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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Indiebio

Podcast: The State of Alt-Protein With Po Bronson

When I asked Po Bronson whether people know him more from his past as an author or by his current gig as a venture capitalist, I was surprised by his answer (though I probably shouldn’t have been).

“Everybody comes to me as Po Bronson, the author,” he told me on this week’s Spoon podcast.

Ok, sure, he was one of the go-to writers documenting the first Internet boom and later became a NY Times best-selling author of career advice and parenting books. Still, I figured that by now, almost two decades after the dotcom crash and with Bronson leading one of the food tech industry’s most well-known early-stage funds, things might have changed.

Apparently not.

“I had a call about a year and a half ago, and someone said, ‘I saw your name on the Zoom invite – Are there two Po Bronsons in the world?’ She’s like, ‘I’ve read your books.’ She nearly started crying.”

I’ve read his books as well, and while I didn’t start crying, I did have a great time talking with Po about what the heck is going on in the world of alternative protein. We talked about the struggles of companies like Beyond, how he thinks they will shake out going forward, and what he’s excited about in future food and beyond.

So what gets Bronson excited nowadays? In short, proteins that aren’t necessarily at the ‘center of the plate.’

“We have companies like Voyage Foods and California Cultured, doing chocolate and doing coffee and doing peanut butter more sustainably. There are so many products in the stores that we can reinvent and do better.”

Po had many other great insights, so you’ll want to listen to the full podcast by clicking below or finding it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And, if you want to meet Po in person, he’ll be speaking at The Spoon’s Food Tech Conference at CES!

Sea & Believe is Making Plant-Based Whole Cut ‘Cod’ That Flakes Like Real Fish

Sea & Believe is a little different than the typical IndieBio company in that they already have a successful product on the market. The Ireland-based company sells two alt-fish products, an Irish seaweed burger and seaweed goujons, and today they are available in 50 stores across Ireland.

But as the company showed last week at IndieBio’s Demo Day, they are close to launching what they see as their biggest breakthrough yet: a plant-based whole-cut filet of ‘cod’ that flakes like real fish.

For company founder Jennifer O’Brien, Irish seaweed is a natural choice as a foundational building block for an alt-seafood product. Growing up in Ireland, O’Brien would eat seaweed to find relief for chronic asthma. The more she studied it, the more she realized the other benefits of seaweed, including its ability to deacidify the ocean, sequestering carbon at a rate three times higher per acre than forests.

“I knew then that there was something special about Irish seaweed,” O’Brien told IndieBio. “I wanted to learn about its properties and figure out how to scale that into a business some day.”

Sea & Believe’s Jennifer O’Brien and Piyali Chakraborty

That dream eventually led her to found Sea & Believe, where she and Chief Technology Officer Piyali Chakraborty would eventually launch their first couple of products and start to develop their white cod filet. The company believes the filet, which will have up to 25 grams of protein, will be the first plant-based seafood product to flake just like the real thing.

The company is raising funds to continue the development of its cod and to build out its seaweed supply chain, including a seaweed farm in northwest Ireland. They are working with two Irish agencies – Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), the Irish seafood development agency, and Údarás na Gaeltachta (UnAg), a regional Irish economic development agency – to help train local fisherman to harvest seaweed on 500 meter rope lines.

The company is looking to raise $3 million in seed funding. With a product already on the market and a successful prototype for flaky plant-based cod, I imagine it won’t take long given the growing interest in alt-seafood.

You can watch their pitch video below to learn more.

Sea & Believe (IndieBio SF Demo Day 12)

IndieBio Startup CellCrine is Developing Serum-Free Growth Media That Reduces Costs by 90%

Growth medium is widely recognized in the cell-cultured meat industry as one of the nascent sector’s biggest cost drivers. According to a survey conducted by the Good Food Institute in 2020, growth media made up 80% or more of the total operating cost for 38% of those cell-cultured meat manufacturers who responded, while 72% of respondents indicated that growth media made up half or more of their total operating costs.

As a result, a number of startups have been working on developing new approaches to create lower-cost growth media. One of these companies is CellCrine, which claims to be developing the world’s cheapest serum-free growth media. As a member of IndieBio’s 12th cohort, CellCrine pitched their idea this week at the biotech accelerator’s Demo Day.

CellCrine’s media utilizes what it says are proteins that are currently not a component of any media sold today. These proteins act as “cell culture activator” that coordinates the cell growth process and brings out the best performance from within cells. According to the company, adding these proteins as a supplement to cultured cell growth media “reduces the need for all other growth factors and recombinant proteins 90% or more.”

“How does it work? It helps cells help themselves,” CellCrine cofounder and CEO Dr. Rodolfo Faudoa says in the pitch video.

Faudoa first started working on growth media when he was working on his postdoc at USC’s Department of gene therapy. There he developed serum-free growth media for Schwann cells from the auditory nerve. He succeeded and was recruited to Stanford University where he worked on scarless wound healing.

According to Faudoa, once a growth culture is initiated using a small concentration of these unique proteins, they no longer need any more. From there, the cells start to secrete their own growth factors by pumping up the autocrine and paracrine signaling among cells.

Last year the company started applying the proteins to meat cells and the results were impressive. According to CellCrine, the cells grow better with their proteins than in 20% fetal bovine serum. The company has established 4 master cell lines – two for chicken and two for pork cells have tailored essential media supplements for each.

The company is currently working on several pilots with different cell cultured meat companies who are testing out their growth supplements. Like most companies coming out of IndieBio, they are looking for additional partners and are, we presume, going to be talking to investors.

You can watch CeleCrine’s demo day pitch video below:

Cellcrine (IndieBio SF Demo Day 12)

IndieBio Cofounder Ron Shigeta Launches Virtual Accelerator

Longtime food and biotech investor and entrepreneur Ron Shigeta is rolling out a new virtual accelerator called iAccelerate.tech.

Shigeta established himself as a food tech pioneer as a cofounder of one of the very first future food and ag accelerators in IndieBio, where he helped some of today’s biggest names in future food such as Geltor and Upside Foods (then Memphis Meats) get off the ground. Since that time, Shigeta helped launch plant-based pet food company Wild Earth and more recently has been acting as an independent investor and advisor to various biotech and food tech startups.

From Shigeta’s Linkedin post announcing the move:

It’s a big day! I’m rolling out my advisory work as a virtual accelerator and I’d like to invite my network and their friends to join us!

Building at IndieBio has created a $4B+ portfolio. in the past 2 years TurtleTree, Inner Cosmos, SolarBioTech, Orbillion Bio (YC W21) , BloodQ, Inc, Juicy Marbles, Finless Foods (and some who are not out in public yet) has taken things to a new level for me and the #BioTech Startup world.

With iAccelerate, Shigeta is essentially taking his consultancy and investing work and formalizing it.

“I worked to find what I thought would be a next-generation accelerator structure,” Shigeta told me over Linkedin. “It’s a very small operation – 5-10 companies a year with lots of attention to detail.”

According to Shigeta, his new accelerator will take in 1-2% in equity for each company, a significantly smaller share than a traditional accelerator like TechStars that typically takes roughly 5% of a company.

As part of the launch of iAccelerate, Shigeta is also launching an investor syndicate.

“My latest stage in the evolution is to offer some investments on AngelList,” said Shigeta. “The Syndicate just lets investors elect to take the deals they like and offers the terms that the VC sees.”

While Shigeta has made a name for himself helping biotech-focused startups get up and running, his new accelerator shows he will look beyond the future food space. One of the first companies in the accelerator is Bite Ninja, a startup from Memphis that helps staff quick service drive-thrus with remote workers via telepresence.

“I really like to work with companies who are are just wrestling with an outrageous idea and we work together sometimes for months just to get it together to present and show MVP,” said Shigeta.

SOSV and Mayfield Launch the Genesis Consortium to Aid Pre-Seed IndieBio Startups

Yesterday, venture fund SOSV announced a partnership with Mayfield to create the Genesis Consortium, which will invest alongside SOSV into pre-seed-state companies participating in SOSV’s IndieBio accelerator.

IndieBio is perhaps best known for helping startups with extremely disruptive concepts and technologies across multiple industries, including food. Memphis Meats, for example, was one of the earliest movers in the cell-based meat space. Geltor is developing non-animal-based protein for to create gelatin for foods, medicines, and cosmetics. 

That level of scientific and technological disruption, however, requires more time, funds, and faith to bring to fruition than would be the case with other kinds of tech companies. That’s one reason many bioengineering-focused startups get stuck, IndieBio’s Po Bronson told me this week. “To really translate the work of scientists often takes years, and we are often speeding that up at the pre-seed stage in our accelerators,” he said. “What we’ve found is that if we could deploy a little more money there at that pre-stage it can help the startups have the runway, time and get more data to prove that they’re really worth the seed funding.”

In other words, the conundrum is that firms typically want companies to show them results before they invest, but companies need the cash in order to get those results.

That’s where the Genesis Consortium comes in. To be clear, this is not a new fund, but rather a “small pool of money,” in Bronson’s words, to help pre-seed-stage companies at IndieBio develop their ideas and technologies. Currently, IndieBio funds about 50 startups with $250,000 each annually. Beginning in 2021, the Genesis Consortium plans to increase that number to $500,000 for each pre-seed startup, according to SOSV’s press release.

As far as the kinds of companies it will invest in, Bronson told me they will continue to work with startups trying to advance entire industries, including food, through science and technology that address both human and planetary health, and the connection between those two areas. These are not incremental technologies that iterate on existing concepts. Instead, these startups are typically rethinking entire industries.  

And while extra funds are an important part of the package these pre-seed startups will get, they’re not the only tool necessary for turning an idea into a business. Especially when it comes to areas like engineering biology, translating an idea into an actual business is where a lot of companies get hung up. A group of scientists must learn how to communicate their ideas and business in a way that can resonate with not just potential investors but also future markets.

“You cannot just be a scientist. You have to be leading a movement in your space and that means communicating and learning to translate,” Bronson explained. He adds that the IndieBio program is “really good” at getting companies through this particular hurdle through its training.

Getting companies over that hurdle is something IndieBio is known for and will continue with the Genesis Consortium. The hope is that through the initiative, a greater number of visionary VCs and corporates will be able to invest in the kinds of ideas that might not otherwise receive the attention (and money) needed to translate them into businesses that can fundamentally change markets.

Dye Another Day: Michroma Makes Sustainable Food Coloring through Fungi Fermentation

Be it Red 40 or Yellow 6, food dyes are hiding in a surprising number of food and bev products on your local grocery shelf. Sometimes these dyes are made from natural ingredients like beet juice, turmeric, or even bugs (which means they’re not vegan, and also kinda gross). But natural dyes aren’t as vibrant or heat-resistant as their artificial counterparts, which are typically made from petroleum (also gross).

Michroma, a new company currently participating in science accelerator IndieBio, is out to recast the food dye industry. The startup is developing a platform to create dyes through fermentation, specifically mushroom root fermentation. Michroma scientists use CRISPR to edit the genes in particular strains of fungi so that when they’re placed in a bioreactor they secrete vibrant, colorful dyes.

Ricky Cassini and Mauricio Braia founded the company a year ago in Argentina before moving to San Francisco for IndieBio. Cassini, who is the CEO, told me over the phone this week that Michroma has raised $250,000 from IndieBio and previously raised $200,000 in Argentina.

According to Cassini, Michroma’s fermentation process could usher in a more sustainable production method for food dyes. In addition to being free from stuff like petroleum and crushed-up bugs, Michroma’s dyes are incredibly scalable to produce since the funghi require very little light, space and energy. Cassini also told me that their fermented dyes are significantly more heat-resistant than plant-derived natural dyes.

Michroma is currently focused on developing red dye. The company can already make orange and yellow. Next up it’ll tackle blue, green and black food colorings.

For now, the startup is creating dyes at a lab scale and, according to Cassini, their products are already cost-competitive with plant- and insect-based dyes. Michroma will sell its dyes B2B to large food corporations (as well as cosmetic and pharma companies), but that won’t happen for a while yet. Cassini said that since their technology is new for food dye, they need to go through something called a “color additive petition” to have it recognized as safe to eat. That could take up to two years. By that time, Cassini said that the fermented dyes will cost around the same as those made with petroleum.

However, he’s hoping that it won’t take a full two years before they can start selling. If he’s right, maybe soon you’ll be able to scan the back of a bag of Dorito’s and see “fermented dye” listed instead of, you know, petroleum and bugs.

BluePlanet Ecosystems’ Aquaculture System Mimics Nature to Grow Fish Sustainably

Globally, the U.S. gets over one half of all its seafood from aquaculture. The process is meant to give some relief to overfished ocean stocks and create a more reliable seafood source, but it doesn’t always work out that way.

“The problem is that the production method is still connected to the oceans,” said Paul Schmitzberger, CEO and co-founder of BluePlanet Ecosystems, over the phone. He explained that farmed fish are often fed small fish caught from oceans, and the smaller fish might contain mercury or microplastics. And even when fish farms use soy for their animal feed, it comes with an environmental cost all its own.

But what if the aquaculture farms could produce their own food and repurpose their own waste, just like in natural ecosystems? Schmitzberger and his team at BluePlanet Ecosystems, which was incorporated in 2018, set out to do just that.

The Austrian company’s LARA (Land-based Automated Recirculating Aquaculture) is a completely turnkey system which consists of three horizontal units stacked on top of each other. The top unit uses energy from the sun to grow microalgae, the “power source” for the entire system. The microalgae is then pumped down to the second unit where it feeds tiny zooplankton. Finally, the zooplankton is moved down to the bottom unit, where it’s eaten by fish and crustaceans. Any waste from the sea life is recirculated up to the top to be used as food for the algae.

In short, it’s a completely contained system that grows seafood without the need to input any food or extract any waste.

When I first heard about the LARA, I had one question: Why had nobody else done this before? According to Schmitzberger, the answer is because it’s extremely difficult to manage. Without constant monitoring, the delicate balance of algae/zooplankton/seafood can get out of whack and ruin the whole system.

However, BluePlanet Ecosystems believes they can do what others couldn’t by adding something that nature doesn’t have: high tech. The startup uses a combination of water sensors, computer vision and machine learning to constantly monitor and optimize the dynamics of the tanks. “We’re monitoring every organism in the system,” said Schmitzberger.

For example, if the cameras notice there are too many plankton in the middle tank, the system will automatically activate a water pump to flush a portion of those plankton out to be eaten. If the software recognizes that a fish is sick, it can alert managers to look for a root cause before the rest of the population falls ill.

The LARAs can fit in 40-ton shipping containers and contain 100 cubic meters of water. They’re modular, so companies can connect multiple units together to be managed under BluePlanet’s software. The units will cost about $50,000 each plus a recurring $2,500 fee for every ton of seafood produced through the system, which Schmitzberger estimates companies should be able to recoup in four to five years. He said they hope to start constructing full-size prototypes over the next six months, with plans to deliver them at the beginning of 2021.

BluePlanet Ecosystems just signed a letter of intent with Singapore largest caterer, sats, which processes 100 tons of seafood every month. They have $250,000 in funding from IndieBio and are currently raising a seed round for $2.8 million.

Several companies are already putting parts of the LARA system in practice. TimberFish has a no-waste aquaculture system based upon brewery waste and woodchips. Aquabyte uses machine learning and computer vision to optimize fish maintenance in seafood farm pens. However, BluePlanet combines both of those value-adds into one — and promises to do it without any necessary inputs.

As of yet, LARAs are untested and expensive. But if they work as promised, we might see our farmed seafood sources become gradually more and more sustainable.

New Culture is Developing Creamy Mozzarella Cheese Without the Cow

If you’re seeking out plant-based dairy, odds are you’ll be able to track down pretty tasty vegan versions of yogurt, milk, butter, and ice cream. But the Holy Grail of dairy alternatives, which at least this writer thinks has yet to be cracked, is vegan cheese.

New Culture, a New Zealand-based company that recently relocated to Silicon Valley, is trying to make an animal-free cheese that tastes just as good as the real thing. Only instead of turning to plants, they’re using biotechnology to reverse engineer cheese’s main ingredient: milk.

According to New Culture’s founder Matt Gibson, there’s a good reason that we haven’t yet been able to make dairy-free cheese that would fool anyone: the cheesemaking process super complicated.

Broadly speaking, milk is made up of water, fats, sugars (lactose) and proteins (casein + whey). When acid is introduced to the milk the proteins coagulate and bond to make water-resistant micelles, which are basically curds. Smoosh those curds together and you’ve got the makings of cheese.

But without casein, it’s really, really hard to make a cheese that tastes, cuts, and melts like the real deal. “Proteins are what we love about dairy cheese,” Gibson explained me over Skype.

As of now, there aren’t any plant-based options that can mimic casein well enough to fool anyone. So New Culture’s team decided to make it themselves using something called “recombinant protein technology.” The company uses genetically modified microbes — like yeast — and “trains” them to produce certain proteins, like casein. The team then adds water, plant-based fat, sugar, and minerals to the casein, which creates something that acts and tastes a lot like milk. “From there, it’s a pretty standard cheese-making process,” said Gibson.

First up, New Culture will be tackling mozzarella, which Gibson called “the gold standard of cheese.” I’m partial to a sharp cheddar myself, but this makes sense from a proof of concept perspective. Mozzarella doesn’t have a whole lot of flavor to hide behind, so it’s a good blank canvas to prove just how good New Culture’s technology is. Gibson’s goal is to make a product that’s good enough to stand on its own on a cheese plate, not just as a melted pizza topping.

New Culture’s animal-free mozzarella.

The company has got a ways to go before they’ll get there. As of now, they haven’t even made cheese from their own proteins yet. While they’re making milk through the aforementioned recombinant protein technology, they haven’t made enough proteins to do their own mozzarella R&D. So for now, New Culture is also purchasing pre-made casein micelles to supplement their development efforts.

The six-month-old startup is currently in science accelerator program IndieBio. Gibson told me they hope to have a cheese sample made with their own proteins ready for Demo Day on June 25.

New Culture isn’t the first company to use this type of technology to make cow-free dairy. Most notable is Perfect Day, a Berkeley-based startup that is also creating milk proteins in a lab by creating casein and whey with genetically modified microbes.

But where Perfect Day is targeting a B2B market, selling their “dairy” to big CPG companies, Gibson said that New Culture will have more of an Impossible Foods model. He plans to debut their cheese in a San Francisco high-end restaurant to validate the product before expanding into more mid-range food spots and maybe even retail. Gibson wouldn’t commit to an exact timeline, but said they plan to do their first taste test “at least 18 months from now.”

The thing is, Perfect Day — which has been around 5 years longer than New Culture — initially also had a B2C go-to-market strategy. However, in 2017 they pivoted to a B2B model so they could focus their efforts on R&D and also scale more quickly. They’re currently partnering with ADM to debut a whey protein powder, so that strategy seems to be paying off.

I wouldn’t be surprised if New Culture makes a similar pivot down the line. For a company that hasn’t even successfully developed a product, it’s pretty ambitious to say that they’ll have their own branded line of cheese in a restaurant in a year and a half. It’s also just a huge lift to simultaneously develop a product, create a brand strategy, and forge restaurant and retail partnership.

Sure, cheese is more expensive than milk or yogurt and they’ll be debuting at a fancy restaurant, so their price point doesn’t have to be super low. But eventually it will have to be, especially if they want to capture the attention of flexitarians.

New Culture is also working with a pretty lean team and comparatively little funding: as of now it’s just Gibson and two other founders. The company received $250k from IndieBio as part of the accelerator and has already raised an undisclosed amount of funding from “an international VC firm” over the past few months.

Regardless of whether they end up changing go-to-market strategies, New Culture is still getting into the dairy alternative space at a good time. Consumer demand for plant-based dairy is on the rise: according to Research and Markets, the global dairy alternative market is projected to reach $26 billion by 2023. And while Perfect Day may have a head start, there’s plenty of space for two (or more) players in the alt-dairy space. Especially if it means better tasting dairy-free cheese.

Food Tech News Roundup: Just Eggs, Mealpal, and IndieBio

It’s that time again! Time for us to take a breath, take a beat, and look back at the week. At the Spoon we covered a large swathe of stories, from food delivery robots to cultured meat and milk news to the drama around meal kit company Chef’d’s sudden shut-down.

But we didn’t have time to cover everything that happened this week. Here are the food tech news stories that caught our eye around the web, here for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

Mealpal rolls out in Asia
This week Mealpal, the takeout meal subscription service, launched in Singapore. Users can select from a set number of meals from various local restaurants, pay for their food online, then skip the line to pick it up — for around $6 per meal. This is the 17th market for Mealpal, which is already available in cities in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. The startup launched in 2016 and is based in New York City.

 

JUST rolls out their plant-based eggs in more locations
Plant-based food company JUST Foods (formerly Hampton Creek) has been making waves with its vegan egg product, which is made of mung beans but looks and tastes like the real thing. According to a press release, this week they forged a partnership with Italian company Eurovo, Europe’s leading producer of packaged, pasteurized, and dried eggs, to distribute JUST’s plant-based product. In Europe, Just Egg will have a different name, due to regulations.

This news comes around the same time that JUST announced that vegetarian fast-casual chain Veggie Grill would bring Just Egg to its 30 locations. They’ll also be rolling out the vegan scramble on e-commerce site Jet.com (owned by Walmart), as well as Sysco, New Seasons Market, Wegmans, and other retailers.

 

IndieBio to open New York City location
New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced this week that IndieBio, a leading bio-accelerator, would open a branch in New York City. Run by VC firm SOSV, San Francisco-based IndieBio works with select life science startups to provide resources, guidance, and networking opportunities. Companies that are selected for IndieBio’s cohort receive $250,000 in seed funding and take part in a four-month program where they get access to labs and co-working spaces as well as a chance to pitch to investors and partners. Over the next five years, New York state plans to invest $25 million in IndieBio’s startup accelerator.

 

A new service lets Philly fans order beer with their iPhones
Stadium concession company Aramark will partner with the Phillies to conduct a food-ordering experiment in Citizens Bank Park. Starting on July 20th, fans in certain sections can order water and beer, without leaving their seats. To order, they’ll scan a QR code on the back of their seats and then text their order, which is completed via Apple Pay. Aramark is the first concessionaire to try this method of stadium ordering. Unlike previous seat-delivery stadium food concepts, this partnership wouldn’t require a separate app — anyone with an iPhone can use it.