Tina Sharkey: Live more. Brand less @ Talks at Google (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Brandless’ co-founder and CEO Tina Sharkey’s fireside talk: Live more. Brand less @ Talks at Google conference. This event occurred on January 29th, 2018.

Moderator: Jorge Cueto

JORGE CUETO: Thank you, everyone, for coming to our Talks at Google event today with Tina Sharkey. It’s great to have you, Tina.

TINA SHARKEY: So psyched to be here. And we brought Brandless snacks. So if you’re on the live stream, we’ll figure out how to get them to you later. But anyone in the room, feel free to get up, get some snacks. I won’t feel insulted. I’ll be really happy, actually.

JORGE CUETO: Tina is the co-founder and CEO of Brandless, which is an e-commerce startup that’s looking to shake things up in the industry by offering high quality products at a really affordable price point. Great to have you, again.

TINA SHARKEY: It’s awesome to be here.

JORGE CUETO: Can you tell us a little bit about Brandless in your own words?

TINA SHARKEY: So Brandless– my co-founder, Ido Leffler, and I, we were sort of feeling like modern consumption was just very, very broken. And that meant that if people really understood what things cost versus what they pay for them, they’d be, in his words, rioting in the streets. I don’t know that I thought people would be rioting in the streets. But that there was just this perception that better had to cost more. And it actually really doesn’t.

And so when we founded Brandless, we were really trying to– at this very high level– try and make sense of consumption. There was a sense that there were the haves and the have nots. And that people couldn’t actually find what they were looking for, shop the values they believed in, whether it was their dietary values, like, I’m gluten free. Or I’m kosher. Or I’m vegan. Or I like to eat organic. Or with their belief systems. I don’t want animal testing. I want non-GMO.