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Growing Meat from Cells · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Meat is expensive. It's costly, and it's costly in
0:25
Speaker 1: a few different ways, on a few different dimensions. For
0:27
Speaker 1: one thing, it just costs a lot to grow a
0:30
Speaker 1: cow or to go out and catch a wild salmon. Also,
0:35
Speaker 1: meat is costly for the environment. Cows are absurdly large
0:39
Speaker 1: contributors to climate change and habitat loss. Wildfish stocks are declining.
0:44
Speaker 1: Fish farming is associated with pollution. Also, a lot of
0:49
Speaker 1: what farmfish are fed is wildfish, which in turn adds
0:53
Speaker 1: to the decline in wildfish stocks. As a result of
0:56
Speaker 1: all this, people are trying to figure out how to
0:58
Speaker 1: make food that is like meat but does not require
1:02
Speaker 1: growing and killing animals. Plant based fake meat has been
1:07
Speaker 1: around for a while impossible beyond, but I would argue
1:11
Speaker 1: that a limiting factor is right there in the name plant.
1:16
Speaker 1: There is another strategy, a strategy that is technically harder,
1:21
Speaker 1: that's not as far along, but that in the long
1:24
Speaker 1: run might be more promising, growing meat from animal cells
1:28
Speaker 1: without ever growing the animal. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this
1:38
Speaker 1: is What's Your Problem, the show where I talk to
1:40
Speaker 1: people who are trying to make technological progress. My guest
1:43
Speaker 1: today is Justin Kolbeck, Justin is the co founder and
1:47
Speaker 1: CEO of a company called wild Type. Earlier this year,
1:50
Speaker 1: wild Type started selling what they call cultivated salmon at
1:54
Speaker 1: a few restaurants around the country. The key ingredient in
1:57
Speaker 1: cultivated salmon is cells that originally came from a real salmon,
2:02
Speaker 1: but are grown in a metal vat, kind of like
2:05
Speaker 1: the way you brew beer. Justin's problem is this, how
2:08
Speaker 1: do you grow salmon cells in a vat, turn them
2:12
Speaker 1: into something that looks and tastes like salmon, and sell
2:16
Speaker 1: that for the same price as wild caught salmon. Justin
2:20
Speaker 1: started off by telling me about this thing that happened
2:23
Speaker 1: about a decade ago. He was visiting his friend Aria
2:26
Speaker 1: Elfinbine at Aria's lab in San Francisco. Aria is a
2:30
Speaker 1: cardiologist and he was growing heart muscle cells in his lab.
2:34
Speaker 2: What was really interesting about that visit is Ari and
2:37
Speaker 2: I were both having a conversation about what's the best
2:41
Speaker 2: way to make food. Should we think about a plant
2:43
Speaker 2: based approach or should we use cells? And it was
2:45
Speaker 2: an active debate because at the time, Impossible Food it
2:49
Speaker 2: was rolling out at Momofuku in New York. There were
2:51
Speaker 2: lines around the block. People were really excited about what
2:54
Speaker 2: plants could do, and he showed me under the microscope
2:59
Speaker 2: a dish with beating human cardiomyocytes. So these are human
3:04
Speaker 2: heart muscle cells, and at the cellular level they have
3:10
Speaker 2: a pacemaking ability, so they beat just like our heart does.
3:15
Speaker 1: Each cell sort of regulates itself.
3:17
Speaker 2: To be the cell. Yeah, like this is way before
3:20
Speaker 2: it becomes the full organ. This is just like the
3:22
Speaker 2: most basic building block of the human heart. And that
3:27
Speaker 2: was a hugely impactful moment for me, because you know,
3:31
Speaker 2: Ari had kind of always told me, hey, cells know
3:33
Speaker 2: what to do all the way down to the most
3:35
Speaker 2: basic level. They are programmed to become the building blocks
3:38
Speaker 2: of our of our various parts of our body. But
3:41
Speaker 2: seeing it beat was really an incredible moment for me, right,
3:45
Speaker 2: And also it made the feet of turning cells into meat.
3:51
Speaker 2: Sorry that that rhymed a bit I didn't intend it to,
3:54
Speaker 2: did it seem a little bit more doable, quite honestly, right, Like,
3:58
Speaker 2: here are these scientists that are growing functional human beating
4:02
Speaker 2: heart cells for therapeutic purposes. Making a non functional piece
4:07
Speaker 2: of meat just for human consumption seemed not trivial by comparison,
4:12
Speaker 2: but a bit easier like, if.
4:13
Speaker 1: You could literally grow human heart self that beat on
4:17
Speaker 1: their own in the lab, surely we could make just
4:18
Speaker 1: a slab of dead salmon for people to eat.
4:21
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. And you know, and I wouldn't say that
4:25
Speaker 2: all of my doubts went away in that moment, but
4:28
Speaker 2: I did get it. I understood the sort of power
4:30
Speaker 2: of what this technology could do.
4:33
Speaker 1: So you were already by this time thinking about food,
4:37
Speaker 1: and in particular thinking about alternatives to traditional meat. Like
4:41
Speaker 1: why why were you too thinking about that at that time?
4:45
Speaker 2: I think we came at this from slightly different angles.
4:49
Speaker 2: Ari and I. So my most recent overseas assignment as
4:55
Speaker 2: a foreign service officer was in a place called Paktika, Afghanistan.
5:01
Speaker 2: At the time I was there, which was two thousand
5:02
Speaker 2: and oh, boy, ten to eleven, it's a long time
5:06
Speaker 2: ago now, Afghanistan was the third most food and secure
5:10
Speaker 2: country in the world, and the place where I was,
5:12
Speaker 2: which was on the eastern part of the country right
5:15
Speaker 2: on the border with Pakistan, was one of the most
5:18
Speaker 2: food and secure provinces in that incredibly food and secure country,
5:22
Speaker 2: and I saw people do incredible things to feed their families.
5:28
Speaker 2: It was non inconsequential part of why a lot of
5:30
Speaker 2: people signed up to become members of the Talban quite honestly,
5:33
Speaker 2: to get a paycheck and essentially be able to feed
5:36
Speaker 2: their family. I came home from that assignment thinking a
5:40
Speaker 2: lot about food security, and so when Aria started talking
5:43
Speaker 2: to me about the power of this technology, I got
5:46
Speaker 2: really excited because it was at least part of an
5:48
Speaker 2: answer to a question that had been tumbling around in
5:51
Speaker 2: my head, which was where's all the food going to
5:54
Speaker 2: come from for the next three billion people that are
5:56
Speaker 2: going to show up on planet Earth? And by the way,
5:58
Speaker 2: they all want to eat more like us here in
6:00
Speaker 2: North America, So a lot of meat, a lot of dairy,
6:03
Speaker 2: a lot of seafood. And it seemed like a very compelling, interesting,
6:10
Speaker 2: partial solution to that.
6:11
Speaker 1: So, okay, so you have this in your mind, you
6:16
Speaker 1: see the beating heart cells through a microscope, right, and
6:22
Speaker 1: then what like, how do you get from there to
6:24
Speaker 1: deciding to start a company to make salmon out of cells?
6:29
Speaker 2: So the first thing that I needed to get over
6:32
Speaker 2: internally was does as technology have promised? And it was
6:35
Speaker 2: clear to me that it did. The second thing was, Okay, well,
6:38
Speaker 2: can we actually do it? And can we make enough
6:42
Speaker 2: cells to cook something up and put it in our
6:44
Speaker 2: mouths and chew it. And so that's what we did.
6:47
Speaker 2: And so at the end of twenty sixteen we started
6:50
Speaker 2: talking to potential for lack of a better word, rent
6:54
Speaker 2: a bench locations on the West Coast. We ended up
6:57
Speaker 2: at this great place that at the time was called
6:59
Speaker 2: QB three. Now it's called NBC Biolabs in San Francisco.
7:03
Speaker 2: They have a few of them now. But what was
7:06
Speaker 2: incredible at the time is you could rent for I
7:08
Speaker 2: think the price was eight hundred and fifty bucks a month.
7:12
Speaker 2: You could have dedicated bench space. It wasn't much. It
7:15
Speaker 2: was like the size of the dust that I'm sitting
7:16
Speaker 2: at now.
7:17
Speaker 1: But is it just full of mad scientists with weird
7:20
Speaker 1: o dreams cooking things up? What's going on in there? Yeah?
7:23
Speaker 2: And other than us and one other person who was
7:26
Speaker 2: also working on some food applications, everybody was working on biotech,
7:30
Speaker 2: healthcare type of stuff, right. And the advantage of this
7:33
Speaker 2: place is at the time Ri n I still had
7:36
Speaker 2: full time jobs and we were funding this from our
7:38
Speaker 2: savings and from our salaries, so it didn't cost a
7:41
Speaker 2: lot to get up and running. We had access to
7:43
Speaker 2: like millions of dollars of state of the art equipment
7:46
Speaker 2: that we could rent. And so, you know, we spent
7:48
Speaker 2: the first part of twenty seventeen trying to find some
7:53
Speaker 2: animals that we could isolate sales from, right and that
7:57
Speaker 2: included you know, obviously fish, which we ended up working on,
7:59
Speaker 2: but also some chicken. In the early days, it was
8:02
Speaker 2: just a little bit easier to get a hold of
8:04
Speaker 2: fertilized eggs, for example, which are full of the kinds
8:06
Speaker 2: of sales that you need for starting a selling the
8:09
Speaker 2: purposes that we need them for, you know. And I
8:12
Speaker 2: remember when we grew our first real full dish of
8:17
Speaker 2: chicken muscle cells. It was before we you know, at
8:19
Speaker 2: the time, we were like literally going fishing to like
8:22
Speaker 2: find a fish, and you know it's called fishing and
8:26
Speaker 2: not catching. So you know, we went fishing a few
8:28
Speaker 2: times and we weren't able to get any fish. We
8:30
Speaker 2: were like down there in the San Francisco docks talking
8:33
Speaker 2: to fishermen and being like, hey, I know you just
8:35
Speaker 2: caught this fish. Can you cut us off a little
8:36
Speaker 2: bit so we can see if we can find some
8:39
Speaker 2: life cells. But while we were doing that, because we
8:41
Speaker 2: always and we can talk more about this. We always
8:43
Speaker 2: saw seafood is like the real place we needed to focus.
8:46
Speaker 2: We were working on in parallel some of these kind
8:49
Speaker 2: of poultry cell lines, and the first big aha moment
8:52
Speaker 2: for me was, you know, we got in a very
8:54
Speaker 2: small format, you know, just like your simple dish. We
8:57
Speaker 2: got chicken muscle cells to grow and then and I
9:01
Speaker 2: had this video still to this day of them like
9:03
Speaker 2: kind of spontaneously contracting like our muscles, still, right, And
9:07
Speaker 2: just like our muscles, if you give them the right
9:09
Speaker 2: kind of environment, you can get them to grow and
9:12
Speaker 2: to be bigger and all of that. And so eventually
9:16
Speaker 2: we did find a place where we could reliably get
9:19
Speaker 2: like fish cells because, as you might imagine, you didn't
9:22
Speaker 2: come upon the ideal cell line the first time around.
9:24
Speaker 2: That's not how science works typically. It took us a while,
9:27
Speaker 2: and it was actually a fish that Aria dissected on
9:32
Speaker 2: Christmas Eve of twenty eighteen that became the starter yeast
9:37
Speaker 2: effectively for the cells that were that were making and
9:41
Speaker 2: putting into products today.
9:42
Speaker 1: It was a salmon.
9:42
Speaker 2: It was a little salmon, a little salmon.
9:44
Speaker 1: So why did you choose? You said, you always knew
9:47
Speaker 1: you were going to do seafood, Like, why did you
9:49
Speaker 1: choose seafood, Why did you choose salmon?
9:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, there are a couple of reasons. One, we
9:55
Speaker 2: wanted to focus on a big potential price, not just
10:00
Speaker 2: price like in the monetary sense, but a place to
10:03
Speaker 2: have a really big impact. And seafood is our species,
10:06
Speaker 2: the human species number one source of animal protein, you know,
10:10
Speaker 2: not driven by us here in North America, but largely
10:13
Speaker 2: by other countries around the world. And so that was
10:17
Speaker 2: one consideration and the other onse and Ari and I
10:20
Speaker 2: felt pretty strongly about this. In the early days, a
10:23
Speaker 2: lot of people were really getting interested in the plant
10:26
Speaker 2: based movement. You know, there were certainly those who cared
10:28
Speaker 2: about it from like a sustainability perspective, but I think
10:31
Speaker 2: there were a lot of people that were just like, Wow,
10:33
Speaker 2: I can have a burger and it's going to have
10:34
Speaker 2: like lower saturated fat, and maybe this is healthier for
10:37
Speaker 2: me than a beef broger. Right, And for seafood, there
10:42
Speaker 2: was a really clear reason for people to switch, which
10:45
Speaker 2: is nobody likes to find a parasite or a worm
10:49
Speaker 2: in their sushi, and it is absolutely ubiquitous. Nobody likes
10:54
Speaker 2: the heavy metals that are present in fish. I think
10:58
Speaker 2: seafood is just this really complex thing where you like
11:00
Speaker 2: ask people like, hey, what's better farm fish or wild caught?
11:03
Speaker 2: You'll get all kinds of different answers, and you know,
11:05
Speaker 2: some of them may or may not be based on
11:07
Speaker 2: any kind of factual base. But it's complicated, right, And
11:11
Speaker 2: so the idea was like, let's just remove all of
11:13
Speaker 2: that complication and just make the purest, cleanest seafoot on
11:17
Speaker 2: the planet. And that was kind of our north star
11:19
Speaker 2: for a long time.
11:21
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's late twenty eighteen. You get your first
11:25
Speaker 1: cells out of the original salmon that is the father
11:31
Speaker 1: or mother of everything else, right, So let's just step
11:35
Speaker 1: back at that moment and talk about the context of
11:39
Speaker 1: this broader technology of working with cells. I mean, it
11:41
Speaker 1: is the thing people had been working on for some time, right,
11:43
Speaker 1: both in a medical context and in a like can
11:47
Speaker 1: we grow meat from sales context? What was the existing
11:51
Speaker 1: arc on the food side of people trying to grow
11:54
Speaker 1: meat from cells at the time you started.
11:57
Speaker 2: Interestingly, the very first demonstration of this technology was a
12:01
Speaker 2: NASA funded project by a researcher I believe in New
12:07
Speaker 2: Jersey whose name was Morris Benjaminson. And he grew goldfish
12:11
Speaker 2: cells outside of the goldfish as a proof point that,
12:17
Speaker 2: you know, because the basic question they were trying to
12:19
Speaker 2: figure out is, Okay, we've got astronauts on long distance
12:23
Speaker 2: space missions, or maybe we're colonizing Mars one day. We're
12:26
Speaker 2: sure as hell not grazing cows on Mars. It's just
12:30
Speaker 2: not going to be a thing. So and you know,
12:32
Speaker 2: we're not going to be able to ship up on
12:35
Speaker 2: rockets huge amounts of heavy meat for people to eat, right,
12:39
Speaker 2: So what are we going to do?
12:40
Speaker 1: Right?
12:40
Speaker 2: And I think that was the original impetus for exploring
12:44
Speaker 2: this kind of technology is can we just make me
12:47
Speaker 2: essentially on a spaceship that's traveling through space? And that's
12:52
Speaker 2: what this researcher did, and he proved that it could work.
12:54
Speaker 1: And when was that just more or less decade nineties
12:58
Speaker 1: or nineties?
12:59
Speaker 2: Ok, yeah, yeah, so it's a while ago. Then a
13:04
Speaker 2: French artist demonstration where he grew some frog muscle cells
13:10
Speaker 2: that he had sort of isolated from a living frog
13:14
Speaker 2: and fed them to some people as like an art demonstration.
13:18
Speaker 1: Somehow very French.
13:19
Speaker 2: They must have been smoking, right, I would imagine it
13:23
Speaker 2: was like a you know, dark cafe somewhere on the
13:27
Speaker 2: chamis Luise. Well this I don't know, but the people
13:30
Speaker 2: watched the frog was alive kind of while people were
13:33
Speaker 2: eating its cells. Essentially.
13:35
Speaker 1: Oh I see, So it didn't harm the frog. They
13:37
Speaker 1: whatever scraped them cells off the frog and didn't have
13:40
Speaker 1: to eat the frog. Yeah, exactly, something sort of like
13:42
Speaker 1: frog legs without eating that frog's legs or any frog's legs.
13:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. But what I loved about this is it wasn't
13:49
Speaker 2: like a scientist or biologist. It was just an artist
13:53
Speaker 2: who saw a chance to create this like absurd setting
13:56
Speaker 2: and just see what happens and document it. And then
13:59
Speaker 2: I would say for applications for like more serious applications
14:02
Speaker 2: toward food started with a Dutch researcher named Mark Post
14:06
Speaker 2: who made the first cultivated hamburger about a decade ago
14:11
Speaker 2: and then ate it on live British TV.
14:14
Speaker 1: So that had happened, so people could do it, but
14:17
Speaker 1: nobody was doing it at scale or in any kind
14:20
Speaker 1: of economic way. So what do you have to do? Like,
14:24
Speaker 1: what are a few of the things you had to
14:26
Speaker 1: figure out?
14:26
Speaker 2: I think a good starting point for that question is
14:28
Speaker 2: how did Mark Post make his burger? And how much
14:31
Speaker 2: did it cost? So that burger costs well over three
14:34
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars to make, just to put it into perspective.
14:38
Speaker 2: And the way he grew it was in these things
14:40
Speaker 2: called cell factories, which are layered large imagine like a
14:45
Speaker 2: big plastic circulture dish, but like the size of a desk,
14:50
Speaker 2: and it's like ten stories tall, right, And he had
14:54
Speaker 2: stacks of these. I've seen pictures of it, just piled
14:58
Speaker 2: up in his lab where they made this initial prototype.
15:02
Speaker 2: So the first step was like, okay, well that's not
15:04
Speaker 2: going to work. If we're trying to take plastics out
15:06
Speaker 2: of fish, we better not be growing it. And he's
15:08
Speaker 2: just plastic cell hotels, right, not to mention that doesn't scale.
15:13
Speaker 1: So the easier move would have been grow the cell
15:16
Speaker 1: so that they're sticking to a plastic box. But you
15:18
Speaker 1: were you didn't want plastic in the fish, so you
15:20
Speaker 1: couldn't do that.
15:21
Speaker 2: Yeah. So look, most cell culture is done in stainless
15:24
Speaker 2: steel fermentation tanks that don't look all that different from
15:27
Speaker 2: a brew tank.
15:28
Speaker 1: So that seems fine, right, Fine, use a metal tank
15:32
Speaker 1: instead of a plastic tank. But get well, let's see
15:35
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand you need to basically get it to
15:37
Speaker 1: three dollars, which is how many orders of magnitude? Right
15:40
Speaker 1: a lot thirty three hundred, three thousand and thirty thousand,
15:44
Speaker 1: five orders of magnitude. You have to get five orders
15:47
Speaker 1: of magnitude out right. That seems like the big job.
15:51
Speaker 1: Also make salmine, which nobody has done. But frankly, it's
15:54
Speaker 1: the five orders of magnitude part that seems really hard
15:56
Speaker 1: to me.
15:56
Speaker 2: So here's how we did it, and it was it
15:59
Speaker 2: was really three things. One it was to start with
16:01
Speaker 2: the right cells, right, like I was talking about, So
16:03
Speaker 2: train the ones they can grow in a beer brewery
16:05
Speaker 2: instead of these cell hotels.
16:07
Speaker 1: And is that just a matter of choosing the right
16:10
Speaker 1: kind of cell? Is it just trial and error that
16:13
Speaker 1: one didn't work, that one didn't work, Oh, that one worked.
16:15
Speaker 2: That's right.
16:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.
16:16
Speaker 2: So it was thousands of experiments literally, oh wow, over
16:20
Speaker 2: two years to get the right type of cell.
16:23
Speaker 1: Just different cell kinds to find one that would reproduce
16:26
Speaker 1: in a in essentially a beer brewing vat.
16:29
Speaker 2: That's right, different types of salmon. So we used Atlantic
16:31
Speaker 2: and within Pacific, we use coho and chinook and just
16:34
Speaker 2: all these other kinds just to try to change as
16:36
Speaker 2: many of the variables as we could, but we got
16:38
Speaker 2: there in the end. The second thing was it.
16:41
Speaker 1: Was Coho, right, the one that worked was Coho.
16:43
Speaker 2: Is what won the contest.
16:45
Speaker 1: The second thing.
16:47
Speaker 2: Second thing was what we feed the cells. So in
16:51
Speaker 2: pharma cell culture, it's not uncommon for a leader of
16:55
Speaker 2: cel feed to cost hundreds of dollars and in fact,
16:58
Speaker 2: that's literally what ours cost when we started.
17:00
Speaker 1: A leader to cost hundreds of dollars. That's right.
17:03
Speaker 2: And you know, just to zoom forward in time a bit,
17:05
Speaker 2: we're at like three thousand liters scale now, so it's
17:09
Speaker 2: just not tenable and so and by the way, that
17:12
Speaker 2: feed has a lot of animal components in it, which
17:15
Speaker 2: again defeats the purpose. Like if we're growing cells outside
17:18
Speaker 2: of an animal, let's not grow it in another animal ingredients.
17:22
Speaker 2: So then we had to put the cells on a
17:24
Speaker 2: plant based diet and reduce the cost like crazy, right,
17:28
Speaker 2: and just to give you sent So we went from
17:30
Speaker 2: hundreds of dollars a lead to like about a buck
17:32
Speaker 2: a liter.
17:32
Speaker 1: Now, okay, and how much meat do you get out
17:36
Speaker 1: of a leader of feed? I guess that is that
17:38
Speaker 1: another optimization problem?
17:39
Speaker 2: It is, that's right, Yeah, yeah, and I'll put that
17:43
Speaker 2: as a subset of the cost of the feed. But
17:47
Speaker 2: while we were reducing the richness of the feed, essentially,
17:51
Speaker 2: we were also selecting for cells that could grow in
17:55
Speaker 2: a very healthy way at higher densities. So we can
17:57
Speaker 2: get let's say, instead of a gram a leader, we
18:01
Speaker 2: can get ten grams a lead, or twenty grams a leader,
18:04
Speaker 2: or one hundred grams a leader, right somewhere in that range,
18:06
Speaker 2: like where we're ten or one hundred x. Ying with
18:08
Speaker 2: some of these efficiencies would be The third thing that
18:12
Speaker 2: we had to do was to scale all this up,
18:16
Speaker 2: so move it into larger and larger cultivation centers essentially.
18:22
Speaker 2: So that was definitely not trivial, and that was more
18:26
Speaker 2: less of a biology thing, more of an engineering thing,
18:29
Speaker 2: like how do we keep the thing sterile? How do
18:32
Speaker 2: we ensure that we're keeping the cells happy? Like nobody
18:35
Speaker 2: had ever studied three D fish cell culture before to
18:40
Speaker 2: the point where like we were, like, what temperature should
18:42
Speaker 2: we grow the mat Almost all cells that are grown
18:45
Speaker 2: for therapeutic use are grown at our body temperature, right
18:48
Speaker 2: thirty seven celsius, never ninety eight point seven fahrenheit.
18:51
Speaker 1: What's the body temperature? Of a salmon.
18:53
Speaker 2: It's cold there, cold.
18:55
Speaker 1: Was what whatever? The water is?
18:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and they have a range that they can tolerate.
18:59
Speaker 2: It's pretty broad actually, which is why this was an
19:01
Speaker 2: interesting question. And so yeah, that was a big process.
19:05
Speaker 2: But once we got it, I would say, into our
19:08
Speaker 2: first stainless steel tank, it got a lot easier.
19:12
Speaker 1: How does that work? By the way, so you start
19:14
Speaker 1: with a cell, how do you get from a cell
19:18
Speaker 1: to a piece of salmon that I can eat?
19:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what we do is, you know, for now,
19:23
Speaker 2: we're growing cells. Like I said, kind of the maxi
19:26
Speaker 2: bawling that we're at is three thousand liters, which, again,
19:28
Speaker 2: if you've been to a microbrewery and you like kind
19:30
Speaker 2: of peer at all those big stanless steel tanks or whatever,
19:32
Speaker 2: twenty feet tall, looks like that one of those.
19:35
Speaker 1: One of those okay, yep, and what's going on in there?
19:38
Speaker 2: So we've got a it's not not that complicated. So
19:41
Speaker 2: we've got a little propeller like a literally we could
19:44
Speaker 2: have like strapped one on from a boat. It circulates
19:47
Speaker 2: oxygen in the in the tank. We control the pH
19:51
Speaker 2: we can control the temperature. We make sure that the
19:53
Speaker 2: oxygen in there is sufficient. But we're literally just stirring
19:57
Speaker 2: cells in their feed for ten days, ten to ten
20:00
Speaker 2: to fifteen days. At that point, we centrifuge or you know,
20:06
Speaker 2: just spin at high speeds, remove the sel feed, We
20:10
Speaker 2: wash it a few times, we concentrate it kind of
20:13
Speaker 2: into pure salmon protein essentially.
20:16
Speaker 1: So what you have first is a lump of salmon
20:19
Speaker 1: cells essentially, shapeless, shapeless, just like a goo. It's like
20:24
Speaker 1: a goo. Is it a orange? Dumb question? Is it orange?
20:28
Speaker 2: It's not orange. It looks like kind of the white
20:31
Speaker 2: part of the salmon, you know, like connective tissue part.
20:35
Speaker 2: And yeah, So what we do is we then combine
20:38
Speaker 2: that with some plant based ingredients, mix it, shape it.
20:42
Speaker 2: We actually have a heating step to make sure that
20:45
Speaker 2: we're killing off any microbes that might have found their way.
20:47
Speaker 2: Because it's all ready to eat sushi product. We want
20:49
Speaker 2: to make sure it's as safe as possible and slice it,
20:53
Speaker 2: package it, X ray it, and send it out the door.
20:55
Speaker 1: So you work on this for many years and then
21:01
Speaker 1: this year, it's this spring you got something from the
21:08
Speaker 1: FDA that is called a no questions letter, So that
21:11
Speaker 1: basically mean FDA approval. What does that mean what happened
21:14
Speaker 1: with the FDA this year.
21:16
Speaker 2: So there's a process on the food side, and this
21:20
Speaker 2: was a process that was done for our industry, it's
21:22
Speaker 2: done for other types of food. You submit a safety dossier,
21:26
Speaker 2: that's what it's called, so a summary of how a
21:29
Speaker 2: producing company came to the conclusion that a new food
21:32
Speaker 2: manufacturing technology, which is what we're doing, so familiar food,
21:35
Speaker 2: new technology or a new food is safe. Right, And
21:40
Speaker 2: so you compile this dossier with lots of supporting data.
21:44
Speaker 2: And what that did is it then kicked off a
21:47
Speaker 2: three year process of back and forth questions with the FDA.
21:50
Speaker 1: It should be called a no more Questions letter.
21:52
Speaker 2: That's right, That's exactly what it is. Right, So once
21:55
Speaker 2: the questions have been satisfied, they don't have any further questions.
21:58
Speaker 2: And you know, they issued a statement that essentially said,
22:02
Speaker 2: we agree with wild types of conclusion that the food
22:05
Speaker 2: made using this technology is no more, no less, and
22:09
Speaker 2: food isolated from a conventional fish.
22:12
Speaker 1: Right.
22:13
Speaker 2: That's what we were working toward, is some degree of
22:16
Speaker 2: external validation that this new and somewhat crazy sounding technology
22:20
Speaker 2: can produce food that's very, very safe. And indeed, like
22:23
Speaker 2: we talked about a bit earlier, quite a bit safer uncertain.
22:26
Speaker 1: Respects specifically, metal content and parasite or pathogen content.
22:33
Speaker 2: Are those the two exactly? Yeah? So lysteria, for example,
22:37
Speaker 2: is a big challenge with any kind of fish, right,
22:40
Speaker 2: and because of the way that we produce our food,
22:43
Speaker 2: we're significantly able to reduce that risk. Not to mention,
22:48
Speaker 2: heavy metals are in some cases orders of magnitude lower
22:52
Speaker 2: than what you'd find in conventional fish. Parasites cannot grow
22:55
Speaker 2: in our environment. So if you want to guarantee that
22:58
Speaker 2: there's no worm or parasite in your fish, like wild type,
23:01
Speaker 2: sim is literally the only optional planet Earth that can
23:04
Speaker 2: meet that. And we don't use antibiotics, so, which are
23:08
Speaker 2: still fairly prevalent and a lot of fish farming today.
23:11
Speaker 1: So what's your cost? Now? What have you gotten your cost?
23:13
Speaker 2: Down to the way that we like to think about
23:15
Speaker 2: it is if we were at scale, what would our
23:18
Speaker 2: actual marginal cost be, right based on the inputs that
23:21
Speaker 2: we're using, And today those inputs are about ten bucks
23:25
Speaker 2: a pound.
23:26
Speaker 1: So when you say at scale, how much bigger is that?
23:29
Speaker 1: How much bigger do you have to be? Like, I
23:32
Speaker 1: don't know how much more fish do you have to make.
23:33
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know the right way to
23:35
Speaker 1: ask that question.
23:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, get I get your question. So
23:39
Speaker 2: the best way to think about this is, you know,
23:41
Speaker 2: we are at micro brewery scale.
23:44
Speaker 1: Now, how much fish do you make it a week?
23:46
Speaker 2: We make whatever, a few hundred pounds a week, right,
23:50
Speaker 2: So it's not it's not enough. It's not enough.
23:53
Speaker 1: No, it's not enough. When you say ten dollars a pound,
23:56
Speaker 1: how many pounds of fish you got to be making
23:57
Speaker 1: a week for it to have your cost be ten
24:01
Speaker 1: dollars a pound, it's more.
24:02
Speaker 2: Like one thousand pounds a week. Is where we need
24:04
Speaker 2: to be.
24:04
Speaker 1: That's not crazy, that's not crazy.
24:06
Speaker 2: It's not And the reason our costs are so highs
24:09
Speaker 2: because our volumes are low. You know, we just launched
24:11
Speaker 2: a quarter ago.
24:12
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.
24:12
Speaker 2: Rent is expensive in San Francisco.
24:14
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, we started with a three hundred thousand dollars hamburger.
24:17
Speaker 1: You're most of the way there.
24:19
Speaker 2: I think so. But but you know, the last bit
24:21
Speaker 2: of the way is tough. And the reason it's tough
24:23
Speaker 2: is because there's not a lot of interest I would say,
24:28
Speaker 2: among either banks or project financers to put money into
24:33
Speaker 2: capital intensive projects today, huh, and the path for us
24:37
Speaker 2: And you know, again this should not be surprising. And
24:39
Speaker 2: that's why I'm kind of using the micro brewery analogy.
24:42
Speaker 1: Right.
24:42
Speaker 2: A lot of microbreweries at their scale are not super profitable.
24:45
Speaker 2: In fact, a lot of them have gone out of
24:47
Speaker 2: business in the last five years. There is kind of
24:49
Speaker 2: a minimum efficient scale problem with what we're doing and
24:53
Speaker 2: what a lot of other industries doing.
24:55
Speaker 1: So your problem at this moment is finance getting You've
24:58
Speaker 1: had this sort of venture financing. Was that one hundred
25:01
Speaker 1: million dollars that you raised to iver call that? Is
25:03
Speaker 1: that the correct number?
25:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, about one hundred and thirty million total.
25:05
Speaker 1: So now you have a sort of more capital intensive
25:08
Speaker 1: that was like you get your IP lined up, you
25:11
Speaker 1: develop your product, and now you have this more sort
25:13
Speaker 1: of classic financing problem where you need is not equity finance,
25:17
Speaker 1: but like alone to build a bigger production plant. And
25:20
Speaker 1: that's hard to get exactly.
25:22
Speaker 2: It's it's really hard to get in twenty twenty five.
25:24
Speaker 2: But that's what we need to do. And you know,
25:26
Speaker 2: the thing is it's not really all that interesting or
25:29
Speaker 2: sexy at this point because it's not proving out brand
25:32
Speaker 2: new science it's just building bigger facilities and spreading fixed
25:35
Speaker 2: costs over bigger volumes.
25:37
Speaker 1: There is a broader lab grown meat. It's not really
25:40
Speaker 1: an industry yet, but there are a few other companies
25:42
Speaker 1: that have what is it two other companies that have
25:45
Speaker 1: been approved to sell lab grown chicken in the US? Right?
25:49
Speaker 1: How are they doing?
25:50
Speaker 2: Like?
25:51
Speaker 1: Is there some like more narrowly? Are they struggling with
25:55
Speaker 1: the same thing you are? Is there a sense of like, oh,
25:57
Speaker 1: maybe people don't want to buy lab grown meat, or
26:00
Speaker 1: at least not yet.
26:02
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I don't have the best information about.
26:05
Speaker 2: So the two other companies you're talking about are Upside
26:07
Speaker 2: Foods and each just they're both but also in San Francisco.
26:13
Speaker 2: Neither of them are selling their products and restaurants today,
26:15
Speaker 2: though I can't really speak as to why that is.
26:17
Speaker 1: It's more I'm selling in Singapore or something. It is
26:20
Speaker 1: one of these things.
26:21
Speaker 2: So there are two companies selling cultivated foods on planet
26:24
Speaker 2: Earth today, okay. One is Wild Type, which is selling
26:27
Speaker 2: salmon in four restaurants in four states today in the
26:30
Speaker 2: United States. The other is a company called val which
26:33
Speaker 2: is based in Australia and they make a cultivated quail
26:36
Speaker 2: product that's available for people to try in Singapore and
26:40
Speaker 2: Australia today and that's it. So there's all this noise,
26:44
Speaker 2: but what it boils down to is just a couple
26:47
Speaker 2: of companies selling products in about say ten restaurants around
26:51
Speaker 2: the world. We're at the starting line, I would.
26:54
Speaker 1: Say, yeah, Like, why is it so small?
26:57
Speaker 2: So first, there's a regulatory hurdle, which is really hard,
27:01
Speaker 2: and as you said, you know, there's I think five
27:03
Speaker 2: companies in the US that have cleared that hurdle. Then
27:06
Speaker 2: there's the manufacturing side of things, right, So part of
27:10
Speaker 2: the proceeds or use of proceeds for the amount of
27:14
Speaker 2: money that we raised was to build this first of
27:16
Speaker 2: its kind cultivated seafood facility in San Francisco. And it
27:21
Speaker 2: wasn't a trivial amount of money, right that we spent
27:24
Speaker 2: on that. And it's really hard to scale the stuff up. Yeah, so,
27:28
Speaker 2: and I think that's part of the reason why very
27:31
Speaker 2: few companies have actually just made it over the regulatory,
27:34
Speaker 2: the scaling, and the technical hurdles to get something into
27:37
Speaker 2: the market.
27:37
Speaker 1: Today, I'm less hopeful than I was when we started talking.
27:42
Speaker 2: Can ask why please, Yeah.
27:44
Speaker 1: Well maybe I I don't know why. It's just the vibe.
27:49
Speaker 1: I feel like, I don't know how you're going to
27:51
Speaker 1: get that money. How are you going to get that money?
27:53
Speaker 2: We'll figure it out. Look, I think no new industry,
28:00
Speaker 2: no new technology, is easy. What we're trying to do
28:03
Speaker 2: is ambitious and it's really freaking hard, and it is
28:05
Speaker 2: not for the faint of heart, but it's important, right,
28:09
Speaker 2: Like my six year old kids, I have twins, When
28:13
Speaker 2: I hear them explain what my work is, they're like, hey,
28:15
Speaker 2: my daddy grows fish, so we don't have to kill
28:20
Speaker 2: the fish. Like they just get it and it's obvious.
28:23
Speaker 2: Like I think most people when you ask them, like, hey,
28:25
Speaker 2: what's the future of seafood, they're not going to tell you, Yeah,
28:29
Speaker 2: let's just pull all the fish out and have no
28:30
Speaker 2: more fish left in the sea. Like, there's this big
28:33
Speaker 2: problem that a lot of companies are trying to solve
28:35
Speaker 2: from a bunch of different angles. And you know, I
28:37
Speaker 2: think it's important enough that it's going to get done,
28:40
Speaker 2: and you know, one or two, maybe three companies will
28:43
Speaker 2: get through this crunch. Right, But we're at a point
28:46
Speaker 2: now as an industry where there were one hundred and
28:48
Speaker 2: fifty I don't even know. I don't count them all,
28:50
Speaker 2: but I've seen a number of cultivated food companies around
28:53
Speaker 2: the world. Not all of those companies are going to
28:56
Speaker 2: make it through. Maybe we won't. I am very helpful, however,
28:59
Speaker 2: that we will, and very confident actually, because we're making
29:04
Speaker 2: something that people want and that the planet needs for
29:10
Speaker 2: us to continue to sustainably feed people's seafood. And so
29:13
Speaker 2: that moment of doubt pessimism that you were feeling is
29:18
Speaker 2: just kind of wired into mine and Aria's brain, right,
29:21
Speaker 2: it comes and it goes. We've got down moments and
29:23
Speaker 2: we've got high moments, and that's just kind of part
29:26
Speaker 2: and parcel of doing something like this. It's hard.
29:31
Speaker 3: We'll be back in just a minute.
29:44
Speaker 1: Why do you feel so strongly that the world needs
29:47
Speaker 1: cultivated salmon?
29:49
Speaker 2: I would suggest talk to a fisherman, particularly one who's
29:53
Speaker 2: been fishing for more than thirty years, about what they've
29:56
Speaker 2: seen with wild stocks. But they're going down right. And
30:00
Speaker 2: you know, if you look at any data measurement in
30:03
Speaker 2: terms of the health of wildfish stocks around the world,
30:06
Speaker 2: it's not up and to the right. Many of them
30:08
Speaker 2: are being fish at levels that are kind of pushing
30:10
Speaker 2: them into endangered species. Right, if you listen or following
30:14
Speaker 2: any of David Attenborough's work, any of his recent films,
30:18
Speaker 2: I mean, he talks about the ocean. You know, there's
30:20
Speaker 2: a real risk that will have an ocean full of
30:23
Speaker 2: jellyfish in fifty years if we're not thoughtful.
30:26
Speaker 1: And careful and nothing else.
30:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, plastic and jellyfish, like yeah, and let's not forget
30:33
Speaker 2: that our ocean store like ninety three or ninety four
30:36
Speaker 2: percent of the planet's carbon in the soil and the
30:39
Speaker 2: seagrass and other things.
30:41
Speaker 1: Right.
30:41
Speaker 2: So I don't know about you, but I get pretty
30:43
Speaker 2: nervous when I think about that delicate ecosystem being so
30:46
Speaker 2: thoroughly disrupted. And if you think about the oceans like
30:49
Speaker 2: this is like the worst prisoner's dilemma type of thing,
30:54
Speaker 2: where you've got this common good and everybody out in
30:58
Speaker 2: international waters is doing whatever they can to pull out
31:01
Speaker 2: as much fish as possible, make as much money, and
31:03
Speaker 2: not everybody's worrying about whether that's going to be sustainable.
31:06
Speaker 2: So that's wild caught, and I think most people get
31:10
Speaker 2: that there's a finite supply. There's only so an efficientcye
31:14
Speaker 2: on the fish farming side. I think what's really underappreciated
31:17
Speaker 2: is that a full third of all the aquaculture feed
31:19
Speaker 2: comes from forage fish like anchovies and sardines, which are
31:23
Speaker 2: well caught and are not infinite in supply, and there
31:28
Speaker 2: are real limitations in terms of the number of fish
31:31
Speaker 2: farms that you can put in a given area. And
31:33
Speaker 2: that's why we're seeing the move toward on land aquaculture
31:36
Speaker 2: systems and all these other things. So the confluence of
31:40
Speaker 2: all of that. If you don't believe anything I said,
31:44
Speaker 2: just go look at salmon prices in real terms versus
31:47
Speaker 2: inflation over the last fifteen years and you'll see that
31:50
Speaker 2: there isn't five times faster than inflation, which to me
31:53
Speaker 2: tells me that we have a real supply problem.
31:56
Speaker 1: Salmon getting more expensive is good for you, right, Like,
32:00
Speaker 1: if you can make salmon cheaper, then salmon can make salmon.
32:06
Speaker 2: You'll win, yes, but the planet loses, right, And I
32:11
Speaker 2: think it doesn't.
32:12
Speaker 1: Well, it depends, I mean, it depends on how cheap
32:14
Speaker 1: you can get it, right, Like, yeah, I don't mean
32:17
Speaker 1: to be glib, but like, fundamentally, your price to beat
32:21
Speaker 1: is the price of wild caught salmon. Right, just as
32:24
Speaker 1: a business proposition, Like that's the sort of solar story, right,
32:28
Speaker 1: as you said, like you want people who don't care
32:31
Speaker 1: to buy your salmon just because it's cheaper, That's what
32:34
Speaker 1: I want, Right, That's the true scale, because most people
32:37
Speaker 1: don't care about any particular thing, it's just the nature
32:40
Speaker 1: of the world. But they would rather buy cheaper salmon.
32:43
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there's an argument that, like people don't
32:45
Speaker 1: want cultivated salmon, but I don't buy that. Like if
32:47
Speaker 1: you look at the garbage people buy, they plainly don't care, right,
32:51
Speaker 1: And so I feel like cost is the game.
32:57
Speaker 2: All of this is, I guess, in principle good for us,
33:00
Speaker 2: but I know myself and my team we kind of
33:03
Speaker 2: think about it at a much broader scale, which is salmon,
33:06
Speaker 2: whether we make it or it comes from a fish,
33:09
Speaker 2: healthy thing that we should be eating more of, and
33:11
Speaker 2: it's not good for society if it becomes less accessible.
33:14
Speaker 2: That is why I've got this bur in my saddle
33:16
Speaker 2: to scale up this process as quickly as we can,
33:19
Speaker 2: and not just for the cost and profitability and all
33:22
Speaker 2: that stuff we were just talking about, but just to
33:24
Speaker 2: get it to more people and to give people a
33:26
Speaker 2: more affordable choice.
33:28
Speaker 1: What's the salmon. Like, now, if I got the salmon
33:32
Speaker 1: sushi at one of the four restaurants where it's would
33:35
Speaker 1: I even know?
33:37
Speaker 2: I think it depends. And we've actually tested this, So
33:40
Speaker 2: we've done blind taste tests for consumer and we obviously
33:43
Speaker 2: tell them that there's potentially cultivated. We're not trying to
33:45
Speaker 2: fool anybody, but.
33:46
Speaker 1: Sure, sure. Yeah. When I say what I even know,
33:48
Speaker 1: I don't mean would they be fooling me? I mean,
33:49
Speaker 1: would I be able to distinguish?
33:51
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, And so what we what we've done is
33:53
Speaker 2: we put like a piece of our locks, you know,
33:54
Speaker 2: so like cured and smoked salmon on a little cracker,
33:57
Speaker 2: like a water cracker, and a piece of Russen Daughters
34:00
Speaker 2: from New York City, which is delicious the best. I agree,
34:04
Speaker 2: that's our gold standard, you know, so master credit to
34:07
Speaker 2: Russ and Daughters. And the answer is no, you know,
34:10
Speaker 2: with like a pretty high degree of like statistical significance,
34:14
Speaker 2: we don't see a distinction in liking.
34:16
Speaker 1: Is raw salmon harder to make identical?
34:20
Speaker 2: It's hard, yeah, And so I think obviously in the
34:23
Speaker 2: right chef hands, and you know, obviously in certain preparations,
34:27
Speaker 2: it is indistinguishable, which is a huge, huge accomplishment. And
34:32
Speaker 2: the cool thing about what we're doing is that it's
34:33
Speaker 2: always improving.
34:34
Speaker 1: I mean, what would you like to improve on? In
34:36
Speaker 1: what ways would you like to make the salmon you're
34:38
Speaker 1: making better for me?
34:41
Speaker 2: There are a couple of things. The first one I
34:43
Speaker 2: think we've nailed in the latest recipe that we're going
34:45
Speaker 2: to be releasing soon is the texture, just like a
34:48
Speaker 2: really nice fibrous bite, you know, like when you're biting
34:50
Speaker 2: like a nice cube of sashimi.
34:52
Speaker 1: It's part of what's great about salmon sushi, right, it's
34:56
Speaker 1: the texture. It's like both firm but so smooth and
34:59
Speaker 1: of all the fat.
35:00
Speaker 2: Right, that's right, Yeah, And it's hard to nail. I
35:02
Speaker 2: think we're getting pretty darn close.
35:04
Speaker 1: In what way is your current version that's out fall short.
35:08
Speaker 2: On the text? I'd say it's too homogeneous, Like you
35:11
Speaker 2: don't get this sort of like like you know, like
35:13
Speaker 2: when your teeth are like biting into like a good
35:15
Speaker 2: piece of meat, you kind of feel like the fibers
35:18
Speaker 2: ripping a bit at a time. Like with the current version,
35:21
Speaker 2: I would say, we haven't you know, fully achieved that
35:24
Speaker 2: the thing that we're about to really is does so
35:26
Speaker 2: I'm really excited about that. And you know, and the
35:29
Speaker 2: other thing is protein. So protein is a big part
35:31
Speaker 2: of the reason people like to eat any kind of
35:33
Speaker 2: meat or seafood, and we're a bit light there, and
35:36
Speaker 2: so it's hard to make a product that is raw
35:40
Speaker 2: with equivalent protein.
35:41
Speaker 1: It's not obvious to me that that would be the case, Like,
35:43
Speaker 1: why is that?
35:45
Speaker 2: Because raw fish is like eighty to eighty five percent water,
35:51
Speaker 2: and so if you want to have twenty percent protein
35:53
Speaker 2: in there, that means a lot of the protein needs
35:55
Speaker 2: to be in the water.
35:58
Speaker 1: That's the and in a fish, that's just the way
36:00
Speaker 1: it works.
36:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's contained in the cells, for example,
36:05
Speaker 2: so most cells the water. Yeah, that's a dramatic simplification
36:10
Speaker 2: of a quite complex problem. But it's been a challenge
36:13
Speaker 2: and I'd say we've made some progress. But those are
36:15
Speaker 2: the two things I would like to improve.
36:18
Speaker 1: Let's talk about policy. When we were just getting the
36:20
Speaker 1: mic set up today, you mentioned that you were had
36:23
Speaker 1: a press conference this morning today talking about joining a lawsuit.
36:28
Speaker 1: What's going on? Why were you on a press conference
36:30
Speaker 1: this morning and what were you talking about?
36:32
Speaker 2: So Texas banned cultivated foods effective the first of September,
36:39
Speaker 2: which which was really unfortunate because you know, we picked
36:42
Speaker 2: Otoko because of the head chef is an incredible person,
36:44
Speaker 2: he's an adventurous head chef.
36:47
Speaker 1: And this is a restaurant in Austin, Texas.
36:50
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And it was literally like one of five
36:53
Speaker 2: that we picked that we wanted to introduce our products
36:56
Speaker 2: to the commercial market in. And this decision was made
36:59
Speaker 2: way before this band was even like a thought in
37:02
Speaker 2: the rancher's minds. But this band went into effect on
37:06
Speaker 2: the first and so we had to stop selling at Otoko,
37:09
Speaker 2: which is just really unfortunate. And this isn't the first
37:13
Speaker 2: date in the Union that has banned cultivated foods, it's
37:16
Speaker 2: I believe the seventh. And this is being driven one
37:19
Speaker 2: hundred percent by economic protectionism, really by the cattle industry
37:23
Speaker 2: who's afraid of competition.
37:26
Speaker 1: It does seem like an anti free market, like on
37:30
Speaker 1: its face, right, an anti free market move.
37:33
Speaker 2: It is like, let.
37:34
Speaker 1: People decide they want to eat cows and fish, they can, right, No,
37:38
Speaker 1: it is proposed taking away that option.
37:41
Speaker 2: That's right, And given everything that we just discussed in
37:43
Speaker 2: that moment of pessimism that you felt, yeah, I just
37:47
Speaker 2: like they should have bigger things to worry about, right
37:50
Speaker 2: than try to ban a.
37:52
Speaker 1: Three little companies that can't even get alone to build
37:55
Speaker 1: a factory.
37:55
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, leave us alone, for God's sake. And I
37:59
Speaker 2: think if most Americans heard about this, they would be
38:01
Speaker 2: pretty annoyed that now the government's telling us what we
38:04
Speaker 2: can and can't eat, And like, if you don't want
38:07
Speaker 2: our food, don't eat it. That's fine, But that choice
38:11
Speaker 2: should be people's choices. It should not be the choice
38:13
Speaker 2: of state legislators who got a strategically timed campaign donation.
38:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, so your fish is still at four restaurants around
38:24
Speaker 1: the country.
38:25
Speaker 2: Then, yeah, So luckily Yoshio Kai has a new restaurant
38:28
Speaker 2: in Aspen, so we just moved it over there. So
38:32
Speaker 2: we're still in four and we'll be announcing a fifth
38:34
Speaker 2: one in the next couple of weeks.
38:37
Speaker 1: So what do you have to do to get wider?
38:39
Speaker 1: What's your ramp from four to everywhere?
38:42
Speaker 2: Yeah? And maybe the question to ask before that is like,
38:44
Speaker 2: why did we just start with five? When you're making
38:46
Speaker 2: real things like what we're doing food, you don't go
38:48
Speaker 2: from It's not like software where you just like write
38:50
Speaker 2: a program and distribute to million people. You need to
38:52
Speaker 2: ramp up manufacturing, hire people, supply chain all that stuff.
38:57
Speaker 2: And so what we've been trying to do is go
38:59
Speaker 2: from literally zero three months ago to shipping product every
39:04
Speaker 2: week to three or four, soon to be five restaurants
39:07
Speaker 2: around the country.
39:08
Speaker 1: Well, so should I how is that going? Or like
39:10
Speaker 1: are you getting the fish out the door? Is it
39:12
Speaker 1: hard to like make the fish every week?
39:15
Speaker 2: It's some things have been harder than we expected. Like,
39:18
Speaker 2: for example, we had we had like an ingredient provider
39:22
Speaker 2: shift their ingredient pretty dramatically. That changed our formulation, so
39:26
Speaker 2: we had to adjust that on the fly. So things
39:27
Speaker 2: like that that are just kind of part of any
39:30
Speaker 2: new products standing.
39:31
Speaker 1: Up manufacturing in a way, it's like biomanufacturing, right, what
39:34
Speaker 1: you're doing exactly.
39:36
Speaker 2: And so from here we are absolutely open to starting
39:40
Speaker 2: to ship to more restaurants as demand comes in, and
39:43
Speaker 2: we have had quite a few restaurants reach out to
39:45
Speaker 2: us and ask if they can start buying it.
39:48
Speaker 1: That's good and is the answer yes?
39:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, the answer is yes, And we're just kind of
39:52
Speaker 2: slotted into our production schedule. And again, we don't want
39:55
Speaker 2: to have stock outs, right, That's the last thing you
39:57
Speaker 2: want when you're introducing the new product, somebody shows up.
39:59
Speaker 2: They went out of the way to try this product,
40:00
Speaker 2: and it's like, sorry, we don't have it this day.
40:02
Speaker 2: We didn't get our shipment yesterday.
40:04
Speaker 1: And then how much bigger can you get with your
40:08
Speaker 1: current production facility.
40:11
Speaker 2: If everything is maxed out and we tack on a
40:13
Speaker 2: little bit more capacity, which we can do. You know,
40:16
Speaker 2: we can maybe get up to like fifty restaurants.
40:19
Speaker 1: And then you have this step function where you need
40:22
Speaker 1: to get alone essentially to build a real industrial scale plant.
40:28
Speaker 1: This is the ram question, Like fifty restaurants is great,
40:31
Speaker 1: but it's not at all what you're going for. It's
40:33
Speaker 1: like what does the magnitude from what you're going for?
40:35
Speaker 1: So how do you keep going from there?
40:37
Speaker 2: So what I was describing is one path where we
40:40
Speaker 2: just build our own facility. We do what we did,
40:42
Speaker 2: but just bigger, and we've got to get that finance.
40:44
Speaker 2: That's really hard, it's not a lot of appetite. There
40:46
Speaker 2: are two other ways you can do this. One is
40:49
Speaker 2: we can go to a contract manufacturer that makes cells
40:54
Speaker 2: or fermented products and has spare capacity. So instead of
40:56
Speaker 2: building it ourselves, huh, we just pay them a toll
41:01
Speaker 2: and they make it for us, the cells or even
41:04
Speaker 2: the finished product, and then we can expand our capacity.
41:08
Speaker 1: And so that is not so capital intensive. You don't
41:10
Speaker 1: have to have any huge upfront costs that you need
41:13
Speaker 1: to take out a loan for.
41:14
Speaker 2: That's right, But it is slow and you can't innovate.
41:17
Speaker 2: So if you're working with contract manufacturers, it's like pencils down.
41:20
Speaker 1: Uh huh. This is the recipe, that's it. Yeah.
41:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the reality is we're still learning, we're still
41:25
Speaker 2: adjusting and going fast, which is why we haven't taken
41:28
Speaker 2: that path today, but we might. The other option is,
41:31
Speaker 2: and we're open to this, is there are companies that
41:34
Speaker 2: can build facilities that have lots of cash and a
41:36
Speaker 2: much lower cost capital than we do, and we'd be
41:40
Speaker 2: happy to license our technology to them. Right, And so
41:43
Speaker 2: that means the cell line and the feed and the
41:46
Speaker 2: know how to make our products well.
41:48
Speaker 1: So like Cargil, the giant food company is actually an
41:51
Speaker 1: investor in your company, right, is that the kind of
41:53
Speaker 1: company I should be thinking of in this context? Yeah?
41:55
Speaker 2: Or giant seafood companies that are maxed out on their
41:58
Speaker 2: fish farms, like we would absolutely be happy to partner
42:01
Speaker 2: with them.
42:01
Speaker 1: Uh huh. That makes a lot of sense.
42:04
Speaker 2: That the reality is we're trying to do a lot
42:06
Speaker 2: of things at a little seventy some odd person company.
42:10
Speaker 2: We can't do it all, and I think we just
42:12
Speaker 2: try to be really clear out about that, and when
42:14
Speaker 2: it comes to scaling and maximizing the impact and getting
42:18
Speaker 2: this product in front of as many people as possible,
42:20
Speaker 2: we try to be really open minded about the best
42:22
Speaker 2: way to do that.
42:24
Speaker 1: Do you think you're going to try and make something
42:26
Speaker 1: after salmon?
42:28
Speaker 2: Yes, eventually we will, I think. But the companies that
42:32
Speaker 2: really focused on doing one thing and one thing really
42:34
Speaker 2: well tended to do better.
42:38
Speaker 1: Who are you thinking of the impossible burger?
42:40
Speaker 2: Right? They weren't trying to do like chicken shreds and
42:42
Speaker 2: the nugget and sausage like all at once. They're like,
42:46
Speaker 2: let's make a kick ass burger that tastes pretty good.
42:48
Speaker 2: It's made from plants. And they did it, and I
42:51
Speaker 2: like that product. They eat it a lot. No, it's
42:53
Speaker 2: not for everybody, but a lot of people do it.
42:54
Speaker 1: No, our freezer is full of many impossible meats.
42:57
Speaker 2: Hopefully that means you're not stockpilling, but you're actually eating them.
43:00
Speaker 2: From time to time, not out yet waiting for the apocalypse.
43:03
Speaker 1: We don't have the big giant basement freezer. I don't
43:06
Speaker 1: want that. It's just a regular freezer.
43:09
Speaker 2: But you know, they chose that path while a lot
43:11
Speaker 2: of others were like, let's just make like ten different
43:13
Speaker 2: things at once, right, And I think for us, focus
43:15
Speaker 2: is powerful, and so for now it's salmon. But if
43:18
Speaker 2: we start to get energy from potential customers like hey,
43:21
Speaker 2: can you make us a blue crab or can you
43:24
Speaker 2: make us lobsters scallop? Like, we would take that really
43:27
Speaker 2: seriously and we've got the right technological know how to
43:29
Speaker 2: do it.
43:33
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
43:49
Speaker 1: We're going to finish with the lightning round.
43:51
Speaker 2: Let's go.
43:52
Speaker 1: So you were in the US Foreign Service in Pakistan
43:54
Speaker 1: and Afghanistan. Correct, Yes, What is one surprising thing that
43:59
Speaker 1: happened to you there?
44:00
Speaker 2: I was as a guest of honor with the governor,
44:05
Speaker 2: served the head of a goat, and I had no
44:09
Speaker 2: idea what to do with it.
44:11
Speaker 1: Like they just put the w all head in front
44:13
Speaker 1: of you and said you're welcome.
44:16
Speaker 2: I wasn't sure if I was being hazed or honored
44:18
Speaker 2: or both.
44:19
Speaker 1: Huh, Well, did you watch the governor and follow his lead?
44:23
Speaker 2: No? Because it went to me.
44:24
Speaker 1: Oh.
44:24
Speaker 2: I felt very self conscious about that because you know,
44:26
Speaker 2: I was about twenty years younger than the governor. It
44:29
Speaker 2: certainly didn't feel like I should have. Sure, I represented
44:32
Speaker 2: the United States government, but I was also thirty years old.
44:36
Speaker 1: So is the governor of the province that you were in. Yeah,
44:40
Speaker 1: So what did you do?
44:41
Speaker 2: I did the best I could. I like keeled back
44:43
Speaker 2: at jowl and went for it. Didn't taste How was it? No?
44:46
Speaker 2: It wasn't good. There's some whiskers in there.
44:48
Speaker 1: This is this is.
44:50
Speaker 2: Not even saying like I think it might have been hazing,
44:52
Speaker 2: because there were plenty of other parts of that goat
44:54
Speaker 2: that were delicious.
44:56
Speaker 1: What's something you missed from that part of the world.
44:58
Speaker 2: I missed the food, and I miss the culture of hospitality,
45:02
Speaker 2: which I think, unfortunately kind of got lost. A guest
45:06
Speaker 2: is sacred to a lot of the push people, and
45:10
Speaker 2: there's nothing you essentially wouldn't do for a guest, even
45:13
Speaker 2: though he or she might be your putative enemy.
45:17
Speaker 1: How did you experience that in practice? What's an example
45:20
Speaker 1: of that? From your experience?
45:22
Speaker 2: There were people who I knew were active Taliban fighters
45:26
Speaker 2: who welcomed me into their home and introduced me to
45:28
Speaker 2: their relatives because that's what the customs demanded, even though
45:34
Speaker 2: you know, later that night they were probably laying IED's
45:37
Speaker 2: blown up my friends. So yeah, it was things like that.
45:42
Speaker 2: And by the way, it was not like duplicitous. They
45:46
Speaker 2: were genuinely trying to extend hospitality.
45:50
Speaker 1: Were you a spy?
45:51
Speaker 2: I was not.
45:54
Speaker 1: I mean, you would say that in any case. But
45:56
Speaker 1: I had to ask, what's one thing you've learned as
45:58
Speaker 1: a diplomat that is helpful to you running your company?
46:02
Speaker 2: Thinking before you speak?
46:04
Speaker 1: Very good answer. I'm still working on that one.
46:09
Speaker 2: You know. I didn't say anything.
46:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, just not speaking. I've learned just not speaking and
46:13
Speaker 1: not speaking is a great move, Like you don't have
46:16
Speaker 1: to respond.
46:17
Speaker 2: It turns out that's one of the most powerful things
46:19
Speaker 2: you can do as a parent when you're challenged. It's
46:22
Speaker 2: just not say anything.
46:23
Speaker 1: Yes, you weren't a scientist when you got into this business.
46:27
Speaker 1: What's one great thing, interesting thing, favorite thing that you've
46:31
Speaker 1: learned about cells in your work.
46:34
Speaker 2: Cells are the most miniaturized, incredibly powerful versions of us,
46:44
Speaker 2: and they have so much potential right. I think when
46:47
Speaker 2: we all go through biology classes we learn that cells
46:49
Speaker 2: are the building blocks of life, but like no shit,
46:53
Speaker 2: they actually are and see and seeing it, seeing it
47:00
Speaker 2: happen and assemble into things that become tissues and organs
47:04
Speaker 2: is incredible, incredible.
47:14
Speaker 1: Justin Kolbeck is the co founder and CEO of Wild Type.
47:18
Speaker 1: Please email us at problem at pushkin dot fm. We
47:21
Speaker 1: are always looking for new guests for the show. Today's
47:25
Speaker 1: show was produced by Trinamanino and Gabriel Hunter Chang. It
47:29
Speaker 1: was edited by Alexander Garreton and engineered by Sarah Bricguherrett.
47:33
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
47:35
Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Problem.