Reducing Food Waste Through Effective Storage - Manik Suri of Therma

Did you know that there are 90 million refrigerators in the business world and 1.4 billion in the consumer world? Imagine the effects of that on our environment. That’s why Manik Suri co-founded Therma, a tech startup driven to prevent food, product, and energy waste, which are three major drivers of climate change, through temperature monitoring and analytics. 

On his journey to founding Therma, Manik shares the many insights he uncovered, some of which were discovered the hard way, such as the significance of finding the right people to work with, how to sell the dream but also stay true to yourself, tips on prioritization and avoiding burnout, plus a useful framework to keep in mind when crafting a product, among others. Listen to this episode to find out more!

Manik’s key lessons and quotes from this episode were:

• “The journey is always somewhat different than we expect when we get started, at least I've never seen the path to be linear.” (3:03)
• “We need so many people to be working on socially impactful problems like sustainability and the climate crisis that there's literally no better time to get started than today.” (26:28)
• “The talent and the quality of the team matter more than anything else… The ability to work with people who are better than you in whatever it is you're not best at is key.” (35:13)
• “The best entrepreneurs and the best strategists are really good at knowing exactly what they need at any given time and quickly changing when that changes.” (40:45)

In this episode, we also talked about:

• Addressing the food waste problem to address climate change (8:41)
• How Therma works (16:09)
• Bringing out the entrepreneur in you (26:27)
• The most important lessons Manik’s learned on his entrepreneurial journey (34:02)
• Finding the perfect balance in life (43:25)