 Hello, Finland My first lush. This is so cool Have you guys seen the saunas? Yeah, this place is amazing they said 9 billion people 2050 seems like we screwed man like I don't know if it's hope for this. How can we possibly feed that many people? Yeah, we're probably screwed No, I mean he also we're hopefully here to talk about you know some solutions that we're trying to bring to the market through What do these guys are doing and also what we're investing in so? Food is part of what your fund do who rises Verizon ventures among other things What is the opportunity that you see today in the food space? Yeah, so I think food is a huge space, you know, I mean when we talk about food we talk about nutrition We're talking about sustenance. We're talking about survival, right and so looking at the different trends, I guess of the past five to ten years One is that you know, we have a crisis of of not being able to feed as many people as as The world is going to have in 2050 One is health trends, right people want to eat healthier. They want to be healthier They want to take health and wellness into their own hands, right and control that three is food security, right? I mean we think there's a lot of We're thinking a very big global problem, but you know regionally there are people just who can't get food who can't get clean food clean water You know, so you have specific challenges there in that market, right? That you can absolutely absolutely like I mean China for example, you know People five years ago was still drinking beer instead of water because they couldn't get clean water So that extends to protein that extends to vegetables that extends to all parts of our diet So, you know, I think it's a very form of investor perspective. It's a very defensible Thesis so the space is active. There's a lot of investment in that space What it is that's being vested on when we say that it's active how it has been active already So a lot of people have been investing in alternative protein So that has been you know kind of I guess a hot topic in the last two three years big part of the reason for that is because People are going along this a little bit of a doomsday crisis that we're gonna run our protein And so, you know, how are we gonna replace that and how we're going to leverage other technologies and other Parts of I guess a food system to replace, you know beef and pork and chicken, right? There's a lot has been done in the logistics of delivery. How do you actually get food to people? Outside of the brick-and-mortar grocery retail You know kind of habit that we have today E-commerce has played a big part in that and then it's you know, how do we get fresh food that is, you know, traceable reliable? How do we get food that you know is? Responsibly grown and responsibly Farmed right so so that has been you know a big part of that And a lot of us have noticed that like that disruption of distribution and that Disruption of production, but one of the things that we talked about Opportunities on the table left on the table. It's a topic that you brought it up that I really love It's the whole Possibility on personalized right right making it about you. How do you see it that yeah? So that's that's like, you know, sort of one step ahead, right? I mean we want food to be healthier for us We want food that is better for the environment, but at the end of the day we don't want We don't want to be eating the same food as as everybody else because we need to be special now You know and but that's you know, I think there's and that connects the revolution in health That we're going through right now that the whole notion that it's all Because we're able to we have more data now. We know that we're different. We know that our guts are different Our microbiomes are different. We know that You know racially we're different because of you know culture and weather and everything so It does make sense. It doesn't make sense. And then I by I guess the question is Provocatively, you know, do we really need to live that long? But you know because that that's another set of problems if we do live longer. We are healthier You know, then we will have less and less we'll have more and more of a problem of You know more and more people in this world, which is a good thing So if you invest in a Ryan perfect day non dairy milk, what the hell do you mean by non dairy milk? I mean that we're developing a new way for the world to make dairy proteins and dairy in general That's based on fermentation instead of animal farming and it all started with you I like that journey a lot because your journey has to do with my journey You were trying to be vegan and you kind of gave up I completely gave up like forget that can we curse here this lunch that okay like fuck that So tell me about that journey and the epiphany that you got that brought you to a perfect day Yeah, I don't know if I would say that I gave up per se But I I know what you're getting at and basically on my journey I grew up eating meat and dairy and all you know normal real foods made from animals and I Like many people in our generation started learning about some of the externalities associated with how we farm today And it led me to desire to change the footprint I was having and so around the beginning of college I went vegetarian which isn't terribly hard today There are plenty of options and it doesn't feel like you're giving up too much But eventually I started to realize that eggs and dairy are part of the same problematic system as meat in terms of the The carbon footprint and water use and land use and animal welfare all these different things that we're concerned about and so I started to realize that I wasn't really doing all that I could and So I made the sort of much more painful transition to trying to be totally vegan where now you're not eating any meat or eggs or dairy or animal products and That that's a lot more difficult So it feels like all the food that you're eating now is made out of glue instead of food And and I think that speaks a little bit to the old-school Yeah, all those things right and the the plant-based milks are typically not very high in protein and to give it a milk like Texture they're adding things like starches and stabilizers and emulsifiers and things that you really don't want in your food And that's that's doubly true in Derivative dairy products like your yogurts and cheeses and ice creams in order to give that kind of creaminess and mouthfeel The best they can do is to put starches and basically and that that didn't feel good enough to me And it made me feel like I wasn't eating something that had proper nutrition because as you might know Dairy protein is the most nutritious protein known in the world And so you're missing that when you eat vegan dairy products and so the question I had was first of all Can't is there a better way to be doing this and second of all if it's so difficult to to be vegan and to eat these other Products if I'm having such a hard time and I care so much about it No wonder no one else is doing it and we're never going to hit that critical mass of adoption that we really need to actually change the World so it ends up feeling more like self torture than actually something that can address the problems You're concerned with and so looking someone looked at there was something in that space and yeah, so where have you looked so the Could you repeat the question? What do you mean? Where have you looked like if there was something in that space like for you to start perfect day? so so the way we thought about it was What's missing from these products and what would really change the world for for the better in terms of dairy is if we were able To make these proteins without animals because animals are the very kind of Beginning of the supply chain and the reason that all these problems exist So how do you make animal protein without animals? That was the question and I remember I had that thought I was working at the time in biomedicine where I was making antibodies and other Therapeutics which are animal proteins made without animals. So it's this aha moment. I'm thinking this technology is already there It's already 50 years old. No one's taken it. Well at first. I didn't realize that no one had done it So I looked it up. I'm in it's 2014 at the time and I'm thinking every idea has already been had right There's nothing new under the Sun, but when I looked it up nothing It's not like people are writing articles about how what a great idea, but it's impossible because of XYZ reasons no one's ever thought of it So rather than apply to work as an entry-level employee at one company that I would like to there was just no company to work for So instead we took it upon ourselves my co-founder and I to start the company to do exactly that Are you now is this something that we're gonna see in the markets tomorrow? Are we gonna be able to buy this shit and try it out like when can I try it? Yeah, you know, I think there's there's a lot of rushing in this industry and we're not here to rush through it We want to do it right and so it does take a little bit of time to scale up this technology We have a team of 25 people mostly scientists and people with biological expertise based in Berkeley, California And we're working with food companies big and small to bring our our technology to market as quickly as we can But also not just with one product we want to do this in a way that we can really help the whole industry and One thing we learned on our journey is that it's not just about fresh dairy products like cheese and yogurt and ice cream Which maybe we're my obsession at the beginning But it turns out that dairy proteins lend functionality to products all over the grocery store So if we zoom out a little bit and take more of an ingredient-centric approach We can actually have impact that's that's much much broader And so that's that's what we're working on now with with many different partners and I'm sorry one last thing here It sounds incredible dairy non dairy milk The protein chase that you after sounds healthy, but it doesn't sound delicious So how are you tackling that notion that a lot that the way we perceive food and the way we enjoy food is about the taste And about the look and feel yeah, so that's exactly why we're doing this right We we care about and what I care about personally is that delicious indulgent experience of dairy products That is missing today if you try to you know have products that aren't made from cows And I can tell you exactly why it feels unappetizing to think about because in for centuries and certainly in the last century Making something in a new way meant using harsh chemicals and synthetic things and just totally For example vegan dairy products today, which literally tastes like they have no polish remover Yeah, they're totally gross But this is 21st century now when we when we manufacture a new product when we're thinking about the whole new supply chain We're making it Exactly the same way that cows make it but with that biology in a better organism than a cow So the protein that we're making is the exact same protein that your body is already familiar with pure protein has no flavor So it can take on whatever product it goes in you can put it in a tomato soup to have more protein Like dairy protein is already doing today but you can also use it as a base to craft a whole new kind of non dairy products that the world's never seen before and Those will be appetizing in your journey right now You continue to pursue that and that's one of the stages that you are and you add them as well as the other things that you're tackling But your stuff already tastes delicious So then how about agriculture like why agriculture what I beg upon why agriculture, you know, so yeah, great A whole bunch of points that I think I'm desperate to make on on the comments that we've already heard My dad was an environmental barrister, so I grew up on a household where We were just quite well versed in a lot of the harm that was being done to the environment in the way that we produce food and I don't think we're screwed at all actually I think that if we can use new technology to go back to the symbiotic system that existed before about 60 years ago Then there's then then we're in a we're in a good place all the technologies there. It's now just a case of Bringing people towards it and this is I guess relevant to some of the comments That we've heard already you I don't believe you can persuade consumers to give up Anything you can't persuade them to give up on taste on you can't persuade them to pay more you have to use New technology to create products and services that are simply better than the ones that they're they're trying to replace so in the example of agriculture an Organic grass-fed leg of lamb and and there's nothing I believe we can do to stop people eating lamb, so I think Our role should be to actually say okay. Well, how do we how do we have a food production system? Which is kind of the environment animal welfare we have to create a system where that leg of lamb which will just be Outright better than any of the nasty industrial stuff that's being produced And that's really what's driving our business forward. It's it's it's predominantly veg and fruit and milk and bread and eggs It's it's across the whole range, but tell me a little about it. How does he work? Yeah, great. Sorry We've built a platform of four mobile products So at one end you've got hundreds of farmers who are all getting real-time orders directly from consumers at the other end And then we've got two other mobile products, which are facilitating the logistics So we're effectively Directly connecting local sustainable producers with people who want to eat amazing fresh food and with and we're doing it real time And zero waste so every single bag of spinach, which we take receipt of has actually been ordered by a customer And that waste thing is massively important because guess what the UN are telling us that a third of all the food That we produce globally is actually going in the bin. That is so fucked up. Well, it is because it means that if we can actually Make the system more efficient and stop throwing the food in the bin then actually we don't have the Malthusian crisis Which the likes of Sinjenta would have us believe in order for them to sell all of their first slices and pesticides which are really really bad news So with farm drop you're creating that on-demand production feel and it's funny Like, you know, you guys know I work in fashion and people like why are you moderating your food conversation? A lot of what we do in fashion is being inspired by what's being done in food So an on-demand production where you tackle it's something that we tackling in fashion world right now so on that note, how How do you get the onboarding of the of the farmers? It seems to be like a fucking nightmare any business and many startups in the audience today Have to do it on-boarding small business owners to use your product. How could you do that at scale? It sounds like a lot of friction and so and it was it was it was a complete nightmare and I mean the business to gain for over four years now, so we've got Literally hundreds of farmers and there's zero churn like every farmer who comes onto the platform They stay and they love it and the reason that they love it is actually an economic one We give them 75% of the retail price which is roughly 2x what they would get elsewhere Why because it's a disintermediated food system We spend half the money moving the food between them and the actual customer and we give the gains equally to the consumer in terms of great price points and producers in terms of three quarters of the retail price and that's what enabled us to say look come and join this mad Hat scheme because the economics are amazing So we use the economics to bring the best food producers on the platform and and that's really what drives that we have no outbound producer sales marketing at all now, so let me ask you one challenge here It sounds amazing. So it's like Ryan sounds amazing. I get my my fresh food. I get fast It tastes better because I got a faster, but it sounds expensive man Like this whole proposition seems like you asking me to pay a lot more and just like in fashion When you want to do things sustainably we wonder do consumers really give a damn enough to pay more No, I totally agree. This is massively important this point. I think it's fantasy It just doesn't give me out of bed in the morning this idea that we're gonna sell amazing food to a tiny number of really rich people I don't solve anything So we look at our price comparisons all the time and guess what we're in line with the supermarkets If you look at their closest comparable products with with what we're selling But ours are always unequivocably higher quality and that's what our customers say. It's just like That cauliflower is just off the chart. It's just better I've never seen anything like that in the supermarket And how are we able to do that comes back to this whole point about using mobile tech to disintermediate So we can operate at a much lower margin for a consumer that just means a lower markup And that and that's a game what drives retention on the customer side because they feel like they genuinely are getting a great value proposition And in the UK are you getting out soon? Can I touch word? Yeah, but but I mean, it's a VC trap I think that the international expansion thing if you go too soon It's a it's a it's a trap and you've got to get Something like food logistics you've got to get your unit economics so on point and make it all perfect Reliability perfect and added to which it's just a huge huge domestic market So you can create a very big business by doing it really well in one marketplace. So we will get there, but you know You've got to you've got to get the timing right We're waiting we're waiting so Chris and Ryan then talked about waste waste really freaks me out Like and you guys know you all flown here those who don't live here You're watching that scene on the plane so many trays so much food just been dumped a lot of stuff even unwrapped being dumped That's our world today a world of absolute waste. Do you think about ways? Do you seek? Ideas in that space. Have you saw anything interesting? Can you tackle that in here with your company somehow? You know, I think it's a this is a social economic problem. It's a social cultural problem I mean, I don't think as an investor I can necessarily solve that I can look at business models that have the ability to To change at least the supply chain, but it's hard for me to change whether you know Ryan always waste food He doesn't but like if you always waste food It's hard I mean I can only tell him not to do it and I have to do that starting from school and Saying don't waste food don't waste food and then restaurants are gonna say oh We're wasting a lot of food and it's economic issue and then they'll change I don't get it. They're throwing money away by not getting efficient I mean you're in fashion. Okay, so I mean, you know when we talk about real economic ways No, okay. No, no, but you know, I think I think it's everybody values things differently, right? And so having the ability to sit at a restaurant to have a huge piece of steak Just to take a picture of and then eating half of that is real I mean people do that nowadays all the time and so That's why I think investing in food biotechnology and in related food agriculture tech Then you know as an investor you have to work with the whole ecosystem You know the work with NGOs either work with influencers either work with people who are doing a lot of great things in the school kind of cafeteria and and change behavior that way and the all the all these different pathways to do it and I think You know, that's a part. I mean a part of the solution I'm gonna be able to get a waist angle For for your for perfect day I think so if you think about it so much of the science and technology of how we understand food spoilage comes from milk It's it's one of the most Bacterial laden products out of bread out of the farm that that we know of so things like pasteurization and ultra-high temperature processing and things like that were really developed for dairy and I think there's a couple angles by which we can help this on the one hand the very core first product We're making the protein itself is much cleaner than anything you could hope to get from an animal farm So right out of the gate you're just starting with less bacteria and and that's you know That's one part of it But I think also part of why we talk about the functionality of so much that milk proteins bring to food is because for example There's something I don't know if anyone here has had those ultra-high-temperature Pasteurized milks the kind that don't need refrigeration and they taste really weird Right. They have actually some countries people like that flavor But most most of us don't like that caramelly weird kind of taste of that shelf-stable milk But actually we understand what the proteins are doing to cause that flavor and it's easy enough for people using our kind of technology To not have that happen So now all of a sudden you can do high temperature pasteurization without any weird flavors coming out of it And it just becomes easier to make totally shelf-stable products and also ship powder instead of water weight So much of what we're shipping and all that mass that's moving around on freight trains and ships and everything is water That milk is 88 percent water, right? But if there are better ways of working with powdered versions and ingredients of dairy That's actually where most of our milk goes I think more than two-thirds of the milk that we produce in the world is turned into other products and used as ingredients And so why aren't we doing more of that and treating, you know, that's where the impact happens, right? It's a little bit like how people tell you in California where I live there's there's a major drought kind of all the time and so they say okay turn off the tap while you brush your teeth or something like that and I always get the feeling that those consumer changes are Not where the problem actually is, right? I mean some factory somewhere Runs for one less minute and that does so much more than everyone in the whole city, right? Or something like that and so similarly I think when we look at the industry and when we zoom out a little bit and look at where all these products are actually Moving and actually how this works you can have a lot more change happen by doing it there rather than all the way at The end consumer There's a lot of technologies out there in the market today that captures our imagination But they're not gonna hit sooner than five years from now like me grown lab grown me It's being developed, but it's not consumer ready. It won't be for a while the same way that lab Grown leather has been in production for over five years. What is it that we are gonna see? Near term like near future Even beyond what you're building. What do you predict that us consumers? Investors are people that watch the space disruptions that we're gonna see hit the market next year and become real conversations The next couple years. Well, I think we we we always look at the food spaces What ends up in your plate, right? And so lab grown meat and that conversation and tissue engineering synthetic biology, I mean all of these is this is real technology way and and I think We don't look at the less sexy side of things which is flavors, you know colors Ingredients, right? I mean all that can be very much in the system already in a cost-effective way And so do I think you know, we will be able to have everything that's you know Biotech driven and you know on our plates tomorrow, probably not But you know, you will have something that you eat that will be coming from a biotechnology perspective You know probably in the next two three years so biotechnology for you quickly. What do you think I agree with our goal I think we are right at the cusp of a sustainability revolution and it's being driven by people wanting to eat healthier and Eating healthier. I think by and large it means eating in a way. That's ecologically better. So that it's already going It's already getting every word totally the same system and it's accelerating. I'm very hopeful I'm excited about that too. You're right. What you think is the theme for the next couple years Well, when you have a hammer all problems appears nails and you all know my hammers biotechnology So I would agree with Chris I think and I really like your point to Chris that a lot of it is invisible to us But for example like today or as of a few years ago the only places to get vanilla flavor were from Forest and Madagascar or petroleum right and that's that's my earlier point Petroleum was the new way to make it and no one likes that right? So now there's a new way using biotechnology and it's the same exact ingredient and it performs the same way But all of a sudden it's cheaper. It's better for the environment right So we have to remain open-minded to these kind of things because it might not look the way you expect but it's the right move for the future because This is a big problem and to Al Gore's point I mean we are we can do this if we embrace the opportunities that are in front of us Oh, thanks for the Al Gore plug. He was great today. He was amazing. We out of time Thank you guys so much for this conversation. Thank you all for listening watching. Thank you slush. This is awesome event Enjoy. Thank you