 Hello slash hello big hand. Hello everyone. We got Brazil and Brooklyn in the house. That's right So I told you you had to come in here. This place is Fucking believable right when you described it last year I thought you were exaggerating and then I arrived and I realized that you were actually underselling it Oh shit, it's real here. It's so beautiful mind-blowing and the energy. I love coming here to Phelan There's areas of the future that get missed in certain areas of the world And I like that we're bringing a part of the future that it's not super developed here in Phelan But there's a lot of interest in Phelan about yeah, which is this whole area by a fabrication On behalf of all the brands that we work for the current has been monitoring the space the space of new materials and by a fabrication simply Exploded in the past few years And you Andres was you were there since the very beginning years and years and years ago a couple companies ago one company ago and Can you give a sense to the to the audience of your mission today and where was that mission from? Is that a continuation so even the term bio fabrication? That's a term that we use to describe our core technology at modern Meadow, which is basically building materials or growing materials using biology Biology in combination with material science and design But this term of bio fabrication actually has a longer history It was initially applied to medical research. So bio fabrication has a long history in medicine You know to grow things like tissues and organs for regenerative medicine and in fact the first company that I co-founded in 2006 is a company called organ OVO which pioneered the 3d printing of human tissue That was used for medical research to help a big story drug companies accelerate the development of new drugs by testing them on human tissues And and the idea for modern Meadow Sprang out of that. We thought if we can make Skin models that could be used by L'Oreal to test new cosmetics. Why couldn't we grow? You know skin to make leather, right? And why couldn't we take this technology of bio fabrication beyond medicine? Into consumer application. So that was the really the provocation and then fast forward many years we realized You know, it's a good opportunity, but you have to change the technology to do it the your company for the past a couple years have been Focus or to known by the fashion industry being associated with you with apparel when people think of modern Meadow They think of apparel today Why that focus on apparel if that's a focus? Yeah, I mean not beauty because when you say collagen I think of beauty. I mean collagen is one of the most important proteins In life, right? I mean most the most important or the most abundant protein in your body is collagen It's the main protein in your skin and it's the the the stuff that holds ourselves together So it's a very important structural protein and what we do at modern Meadow is we've developed a way of Growing collagen and then assembling it in different ways to create a whole range of materials That are inspired by leather because at the end of the day the main biological building block of leather is collagen So that's that's that's that's why we do that, but why apparel? I mean You know we think of of leather as being an incredibly attractive opportunity If you're gonna develop a next generation of materials and the reason why is because leather is used everywhere I mean in this audience raise your hands if you're wearing something made of leather or if you bought something made of leather in the last year Right? It's a huge market You know traditional leather is a hundred billion dollar raw material market and it's eighty five billion if you add in synthetic leather So it's about a two hundred billion dollar raw material market. It's used everywhere from furniture to automobiles to apparel Footwear you name it leather is used everywhere, but it's got a lot of inefficiencies It comes from livestock Which is the biggest user of land biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and a big user of fresh water And then on top of that the the production method to make leather goes through many many steps and a lot of waste A lot of material is wasted at every step of production and And and after and if you think about it despite how widespread this material is and despite all the inefficiencies of it You know We still I mean let me let me ask you how many people in this audience can name a brand of Leather material raise your hand if you can name a brand of leather material not product So we see that as a missed opportunity Okay, do you which one Edelman Edelman, that's yeah, you're correct But if you ask a hundred people on the street name a brand of leather material, they won't be able to name one But hold on I want to challenge us to see you talking about leather First challenge. Yes On the sustainability front There's a lot of excitement about mother matter and possibly being alternative to leather in the future as your scale Yes, but why do we need you? We have leather. No fake leather. Yes Well, let one important point here. We are not looking to imitate leather our our Our materials we call them Zoa Bio fabricated materials or Zoa for short are inspired by leather So it's a whole world of materials that are made of collagen, which is the same building block as leather They're inspired by leather, but they can do more things than just traditional leather They we can dial in the design properties the performance properties We can go beyond leather in many ways and I think it's very important if you're gonna innovate To not imitate right you can basically take what you like about traditional materials But but but push the boundaries do something new and that's very much what we're looking to do I'm a huge fan of that answer, but I'm gonna put your tush on the fire here with one more Go ahead a good friend of yours Design of Stella McCartney. She is one of those champions on sustainability She says my leather pants are evil right because it's the worst thing you can do to the environment is to wear a pair of leather pants leather jacket And I was wearing leather in her talk when I met her I'm like, I'm so sorry But she really means it she gets you get to very angry and in her product She uses for leather, which is petroleum that makes me angry. Yeah So I mean to your earlier point about there's traditional leather that comes from animals And then there's all kinds of you know synthetic imitation products that are made from petrochemical products There's advantages and disadvantages to both and and frankly if you're looking at it strictly from an environmental standpoint synthetic leather is actually better for the environment and You know because it doesn't have the whole livestock footprint, right? And that can be quantified using something like the Higgs index so you don't need to take my word for it There's actually standards out there that are used by the industry that evaluate all kinds of materials So Stella has a point from a strictly environmental standpoint There are versions of synthetic leather that are much better for the environment than traditional leather That said there are synthetic materials that are also really bad for the environment So it all depends on what specific synthetic material you're talking about got it got it We have some images showing up of modern metal and I want you to take us through what is this Production like what is the fabrication like what's the difference the production of fabrication? Sure. So how do we do it, right? I mean what we do is we've developed a form of yeast which you can see here We've designed a type of yeast that you can brew to produce collagen much like you would brew beer and We then are able to grow it up in very large quantities and giant tanks So imagine walking into a brewery, but instead of brewing beer at massive scale We're able to produce collagen and then once we you purify it that becomes the building block of our materials and Depending on how we assemble the collagen and then how we go through the tanning process It can create a whole range of different material properties So it's all under the the Zoa label, but there's actually a pretty broad range of Products that can that can be in that in that category and that's the fermentation This is the brewing and this is in New Jersey or Brooklyn. This is all this is in New Jersey So last year we moved into the former headquarters of Hoffman La Roche in New Jersey And we were the first company to do that when Roche moved out they bought Genentech in California They decided to consolidate everything on the West Coast and we were fortunate to be able to move into their wonderful facility And so now we have 70,000 square feet to be able to accelerate our research our development and even our small-scale production there And so this is our design team so we have designers working side-by-side with material scientists and biologists and Then you created the there was a very important moment last year when you took Zoa the material And you developed a concept of a piece like a t-shirt Yeah, for and he became part of the museum collection Correct We did not expect to show something that year But when the museum of modern modern art approaches you and says we've got an exhibit on design That's the first one that we're doing An on fashion rather that we're doing fashion that we're doing in 70 years I mean we haven't done one since the end of the second world war And we're doing a new one on fashion. Do you want to be a part of it? Your only answer if only possible answer is yes, and you figure out. Fuck. Yeah, you figure out how to make it happen And that's what we did. So we basically we thought about what is it that we could do that could showcase Zoa in an unexpected way And so what we decided to do is we decided to take a t-shirt Because t-shirts are actually the blank canvas of fashion, right? And they're often associated with a revolutionary movements, you know, like if you have a revolution you have to ask yourself You know, what's the t-shirt? What do you put on the t-shirt? And so we decided to take that t-shirt And to take an ordinary t-shirt take it apart into pieces and reassemble it using a liquid version of Zoa Where the the the liquid Zoa could serve as the seam to reassemble the different pieces of fabric And therefore we could show that Zoa Is not only a new material but could potentially be a new manufacturing technique as a way to join fabrics without stitching or gluing That's that's really cool. And then what's next then? Are you seeking partnerships in that space for that to become commercial? A lot of the people when they see your story and they they hear about mother mato, that's the shirt right there That's the shirt and momma It's really gorgeous up close and it's been added to the permanent collection. Yeah, I know I know that's Congratulations on that But when we see that Like you used to because you create in this every day, but we want to know when can we touch it? When can this be something that is consumer? It's for the consumer and affordable so We are very focused on the consumer ultimately the materials that we create have to Really bring a benefit to the consumer in terms of design in terms of performance. It has to deliver something new But our customers our partners our businesses we are b2b and and and we've identified and we're working with some of the world's best brands to develop our materials to develop their products and to Integrate our technology into their production so that they can launch to their consumers Now that takes time It's not something where you just throw up a Kickstarter campaign and you're you're doing it next week And fashion is a little slow anything that has to do with open innovation And also you want to make sure that you do it right with the right partners in the right way Now we're fortunate to be working with excellent companies and it's a real, you know, we've got really Deep strategic partnerships where there's a lot of sharing. There's a lot of learning going on And we look forward to showing up With consumers within the next year or so like when? The exact date We flew all the way here. I gotta give you something I'll say I'll say this by this time next year You will know some of the partners that we're working with and do you have any of the big names any of the new names? I know you have big names, but any of the new names or the usual Suspects champion of sustainability. Yeah, I still a sustainable story. Yeah, I mean the way we think about it is that we've We have two different ways that we work with companies Ultimately at the end of the day we're focused on developing broad platforms We've got material platforms that can address A wide range of applications But in bringing these platforms to market we've identified a handful of partners that can help You know with by accelerating our learning And accelerate the development so that we can bring them to market and and that that really deep partnership We can only do with a few brands, right? You don't want to partner with a hundred different companies because you're going to go crazy developing your platforms But if you're developing a platform and you and you've partnered a handful of them that can really inform how you develop that platform Which then you can use for everybody you can then sell that material or variations of that material to everybody So there's companies that we work with as strategic partners And then there's companies that we work with as just customers Right and we have to basically think when is someone a partner where we can do a real engagement And then when is someone someone we just want to Be able to adapt the material and be able to send them samples so that they can prototype and ultimately launch products Because a lot of what you have been doing up to now. It's that evangelizing getting the word out But now shit's gonna get serious Stuff's gonna get very serious very quick. If it was completely if you were completely up to you How would it be the roll-out of your material? throughout industries Is it really fashion first like luxury fashion? Do you want mass market? Um, then do you move to beauty? Then you move to home like what is the little ladder in your imagination? You found their mind I would say that the way I've thought about it is that You You want to work with companies Where they can be a real partner to you in bringing this technology to the market and in explaining the story to the consumer And there are companies that Are incredibly thoughtful about the materials that they use and the quality Of of the of their products. So that's why we've selected companies that that are real innovators that have had a history of innovating in materials And that have a history of really being at the at the forefront of quality If you can actually satisfy their needs and they're there it's a very high bar, but if it's good enough for them Then you can address a very very broad market as well But if you start really at the bottom of the market You really only get one chance to make a first impression And it becomes fairly difficult if you start at the low end of the market To then kind of walk your way up the innovation curve or the quality curve So for better or for worse our choice has been to set the standard fairly high That doesn't mean that we're waiting to be at the top of the mountain to show up But we'd also don't want to be at the bottom of the mountain when we show up We want to be somewhat up the journey and in all honesty, what's your greatest challenge to get something like this out and from Just conversation to actual realization And i'd say that one of the big challenges is that You know in the last innovations and materials when we're talking about Adams, you know things that are made of you know real substance is difficult Right hardware is hard as they say Um and material innovation fundamental material innovation. I would say it's even harder I mean that's the stuff that hardware is made of right and in the last century There's been a I mean the 20th century was a revolution in new materials Right 20th century brought us new polymers synthetic fabrics plastics We wouldn't have um the information age. We wouldn't have uh, you know The digital economy if it wasn't for advances in materials like semiconductors one of my favorite ones is sugar cane rubber from all birds Right, but but but but but these innovations and materials that came about in the 20th century for the most part were developed in very large companies Right, it took the companies like dupont and dow and basf and 3m To develop new generations of materials and they were able to spend hundreds of millions of dollars billions of dollars And and you know decades to develop new materials What's exciting now is that startups are able to do it as well And they're able to do it in a fraction of the time and a fraction of the budget and actually flip that The most exciting materials in the space right now are set up created The ones who are really capturing and gobbling up all the headlines around the world Well, but the headlines but at the same time headlines is not always reality as you know, Liz, right? Yeah, the bottom line. What's the biggest challenge the biggest challenge is that It's it's it's not as simple as moving electrons or you know bits, right when you're dealing with Material science innovation You not only have to develop it and it has to work and you have to get it right But it has to scale you have to be able to produce it at scale It has to be able to work economically And that industrialization is not something that moves from one day to the next It's not something that moves at the same speed as you know Digital media startups do so for the investing community to appreciate that these are massive opportunities These are huge markets with incredible potential to Create value and to have a positive impact in the world but There's a different ramp up that is required So you talk about the hockey stick talk that drives founders crazy and compromise the quality of the vision It's not it's not about basically going from startup to unicorn in one year You have to really go for singles and doubles I'm glad you're saying that because this is this is an interesting conference, right? There's a lot of founders in the audience. We have a sauna with investors. It's crazy here, right? It's all about no conference is complete without a sauna. No, not at all Not after you come to slush And but something that I see here. I see a frenzy on Playing the investors game Instead of looking for the investor that would allow you to play your vision game and tell the others to fuck off Regardless how big they are and you've been great at that you really slow down To your own pace and you really perfected something that until the moment you feel comfortable to put it out You cannot when you're dealing with this level of innovation and scaling You cannot play it as a there's no such thing as a quick flip It's not lean startup machine. I mean, you've got to be lean and I think as a company You know, we're a six-year-old company that has developed 90 patents We've partnered with some of the best brands in the world with some of the biggest, you know Biochemical companies in the world we've partnered with avonic to scale our technology There's a lot of real but lean startup like put it out there if it doesn't work out We fix it. No, no, it has to right you can't move fast and break things because you're dealing with real production Massive scale and if you get it wrong the consequences are pretty dire in terms of just inefficiency and and and cost right, so what I would say is is is that In this space it's better to kind of like measure twice and cut once Then to move fast break things scale too quickly and realize you've built the wrong factory And now you've got a fully scaled-up factory That's not running the process that you needed to run and you've spent hundreds of millions of dollars doing that And there's companies that have done that in this space We are fortunate to be you know six years into this journey in a space where many companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get here We've only spent 50 and that might seem like a lot of money 50 million dollars But you know Dupont you know and other companies like it had spent billions of dollars developing new materials So for us to be at the level of of of commercialization and scaling that we are At this level of investment is actually remarkably resource efficient. So we are almost out of time I wanted to tell everyone that if you have any questions about the space about andras I want to talk more about biofabrication And moving to the founder's studio after this But I want to leave something behind like a message for for to quickly like a quick takeaway for consumers Why they should be excited about biofabrication and for founders. They're chasing unicorns all kinds of unicorns doesn't have to be Hardware or bio it could be software. What is what is your founder? I would say that the reason why consumers should be excited is because we're living in a very exciting century The 21st century I believe Is a century where it's a biofabrication century I really think that the next material age Is a biofabricated age, you know an age of biofabricated materials just as in the 20th century. We had innovations in polymers and semiconductor's And you know the the industrial revolution would not have been possible without advances in steel I think that we're on the cusp of something really remarkable happening when you take biology And the huge advances that have happened there and you combine it with material science and design So the world of materials around you over the next few decades is going to transform And it's exciting because it means you will have new choices as consumers for materials that are better That bring some kind of new property New design to your wardrobe and to your household and to your everyday And it can also do that in a way that's better for the planet and that doesn't harm animals And what's one sentence advice for founders in the audience? Focus on long-term value Oh, that's deep create create a company that can create enduring value and you will do right You will do right by yourself by your employees and by your investors Thank you so much andres for following my tip and coming here to fail and we did blush man We did it. Yay. Thank you everyone for being with us. Thank you all