such a good question. I think it really. I mean, it really depends. Of course, there's a huge advantage to in person, especially with like the growth of AI and people wanting the more human connection. So there's there is that huge advantage. There's the advantage of you know cross cross collaboration and just like the little magic that can happen when you're in person in an office that just can't really happen remotely. And then it also depends on the work. You know, if you're more R and D focused and you're more, you know, science heavy, kind of have to be in person. The obvious advantages of remote work is you have access to a broader talent pool, and then a lot of these roles really don't need to be in person, especially commercialization roles where they're traveling a lot. There's some interesting companies that have cracked the code of something in between, where they do you know once a month or once a quarter get together in person on site or something like that. But yeah, it's a it's a balance. It's a there's no there's no right answer.
Paul Shapiro 29:12
Yeah, I've largely been biased against remote employment. I find it a very difficult thing to make work. I do think that you're right that there are some specific jobs that might involve a lot of travel that it is worth bending on. But my but my bias is very strong on this. Like, there's just no.
Noga Golan 29:36
We're fully remote. I know that you're fully not remote, and we are. We are food impact partners is fully remote. Tell me what kind of like what's your fear here?
Paul Shapiro 29:44
Sure. So BMC Ingredients does have one remote person who is our VP of business development, and that's because she does travel more. But overall, like it's very hard to have a team. It's it's very hard for people to have a sense. Of a team, and to really know their coworkers, and get to feel like they're all putting their oars in the water, rowing together when when everybody is on Zoom or in their own homes, it's it's just really tough to do that. And for us, especially at BMC Ingredients, as a company that is actually manufacturing one, you know, like we have a lab, we have a factory. Like people have to be in there. We're not going to have millions of dollars of biotech equipment in their apartments. But two, even the people who aren't involved in that work often it's beneficial for them to see it and to be involved in it to help you know conduct harvests, for example, and and other things. And so my general point of view is like it's just very hard to maintain a team type mentality when people aren't actually physically present together, and so I've been very biased against remote employment. I know other people have different points of view or different experiences on this, but it is what I have found. Oh. Okay, I want to ask you just briefly, Noga, about some of the mistakes that you see companies making. So you can tell me if you think that one of them is being too insistent on in-person work. That's fine. I don't. I don't mind. But you know, you've watched a lot of startups hire. What do you think are the biggest mistakes that founders make when they're building their teams? Are they hiring certain positions too early? Are they waiting too long to hire certain positions? Like, what have you diagnosed as somebody who is at the macro level looking at the hiring trends in the alternative protein industry? That what are mistakes that people are making?
Noga Golan 31:39
Yeah, I mean, I feel really fortunate that I've been able to work very closely with many startups, and because of that, we see a lot of patterns over time, and it's it's really interesting. I think there's. I don't. I'm trying to like narrow it down to just a few. The ones that are top of mind are one having like this really rigid idea of what should be, and maybe that's both like what the consumer should be, what the product should look like, what the go to market is what the hire should look like, who the hire should be, what their personality is, kind of this mentality of founders or leadership that they you know they really want this to be true, but sometimes it's just it's just not, and even if it's not ideal, realizing what is true sooner or what is not true sooner, and just being able to accept that is is a huge advantage to the companies that are able to succeed or fail faster versus the ones that don't. So, I mean, I guess as an example in in hiring, it's you know-we really want this person to be. We really think it's important that they're you know aligned with our mission in order for them to succeed in sales, for example. And like, it's really important for the culture of the company that they're aligned with the mission and that they're have these certain quality traits, and they should you know have this you know very extroverted personality. Like they have this kind of vision of what that person should look like, and part of our job is we spend a lot of time up front. We don't just take a job description and then like, all right, let's go find the person that fits this job description. We'll spend a lot of time up front with the hiring manager, the founder, to understand what are the goals of the company? What are the goals of this person in the next 12 months? In the next 18 months, what are the challenges that this person is going to face that aren't obvious to us? Because we want to make sure that we're finding someone that is set up for success that can handle those challenges. We don't want to hire someone that you know in eight months they face a challenge that you know you could have predicted, and like they don't know how to handle it, and like they fail. So let's look for the people that can actually solve those problems that can that we think can execute on your goals and that can handle those challenges probably well. And sometimes that can't doesn't look like what you've imagined it to be.
Paul Shapiro 34:21
I've hired a lot of people, and some of whom are I would call highly mission aligned, and others really don't care about the mission. Maybe it's a nice like bonus for them that they're doing something good for the world, but it's really not motivating them. And in my experience, there is no correlation between the productivity that they have, which is surprising to me, because I would have thought that people who are mission aligned are going to work harder because it's not just their own career, but it's also their their goal in life. But I haven't found that to be true. I found you know some people mission aligned do a great job, and others don't, and the same is true for people who aren't really primarily motivated by the mission. Have you found that elsewhere? Like, I just like I'm shocked by this because I think if somebody thinks like their life goal was to let's say reduce the number of animals who are used for food, and all of a sudden they're in this job, and you think, well, they should be like on like with missionary zeal, and sometimes they are, and sometimes they aren't, and then there are other people who just seem like really motivated to succeed, like they really like the idea of having a challenge or like some technological challenge they like solving, even if they're agnostic to the mission of the company.
Noga Golan 35:27
Yeah, I think I would say that doesn't surprise me. And then, furthermore, I think having that diversity of what motivates people and you know what backgrounds people have and what experiences people have, that diversity within one company is going to help the company succeed more. For example, if you're running a vegan cheese company and you only have mission-driven vegans working at the company, it's you know I wouldn't be surprised if everyone's trying the iterations of the product. They're like, oh, this is so much better than the previous version. But you know, bring in someone that's like loves cheese and eats cheeseburgers like with meat and everything. Bring someone like that. That's you know call it like not as mission aligned to the company, and they might just say like, "Ew, this is gross. I don't want to eat this. And you kind of need that, and that's kind of going back to like getting to the truth sooner. Like, don't it's it's you know we have this desire to delude ourselves into what we want to be true, but if you can get to that truth sooner, hey, the target audience is going to say this is gross. I want to know that as fast as possible so that we can iterate accordingly. So I think diversity of backgrounds will help you get to that truth faster.
Paul Shapiro 36:40
I do find that sometimes I'm happier when I delude myself into thinking that things are true that probably aren't true. But it's like a good coping mechanism in my life for improving my own welfare. But in in in terms of your own mission relatedness, Noga, you know you've now built this company, Food Impact Partners, around this proposition that people want meaningful work. Has running your own company made your own life more meaningful? Has this been a welfare improvement for you as well?
Noga Golan 37:06
It has. It really has. I think I'm. I think I've told you this also recently. I mean, I'm probably at my happiest that I've ever been. I'm making the least amount of money that I've ever made. Hopefully, you know that will change. It. You know, we did did I did start this company in like the toughest market in history both in recruiting and in food and so you know it is that's I was going into that wide eyes wide open but it does it is it is very exciting to have work that is that is meaningful that is making a positive difference in the world for sure.
Paul Shapiro 37:43
Yeah, you know, I was I was talking to a founder of another alternative protein company just yesterday, and I asked her this question: whether she was happy doing this or not, because it's it's such a it's such a often thankless and uphill job to do, and she said that she has never been happier that it provides her with so much meaning in her life, and that even when even when things aren't going well, she has a lot of meaning, and she likes that. And I feel the same way. You know, there's all there's all types of challenges and hurdles to to face, but it does provide me with a lot of meaning, and I'm grateful for that. And it enables me to make my life more worthwhile, and so even when it is difficult, which sadly is is frankly quite often, I would say like I'm just grateful for the opportunity. Most people will never get to be running a company, let alone one that is seeking to solve one of the world's most vexing problems and creating so much utility in the process. So I certainly hope that Food Impact Partners ascends and creates even more and more value both for the world and for your own salary, which hopefully will go up soon. But let me ask you, Noga. There's a lot of resources, including your own, that are useful if people are interested in learning more or they're interested in working in alternative protein themselves. Where would you recommend they go? What resources should they check out?
Noga Golan 39:02
Yeah, well, I guess I can't not recommend our own website. So foodimpactcareers.com is the job board, which just has hundreds of jobs globally. Our foodimpactpartners.com. which is the recruiting site, has a market intelligence tab that just has some of the reports that you quoted from that just gives a little bit more information. My, I mean, this is you know outside of the industry, but one of the books that inspired me most was Principles by Ray Dalio. It's just a very different way of thinking, and I think a lot more practical. It's it's a lot of hard truths that I think a lot of us need to hear.
Paul Shapiro 39:42
All right, cool. We'll link that in the show notes for this episode@businessforgoodpodcast.com. I too read principles and found it quite useful, so I'm glad that you raised that. Finally, Noga, there are a lot of companies in this space. Some of them are your clients. Some of them are just companies that you are supportive of. Are there any? Companies that you wish existed that don't already anything that if somebody's listening thinking you know I don't want to apply for a job at one of the existing companies I want to start my own company what should they be thinking about doing
Noga Golan 40:10
yeah I do think about this a lot and I think rather than reinvent the wheel and try to come up with like what is the newest most exciting idea what has not been done? I think there's a lot of things that have been tried, and a lot of them can be successful if they are. You know, if you take the learnings from what has already been done, and I would say the first thing to look at is product market fit, and those are the companies that I would bet on. The companies that are obsessed with finding product market fit and obsessed with consumer with the consumer, the end buyer, and I think if you can think about that and really obsess about that, and then take any number of the companies that you that we've seen in alternative protein or food innovation and build upon that, but with the lens of obsession over product market fit and the consumer, the end buyer. I think there's a lot of companies that could be built that could be quite successful in this sort of new wave of innovation, this new next wave of alternative protein.
Paul Shapiro 41:17
Interesting. I was thinking about this myself recently because it was saddening to me that plant-based meat has has stagnated as a total revenue category. But there are some bright spots. I mean, first of all, plant-based meat is doing great in places like Western Europe, where it's actually growing. But even in America, shockingly, tofu sales are soaring right now, and you know, like people want people want protein, they want queen protein, and I wonder why there isn't more innovation in tofu. Why there aren't more tofu startups? Like everybody thinks, oh, we need like some deep biotechnology. I got to raise millions of dollars to buy bio reactors and so on. It's like, well, you know, maybe you come up with some awesome tofu. Like, why not? I even sellers one company like freeze
Noga Golan 41:58
dried tofu. Well, yeah, that's an
Paul Shapiro 42:01
interesting one, but yeah, I mean, I don't know how mass marketable that is. I think it's more of like a niche audience in which I find myself firmly located myself. But like, like you know, maybe shelf stable tofu that people would eat like a protein bar, right? Or maybe there's other types of tofu, like Hodo tofu, is pretty much the only really branded tofu that people buy. Most of it is more generic. It's not that it's literally brandless, but it's not something where there's like a sexy brand. Yeah, that's right. And I would love to see more tofu innovation. I think that would be really great. So hopefully, if
Noga Golan 42:34
what is an example of what's an example of tofu innovation?
Paul Shapiro 42:38
I have one that I hope that somebody will do. People laugh every time they laugh at me, not with me, when I say this. But you know, right right now, if you look at consumer surveys, tofu is perceived as so-called women's food. So, whereas men are everybody's driving the protein crazy right now, but especially men who want to get you know more jacked or really protein heavy right now, why not create a tofu for men and you call it brofu? And you know Brofu is like something special. You know you market it as like you know somehow it's a different type of tofu that's meant for men. It's got like something that makes men more virile or something in there, right? Now you know people laugh at this because they think it's such a laughable idea, but you know this is what they did with tofurkey. Like it had a crazy name, tofurkey that people made fun of, and that was one of the reasons they got so much publicity. Imagine if brofu comes on the market. I really think that a lot of people would be laughing at it and making fun of it and saying how stupid it is, and yet that would get them a lot of attention, and therefore a lot of people would be curious and would try it. So that's one example of tofu innovation. I'm not saying it's the only one. I think there are plenty of others too, but that's that's one that I think is a good one.
Noga Golan 43:40
So what you just described was actually more on the on the like CPG and branding, which I think there's a ton that could be done there for food. We didn't really talk about that because we you know we just didn't get into that. But there's I think that's a huge opportunity for alt protein and just like novel foods right now, especially with how social media is working. That's a huge opportunity for a lot of these alternative protein brands. So if you're starting a company, that's something to also think about.
Paul Shapiro 44:05
Yeah, I totally agree. But to be clear, I am not talking about the Liquid Death equivalent of tofu, right? Like Liquid Death is just water in a can, and they have awesome marketing, and so people buy it. I'm saying like there's something different about the tofu that makes it more appealing. Like they add creatine, or they add you know something else like to the tofu that makes it somehow, yeah, yeah. But there is like it's mostly branding, but there is some innovation. It's not just putting a different label on tofu.
Noga Golan 44:29
It's like poppy, the the poppy water. Like it's
Paul Shapiro 44:31
yes, yes, that is a good point. It is like poppy. That is right, which has done phenom, which has done phenomenally well. So with that said, Noga, I hope that somebody will go out and start Brofu. You have my blessing. You don't need to give me anything. I'm giving it out free as a free idea. So I am grateful, Noga, for all that you're doing with Food Impact Partners. I hope that Brofu, whoever starts it, hires you to hire their executives for them, and I will look forward to seeing the continued success of Food Impact Partners as. You place more and more great people in companies doing great things in the world.
Noga Golan 45:03
Thanks, Paul. It was great to be here.
Paul Shapiro 45:05
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