Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Creating a new class of nutrients: bioactive human proteins for people of all ages - with Laura Katz, Founder of Helaina

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Creating a new class of nutrients: bioactive human proteins for people of all ages - with Laura Katz, Founder of Helaina · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Laura Katz for Female Startup Club.
• 0:12
  Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. If you missed our recent announcement that I'm very, very happy about, we have recently joined the Acast podcast network and that means so many exciting things for the show. First of all, we're going to be starting to introduce some different kinds of episodes like strategy breakdowns with industry experts and how to's for early stage founders and future founders. Okay.
• 0:42
  It also means you're going to start hearing a new voice on the show. You're going to meet my wingwoman and one of the best humans I know, Josephine. If you've ever messaged us on Instagram or you're part of magic, you'll know just how wonderful Josephine is. And she's going to be joining me in this new series where we talk through insights and questions and what's just happening in the world of business.
• 1:07
  Now, something I'm very excited about is the comeback of our Facebook group. It's linked in our show notes, and I want you to jump in there and join us right now, like today. Every Monday, I'm going to be sharing who I'm interviewing that week. And this is where you can ask really specific questions that you want answered on the show today.
• 1:27
  from that founder or expert. You can also drop your own questions and challenges, and we'll be shouting those out too. And this is a great chance for you to get your brand featured on the podcast. On today's episode, we're chatting with Laura Katz. Laura is the founder of a company called Helena. It's just crazy to me. It's so cool.
• 1:52
  Laura has always been obsessed with food and her career followed that true love and passion into food science. In this episode, we talk through Laura's big light bulb moment, how she approached raising capital with zero network and zero experience in her early 20s, and how you get a big idea like this through to commercialization, because it is definitely not straightforward and it's not the playbook we're used to hearing on the show.
• 2:21
  This episode literally blew my mind and I would love to know what you think about it. So join me in the Facebook group to chat more after you finish listening. Let's get into this episode. This is Laura for Female Startup Club.
• 2:37
  Laura, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to have you here. I'm so excited to be talking about what you're doing. I'm so interested in what you're doing. I absolutely love it. How are you, first of all? How's your day? Any wins? Any oh shit moments? What's going on? A couple wins. Definitely a couple of moments today of...
• 3:03
  Challenge, I would say the things to me that are the hardest, most rewarding and most important parts of building a company are building a team. And...
• 3:16
  when there are challenges on the team, interpersonal issues, you know, feelings, emotions get involved. Anytime I hear anything that happens at the company, I get so laser focused on that because to me, our culture is everything. And so, you know, I heard of a couple of things today of things going on on the team. And, you know, that's all I've been thinking about. Right, right.
• 3:41
  But this is for the oh shit moments, right? Is that what you're saying? These are challenging parts of the day? These are challenging parts of the day in the job. We've got such a great team. And if I hear this one person is feeling a little bit overwhelmed by what they have going on, they have a deadline. I'm like, okay, how can I help this person be like,
• 4:01
  Working hard and having a lot of work, we all handle it differently. And so I'm so dialed in to how the team feels because I care so much about how they feel when they show up to work. And we spend so much time at work and we should love what we do and everyone loves it. And so sometimes that becomes hard because there's a lot of weight on your shoulders. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. How big is the team for you guys?
• 4:32
  We are in the mid 40s and growing. So we're getting to a point where I don't get to spend so much time with every single person every more, whereas I used to. So when I get to touch base with somebody and they're like, yeah, you know, I've got this big thing coming up and, you know, it's taking up so much on my mind share. I'm immediately like, what can I do to help? And
• 4:56
  You know, I know that even where we are today and where we'll be in a few years from now, I won't even be able to have these conversations. So to me, it's just so important to spend as much time with the team as I can. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Cool. Very cool.
• 5:11
  I want to kind of start this episode by going, you know, back to teenage you. I was reading about the 14-year-old version of Laura and what she was up to. And I'd love to kind of start the story in your early teenage years and kind of go from there almost. My early teenage years? I was certainly odd, I would say. Yeah.
• 5:37
  I was obsessed with food in a way that now you might see on social media. But at that time, I mean, Facebook was just starting. I'll age myself 2006, 2007. And I consumed food media by 10%.
• 5:58
  having a monthly subscription to every single cooking magazine and food magazine you could think of. I would get like five to seven every month, read them cover to cover instantly, cook all of the recipes in there, watch every food network show. They didn't have any of those like competing kid TV shows for food or else I would have done them. And I was just, I just loved feeding people. And I would say to my parents, like it is my role in life to feed people. It's a very profound thing for a child to say. And yeah,
• 6:27
  That was my teenage experience was just cooking for people, trying to start different businesses, catering things and doing whatever I could and just being dedicated to food. Why were you so interested in food? Where did that come from? I think in my family, we all love food. I've come from a family of immigrants to Canada.
• 6:55
  Not my parents, but my grandparents. And so I think food is really unifying, especially when you're not in the place you're from and cultural food. And so that was always just a really big part of how I grew up. And my mom, she was diagnosed a little bit later in life in her 30s with type 1 diabetes, which is like the autoimmune version of diabetes. You become completely insulin dependent. She got it in a really weird way.
• 7:23
  And when I was, I don't know, maybe four years old, my entire family's philosophy on how we eat has changed because, you know, my mom is a really important figure in how we eat and how the family was fed. And we automatically started to think about food as a tool for our health, food as a
• 7:47
  love to eat, we would always eat all kinds of foods, but there was an instant connection to every single person in our family that food is so important for us to feel and live a healthy life. And I think that that was always pretty motivating to me was that if I can feed people, I can hopefully help them feel healthy.
• 8:05
  or happy, or whatever that feeling is, because food is for our health, but food is also so emotional. And I think it was a confluence of all of those things that made me so dedicated to food for my life then and my life right now. How profound to be, you know, from such a young age, having these thoughts and feelings and kind of like worldviews, almost. And,
• 8:33
  how did you get from, you know, 14-year-old you to scientist? How were you thinking about, like, future career when you finished school? Was it kind of a clear, like, oh, that's just what I'm going to do? Or did you explore, like, what you were saying, kind of different, you know, going into TV or going into recipe cookbooks or, like, going into all these different avenues that you could have branched off into? So I have done all of those things, actually. I just knew I wanted to...
• 9:02
  work in food. I didn't know what it was going to look like, but I knew that I wanted to go on the path of food science because what that meant was I could develop the skillset and the toolkit that I would need to make food products, not just in a kitchen, but at mass scale, which to me was always really exciting that I could not just impact people from cooking in my kitchen, but I could impact large populations of people through the foods that we get in the grocery store or on a shelf.
• 9:30
  And food science is a very clear path. At the time, it wasn't as big as it is now. Now we see the food technology industry exploding and food scientists are becoming celebrities, but that was not the case in the early, mid-2000s. And so when I started my undergraduate degree in food science, everybody would say, what even is that? What do you do with that degree? Meanwhile, it's one of the most tactical things
• 9:58
  and career oriented degrees you can go into. So what, what is it? What does it mean to be a food scientist just to like get you in that moment there? And also who is a food scientist celebrity that I would know? Yeah.
• 10:11
  That you would know, well, I can say in the US, Alton Brown is a really big food science celebrity, but we can look at lots of folks who bring kind of science into their food and into their cooking and into their kitchen. I mean, what Impossible Foods does and what Beyond Meat does, it's all driven by food scientists. Got it. Food science is a pretty multidisciplinary field that looks at and studies that,
• 10:41
  how our food is composed, the chemicals of it, and how we can make new things with food. And when we look at food and what we're studying, the impact on the quality and the food itself is the final outcome. And that's really different from nutrition where we look at how food impacts our body and health.
• 11:01
  In the world of food science, you typically understand nutrition, but your ultimate goal is what's happening to the food as the final product. And that's usually how I separate the food science from the nutrition where we're looking at how does the food impact the body. And so...
• 11:16
  That was really what I studied in my undergraduate degree. And then I moved to New York City. I'm actually Canadian. So I was doing all of this in Canada. Then I moved to New York City to do a graduate degree at NYU. And then very quickly after that, started working in the food industry, developing products.
• 11:36
  I think I read you worked for like so many of these, you know, huge brands like Nugs and... He's Australian. Yeah. The founder's Australian. Oh, my God. Shit. I did not know that. Yeah. Wow. That's so cool. So when you were there, what were you working on like in those kind of companies? My, I would say like specialty expertise is coming in to help formulate new products. Oh, fun. So if you want to make an alternative business,
• 12:04
  nugget or I've made an oat milk or I've made candy or I've made whatever that looks like. There's a lot of details that go into how do all the ingredients come together to taste a certain way, to have the right shelf life, to have the right texture, to have the right color, to do whatever it is you want to do. So where my brain gets really excited is how do we solve that problem?
• 12:31
  And so when I started working for Nugs, which is now Simulate, we really wanted to figure out how do we make this taste like it's not vegan? And how do we make it taste like McDonald's or something that people enjoy that would maybe really pull in somebody who is typically a meat eater that we want to get excited about a vegan product? And that comes with a lot of science.
• 12:57
  And then there's science in the lab and then the science at scale and the engineering at scale to figure out, well, how do I replicate this thing? I may be able to do in a very small way, but then I have to make hundreds of thousands of nuggets.
• 13:10
  And those are the problems that I like to figure out. And then all of the fun technical bits that come with that. How do you label it? And how do you comply with the regulatory requirements? And how do you package it? And all of those pieces to me are just really exciting. And it's a way to tell a story. I think like it's so smart to, you know,
• 13:33
  have these like big ideas, but then go and work in the actual field in a startup or, you know, maybe those companies aren't startups anymore, but kind of like in that environment to really learn the blueprint and get like a clear kind of base foundation before you go off and do it yourself. Because I imagine the learnings that you got in this part of your career were kind of fundamental to what you're doing now. Absolutely. And I think my biggest learning was
• 14:03
  There's no right way to go about making a new product, whether it's food or in any other industry. There's the core tenants or the key elements that you need. But something that I firmly believe is you can make and develop and scale something in the matter of a couple weeks or a couple months if you know what the whole picture needs to include. If you know that you need to be thinking about
• 14:29
  manufacturing, you may not know what the product's going to look like, but go find your manufacturer and that's going to speed it up. Or, you know, you learn these little bits and pieces on the way that allow you to know enough to be dangerous, but to also then have the ability to think outside the box, to get creative on how to solve the solution or get to that solution. Absolutely.
• 14:52
  I want to kind of get to the light bulb moment of where were you? You know, where were you at work? Where were you in life when you were like, I have a moment that is going to like change the course of what I'm doing right now. And I'm about to switch directions and kind of pivot out of this career and do my own thing. I'll start by saying I always thought that I was going to start my own company. I never knew what it was going to look like. That was always on my path at some point.
• 15:21
  And when I was young, young, when I was a teenager, I was like, I'm going to start a specialty food store one day. That may come in the future of my life, but I was on the subway in New York City. I will never forget the moment. It was, I want to say, the spring of 2016. I was going to my brother's apartment and I was listening to a podcast about the black market for breast milk.
• 15:50
  and how parents go on the internet in the US and in other countries to buy breast milk from strangers. But it's not just parents that go on the internet. And this was the part that I
• 16:10
  have to go to the internet to figure out how can I get this thing that's going to do X, whatever that means for my health. And as somebody, you know, really entrenched in the world of food science, I was like, I did not know that I had that exact response. I'm like, I can't believe people would.
• 16:26
  looked at this black market, when we have such sophisticated technology to recreate all of these things in our food, why aren't we just making the thing that makes this milk so precious, so valuable, and so important to our health? Why isn't anybody doing that? And I know how to make food products. I don't know how to make this thing, but I can probably figure it out. And the impact that could have to babies, to adults, to whoever needs it would be
• 16:56
  really kind of industry changing, life changing. So it was in that moment and it took me several years. I mean, you can tell that was 2016. I didn't start the company for years later because, well,
• 17:08
  I had to save money to quit my job, but that was the moment where I was like, I need to solve this problem. That is so interesting because I knew about, I'd never called it the black market, but I knew about the market of, you know, women who were not able to breastfeed looking for other mothers who were breastfeeding that they could, you know, get breast milk for their babies. But I didn't realize these other niches were.
• 17:31
  of people who needed it for, you know, for health reasons and health benefits. That's so interesting to me. It's something that, you know, as an everyday person, we don't think about, but breast milk is such a fascinating fluid, for lack of a better term, because it has all of these bioactive components in there that
• 17:57
  build humans, right? They create us, but they also help to develop our immune system. They teach our gut how to be a gut. Like our, you know, entire microbiome has been developed from this first food that we've had, breast milk. It teaches our whole body how to function. And so if you can imagine what that could mean for
• 18:19
  both the healthy and the non-healthy adult for the aging population, for people who are, you know, recovering from sports, these really important components that up until, well, what we're building at Helena are not commercially available, that that could unlock really a new world of nutrition. And I think that's where like my internal mentality,
• 18:41
  mind was blown. I was like, well, we know what this does. We know what these proteins do. Now we just have to go figure out how to make them, how to scale it, how to do this in an affordable way so we can disseminate this technology as far as possible and change people's lives. Wow. That is so crazy. My mind instantly goes to like,
• 19:02
  okay, cool, you know, we're starting here with baby formula that is a real replica of breast milk. But, like, what about, like, the supplement industry so, like, people can, like, have the exact same thing but just in capsule form? Like, that just sounds amazing. And that's really what we think as well. Just for anyone who might not know, can you just kind of, like, quickly explain what precision fermentation actually is?
• 19:28
  Precision fermentation is a technology that allows us to make precise and new compounds out of microbes. So we take microbes. These are little kind of cell factories that we can take and then train to become a factory to make a very specific and precise product.
• 19:53
  target molecule. So for what that means at Helena, we work with little microbes and we teach them, we go into the cell of the microbe and we teach them that when we feed them the food that they need and ferment them, that in that process, they start to then produce for us specific proteins. And it may seem like, okay, what does this actually mean? Like this is a foreign concept,
• 20:23
  Until, you know, I think it was the 90s maybe or the 80s, insulin that is used by diabetics and people who need insulin for their body was actually taken from the pancreas of pigs. That's not really how it's done anymore.
• 20:39
  what the whole scientific community figured out was if they took E. coli, which you're thinking, wait, that's like a germ, that's a bug, but you take it and you keep it in a sterile environment, you teach the E. coli, okay, instead of when I ferment you, you're going to just like grow as E. coli, I'm going to ferment you. So I'm going to feed you food, I'm going to grow you up. And hey, E. coli, you're going to go make insulin now.
• 21:03
  And it takes a lot of engineering of any coli cell. But what comes out of that is this protein insulin that is identical to what's found in the human body. And so what we've done and what a lot of folks in our industry have done is say, OK, the pharma industry has done this for a while for these really high value things, you know, pharmaceuticals. But if we can borrow that same strategy and bring it into food,
• 21:30
  we can make new and important proteins that the world hasn't really had access to because we're not going to take this stuff out of breast milk. That's not quite possible, but we can then create
• 21:44
  new ingredients that are really valuable for nutrition. So that's what we do at Helena's. We take microbes and we train them to make these proteins found in the human body so that we can scale it. We can make a lot of this. We can make it really, really pure. I mean, the quality standards that we hold are like almost pharma grade in what we're making. And so it's delivering nutrition in a really new and novel way.
• 22:12
  Man, science is so cool. Technology is so cool. That is just mind-blowing to me and so exciting. I'm so excited to see, like, you know, all of these things that, you know, not just Helena, but, like, all of these other technology and things that are kind of in the works right now, like, actually be, like, available on the market and kind of in action in such a huge way. It's very exciting. Yeah, it is very exciting.
• 22:41
  I want to talk about, I guess, the R&D process. Like you have this idea, you're on the train or you're on the subway. It's 2016. You're working. You need to start saving. But like, how do you actually get from idea to, okay, cool, I've quit my job and I'm, you know, manufacturing in a lab this stuff that is seemingly kind of impossible to do. Like this just seems so crazy to me.
• 23:06
  Is that kind of connecting with universities or is that in different labs or is that finding scientists to partner up with or is that immediately taking an idea and strictly talking to investors to get capital? What does it look like to get to the next phase? There's no right way, but I can say what it looked like for me because everybody would go about this pretty differently. So I knew that I wanted to do this. I was...
• 23:33
  I don't know, 22 or 23. I was like, I can't start a company right now. I have $0 to my name. I live in New York city. It's like the most expensive city in the world. So I hustled, I did as much work as I can to save money so I could then quit my day job. How much did you save? Okay. This is the part that is like probably concerning. I saved $15,000. Now looking back, I'm like,
• 23:57
  I don't know how I quit my job with $15,000 in the bank. I feel like rent in New York is like five grand a month. At that time, I was so proud of myself. And I was like, this is going to take me far.
• 24:13
  I made it last six months, which is pretty good. Six months. Pretty impressive. Yeah. It's not a lot of money. And, but then I had a drop dead date. I was like, I need to raise money by this time because I'm going to have to bring a salary in. And when I started with the salary, it was crazy.
• 24:33
  I always, I feel very strongly like you should never pay yourself a lot of money, especially early days. But then I was able to actually pay myself a living wage. But it took me three years. So what was that? What's the early salary that you were able to pay yourself? The early salary I was able to pay myself was, I think I paid myself $50,000 a year.
• 24:57
  totally livable in New York City. I was like, this is great. This is all I need. I don't want to take more money from the company. I just want enough money to live and to be comfortable. And it took me three years. So in that time from, I need to do this to, I'm quitting my job today to start Helena. I had my saving kind of goal.
• 25:19
  I had a timeline for myself internally of what I wanted to be able to do. I also wanted to be exposed to some startups in that process so I could see really firsthand what it means to be kind of boots on the ground, first employees at a company. So I did that.
• 25:35
  I also taught at NYU, which gives you a completely different vantage point of what it means to work in a team. Because even as a professor, you're working as a team because you're working with your students to really help them excel. And it was June of 2019 when I quit my day job and I got started with Helena. I had six months to figure out, OK, I need to raise money. So that was the first thing we did. And I.
• 26:04
  One on Crunchbase, which for the listeners who don't know, it's an online kind of like database of investors and profiles of companies and how much money they've raised. And I just went through like the top 200 angel investors for early stage investors.
• 26:22
  investing in New York or in the US and like went through and emailed all of them. And there were some that I thought, okay, this person I actually want to try hard to connect to. And some was just these like emails I would just try to get to everybody. Most people ignored me, but a couple people didn't. And we had our first check in August of 2019 written. It was $50,000 and it was from one call.
• 26:47
  And I was like, shocked. I was like, this person wants to give me money, $50,000. I was like, this is insane. And I'll never forget the day. You'll like. I was like, this is actually going to happen.
• 27:03
  And then I met really soon after that, somebody who ended up being, and still is, I was talking to him today, my closest mentor. He's invested in four rounds of Helena fundraising. He was at my wedding. I talked to him every day. Just somebody who- Is this Tom? I read about you talking about him in an article. Shout out to Tom. This is Tom. Shout out to Tom because the way we got connected was I reached out to him on LinkedIn and
• 27:30
  And now he is one of the most important people in my life. So my kind of note to first time people earlier in their career who have no networks, I had no networks. I didn't even know what venture capital was until I started Helena. And you just got to reach out. Can we like stay here for a second? I kind of want to dig in just a little bit deeper to the investor piece. So yeah.
• 27:56
  Were you reaching out just with like a, you know, what were you saying? Like, were you just emailing being like, hey, I have this idea, you know, I'm this person in like the food science world. What do you think? Or were you like, cool, here's my like very professional pitch deck. Like I've got it all figured out. What was the kind of like nitty gritty of what you were doing with those 200 people? I did not have a pitch deck. Yeah.
• 28:21
  Wow, that's cool. I reached out. I probably didn't even know I was supposed to have a pitch deck. Like this is how naive I was. I reached out to people. I said, hey, I, you know, maybe one of the only reasons why people responded was I said that I like the youngest professor at NYU. There's a proof point there. So there's like bits and pieces. Maybe people were like, okay, like maybe there's some legitimacy here. Most people didn't respond.
• 28:50
  But I think the folks who did respond were people who had a personal connection to breast milk or breastfeeding. And so I think that was what spoke to people was how I...
• 29:04
  reached out and I would put like kind of fun like titles like let's chat about breast milk technology or just things that I thought would draw people in and most of it didn't stick so I mean I've definitely learned from that I still cold email people all the time like I still do it but I think I don't know what it was why anybody responded but a handful of folks did
• 29:28
  Gosh, I love that. And I think it really speaks to also the power of just like a really world changing idea. If it's a good idea, it's a good idea. And people want to get involved in that, you know? I think smart investors don't write anybody off. I think that smart investors and not just smart investors, people, anybody in business,
• 29:52
  could see potential in just about anybody. And just because you don't have like, I didn't go to an Ivy league school. I didn't work. Like I don't have this kind of textbook experience.
• 30:05
  background or resume of so many startup founders that, you know, end up raising a lot of money in Silicon Valley. But I think it's the best investors who don't follow a script and see a person for the person as opposed to what, you know, a pattern matching kind of algorithm might tell you. And that's been to me something I've seen time and time again.
• 30:29
  How did that evolve? You know, that was kind of the early round, like, angel kind of checks. And I know, you know, you've raised to the tune of $30 million now. How did your, you said you still called outreach, absolutely. How did it evolve your kind of approach to fundraising? And kind of throughout the process, when you look back at, you've done Series A, I think now, when you look back at, you know, Angel, pre-seed, maybe seed, Series A, what have you learned? Like, what is it like to have raised $30 million?
• 31:01
  I don't think about this often, so it's a good question. What I've learned, I'd say the most important thing I've learned is how critical it is for me to be myself in the fundraising process. Around, I would say our seed round, I thought that I had to perform as the CEO that these companies,
• 31:29
  investors often see. And it's just, I'm not a typical CEO. I don't have that background. I always think I would not be a CEO if I was not the CEO of Helena. I'm the perfect CEO for this company, but I don't carry a lot of those attributes. I was not very well versed in any of the financials of a business until I had to rumble myself.
• 31:53
  And so I think it's not saying what you think an investor wants to hear, but saying what you believe is really important when you're fundraising and being honest, which is critical because we've seen people not be honest and where that gets them and be really real about your business while also selling yourself in the company.
• 32:16
  And as you go through more financing, in which we recently just closed when we didn't really announce it publicly, it becomes less about you and it becomes more about the numbers. But who you are as a leader becomes very critical to the company's success. And so you still have to be yourself. And it's really easy for that to get blurred.
• 32:40
  when you see all these companies raising big rounds and from all these fancy investors, and you feel like you have to be somebody you're not. And that's just not going to get you anywhere.
• 32:51
  I think that is such great advice. And I love that. Yeah, be yourself. Speak about your beliefs, what you believe in, how you see the world differently in 5, 10, 50 years time. That's critical for sure. I love that. And you'll find the people who believe those same things and want to be part of that movement or that mission.
• 33:12
  Before we started recording, you were saying something about it being a tough market. And I feel like we hear that all the time, right? We hear investors are saying it's a tough market and founders are saying they're being told it's a tough market. But what does that actually mean? I think it means a few things. I think investors are taking their time in running diligence processes for companies they're interested in.
• 33:37
  They have different expectations for different types of companies, depending on what you do with your business, different expectations for what they need to see,
• 33:47
  different expectations on the path, or if you're generating a lot of revenue where you get to from a profitability perspective, and some funds are just making fewer investments overall. They're making fewer bets and hopefully stronger bets. So that's what we see across the board and what we're hearing from investors right now. Gosh, tricky times. Tricky times.
• 34:18
  Tough seems like the word that, yeah, everyone uses. It's a tough market, a tough climate is what they say. I think tough but not impossible. I guess I would say that. Tough but not impossible. If you've gotten to a certain stage of your company, you've probably figured out tough. Yes, true. Absolutely. I want to talk about kind of...
• 34:41
  the go-to-market strategy and how a business like this gets to commercialization, because I don't understand what that looks like. I imagine in my head there's regulatory stuff that needs to happen. Maybe there's clinical trials that needs to happen. It's in the space of babies, so extra care, fragile kind of wrapping around that as well. And then I'm kind of wondering, is this...
• 35:08
  the kind of business, and this is probably a really stupid question, but is it like, oh, it's D2C, you'll be able to go onto the website and press buy? Or is this like, no, we do this in partnership with huge nationwide, I don't know what, providers that kind of put this everywhere? That's what I'm trying to understand in my head, because I don't know. And there's a lot of ways this could go, depending on your goals for the business.
• 35:37
  that allows us to make these humanized milk proteins
• 35:43
  that are really critical for our health. The first protein is called lactoferrin. It is this multifunctional protein that helps to reduce inflammation in our body. And when it does that, when our cells are inflamed, whether you just worked out or with aging or throughout your life, you experience inflammation, what the protein does that is so cool is it basically reduces inflammation at the cellular level.
• 36:12
  So when our cells are inflamed, they hold on to iron. And lactoferrin helps them remove iron and put the iron into our blood, which is what we need to be healthy is iron circulating in our blood. So it does this really cool thing. It's one of many things it does. And so as we've gone on this path to figure out how do we make this stuff? How do we make it out of these microbes? Okay, great. We figured this out in the lab. We engineered our microbes. Check.
• 36:40
  okay, now we have to figure out how to scale it. So we have to get to pretty large volumes quickly because we're also a startup. We don't have all the money in the world to sit around and figure it out. We gotta just make it happen.
• 36:54
  So we make it happen at large scale. And these are tanks that are the size of buildings. They're like 50,000 liters of making this stuff. So we do that. That's another checkmark. But from there, the critical piece and what you bring up is before we bring this to market, we are really focused on ensuring that the quality of what we're making is second to none.
• 37:20
  And quality and technical rigor in science are like the key tenants to who we are as a business. It's why we were started. So what we've been doing the last six months or so is a lot of studies to ensure that the structure of the protein, the way that it all comes together, the purity, the shelf life, the stability, the way that it acts as an anti-inflammatory, we can test that. We can test how your body will digest it. We actually...
• 37:48
  have these simulated guts where we, in our lab, basically digest the protein and how it would digest in your body. So we know exactly what it's doing in your stomach. So we collect all of this data, which we've done. And then the last piece here is a clinical study.
• 38:05
  So this is not a requirement, but for us it is because we want to ensure that we can measure all of these things in the human body. This first protein that we've made, lactoferrin, we're starting in adult nutrition and then eventually we will get to infant nutrition. But for us, it was really important to do a clinical study in an adult population first. So we're running that study right now, which everything's going really well, which is great.
• 38:32
  We'll have the data by the end of the year, and then we'll be able to launch our protein right after that. And what it looks like from a business perspective is for selling to other businesses that can take it, so B2B, and incorporate it into their food products, whether that's supplements, beverages, bars.
• 38:50
  wherever it might go. And then over time, as we can get all of the data from an infant clinical study, which is our next step after the healthy adult clinical study, we'll incorporate this into an infant formula and hopefully work with several partners across the world because we want to get lactoferrin, this first protein we've made from breast milk into every single baby in the world.
• 39:14
  And we can't do that alone. So to do that, we've got to work with others who have really far reach to be able to get the lactoferrin where we think it needs to go. That is so cool. So cool. So you're in this like adult clinical trial at the moment. Does that mean you're taking lactoferrin?
• 39:33
  Are you allowed to? I cannot take, I cannot participate in the study because it would be a conflict of interest. Okay, right. I would love to take, once this is on the market, I will eat it every day. The studies on this stuff, we believe lactoferrin in the next 10 years is going to be what probiotics have been in the last 10 years for us. It's going to be in every food product. And that's because from early life to end of life, the impact this protein has on our body
• 40:03
  is game changing. So I want to get my hands on it, but our clinical study is, we work with partners that run clinical studies a lot. And there's, you know, people who can elect to enroll in the study, they have to meet the criteria. It all gets publicly disclosed because that's the requirements in the US. It's, you can go read about our study on the internet and people have been drinking. It's a drink mix.
• 40:27
  with lactoferrin. So we develop like a drink mix, kind of like a hydration powder. You pour it into water. Just a really easy way for people to take this, for us to be able to monitor all these different things. And then we look at their blood. We measure markers of inflammation. We measure antibodies. We measure their gut. Like we're looking at the gut microbiome. We look at stool samples, which sounds kind of gross, but it's actually really important to get the data. So all of that stuff is happening right now. And we're actually...
• 40:57
  like halfway through the study, I believe. Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. I want the product. It reminds me, what's that guy that, you know, he's super famous at the moment for his – he's trying to, like, add years onto his life. What's his name? Oh, Brian Johnson. Yeah, Brian Johnson. I feel like he needs to be part of the study. He will one day – if anybody is listening and can connect me to Brian Johnson, I believe –
• 41:22
  he's going to incorporate lactoferrin into his regimen of all of the things he takes. There must be someone who has a connect to like a, like, you know, a connect through a weird way of like, this person knows this person, knows this person. I reckon we could, I reckon we could figure that out. Probably. Look, I've listened to him on, on podcasts before. I think what he does is fascinating. And I believe what I think he does that's very interesting is he,
• 41:49
  he understands his body in a way that none of us have ever really experienced.
• 41:55
  started to think about our body. And as, you know, we experienced so much stress and we experience all of the things in the world for us to be so in tuned with who we are and our needs and have like personalized nutrition. I think it's really going to make a big impact on our ability to age in a very healthy way, to have, you know, a longer health span as opposed to just a lifespan. And we think these proteins, bioactive proteins, their role is to interact with your biology.
• 42:22
  They enter your body and they become customized. That's what they do. So what that could mean for our health over time could be really impactful. And as we see an aging population where I think in the next 10 years, over 2 billion people in the world are going to be over the age of 65. I mean...
• 42:40
  We can deliver better nutrition for them to not just live long and unhealthy, but to live long and healthy, but have the ability to start potentially, you know, for people in their 20s or 30s. We just think the impact is going to be really big.
• 42:56
  Gosh, that is so cool. I really love it. I'm such a hype girl. I'm like, yeah, 100%. Billions of people are going to have this product within the next 10 years. Love it. We've got the six quick questions coming up, but I just want to kind of end on...
• 43:12
  your kind of top piece of advice for people who are either in the early stages of building a business or people who are even just in their career at the moment and listening to this, feeling inspired, and they have a big idea, a world-changing idea. What's your advice for people like that? Try it and don't stop. The persistence is what's going to
• 43:39
  allow you to get done what you need to get done. I had people when I started, Helena, tell me this is absolutely not possible. People still tell me this is not possible. No one's going to take this stuff. Earlier, people said you're never going to figure out how to make this. No one's made a human protein outside of the human body for food. No one's done that before.
• 44:00
  And I was like, well, we're just going to have to figure it out. Like, I have this amount of money. It typically costs companies three times this amount of money to scale. But we have to do it with this amount of money. So we're going to figure it out. And if you have that mindset while everybody's running and they fall down, if you keep getting back up.
• 44:21
  then you're going to figure it out. And your ideas are going to twist and turn and you'll pivot and all of these things are going to happen. And that's part of the process, which is exciting. So you just got to keep going and try. And if people tell you you're crazy, they're the crazy ones. Oh, I love that. Very good advice. Thank you.
• 44:42
  All right, we are up to the six quick questions part of the episode. So question number one is what's your why? Why are you waking up every day and working on Helena? I want to change how people eat and improve the nutrition of their foods. That's my why.
• 45:04
  Question number two is, this one might be a little harder to answer because you're not live yet, but you would still have moments. What has been your favorite marketing moment so far? I think my favorite marketing moment has been when our immunologist was interviewed on a podcast.
• 45:34
  people behind the scenes making the science happen, get the spotlight. It's so easy for me to get that moment. And that's what we're trying to do at Helena is use science for good and bring science to the front of what we do, how we eat and how we interact with the world. So I think that was probably my favorite moment. That's a cool one.
• 45:56
  Question number three is what are your go-to kind of learning resources? If you have to think about like a podcast or a book or a newsletter, like where are you turning to learn? I listen to a lot of podcasts.
• 46:11
  I love podcasts. I listen to this podcast, actually. I like to listen to other founders' stories. My podcast? Early, late. It doesn't really matter. Yeah. Oh, my God. I love that. I listen to this podcast. It's so cool. I'm a huge podcast listener, and I find it's different when somebody's telling verbally their story. I really like The Diary of a CEO. I know that's a pretty popular podcast, but I love listening to that.
• 46:40
  I liked him Ferris's podcast. I learned a lot from that. And there's a podcast, an unexpected podcast. It's called the C word. It's about women in history who have historically been called crazy, who are really important public figures and really the story behind their life. And I think entrepreneurship doesn't just come from building a business.
• 47:07
  you could have built a lot of different things. And so I learn a lot from, especially the story of women who've had to endure so much and bear the weight of the world. And I take a lot of those learnings into my day-to-day life of how I can be a better leader, a more empathetic leader to the people around me and create a better future. I'm so excited to listen to that podcast. I'm gonna subscribe. It's a good one. Right after this.
• 47:33
  Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM or PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and motivated and successful? Every single morning, first thing I do is I drink a cup of water. It is key. Water before anything else. And I encourage that for everybody. As you can imagine, I love food and it's a fruit or vegetable at every meal.
• 48:00
  Doesn't matter what you're eating, if it's healthy or it's unhealthy or whatever it looks like, if I have a fruit or vegetable at every single meal, I'm gonna feel really good. And for me, another non-negotiable that kind of brings me back to earth is I have a 15 month old. And every single night I put him to bed, no matter what. And I think that it's being able to have this busy, crazy life, do everything that you do. But when you have these moments where you can be a person,
• 48:29
  For me, it's be a mom and have that interaction. No compromise. It's so important. So I'd say those are the things that keep me energized and keep me excited every day. Love that. Question number five is what's been the worst money mistake in the business and how much did it cost you? Worst money mistake? It's like, are my investors listening? Yeah.
• 49:00
  We bought a piece of equipment that I don't think we now use. So I will say we use it. But it was like $300,000, which in the world of science, like the equipment is really expensive. Like we have millions of dollars of equipment now, but we lease all of it.
• 49:17
  So we're not paying for it outright. And we thought we needed this thing for a certain experiment, but we were like months out from doing it. And anyways, I don't think it was the best decision at the time. But now we have it and the team uses it. But I think we probably could have directed those funds elsewhere at that moment, looking back on it. Yeah, that's an expensive one.
• 49:40
  quite expensive. The world of science is really expensive. So those types of numbers you just hear all the time and you somehow get used to them. Last question. Question number six. What is just a crazy story, good or bad from the journey of building Helena? I have a funny story. Let's tell it. Love a funny story. I've never told this on a podcast. I don't think
• 50:11
  And during COVID, we're a lab company, we were still in person, but all of the calls were Zoom calls and we were just getting accustomed to Zoom for the first time. And I was speaking on a panel, on a Zoom call. It was, I wanna say April or May of 2020. And I was in the lab, I was going to the bathroom before I was about to get onto the Zoom panel. It was gonna be like, you know, one or two hours. So I was like, let me go to the bathroom first.
• 50:40
  I go to the bathroom. I'm going to put this out there because it's a key piece of the story. I peed. That's a key piece of the story. And I flush the toilet, and it explodes on me. And I get soaking wet. It was disgusting. And the panel was about to start in two minutes. And I was like...
• 51:00
  I need this. Like I need the world to, you know, we're still early days. We hadn't raised a lot of money. Every opportunity is a good opportunity. I was like, I'm just going to have to figure out how to fix myself up, how to look professional from the top up on the zoom call. Luckily it's a zoom call. It's not in person. I can figure this out. So I sit for like two hours on this zoom panel covered in toilet water and
• 51:27
  It was horrible, but I did the Zoom panel. I did great, and then I ran home. And I remember in that moment thinking, this is what entrepreneurship is about. You have to just put your best face on no matter the circumstance. Certainly didn't think I'd be in that circumstance, but that happened. So that's one of my funniest stories. That's a LOL one. Yeah, cool. Toilet water.
• 51:52
  Toilet water. Nice. Probably not what you or the listeners expected to hear. So many stories like that where you're just like, you walk into the weirdest situations running a company and you're doing it right if you walk into these weird situations a lot. I love that. And that is a great note to wrap this show on. Laura, thank you so much for coming on the show. Such a hype girl. Love what you're doing. So grateful.
• 52:21
  Thanks so much for having me.
• 52:27
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 52:52
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 53:14
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.