Ashwin Cheriyan from Thistle: From Creating a Category to Scaling It to 100K+ Weekly Orders

👉🏼 Description:
Tune in as Ashwin talks about creating a category of healthy eating before it existed, telling customers about the tough decision to add meat to their plant-based service, and more!\

👉🏼 About the Guest:
Ashwin (Ash) is CEO & Co-Founder of Thistle, the tech-enabled organic meal delivery company focused on healthy, plant-based food to address health and climate concerns. Coming from a family of medical doctors, Ash brings a unique perspective to the business, utilizing his leadership to help the modern consumer invest in their own health and that of the planet. Ash and his wife, Shiri, were driven to found Thistle because two of the greatest challenges of our generation – our growing health crisis and the current climate emergency – pointed to a common solution: eating more plants and consuming less meat. Thistle aims to make eating healthy, plant-forward, and planet-friendly meals easy, with irresistible meals delivered directly to your door. He received his B.A. in Economics from Brown University and his JD from the University of Texas School of Law.

👉🏼 About the Host:
Shriya Nevatia (50K+ followers on LI and X) has been building community for 12+ years for founders, investors, and builders around the world. She launched the On Deck Catalyst community for elite global young leaders, helped hundreds of women start angel investing at The Council Capital, and founded The Violet Society, a pre-accelerator for female & non-binary startup founders.

👉🏼 Timestamps:
00:00: Episode Highlight
00:18: Intro to Taste & Tactics
00:32: Intro to Ashwin Cheriyan, co-founder and CEO of Thistle
02:43: How to choose the problem you want to solve
07:41: Choosing your audience and users
10:59: Being the first mover in a market, before the audience is ready
14:35: Why all-in-one products are important
16:35: How to roll out product changes and gauge customer needs
18:57: Catering to customers' stated (and unstated!) desires
25:00: Carving out a niche when the market doesn't even exist
29:10: How authenticity in marketing made Thistle's growth trajectory shoot up
33:23: How to make product decisions as a founder
37:47: How personal taste can (and sometimes should!) take over data
39:35: Learnings and takeaways from the episode
41:50: Outro

👉🏼 Where to find Ashwin:
LinkedIn:   / ashwin-cheriyan-3324137  
Thistle - Website: https://www.thistle.co/
Thistle - Instagram:   / thistleco  
Thistle - X: https://x.com/ThistleCo
Thistle - LinkedIn:   / thistle  

👉🏼 Where to find Shriya:
Twitter: https://x.com/shriyanevatia
LinkedIn:   / shriyanevatia  
Taste & Tactics Twitter: https://x.com/tasteandtactics
Taste & Tactics Instagram:   / tasteandtactics  
Taste & Tactics TikTok:   / tasteandtactics  
Taste & Tactics LinkedIn:   / taste-and-tactics  
Taste & Tactics YouTube:    / @tasteandtactics  
Taste & Tactics Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72Xgo0s...