 nutrition is going to be the organizing principle for the food system. And prior to this, for the last, you know, sort of 100 years as the kind of the legacy system was being developed, it was all about calories and securing calories. I think now it really is securing, you know, sort of nutrition. Now that has profound, you know, implications on how you, you know, how you transition to that, you know, kind of system. You have to start thinking about things much differently. Okay. Victor E. Friedberg is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas, brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. Victor has been at the forefront of innovation, investment and sustainability for over 20 years as co-founder of S2G Ventures. He was a principal force in developing the S2G mission, culture, strategy and team. Through his work at S2G, he pioneered systems, investing as a strategy for investing into food and agriculture and applied this approach in building the S2G portfolio. As managing director, Victor led the S2G investment into free food unicorns, beyond meat, sweet green and a field science, all well known as well as Maple Hill, Creamery, Adoraxus and Lava among others, which is a yogurt company, right? Yogurt. A non-dairy, yeah. Non-dairy type of yogurt. Although now we're becoming a super food company and we'll talk about that. Super food, super. Beyond meat, which Victor served as board observer from 2014 to 2017, became the most successful IPO in 2019 and one of the most successful food IPOs in the last decades. The new fund, a new epoch capital invests in best of class entrepreneurs, building transformative companies, defining a new era of health and wellness to support their visions of providing healthy, sustainable, effect us personalized and traceable products and services for the values conscious consumer. He is founder and chairman of FoodShot Global, a 501s T3 blended capital investment platform of equity, debt and grants with 25 of the leading funds, banks, foundations, universities, corporations and nonprofits seeking to join him on his mission to transform the food system into one that is more healthy, sustainable and equitable for all. FoodShot's Global Groundbreaker Prize is presently the largest prize for food and agriculture in the world. He serves presently as executive chairman of the fast-growing plant-based dairy company, Lava and chairman of the organic toddler food company, Tiny Organics. He serves on the board of those two companies as well as the biotech company, the Birdie Air Protein. He is an advisor to the biotech company, Mori and the SLM partner land fund. He was named by Forrest Magazine, one of the top 25 deal makers and influencers in consumer products in 2016. And I could go on and on. He has been involved in this as was said well over 20 years. He's a veteran and a wonderful person, a good friend. We might see his dog in the background or a beautiful ridge back. Hear him shaking his collar once in a while. Victor, welcome to the show. I'm so glad to see you, so good to talk to you. Mark, so glad to be joining you. I know it's been a long time coming, but I'm excited to both catch up as colleagues and also talk about all of the great things that you've been following on your podcast over the last year. So I'm excited. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for being on. And I'm really honored and glad we could get a workout. The last time, just for our listeners, the last time we saw each other was at Sustainable Brands Madrid in Madrid, Spain. We had a nice beer. Matter of fact, it was my birthday. We had a little beer celebration. We did. In a bar afterwards. But you gave a beautiful talk and our paths have crossed at the Eat For Me Foundation as well in Stockholm, Sweden, and many other places, I'm sure, over the years. You are just a pillar, a rock, and a man after my own heart in the vision that you have for food, not only in your investments, but in just the transformative global moonshots, this global food reform vision you have for the entire industry and where food needs to go. And so I want to just write out of the bat, out of the chute, first, with all those years of experience with these investments and real strong focus around health, sustainability, and equitable future for food. Has any of that helped you weather this pandemic and how the hell have you been in this tumultuous, crazy time? Well, you mentioned our meeting in Madrid and Stockholm. That definitely seems like a long time ago, and now we're all meeting on Zoom calls like this and having conversations virtually with lots of folks. So like everybody else, I've adapted to sort of that reality, but I do look forward to getting back into the world and engaging personally and traveling and the like. I mean, like everybody else, the last eight or nine months have been deeply profound in terms of your family life, your personal life, certainly the trials and tribulations as well as opportunities on the business side. But I don't think anybody isn't looking forward to what's coming next and hopefully a better 2021. And it looks like we're on a good road to do that. What I will say is that over the last seven or eight months, one of the things that I had done right before COVID was to dedicate myself to taking operational roles in either portfolio companies or companies that I had interest in in either the founders or in what the company was doing. And I have to say, going from the investor side to the table to the operational side of the table is a incredibly educational experience and any investor, I would recommend a tour of duty out of the investment committee room and into a company. If they haven't prior really been operators because you're gonna look at investments completely different, leave from that sort of vantage point. That was true before COVID. During COVID, you really become to realize how companies are ultimately dependent on teams and the team's ability to step up, rally, pivot, analyze, feel. All of those skills come to bear in a timeline that is very intense and very consequential and so hopefully you're stronger for that at the end of it but it's been a profound time. There are things I've learned from that and clearly, I would love to talk a little bit about the sort of big macro changes that have happened over COVID and one could argue that they weren't changes at all, they were foundational cracks that had been there and the stress of COVID just made them more revealed and more urgent to address. And I think that's the main thing that I've seen is that all of us who have been deeply involved in food system change and understanding the implications for human health and for sustainability and planetary health and for sort of equity. Man, like COVID brought all of those to the surfaces in ways that ultimately would be very important I think very positive and beneficial for the industry and for the world but what a profoundly, I don't know, just a hard way to learn those lessons. Yeah, really hard way. I mean, not only did a lot of things bubble to the surface but we got a microscope look at what was wrong and what was right and just got this different perspective but in a very hard way. I mean, the food industry and gastronomy was really one of the hardest hit but it was also amazing. And I think, and I kind of want to follow up with you sharing this is that a lot of those companies that you invest in that you're kind of operations and focusing, they already have this ESG model a business model, a way of thinking they're focused in on health and sustainability and the future of food but also this global food reform, how we can do food differently. They were a lot of them as far as investments go first, second and third quarter outperformed conventional counterparts sustainable index funds, ESGs, food companies received investments, a lot of positive movement for really recession, a pandemic, a huge thing first, second and third quarter which was amazing but it also said, okay, well, here's the ones that haven't been walking the walk or just been talking about it, haven't made that transition and they're really suffering so but it's also put down those who did make that transition in a better position to deliver vital services essential services, continue producing but for example, the meat industry, I mean, boy that they're set up in practices were just not very sustainable but also ones where there was a lot of problems especially here in Germany with the meat industry and in the US and so where there are times where those companies that you're involved with say, we didn't listen, we need your help or so just aha moments in this time that you can maybe elaborate even more on where you saw that coming out and emerging that it may be confirmed to you this is a better model or, oh no, there's this microscope is showing us we really need to work on these. Yeah, I mean, I think from the vantage point of companies that I've either invested in or been operational in or from the overall vision of let's say what I've put forward for SUG and for Fuca Global all of those held up sort of quite well. I mean, those theses didn't anticipate a Black Swan event like sort of COVID, there were touches of them like a company I had led the investment at Araxxus which is, it's a technology that basically allows supply chain managers and stakeholders in the meat industry to validate that the meat actually is antibiotic free, right? So it's a kind of a honesty system but also for meat companies who wanna make sure that their supply chains are meeting their SPAC and trying to figure out where the weak points are and that you need a low cost, reliable sort of tests as the meat that you're buying is in sort of antibiotic free. Now that investment got done years ago but now you look at it through a COVID sort of frame and sort of understand the relationship between livestock farming and sort of the meat industry and bacterial superbugs and even potentially sort of viral ones you start understanding that that system is potentially ripe for the pandemic we can't see going forward. So how do you start thinking about an industry like that and a technology like that not just in terms of consumer traceability and transparency but now on this bigger theme of how do we keep our food systems moving towards a security that prevents the next sort of pandemic. So it's interesting though back and look at an investment like that, you look at certainly the Beyond Meat investment the IPO happened clearly before COVID and I think the view of Beyond Meat prior to COVID was that this sort of plant-based meat revolution was super aligned to the new consumer and people moving into flexitarian diets and that was all part of sort of the IPO. Once COVID hit, now you look at those companies much differently and I think all of the investment banks have reassessed the total addressable market for plant-based meat coming out of COVID and it gets to a trillion dollars a hell of a lot faster than people thought six months ago. We're seeing unbelievable things in that area just plant-based milks, plant-based meats, everything it's just unbelievable growth during this time for probably the biggest sector period. I mean, just oat milk just went through the roof and it's unbelievable how that was. Was that first company you mentioned was that a blockchain or emerging technology type or was it just a digitization? No, no, it's a lateral flow sort of pregnancy test meets sort of biopsy but then into databases and readers and supply chain visualization and all of those kind of things. So it's just an example that you can now look at all of these sort of companies as they had tailwinds going into COVID and now they have sort of like gale force winds sort of during COVID. I think for me the frame that everybody's still trying to get their arms around and anybody who says that they have a crystal ball clear vision as to where this all sort of ends up. I don't think you can get there but clearly automation decentralized distribution, traceability, blockchain like all of that infrastructure part of the food system that was the unsexy part that very little investment was going into certainly home delivery and last mile stuff and online groceries from there was plenty of capital going into that but into processing into storage into logistics all of the things that came under incredible pressure and buckled meaningfully during sort of COVID. I think those are starting to emerge as places where capital's gonna start finding its way to because I think we have to reimagine that middle layer of the food system and most of that hasn't changed for 70 years and I think that's an interesting sort of development. The other place I'm very interested in and with investments like lava and sort of tiny organics and but also air protein another one. Food as affordable nutrition and even food moving towards medicine I think is the big winner as a trend coming out of COVID clearly the two most important words I think from to really understand COVID's relationship to the food system or the words underlying conditions. I mean, that underlying conditions is now also turning into when you're talking about healthcare preexisting conditions but the 70 years of cheap calories and sort of food as marketing. I think that era is truly coming to the end because it has to. I think investors and venture capital was pushing that forward because one capital wants to find new consumers and new markets to create. But now at a macro level global stakeholders are seeing whether your insurance companies or your big employers or your governments or your healthcare providers like you're seeing the stresses materialize in a way that is translating into lost human potential, lost of lives, incredible amounts of spending that could be avoided by proactive approaches to sort of food. All of that I think is an incredibly difficult thing to watch on a day-to-day basis every day. I was here in New York in April and May and we were having 7 to 800 people dying a day here and obviously there were many things sort of contributing to that but it is clear that when the data is fully analyzed this is gonna be a story about food, diet, obesity, chronic disease, nutrient deficiencies, it's gonna be a story about that and how that burden has fallen on the shoulders of minority communities because of the economic realities of food and sustenance and cheap calories and it was heartbreaking to watch. You could almost every time you saw a picture of somebody who died during that time in New York you could almost visualize them on the screen. It was much more likely that they were going to be combating these chronic sort of health diseases that have been around for decades and the result of diets and so unless we as a community in the world start making changes there and creating incentives for scaling up a better, nutritious and efficacious approach to science towards food what are you putting in your body? What is it doing? How is it benefiting you? The food industry has just gotten away with way too much for way too long on marketing slogans and pseudo science and the like and so I think now we're ushering in the golden era of a new approach to nutrition and I think the benefits for that are gonna be clear. I totally see that as well and I see that new decade being ushered in and now we really need to get back to the health and fix our not only our biome but the biome of a human body which is really lacking nutrients and the good gut health and the vitamins, minerals out of our food sources the way that they're being produced and what options we have there. I really start with the first big question for you is do you feel like you're a global citizen and how would you feel or could you imagine a world without nations, borders, divisions of humanity one from another and what are your thoughts and feelings about that? Well, first of all, I think as we were talking about right before we did this interview we're in the midst of a political environment here that obviously is very US centric but has implications for sort of the rest of the world. I'm more singularly focused on how to get through the next three months here and finding the belief that our systems here will hold up under kind of the pressure that they're under now and that from there, the US joins a aligned group of global states that are trying to truly tackle the issues of this world around sustainability around food and nutrition, around all of the things that I know you're a big believer in. So I'm starting to think about I'm answering that question from the ground up from the bottom up and not from the top down I got to see what grassroots activism on a local level here has done and changed potentially the course of this country. So right now I'm in the view that these very localized grassroots very sort of progressive strategies are super important. And then if we can get through that, then maybe zoom back out for those bigger top down questions and maybe you mean it as a ground up, bottom up sort of strategy. But right now all I'm thinking about is what's going on out in that on those streets. It's crazy. Because the next couple of months there's gonna be a lot more of it. Yeah, I mean I really need to congratulate the US for their vote for Biden and whatever controversies and craziness comes out of that for the next month. I don't wish upon anybody. I hope that we can move forward with all the Paris agreement and many other things to kind of heal, repair and get into a better place. Like the World Economic Forum says, this should be a time of a great reset and awakening that the microscope has been. We've seen the problems and things above to the surface that we know where the systems are broken, what's wrong and where they are. Let's get them fixed. Let's have a reset and not go back to, you know, back to usual or to normal. Let's truly make it happen and move forward. Because really this year started out in January as a very positive movement in a lot of directions, a lot of movements. And even though it's been very tumultuous during the year with the pandemic, good and bad all around the world, there's also been some positive things around food and progress that have been made that really take us forward. Now we still need to have this roadmap of global food reform and have this, as you so eloquently say it, through the FoodShot.org and through your FoodShot business and project that we need a moonshot, a food shot for better food for the future. We need to start moving in that direction. The reason I, you know, I caveated it with those global citizens and how would you feel about a world without nathans and borders is because what we saw through this zoom in and zoom out of the pandemic is really, food didn't have any nations or borders. They continued to move around the world during the pandemic and the lockdown also. And a lot of communities bubbled up to come to service and to feed people and to make sure that it was distributed where we saw where the problems in our systems were as well. But also that, you know, during this time we had the documentary Kiss the Ground come out, which I think is a good, beautiful, regenerative movement and some directions that we need to go that people, you know, where see, but also the just last two weeks ago, the vote on plant-based meats in Europe and the vote on, yeah, plant-based milks and stuff and what's happening there and kind of, you know, are we going to allow politics to govern our food when we know that it's just as corrupt as others, that there's so many monies going from private organizations and the wrong direction on policies around food and things like that. So, I mean, the way I would sort of, you know, talk about that is like, you know, and I used to come to Europe, you know, to, you know, do talks, you know, and the like and beyond panels. You know, European, you know, investment panels, you know, and entrepreneurship panels are very different than sort of, you know, sort of US and, you know, invariably, you know, you'd be on an investment and entrepreneur, you know, panel in Europe and you, you know, if you had, you know, 45 minute panel, you've spent 35 minutes talking about regulatory environments and, you know, which is just completely the opposite, you know, kind of the US. I mean, you would never even probably have a regulatory conversation, you know, about investment and entrepreneurship unless it was some incredibly novel, you know, technology or, you know, you know, sort of process. That's just, you know, the way, you know, sort of Europe looks at, you know, protective industries and, you know, but also oversight, you know, around things that Europeans care, you know, you know, deeply about. The thing that I'm starting to think more about on the US side is, you know, we have a structural problem, you know, you know, here, you know, this sort of, you know, kind of cold civil war is what I call it, you know, you know, like there's the cold war, you know, like we're having a cold civil war. And, you know, obviously we hope that it stays cold and it does not go, you know, sort of, you know, hot, you know, but there are two nations, you know, here that have stopped hearing each other, you know, and in very few, apart from very few, you know, intersection points, you know, you know, think and act discreetly. And, you know, obviously that, you know, house divided cannot, you know, stand. I think we're, you know, I think we're right there. The role of, you know, sort of capital and, you know, sort of entrepreneurship, I think is really about, you know, and if Biden and even if Trump had stayed, you know, stays in power, but, you know, whoever is in power, you know, has to start believing that at the end of the day, what people want are good jobs, hope for the future, food on the table, all of the social issues, yes, they can get, you know, pretty hot on the periphery, but at the end of the day, you know, education for their kids. And, you know, it's a relatively simple list of things that, you know, have to be, you know, to deliver to have a healthy, you know, sort of society. And, you know, we've probably for too long, you know, incentivize the system for, you know, around have and have nots and, you know, capital is only flowing, you know, into certain, you know, sort of, you know, sort of communities, you know, entrepreneurship and, you know, is, you know, a coastal, you know, thing. And what I think food allows an agriculture is a way for, you know, at least here, you know, the entire country to participate, you know, in a reimagining of that and to be beneficiaries of it. So, you know, if you're an entrepreneur in Utah, or you're, you know, in West Virginia, or, you know, if you start thinking about food from, you know, how are we going to create a 21st century farm? How are we going to start, you know, creating decentralized controlled environment, you know, sort of, you know, growing for, you know, you know, cities, how are we going to, you know, create regenerative, you know, agriculture that gives, you know, you know, farmers premiums on their, you know, you know, on their goods. And, you know, there's, there's a lot of things the entire country could be doing there. And capital could be supporting that, you know, like Steve Case has been doing this work for, you know, a long time. He gets on a bus, you know, he goes across America, you know, he goes, you know, it's called Rise of the Rest. Yeah, right. You know, it's investments into, you know, these quote, fly over, you know, you know, areas and how do we get entrepreneur hubs, you know, going there, you know, how do we, you know, create, you know, opportunity, you know, in which capitals, you know, playing a role. The writer you probably know is now I'm blanking on it, who wrote Hillbilly, you know, Elegy, you know, Elegy, you know, that gave the first real insights as to why Trump got elected in 2016. He's got a venture fund now, you know, and it's basically taking that philosophy and saying how do we, you know, how do we catalyze, you know, all of these, you know, sort of communities that had not had those ecosystems and not had that capital and not had, you know, kind of the roadmap, you know, to be able to be an entrepreneur, to build a company or to, you know, that's exciting if we can, you know, if we can really do that. And so, you know, I'm hopeful. Well, how can we dive a little bit more into food shot and you kind of tell me how, how that's evolved, how it's been going and what your main push and drive is, what you want to deploy and see reached with food shot. Sure. So, I mean, you know, food shot got incubated, you know, when I was building S2G and the idea was originally that, you know, venture capital is an incredibly powerful tool in, you know, change, but it's not the only tool and it certainly shouldn't be the only voice. And so how do we create a multi stakeholder platform that brings other voices, you know, into, you know, the mix, you know, representing, you know, industry, you know, finance, investment, you know, innovation, nonprofit work. And for us to collectively then on an annual basis say, here's where we want to focus and then to use a blended capital. So not only, you know, equity investment, but debt and, you know, non-dilutive grant dollars to catalyze, you know, high risk, high reward, high impact, you know, entrepreneurs and scientific work. And to use the consortium of stakeholders help de-risk that a bit. So, okay, if you're going to swing for the fences, you know, and take on that higher risk, higher reward, maybe by having this group of collaborative stakeholders that have, you know, their foothold in a lot of the industry, you can help, you know, minimize that, you know, immediate that risk. So that was the kind of the original, you know, sort of concept. We've built that now into 25 different, you know, partners, you know, Robo Bank, Generation Investment Management, Mars, Grantham, you know, Nature Conservancy, you know, a long list of, you know, Rockefeller Foundation, Generation as Al Gore, by the way, as one of his, so yeah, fabulous. And so, you know, what we do now, and I think what's exciting for me in the work that I'm doing there now is how do we take big global challenges like soil, you know, sort of protein and create new frameworks that would help investors and entrepreneurs, you know, make better decisions in the development of their, you know, their companies and their funds, but also that ultimately plays a way to think about that future food system and how do we get that and define it faster. So on protein, for instance, you know, this was, you know, the approach that we wanted to take here was not about, hey, let's find the next cool, all protein, you know, next beyond meat, you know, there's plenty of people doing that and, you know, that's being done kind of everywhere. I was really convinced that nutrition is the key driver for investment and opportunity and entrepreneurship going, you know, forward. So how do we think about protein from a nutritional standpoint on a global basis? And what occurred to me as I was thinking about it was that, you know, we use an incredible amount of resources, you know, energy, you know, water, you know, industrial capacities, you know, to create this sort of protein as if it was a shorthand for human health. And it's not, human health is much more, you know, much more broad micronutrients, phytonutrients, you know, they're all of these. And so, like, we're super fixated on protein as a catch on, it's not. So the idea was, how do we, if we are going to, you know, try to create a better protein system, which obviously because of the resources that it takes and, you know, how focused the consumer public, you know, is on it, how do we steer it in a better, you know, direction and how do we think about it? That's a new framework. And the framework ultimately was that, and we, you know, we basically called a precision protein, which was, if you're going to spend that much, that many resources on it, it's going to be that much of a fixture for, you know, nutrition. And how do we get more precise as to what protein is? What are those amino acids? What do they do? You know, you know, you know, since you can get them from plant proteins, you get them from animal proteins. How do you look at it more from an amino acid perspective and make sure that, you know, you're producing amino acids in a way that is more conducive to human health? So for instance, the protein needs of an infant versus a child versus a, you know, teenager versus an adult versus, you know, a senior citizen are completely different. So why aren't we now starting to think about individuals, you know, life stage, gender, you know, health history and really think about their protein access, you know, from, you know, from that vantage point. And then if we're going to, if we're going to produce proteins, how do we produce them? So, you know, a lot of protein nutrients are lost through the production process. So now you're, you're spending all of these resources to create the protein, but now you're losing a large percentage of it as it moves through the processing. Okay. Can we stop doing that? Can we make that more efficient? Can we make, you know, sort of the protein yield on the processing side more, you know, make it better. So we're looking at those kind of things and put together now, you know, a framework. We're in the final stages of diligence on the pipeline of very exciting companies that span, you know, animal meat production, aquaculture, fermentation, you know, driven, you know, protein, you know, waste of value systems, you know, really exciting stuff. But we'll be announcing those winners on both the ground breaker prize and the ground breaker equity award in January of 2021. Beautiful. Beautiful. Maybe you can tease us. I know you want to start a new fund pretty soon. Can you maybe give us a little teaser or what we can look for, or is that too soon? No, no, I would love to talk about it. Thanks for, thanks for asking. The new funds called new epic capital. You know, the inspiration for it was, I started to see in other sectors and other verticals, a lot of the signals that I saw in 2012 and 2013 and food and agriculture. And that ultimately, the consumer drivers were all very similar. It was about health and wellness. It was about efficacy. What is it doing for me? It was about personalization. It was about resilience and sustainability. It was about e-com and, you know, it's just sort of new distribution. So the consumers spoke in as to basically what, you know, what we want. The systems have to catch up, you know, to that. Now food and agriculture now has been on a good run to better align, you know, the food system to those consumer drivers. So new epic will be investing absolutely in food and agriculture. But there are these other sectors, you know, beauty cosmetics, sustainable apparel, home and office now that we're now spending 90% of our time in our homes, you know, which I think is going to, a lot of that's going to continue as well. Now, how do you create, you know, better environments, you know, that you're now living and working in. So detoxification of, you know, materials and, you know, sort of paints and things like that, you know, microbiome, you know, in your, you know, in your built environments, you know, there's lots of science, you know, into, you know, into that. So new epic will be looking at these, you know, these same themes, but now making systems investing, you know, in these other consumer touch points. Sounds like a very systems approach and it's, you know, the, the resilience scene or the sustainable scene and, you know, not no more longer the, the anthropocene, but this new epoch of something moving more towards either resilience or sustainability, you know, I love it. Perfect. Well, you actually sort of got to why I named it new epic. Capital. Most people haven't sort of picked up, you know, on that, but this is the first epoch in which it's being named for man's footprint and thumbprint on the planet. And so, you know, before this, before Anthropocene, it was about species change and geological change. That's not what this is about. This is about for the first time, you know, man is having an effect, you know, on the planet. And so, you know, a fund that sort of understands that, you know, as its core tenant is, you know, really the direction we're going. Beautiful. Yeah, I'm fully aligned. So, you know, that's great. I'm excited to see and hear more and the world needs more of this. We just, we just, that's the direction we need to go. And I'm as crazy why we're still late, why we haven't jumped on board sooner and gotten there sooner. There are some positive movements as well. I mean, this year was supposed to be the launch of the sustainable food summit, the United Nations food system summit that's been pushed till next year. Now this year they've had some virtual events and things, but it's really bringing food into the discussion and global reform into the international global dialogue, especially at the United Nations where it's kind of how to backseat. It's been more about renewables and capturing carbon, carbon offsetting and putting a price on carbon. And really, those are all great. They're on the top 10 list, but we're getting it wrong because the number one way to impact and change is to usher in a better epoch is to start having food in our, our dialogue and what can we do to reform it and, and to get to a better place. So I want to ask you the burning question, WTF, and that's really what we've probably all been pulling out our hair and saying during this pandemic and especially during the election of the United States, but it's not the square word. It's really the word, you know, what's the future? I don't really want to know what your vision of the politics or other nations are. I want to know what, what's your future? I mean, you've given me a little bit of the setup of, of the, the epoch and, and some of the projects you're working on, but your vision is much bigger on global food reform. So really what's the future? Where do we need to go? And do you have a clear vision of that? Can you describe it to us? I mean, I think I've touched on, you know, it a little bit here is, you know, I think nutrition is going to be the organizing principle for the food system. And prior to this, for the last, you know, sort of hundred years as the, kind of the legacy system was being developed, it was all about calories and securing calories. I think now it really is securing, you know, sort of nutrition. Now that has profound, you know, implications on how you, how you transition to that, you know, kind of system, you have to start thinking about things much differently. Okay. Farming practices, inputs, you know, data, you know, you know, right now we think about yield from a, you know, from an idea of bushels per, you know, sort of acre. Well, why wouldn't we start thinking about it in terms of nutritional, you know, nutritional inputs as opposed to, you know, sort of yield and, you know, you know, unit, you know, sort of, you know, outputs. So, you know, my sense is again, you know, we're relatively simple beings, you know, you know, we need nourishment. You know, that nourishment feeds, you know, not only, you know, our human health, but our spirit, you know, so to speak. So, like, everybody has a vested interest, you know, in accessing, you know, nutrition. Right now, that system is broken clearly. You know, it is moving more into a have and have nots, you know, you know, sort of structured, that's not sustainable. You know, when you start getting into food and water security, you know, you know, issues, that's when civilizations, you know, come to an end. That's when wars, you know, you know, sort of break out. So everybody's got a vested interest in, you know, accessible nutrition that is global. And within planetary boundaries. And so that's, you know, that's the frame. Now the question is, you know, how do you do that? And how do you create the new models that are going to accomplish that? And there's the bottom up part that we talked about in which, you know, venture capital and entrepreneurs and, you know, you know, local, you know, sort of in regional food, you know, thought leaders are playing this role. And then there's this, there's this top down, which is about, you know, big companies, you know, insurance, you know, companies, large employers, governments who are also interested in that, you know, outcome and I think becoming more interested, you know, in that output, you know, in that outcome. And so I see the bottom up efforts and the top down, you know, efforts putting pressure on creating that, you know, that system like a diamond, you know, like, you know, from, you know, kind of the pressure that makes a diamond. I think that's coming from the bottom and from the top. And so, you know, I think the hope is that that's what gets us, you know, there, I think the signals are pretty good. I think COVID accelerated that pressure. And so, you know, hopefully we'll get there faster. I really do too. I mean, do you feel that this current model that we're on, you know, the civil civilization framework, even the model that you're on in Manhattan there on, as far as who goes, is that a model that can be pushed out into the future? Or do you think that that's one of doom and gloom? And that's why we need to have this, you know, global food reform or this bigger vision of how we fix it. I mean, I mean, do you mean like, you know, is there a model here that's happening now on a local level that you think is replicable or, you know, sort of scalable and maybe give a clue as to what's coming next? Is that what you mean? Well, what I mean is I, is it because, you know, as you said in the beginning of our conversation, things bubbling to the surface that we're seeing that there's a lot of food deserts or that the current model we're in, you know, with extreme lobbyists and extreme monopolies of food and the way the food has been done in the past is just one that's not sustainable. And so you say, well, here's the situation I'm in now and I'm going to push that model out into the future. What does that look and feel like? Well, it doesn't look or feel very good. And now how do we make the shift? And you know, that's where you're talking about this bottom up, which is meeting this top down that does, it's not working for us is creating this new, this new vision or diamond and that's kind of what I just wanted to maybe push a little bit more of your thoughts. You know, real deeper. So one of the things I'm starting to develop with some partners for, you know, with food shot is, whether, you know, at the end of the day, it's, you need a viable economic model. And so, you know, better food at this point is just more expensive. I don't think that's a radical thing to say. And that it being more expensive is not just because it can be and there's more, you know, sort of, you know, sort of dollars for the entrepreneurs and, you know, investors, because they can charge more of that. That's not where the expense is coming from. The expense is coming from, it's more expensive because the systems that you need to create better food and do it the right way are just more expensive to do. They're more labor. You know, they take, they have less yield. You know, there's, there's all these contributing factors. So all of the venture capital that's come into the innovation front is an attempt to solve some of those scaling issues so that better food over time can be less, you know, sort of, you know, expensive, but it can't be as, you know, it can't be par to, you know, you know, a system that's cranking out cheap calories that's been optimized for a hundred years. I mean, that's, you know, there's, there's going to be, you know, a gap between even where the most efficient progress is being made to get the costs down of food, of good food. There's still going to be a gap to what the cheapest calorie, you know, like food that's contributing to all of these underlying, you know, conditions and, you know, all of these, you know, sort of health impact. So the question is, how do you manage that gap? And is there incentives in that area so that you can make, you know, the good food cost on par, you know, to, to the consumer to make healthy choices. Is there a role for stakeholders, state governments who are concerned, you know, around, you know, their, you know, rising, you know, health care costs for their, you know, safety net citizens for employers who are concerned about, you know, reduced productivity, you know, for their, you know, workforces for, you know, food manufacturing companies that are, you know, losing market share for entrepreneurial companies that want to gain more, you know, market share for retailers who want the halo of, you know, sort of health and wellness to be able to differentiate from their competition and to, you know, create loyalty, you know, within programs within, you know, their stores for health insurance companies who, you know, are going to basically take on the brunt of, you know, all of these, you know, chronic disease, you know, sort of, you know, what I call, you know, sort of, you know, sustainability world talks about externalities. The nutrition world should be talking about internalities, so I call them internalities. So, like, how do you start factoring in those, you know, costs of the cheap calories going in, but the expense of health care, you know, sort of coming out of that system? So, you know, the question, you know, is could there be a consortium of stakeholders that believe that the costs differential between the cheap calorie products and the, you know, the scaling better for you products, that it's better to subsidize that delta in the short term to avoid that much larger delta and all of those internalities, you know, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, you know, sort of later. So we're putting together the broad strokes of a pilot that we would do, you know, most likely on the west coast to test that thesis with stakeholders in each one of those buckets, insurance companies, retailer, big food, government. I did see that you have a nice chart on your website and I'll put those in the show link so that they can find those as well. I think that's important. You know, it's interesting and I don't want to maybe dive in just a little bit deeper as well because I think it's, when we were in Madrid, we kind of talked about this article, the surface of some of this conversation as well, that in 2008, the entire world's investments pretty much because of the financial crisis and some of things were happening in the markets at that time, shift to investments in anything to do with food systems because that was a safe bet. It's something that's grown 99 billion or trillions every year, nonstop since 2008. And it not only was a safe bet, but what happened is a real critical thing happened at that time. It turned food into a commodity. So not only did we kind of have the problem even before where those who were producing food weren't always knowledgeable about how to produce food or just trying to do it as cheap as possible. Well, now that we turned it into a commodity, it's even more so that it's not really, it's about when we make a profit, how do we do it? And it turned it out and Carolyn Steele really said it best. She says, if we cheap and food, we basically cheap a life, you know, and where you turn food into a commodity where it's not the true value or the total environmental cost of food or the percentage of EBITDA to produce that food. But then we drill down even deeper and said, you know, what if we use a real crazy model, which in my opinion is not that crazy. It has to also tie with this moonshot thinking that for our earth shots and for these, these planet dots. And that is really with moonshot thinking, you're thinking, how can I survive, eat, drink, sleep, get air, oxygen, energy and space and the harshest conditions be resilient and not while I'm trying to grow food or go to the bathroom in space that I'm creating waste or creating inefficiencies or using chemicals or processes in the way I do produce my energy that kills me in hours because I'm in this confined out harsh conditions of outer space. And what if we apply those and how we produce food and we discuss that, you know, it's not about the brands or the food products of the future that really are the key to solving the problem. It's what you've touched upon several times during our whole conversation. It's really about how we produce food is the biggest impact not only on environment, human health, human suffering and bringing, you know, getting more nutrition. That will have the biggest impact in the brands of the future. It's how we produce those brands in the future. And that's what goes to what you're saying. How can we fill that gap? How can we bring that imbalance back into alignment? So you've got this cheap product that is cheap but there's also no nutrients, minerals, vitamins. There's nothing you're just, you might as well eat dirt or, you know, maybe dirt would even be better for you. But how do we bring the prices in alignment and still have nutritional healthy food that doesn't hurt human health or our environment? And the thought process was, why don't we use renewable energy, non-finite resources, battery backup, passive systems, circular economy thinking, cradle to cradle processes where we have this organic cycles, these technical cycles that when we produce, we, by using these renewables, by using these efficiencies of non-finite resources, we actually reduce our costs of good souls. We bring in the efficiencies of all the waste of what normally occurs and outdated antiquated production processes. And then we're not paying the high overheads for land and energy and the resources to make that, which brings that cost of goods down and brings up price in comparison to the others. And so I really think that, I mean, what you just said, that's how I hear. That's how, that's how I think that, you know, the direction of getting us into this global food reform and thinking, getting away from keeping food and getting it so that it can still be the true cost, the fair trade, the fair value. And I don't know if there's anything that you want to jump into that or how you're- So yeah, so it's a great example that I think would illustrate that on a number of fronts. So interestingly, so in 2009, I think that would have been, I founded, you know, the sort of investment platform with NASA State Department, USAID, Nike, a bunch of other, you know, corporations called Launch. And the idea for Launch was that, you know, NASA really felt that, you know, they should really be in the sustainability conversation because for decades, you know, they, you know, they were probably best in class, the closed loop systems, you know, they had the eyes and the ears, you know, kind of, you know, sort of the planet, you know, they were very much an innovation, you know, sort of culture. So when Obama, you know, came in, NASA want to position itself, you know, as a kind of a cutting edge thinker on sort of the sustainability. And it wasn't just the Department of Energy that should be kind of in that, you know, sort of conversation. So we founded Launch to be able to, you know, kind of, you know, identify those kind of, you know, sort of companies and to move money, you know, kind of in them and, you know, use this consortium of partners to do that. One of the companies, one of the first companies at this time was called Kaverdi, who was founded by this woman, Lisa Dyson, who was, you know, a scientist, had, you know, spent time at NASA. And she had, you know, discovered a technology that, you know, NASA was kind of working on at that point, you know, that basically took my, you know, sort of microbial communities. And, you know, you could take CO2 and create different outputs using, you know, those sort of communities and specifically hydrogenatropes, which I had never heard that term until I talked to Lisa. So I had met Lisa in 2009. And, you know, we'd kind of worked through launch. Then I hadn't really crossed paths with her until about two years ago. When all of a sudden she was now Kaverdi, you know, it was around and been funded and was doing a lot of that CO2 to value work that she was getting into kind of the food industry, on the sort of protein, you know, and that she'd found this application for using these kind of hydrogenatropes, using CO2 as a feedstock, fermentation, I think using oxygen, you know, and hydrogen as well, you know, on the inputs and creating a, you know, sort of a protein powder and, you know, kind of doing next beyond meat or kind of impossible using that, you know, sort of, you know, process. So that mass of thinking had led to Kaverdi and then, you know, clean tech kind of went its way. And she was looking at, you know, the kind of the food industry and was like, oh my God, like there's this great application for that. Why don't we, you know, spin out this company, which is now called Air Protein. And so I'm on the board of that, you know, sort of company now, but it just just shows you, you know, how do you do meat production, you know, basically decoupled from agriculture and it's not a cell-based, you know, approach, which has a lot of complexity, you know, to a lot of money going into it, but I think the jury's still out, you know, kind of, you know, on that here, she can use this process not only in, you know, this really works into my precision protein frame, not only to create, you know, you know, distinct amino acid profiles, but then also to create, you know, other micronutrients that can basically be done through the same process. So a complete approach to nutritional development decoupled from land, available for renewable, you know, energy, you know, on top of it right now, it's, you know, obviously, you know, still reliant on non-renewable energy, but you'll be able to get to the renewable side of it relatively quickly. So that's a very exciting, you know, sort of company and really thinks about these closed-lose systems, precision, you know, sort of protein, you know, decoupled from, you know, traditional agriculture and scalable, you know, you know, with the needs for a global population. So I'm very excited about that. There's a great company in Helsinki, Finland called Solar Foods. They do a similar thing as well. It's very, very similar to that. And, you know, there are so many cross-cutting thoughts and this connecting of complexity science and systems thinking to some of these companies. So you mentioned cellular agriculture and there are some really interesting things emerging in that area. There's still a lot of dealing with the scaffolding. So they can produce, you know, lab-grown meat, but it's pretty, it's almost like an Asian soup thing-cut meat that you would get if, you know, it's not a true burger in a short amount of time and so they need to work on scaffolding and what's the inputs and the mediums for those things. And there are some pretty good scaffolding opportunities around, you know, fungus around mushrooms and things there as well as other plant proteins or other plant-based scaffolding. So we're really at the cusp of this new epoch. So I just love how that's so fitting to go into this new direction where we have the opportunity to be creative and inventive and engineer and design these food futures and more so what we've also touched upon, which I hope my listeners will pull out of our discussion, is that we're not really talking about the future of foods. We always keep coming back to how do we get those futures of foods to production and scale and into this new, you know, to the masses because there could be 100,000 solar foods or impossible meats or impossible foods out there. And then we would start to tickle the surface of the problem and have that impact. And that, I mean, goes back to an even other thing, you know, neoliberalism, neodarwinism, you know, that's only the strong survival of the fittest, natural selection. Well, that's all bullshit. It's about competition, collaboration and really unifying and realizing, well, there's almost 8 billion people on this planet and impossible foods or solar foods, they're not going to cover it all. We need to be shifting the way we think about food. And so I really could go on and talk to you for hours and hours about things and I loved our discussions and I hope you will still contribute a section in my book, Menu B. I would love to do that, of course. People on planet food saving solutions, I've got a spot for you and I want to hear your wisdom and your thinking in what you've been specializing in for years. But as we wrap up our conversation, I want to give my listeners three sustainable takeaways from you. So something kind of selfish. I want you to give them something that will better their lives. And so I have three questions for you to kind of move in that direction. And it goes like this, is basically if there was one message that you could depart my listeners, a sustainable takeaway that has the power to change their life, what would it be your message? Before I answer that, maybe you can kind of give me a little more context for that one. Really, I just, you know, if there was something that you could say, you know, here's the future, here's something that really is a message, you know, the message that you preach, I think I could tell you what I think I've heard out of our conversation. But is there a message that you could give our listeners that would have the power to change their life or to change their way of thinking, acting or impacting on their own world or maybe what's your message? Well, I guess I'll answer, you know, I guess I'd answer it two ways. One, you know, if you are ever thinking about being, you know, an entrepreneur or an investor in this space, now's the time get off the sidelines and, you know, both for, you know, not on the impact side, but the ability to build world-class companies with, you know, with, you know, impact and growth. Now, my God, it's an amazing time to reshape the world. So you have a role to play if that is something that, you know, is, you know, of interest. And even if not, the role that we play as consumers voting with our wallets is intensely profound. And if we can move more and more money towards values-based, you know, consumerism, conscious consumerism, I think it's moving there anyway. I mean, I think ultimately more and more people are buying that way. You know, does this brand or does this company, you know, align to my, you know, view of my own personal values and those are being expressed through, you know, sort of those companies. So we're doing that and we're not, you know, sort of sleepwalking, you know, with our, you know, power, you know, as, you know, consumers, the faster, you know, I think the change, you know, is, I think ultimately it's a message of the personal power your viewers have to reshape that world and hopefully a better, you know, so that would be my response, I think. That's beautiful. And I really like that because really if you're, if you invest in this arena, this area, and it's the biggest in the world, it's biggest industries in the world and it affects us, it's our basic needs. It's a good investment, but it's also a solid investment in your future and one of the desirable future and pretty much most other investments, especially fossil fuels and, and others are actually, you're betting against yourself, you're investing against your, your long-term future good outcome. And so that's how I see it. I'm a little biased. So the next question is, what should young innovators in your field be looking for or thinking about to make real impact on our world? Well, I mean, in food, in the food nag, sort of, yeah, so, you know, I think there are similar to my prior, you know, my prior statement, like, you know, this is the Cambrian explosion of food companies. Like we're there now. And so, you know, that's incredible from an opportunity standpoint. I think in reality, you know, the bigger the swing, you know, like, you know, if you're going to do something now, you know, that is going to be a venture backed company. There is no downside to big swings. I mean, you know, this, this is the, you know, sort of the time for that. So if you're an entrepreneur, think big and think about, you know, your idea, whatever that is, and is there a, you know, sort of a bigger frame for, you know, where that idea, you know, are you thinking too small? I think would be the, you know, sort of the first question. The counterpart to that is that at the same time, companies are under, you know, startup companies are going to become more and more under pressure to perform in terms of real businesses, you know, more quickly and that this isn't just about big swings. You have to be able to take the swing, but you also need to be running the vases. I don't know if that's a good sports metaphor, but you need to, you actually need to, you know, get in there and make your business work. And the, you know, the runway for that is a viability is getting shorter and more intense. So like if you're going to build a company, bring a team together that, you know, is simultaneously thinking about technology, market development, but somebody in there who's got a really good sense of finance and margins and, you know, business models and the like, because, you know, that stuff's coming to bear much faster than it did when I started, you know. So, you know, in 2014, you know, when I did the beyond meat investment, you know, beyond meats, you know, if you looked at that from a, you know, P and L standpoint, you would ask yourself, why would you ever, you know, as an investor invest into that company? You know, could a beyond meat now be funded with the same, you know, sort of, you know, like runway where it'd be given that much time to, you know, sort of develop viability. I don't know the answer to that. My sense is that runway is shortening. So as you create these companies, make sure that the teams, you know, really bring that multidisciplinary approach, you know, science, market and finance. Thank you. And the last question I have for my listeners is really what have you experienced or learned in this long 20 plus years professional journey that you would have loved to know from the start? If I only knew that, I mean, well, life would be different. Is there a aha or a moment like that, something that you would say, I would have loved to know this from the start? Well, I've been thinking about that question for a while now. And it sort of also relates back to kind of the beyond meat, you know, investment. You know, if I'm being completely honest with myself, with myself, you know, the success of that company as an investment, you know, for, you know, for the fund really ultimately came from, yes, you know, kind of an understanding of sort of macro trends and things like that. Yes. Is there a role for flexitarian, you know, diets, you know, that are for American families to eat less meat, but not become vegan, right? Okay, that was kind of the macro. But, you know, it was a pretty naive investment, right? So what I think about now is if I took all my learnings from now and went back to that moment, would I have done the investment? Maybe not. And so there is a, you know, there is a role for the art as opposed to the science in this and about, you know, kind of, you know, a belief in sort of gut, you know, feels, you know, at certain points, you know, so I think the learning is that your gut does play a role that actually can be quantified, you know, at a, you know, at a certain, you know, point. So, you know, I think that would be the main thing is like, you know, the aha that I'm having right now is that, you know, knowledge doesn't always play to your, you know, advantage. There is a role for sort of gut and these sort of macro you know, sort of understanding of where, you know, sort of things are, you know, are going. So I think my, you know, I think the biggest lesson, you know, or the, you know, I guess the aha is, you know, for an investor anyway, you know, there are, the future isn't ultimately seeable, you know, and, you know, some of the way that you have to think about things is to break it down into, you know, you know, a set of frameworks that can help you make better decisions, you know, in real time, you know, as they're, you know, they're happening. And a lot of that has to do with the team around you. You know, I had the benefit of, you know, great partners, you know, smart people. You know, we used to have a phrase that, you know, if, you know, if we were the smartest people in the room, we were in the wrong room. And so, you know, there's a humility, you know, that I think, you know, in investments really, you know, important, you know, just try to get the smartest people, you know, around you and, you know, try to come up with the right balance between art and science, you know, intellect and gut, and, you know, stay true to your mission and, you know, try to get as much noise out of your decision-making. You know, don't be tempted by like all the shiny, you know, objects and opportunities and where the herd is going, whatever stick to your principles. You know, yes, you're, you know, your thesis can evolve over time, but at any one moment, you know, look at it as, you know, a, you know, a tool to help you separate the things that you should be, you know, focused on and the ones that, you know, you shouldn't. So, I don't think I answered that question. No, I think you did. You actually went beyond, so I loved it. One thing that I took out of it that I want to touch upon, so I love how you say, you know, use your gut as well. If you were to look, looking back, you say, you know, what I made that same decision now, you know, and that was kind of the question you said, probably not, but that gut is, we could go to another rabbit hole, but we won't, we'll leave it at that. But what I wanted to touch upon is you said you made that gut decision or that was that gut. But what we're learning today through health, through nutrition is that our gut is our second brain. In some respects, if we have a healthy biome, a good gut health, then that true saying, you know, a gut decision can have a lot of meaning and have a lot of depth in that. But when you're numb and you're malnutritioned or undernourished, sometimes you're numb or desensitized to just common sense decisions in our world because you can't see or feel the world because you're not aligned, you're not healthy. And so maybe that's also something that changes over time, or maybe it is a different type of a gut decision. Thank you so much, Victor, for answering those questions, again, my listeners, these sustainable takeaways that, well, they will hopefully apply and go and research and look at your websites and see how they can follow in your wise footsteps to move forward. Before I say goodbye, I want to ask you, do you have any questions for me or if there's anything that we didn't get a touch upon that you would like to tell my listeners or that you'd like to talk about before I tell you goodbye? Well, my only question would be is like, you know, next time I see you, you know, will that map have all of the lines of the different nation states gone? And will I see a map of just sort of land and not of countries? Well, and I have an answer. So today I've recorded a couple of podcasts, and the podcast that I recorded right before you was with Parag Khanna. And he is a GIS specialist, PhD, and he does a lot of maps. And his, I asked him a question about global citizens and that this map is showing borders to divisions and separations of humanity. But if we look at some of the food maps, the cartography food maps out there, if we look at some of the infrastructure and industry or supply chain maps of our world, if we look at the population maps of our world, you would get a much different view of our world and what it's like. And I'm actually, for our book, which you'll see, I've got a real unique idea for the cover of the book that has to do with cartography and food. And so you might be a different map behind me. You know, these white flags and these different, those are some of the projects that I have around the world with the UN World Food Program and FAO and other businesses and things that really almost all of them tie with food one way or the other. And so I'm hoping to show you a different map this time. I look forward to that. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Victor. It was a pleasure to have you. Was there anything else you wanted to tell my listeners or did we cover it all? We covered a lot, you know. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. And yeah, I hope your listeners like it. I look forward to reading the, you know, any of the comments that come across. Perfect. I'll put all your links and stuff in the show description and I really appreciate it. You have a wonderful day there in New York and we'll talk to you soon.