Joe Rogan Experience Review podcast - 280 Joe Rogan Experience Review of Ilan Sobel of BioHarvest

Episode Date: July 16, 2022

Welcome to this special episode of the JRE Review. An interview with Ilan Sobel of BioHarvest.  Check out more from the company on our website www.JREreview.com Ilan's Bio at BioHarvest https://bioharvest.com/team/ BioHarvest. Go to https://vinia.com/pages/jrer To get 15% off your first order from Vinia A portion of ALL our SPONSORSHIP proceeds goes to Justin Wren and his Fight for the Forgotten charity!! Go to Fight for the Forgotten to donate directly to this great cause. This commitment is for now and forever. They will ALWAYS get money as long as we run ads so we appreciate your support too as you listeners are the reason we can do this. Thanks! Stay safe.. Follow me on Instagram at www.instagram.com/joeroganexperiencereview Please email us here with any suggestions, comments and questions for future shows.. [e-mail]

You are listening to the Joe Rogan Experience Review podcast. We find little nuggets, treasures, valuable pieces of gold in the Joe Rogan Experience podcast and pass them on to you, perhaps expand a little bit. We are not associated with Joe Rogan in any way. Think of us as the talking dead to Joe's walking dead. Hey guys and welcome to this special episode of the JRE review. Lately, I've had the great fortune as this podcast has grown to be able to meet

and chat with some very fascinating people. And I thought that I would start doing maybe a series of episodes discussing topics with them. Recently, a company called BioHavus reached out to me to discuss their breakthrough technology to grow nutrients for supplements directly from cells. It's really cool stuff. My entire team started taking their grape supplement called the vinaig, and they have been

raving about the extra sustained energy that you get. I mean, the stuff is really good. It's remarkable. So after speaking with their CEO, Elon Sobel, I was blown away by the company and the story. Elon is such a remarkable guy. The type of person that turns any project he's given into something multinational. He's done it over and over again. You'll hear about it in the interview in many areas of business.

So, I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did and you get inspired by it. Check out all the links in the bio and keep an eye on this company's technology as it just might be the solution to many of the resource shortages this world faces in the future. Here's my interview with Elon Sobel. You're listening to the Joe Rogan Experience Review. What a bizarre thing we've created. Now with your hosts, Adam Thorn. My heat every the worst podcast with the best one. Two, one, go.

Enjoy the show. Hey guys, and welcome to this very special edition of the Joe Rogan Experience Review. Today I have my buddy and special guest, Ilan here. How you doing, Mark? It's a pleasure to be with you today, Adam. Thank you. Nice and you're joining us from Tel Aviv, correct? I'm pretty close to Tel Aviv, Israel.

All right, so yeah, bit of a time there, friends. What do you got like seven o'clock tonight? Yeah, it's 7.30 pm now. So we're seven hours ahead of Eastern time. Gorgeous day here. Beautiful summer day. Blue skies. Love it. That's what you want. I need a visit there. I really do. It sounds awesome. You got you got to come and see the magic of biopavis to now technology Not it's a magic of Tel Aviv. It's one of the biggest party cities in the world Oh, I like the sound of that of course and any excuse to get out of the winter of bozeman. I'm ready to do it

All right, so let's jump into it. Now, tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of your background in Korea before you got into BioHavus. And what led to that? Because you've done some pretty amazing things. Yeah, look, I've been really privileged with the foundational professional experience of us. I've had that have prepared me for this role as CEO of

Biaharva Sciences. It all starts back with back in Australia actually. People are probably wondering about my accent and they'll try and figure it out as we go through, but I'll take the suspense away. I was born in South Africa in Johannesburg, South Africa. I moved to Sydney, Australia at the age of 12 and did all my formative years in Australia. I Spend actually some time while studying at University of New South Wales. I also studied in the US at a school called Bapson Bapsons the number one entrepreneurial school in the US and that's where I kind of kind of kindled my, kindled, I should say, my entrepreneurial spirit. And while I was there in the US,

the Americans allow us Australians to actually work in the US as long as we studied. So I had an opportunity to work in the US for a year. And I was very lucky to actually start my career. Adam, as a, what we call here in Israel, a schlepper on a Pepsi Cola truck, as part of an internship in Massachusetts, in a place in place called Austin, in Boston, opposite Harvard University. And I started on the trucks with a two wheeler, 5.30 in the morning at the depot,

and I was the guy carrying, you know, those two liter Pepsi the morning at the depot, and I was the guy carrying those two litre Pepsi's from store to store, and I worked my way up into a merchandiser, and then into a sales guy, and I was pretty lucky at that time. This is the time of Crocodile Dundee. If you remember the movie Crocodile Dundee, it was a huge hit in America. Oh, classic.

Classic hit in America, not so successful in Australia, but a huge hit in America. Classic hit in America not so successful in Australia but a huge hit in the US and you know all of a sudden every store that I went in as a sales development manager in downtown Boston I was able to literally close deals very very quickly purely because of Australian accent and thanks to Paul Hogan of Crocodile Dundee. Anyway I worked my way up in the Pepsi system, and Pepsi actually offered me a job to, just to actually stay in the US and to work for two years in operations, and then to go to purchase New York.

And I actually accepted it. I came back to Australia, I told my parents, I had to finish off a couple of subjects to get my business degree, and I told my parents at the time I was gonna live in the US, and my mother was, she went berserk, my business degree and I told my parents at the time I was going to live in the US and my mother was, she went berserk, a typical Jewish mother, how can you do this to me, put

all the guilt on me. And I said, okay, listen, I'm here for three months, whatever the best job is, I'm going. And actually at that time, I was very lucky because the Coca-Cola company was recruiting a team of middle managers to be trained up in Australia, a very sophisticated market, and to be prepared for senior management roles in Asia Pacific. At this time, Asia was really on fire. This is like 1997, 1998. And I was successful in getting a role with the Coca-Cola company on this program. And that Adam led to an amazing 18 year career where I spent a year in Australia. Then I moved to Hong Kong.

I did brand management roles in Hong Kong. Then I moved into Bangkok where I was director of new products for Southeast and West Asia, launching water, juices, tea, energy drink products, building into end businesses from developing the brand all the way through to actually developing the manufacturing side, the capital side of the business, and launching brands into the market in countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal. I then moved to Hong Kong. I was General Manager of the Hong Kong business as well as Taiwan, Macau, and I also had responsibility for Mongolia. We're talking about

outer Mongolia here. We're talking beautiful Ulaan Batur, and I had actually the privilege of building the business and actually launching Coca-Cola locally in Mongolia. It was one of the four countries in the world where there was not local production of Coca-Cola. At the time, it was like Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, and Mongolia. And I had the privilege of taking Mongolia off the map. Then I got pulled into the China business and I was head of marketing for an innovation for all of China fighting the Cold War versus Pepsi, built a billion dollar juice business with my team there, underneath the minute made trademark, and also worked on leading all the local working China for the Beijing Olympics, which was an amazing experience. After three years in China, I moved to South Africa. It was great to actually go back to South Africa

at this time, post apartheid, and amazing time to really make a difference in the country. And you can take a boy out of Africa, but you can't take the Africa out of a boy. So it was really special for my wife and I and at the time we had one child who was actually made in China and born in South Africa. But we, you know, coming back, we had our second kid in South Africa, which was great. We had family around us, which was really awesome after living in Asia for so long without any family and support. And in South Africa,

I actually, my job description was to actually keep Pepsi out in South Africa, I actually, my job description was to actually keep Pepsi out of South Africa, because they were trying to build a scalable business. And that was a lot of fun. You can see a consistent theme here of battling, the dealing with the total wars. And I also had the privilege of leading all the work locally for the FIFA 2010 World Cup football tournament, which again,

you know, after doing a Beijing Olympics and then doing a FIFA World Cup, what more can one ask as far as just, you know, experiences that, you know, really, or once in a lifetime experiences. And so, I completed my assignment in South Africa in 2010, pretty much as the World Cup was finishing up. And then I went to the US, I got sent to the US to run one of Coke's businesses in the US, initially I started in a marketing role, then I went into general management role,

where I was responsible for a business, one of the four businesses in the US, this business called Glasso, which is where I had responsibility for their premium hydration brands like vitamin water, smart water, power eight sports drinks, and the energy portfolio. It was a pretty sizable business, a few billion dollars at retail, and a very important profit contributor for the company. And that was an amazing experience for me to be riding such a big business in such a critical

market like North America. And I hit the age of 40 and people say that you kind of rethink your life at the age of 40. And for me, I really kind of, it came and hit me and I really, I reassessed together with my wife many elements of our lives. You know, at the time we had three young children. I had a nine-year-old, a six-year-old, and a two-year-old that had been born in America. My six-year-old was born while we were in South Africa. And my wife and I basically were tired of being global citizens.

We were tired of going every three to four years from country to country. And when you have young kids. Well, that's that's so much traveling for you guys. That's unbelievable. It's traveling. It's packing boxes. It's unpacking boxes. It's coming in, learning a new culture and then driving a business in a new country.

Look, it was an amazing 18 year innings, as I say, that I had at the company and I'm so grateful for all the experiences but at that time I just felt that I wanted to make a fundamental change in my life from a professional perspective and also from a personal perspective and from a spiritual perspective and making sure that they all lined up so for my wife and I we made the big decision to actually firstly decided to leave the code company and to make the big decision to come and live in the land of Israel. And for me, obviously, being an observant Jewish person, it was important for me to have

this opportunity with my family to get reconnected to the land of Israel and for my children to grow up with a strong, you know, Jewish identity. And also at the time from a professional perspective, the technology industry in Israel was just really starting to pump. This is 2014. And I think many of you listen as may know that Israel really is a huge high-tech hub for the world, whether it's cyber tech, fintech, biotech, just general broader high-tech. And the Israeli market is really small. There's only 9 million people here.

So everything that's done in the Israeli market is really done for the North American market, European and Asian market. And I had a lot of experience that I'd gone in the Asian market plus the North American market. And I thought this was just a great timing for me to come and be part of this, this, you know, high tech and this amazing momentum that there was in the country in addition to, you know, obviously on a personal level, wanting my family to kind of have firm roots in one country and as my wife told me at the time, she said to me very clearly, choose one more country and choose very, very carefully because we're not

moving. Yeah. You don't want to mess them up. So one thing you learn to do is you've got to listen to a Jewish wife, you know, you don't argue in that you get those kind of, you kind of have those discussions. So we came here in 2014, got the family settled, and I was very, very blessed where I decided I was going to become an entrepreneur, a full on entrepreneur and kind of go back and relive that entrepreneurial spirit that I always had inside me. And I was very lucky. I was able to really unleash a lot of that entrepreneurial spirit, working for the Coca-Cola Company with many of the different assignments I had. But this time it was time to kind of start really as an entrepreneur, pretty much building

a business from scratch. And together with two Israeli partners who were actually much younger than me and that become really lifetime friends of mine, we built a really interesting business. And it was kind of weird. I went from like the front of the aeroplane to the back of the aeroplane, and I went like from the four seasons hotel in Atlanta when I used to go for work to really the red rooftop motel in Atlanta. And trust me, you know, it's a big change, but it was something that, you know, I was pretty comfortable with, and I actually kind of enjoyed being at the back of the plane and kind of, you know, being a, you know, scrappy and bootstrapped entrepreneurs, we started to build the business with my two Israeli partners, and we started a business, which was a big data, IOT and software company in the beverage industry, focusing largely on beer. What we did is we basically,

you see a common theme here as well. We basically went into bars and restaurants, and we connected sensors to the beer taps. These sensors had a motor, we connected to a motor and we took it to the cloud, all the data to the cloud. Then we figured out how to connect to every point of sale system as well, to be able to take every single transaction coming from the point of sale, plus what was coming from

the beer taps up to the cloud. Inside the cloud, we cleaned the data, we normalize the data, we aggregated the data, and we gave the data back to the bar and restaurant owners as critical insights in an app that they had real-time insights on how they could grow the top line of their business, the revenue of the business, as well as drive significant operational efficiencies to improve the bottom line performance. And then the game changer that we did with this data is we actually sold this data to the breweries. So we're talking to the major breweries like Ann Houser Bush Inbeve, Hineken, Colesburg, they were all our customers and for them

this was the first time that they had real time data of what was going on up and down the street in bars in Tel Aviv, in Rio, in São Paulo, in Seoul, in New York, in L.A. in Cape Town. And it was for them, we were like shining a torch on these specific bars and restaurants, such an important channel for them to actually grow their businesses, very high margin. And this is a channel that you build brands. And all of a sudden they had real-time data on what was happening inside the bars, not

just in the beer category, but in across all categories, look, understanding spirits, consumption, food consumption, beer and food consumption. And it was a real game changer for them to be able to work with their customers, i.e. the bar owners, on helping to create value and build their overall businesses. So we built the business over four years and then we were very, very fortunate. And how's the push in there, which again is an amazing company. They have great brands like, you know, obviously Budweiser, Corona, Stella, Atoa. But in addition to being a great, you know great beer company, they also get technology. And they understand

that technology on an end-to-end value chain is a major source of competitive advantage. And they decided to basically buy 10% of our business with an option to buy the entire business. I was a COO of the business, and we were very happy to have them come on board as partners We worked together for a year and after a year they bought the entire business and our company which is called nice beer guy Yeah, so we actually we were the first Food tech major food tech exit in Israel to a multinational player and The company was very well integrated into the Anaheim's Abush system

Really it became like the big data intelligence system as well as helping them solve major problems across the world related to obviously sales and operations using big data and also developing unique products for them to be able to create value for their customers. And I was very happy working with them. I had to work for a year just as part of the deal and I landed up working for two years with him until I saw this company called Biahavis Sciences and in fact, my personal lawyer who literally

was like a real pain in the butt. He said to me, Elon, you've got to see this company. I think it has so much potential. An amazing R&D company, you've got to find the time to come and see them. To be honest, it took me about six months to get there, but I'm so happy he was so persistent. I came to BioHavist as an investor. Oh, I see.

So that's how you got into it. Correct. It was December 2019. I had the opportunity of meeting the most amazing team of plant cell biologists. Because bioharvest at its core, they are the global leader in plant cell biology. Nobody understands how to unlock the secrets of cellular plant biology like Biahavis and I saw this very very quickly with the technology that they had which is a platform technology which has the ability to take any essential active ingredient from a plant. So any type of

polyphenol secondary metabolites like polyphenols, antioxidants, cannabinoids, or primary metabolites like proteins, and they're able to grow these critical active ingredients that the human body needs in order to function effectively, they're able to grow these active ingredients in cells. So they don't need to grow the plant, they just grow cells with these active ingredients,

and they grow the cells in industrial scale bioreactors and after like three weeks of growing the cells, they're able to actually provide an end product which is very highly soluble and bi available. And I was just blown away with this technology just giving my background in food and beverages and I did a very thorough due diligence on the company. I was super impressed with the IP and the quality of the patents, you know, patents that were across multiple geographies, process utility composition, which is what you look for in patents. The company had clinical trials that were published in peer reviewed scientific journals and really were on a journey

to just make a fundamental change to the overall health and wellness landscape from a global perspective. And I myself, together with a number of other people, we invested in the company and I actually about two weeks after I signed my checks as an investor, I was away with my family in Europe enjoying a holiday and I got a phone call from the CEO of the company. And I thought he was calling me, maybe there was a problem with the checks, it hadn't passed at the bank, you know, these things have happened before. And he's an amazing guy who's the chairman of the company today and he actually had invested $20 million in the company previously as a co-founder of the company.

And his name's Dr. Zakir Akir and Zakir called me and I said, Zakir is a problem with the checks. He goes, no, no, no. In fact, I waited for the checks to actually pass until I made this phone call to you. I said, he said, do you have a few minutes? I said, yeah, I'm on the ski slope here in Italy. No problems the kids are down at the bottom of the slope I can talk to you for a while no problems He said to me listen you drove us crazy

During the due due due due diligence absolutely crazy by all the questions you were asking and of course You know I spent 18 years at coke. I know how to do a due diligence and he said listen But I realized from this process, I need a professional CEO to actually come and run this business. And I'm gonna move to the role of Chairman, and I want you, I'm gonna give you the keys, and I want you to come and run this company.

I'll tell you Adam, that conversation changed my life. Because I've now been in the role for just over two years and professionally, you know, as I said, I've been very fortunate with what I've done in my career 18 amazing years a coke starting a start-up and doing an exit But the last two years there's nothing more fulfilling when every single day there's nothing more fulfilling when every single day you're getting up and you're focused on making just a transformational change in people's overall health and wellness. And bioharvest is a purpose-driven company. Every single day leveraging the power of the plant and bringing the power of the plant to the people, our ability to actually take these essential active ingredients and bring it to people

in unique formations, whether it's capsules or whether in the case of our cannabis specific, biomass that we're bringing consumers with a level of solubility, bioavailability, consistency, cleanliness, and being able to fundamentally change their lives. There's nothing better than waking up in the morning and for example, every morning I get many reviews from our Vinnie product, which is our Red Grape Cell product that we sell

in Israel and in the US. And you just hear people firstly giving us really high ratings, but more importantly, their comments on how we're fundamentally changing the quality of their life as a result of our products and helping them live a much superior quality of life. And importantly, we're doing this as a company because we're purpose driven in a way that we're leaving the planet in a much better position for our children and our grandchildren, because sustainability is so much at the core of our technology as we leverage the power of our plants, the plants kingdom, and bring these unique cells with these active ingredients to consumers in a way whereby we're utilizing a fraction

of the water, a fraction of the carbon footprint, the electricity that traditionally are utilizing agriculture, and also when there are competitors versus what our competitors are doing today. So that's pretty important as well. I want to get back to that. I want to get back to the environmental impact of it, but what first pulled me to this is the fact that when I started to take that supplement and then we got it for some of the other people on our team, it was ridiculous.

Like, we take supplements all the time, we've been sponsored by different ones, they're good. You know, there's healthy stuff out there, but you don't always notice like a big change. And it was undeniable to like the people on my team that they come in in the morning and they're like, dude, I think it's that stuff that we got. And I'm like, I know it's good, right?

And then the more I find out about the company, it's just, it just kind of amazes me. Even the people on the team, like you tell me the story about how the COO comes to you and says, we need a new guy and it's you. And the more I get to know you, which is fascinating, it's like, I don't think you can do anything on like a small level. If somebody just gave you a car wash to start that company, by like the end of the year, it would be like an international car wash. You don't like to do things small at all. Do you?

Well, I think when you're passionate about something and you really believe in it, and we're all blessed to be on this earth and we've got to make every single day count, and when you're put in positions of responsibility where, in my case, we have this technology, this platform technology, where we can take any plant in the plant kingdom

and take all the essential active ingredients in their full spectrum way. So you're taking all the polyphenols from a red grape cell and we're able to put it through our system and we're able to increase the levels of the key polyphenols. You have with this technology I feel like I have such a big responsibility on my shoulders to make every single day count and to ensure that we scale the technology so that we're positively impacting millions, tens of millions and maybe hundreds of millions of people. Like you take the product that you and the team have been on, which is our Vinnie product, which is based on the French paradox.

You know, the French paradox talks about how the French people, they have a really fatty diet, lots of pate, lots of cheeses, lots of butter, but they have really good cardiovascular health. So when the scientists started to understand what is it about the French diet that gives them such good cardiovascular health, they realized it was for moderate consumption of red wine, two to three glasses of red wine every single day. And when they went deeper to understand what is it inside the red wine,

they realized it was coming from a number of critical polyphenols all working together. And the key polyphenol, which we call the King polyphenol, is called Pasey resveratrol. And together the pase ed res veritrol with other polyphenols, like categine, coercetine, anticinins, and tannins, it creates this amazing positive effect on your body, which drives significant blood flow. And I'll talk about how we do that. Now we took the skin, we actually took the red grape. We took cells from the skin of the red grape, we took cells from the flesh and cells from the actual seed of the red grape.

And we grew these cells with the active ingredients. And we were able to increase the passivelyeareders' veritrol, which is that King polyphenol by 100 times greater than how it's found in the actual red grape. And that actually makes us the only company in the world today that's able to produce pass-eareders' veritrol. That's the gold standard of resveritrol from red grapes at a commercial scale. And then together with all the polyphenols, it has an amazing impact that we've validated

in clinical trials, or double-blind placebo, that have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. So the feeling that yourself and all your peers back in the ranch in the office were feeling is really as a result of what our clinical trials shows is that after taking vinegar, one capsule in the morning, every day, for three months, we were able to clinically show that we can increase what they call the flow-mediated dilation of your arteries, FMD. We increased the flow-mediated dilation of your arteries, FMD, we increase the flow media dilation of your arteries

by 70% versus baseline. That means your dilation of your arteries is significantly increased and the more dilation of your arteries, the more blood flow you have going through your body and blood flow, people don't realize how important it is as far as your overall body's operating mechanism is concerned, because when there's more blood flowing, guess what, there's more oxygen and nutrients going to the body, tissue and to the organs. And that's why they were feeding the physical energy

and that mental alertness, no more brain fog waking up in the morning and having brain fog, because when you got more blood with oxygen going to your brain, you're able to waking up in the morning and having brain fog because when you've got more blood with oxygen going to your brain You're able to wake up in the morning and function. You're able to work longer You have more energy in you and these are like the baseline benefits that veneer delivers in addition We have the ability to drive significant benefits around helping to maintain blood pressure already within normal ranges.

In addition, we're able to support heart health, obviously as a result of the increased blood circulation. And importantly, another one that we're able to make, another benefit we're able to talk about according to FDA guidelines in markets like the U.S. is that we're able to reduce the oxidation of LDL cholesterol. And I'm sure many of you are listening to understand that it's not just one thing having high LDL cholesterol. That's a problem.

But when it really becomes a problem, it's when your LDL cholesterol oxidizes and forms plaque in your arteries. And Viniya is able to significantly reduce the oxidation of LDL cholesterol. And this we've all been able to demonstrate in clinical trials, as I said, double blind placebo, published in peer reviewed scientific journals. So it's great to have a product that works and that goes back to a product is from an amazing technology platform.

And with this technology platform, you know, we have our red grape cell product, which is vinaigre. We also have in our pipeline an olive cell product, which is the benefits of the Mediterranean diet with none of the calories. We have a pomegranate cell product. We'll be launching in early 2024, which is around reducing inflammation. And then we have cannabis, which is a whole new ballgame, which we can talk about a little bit later. But as I said, it goes back to to you know, I'm living a dream and you talk about the car wash analogy Well like frankly, you know when you're in these roles of influence and where you understand the

gravity of the impact you can make on people's overall health and wellness. This is a big responsibility to wear every day and I try and do my best every day with the team to scale this business and to impact as many people as possible across the different geographies that we operate. Well, what's really nice about it is, you know, I've taken a bunch, they're even verisveratry, I've taken other supplements because they've shown, and when they've talked about it on Rogan lots of times, Dr. Ronda Patrick has and other anti-aging doctors that come on, and you know, it is one of those things that's been shown to be beneficial for a bunch of reasons. Yet when you take it, it's hard to notice

the difference. It's like you're taking it, you're probably healthier, you know, but you don't always know. It's like coffee works for me. I take coffee, I wake up. This stuff though, as soon as I took it, it doesn't even seem to take like many days to get into your system. It's like right away, you take it and you are on go time.

But do you know why Adam? You know, it's very important to understand that unlike people, not all resveratrol is created equal, okay? And as I said, as I said to you earlier, we're the only company in the world that can produce the gold standard of resveratrol, which is the Passe-E resveratrol from the skin of the red grape, which has glycoside.

The rest of the world, and you can go into Amazon, you can search any risvera-trol product, and I will guarantee you that risvera-trol is an inferior risvera-trol. We call it naked risvera-trol. And that's from Polyghenum, which is a Japanese knotweed. Our passiides resveratrol is known to be 25.5 times more soluble. And this is this is this plenty of research on this talking about the amazing solubility of passiides resveratrol versus the polyghenum, the naked racerol, and if you think about it, solubility is so important, and that's why in the dietary supplement world,

or even in the medical world, if the active ingredients you're taking are not soluble, then it's not gonna get dissolved in your intestinal tract. Now, Vinnia has 82% solubility, which is amazing. The other factor is, VINIA has improved by much better bi availability versus the other resveratrol, the naked resveratrol from polyghenum,

because VINIA actually enters through the membrane into the blood plasma in 20 minutes. It takes 20 minutes to get into your blood plasma and it lasts for 12 hours, like a slow release, and we have a peak after one hour and we get a second biological peak after five hours where the naked resveratrol or polyghenum, it enters quickly into your blood plasma and after one to two hours, it's out of your blood plasma. So this is the uniqueness of vinae in the context of the Pysied Resveratrol and we have the

gift that we're the only company in the world that can produce an industrial scale, Pysied Resveratrol from the skin of the re grape and then together with the Categine, Coercantine and Thysinean Intentanins, you have this basically full spectrum, entourage effect which goes and chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, chiropractic origin, Now, with this technology, and I don't know how much of it you can talk about because it's probably a secret, right? You're the only guys to do this.

But is it a process of cloning? You say you grow the cells. Do you clone those cells? Is that what it is? Well, I don't like to call it cloning, but basically, you know, what we do is we'll take, and I guess, you know, maybe this is a good, a good segue to cannabis, right? We, we basically have been doing this now for 14 years.

So, you know, as I said earlier, we're the global leaders in plant cell biology. And we learned first on the red grape, then we moved to the olive, then we moved to the pomegranate, and then we set ourselves, look, we want to now validate our platform technology on the toughest plant in the plant king. And when we looked at the toughest plants out there in the plant kingdom that had relevance to consumers from a medicinal perspective, we said, let's try cannabis.

And when we went to, and we announced to the world that we were going to do cannabis using our platform technology, many of the giants in the cannabis world said impossible, impossible to utilize your technology on actually growing cannabis. And the reason why they said this was, you know, cannabis is different because the cannabis plant has a critical component called a trichome, which actually exists on the outside of the plant and the trichome is the mini factory that produces the cannabinoids and the terpenes and the flavonoids. And they said, in the case of your technology, you have to grow a cell and then you have to get a cell to actually grow a trichle.

And that's never been done before in the world, never been done before at an industrial scale. So going back to your point is a cloning, we basically take the plant through each stage of its life cycle. So every single week we took this cannabis plant and we're taking cells from all parts of the cannabis plant and we have an AI process in a way where we know which cells to ultimately focus on, and we grow these cells initially in a petri dish. Petri dish, we're talking a little petri dish, round a little petri dish. And then we figured out how to go from a petri dish into,

and we're talking hundreds of leaders, large scale industrial bioreactors with the cells multiplying, okay, where we actually are able to get the cells to basically multiply so we can start to kind of scale. And in no way do we alter the structural composition of the active ingredients, which is why our technology is non-GMO, which is super important for consumers in Europe and becoming now today more and more important for American consumers and Asian consumers. I think that's what scares people, right?

Because they've talked before about clone, like growing meat in a lab. Like, that's been talked about for a while, and I growing meat in a lab, like that's been talked about for a while, and I don't know how far they've got with that, but your knee jug reaction always is, that sounds a bit gross. Look, ultimately what we are doing is we are mirroring nature, and then we are using our technology to actually enhance and improve nature. And we are only the way we're enhancing nature is we're just able through the way we actually stress the cells,

we're able to get the cells to produce higher levels of the active ingredients, those critical polyphenols or the cannabinoids. And in the case of cannabis, we were able to figure out and we're the only company in the world, and I'm super proud of this. We, over the last 12 months, we have broken biological barriers. We have made biological history because we're the only company in the world

that has figured out how to grow these tricomes. So we are able to grow cells in bioreactors and then we get every cell to grow their own trichomes, which is like this mini factory that produces the cannabinoids, the terpenes and the flavonoids. In fact, we grow 93% trichomes, 7% is cell, 93% is the trichomes. And these tricomes that we grow have a density, which is 100 to 200 times greater than the density of the tricomes that the plant grows. So it's super much more efficient.

And inside these tricomes, Adam, we shared, I shared last week with our investor partners in a shareholder update, I shared a little bit about the unique composition that we have. So not only do we have consistency in cannabis, which is so important, not only do we have a level of cleanliness because we have no heavy metals,

there's no pathogens, cause we're growing in these aseptic bioreactors, but we have unique composition of major cannabinoids, minor cannabinoids and ratios that one cannot find in the plant. And these unique composition of cannabinoids allows us to develop signature medicinal blends to be able to target specific palliative conditions that people today are utilizing cannabis with some levels of success to actually substitute farmer drugs out there that are not delivering or are delivering with severe side effects. Think opioid crisis and pain management. The, you know, all the challenges in mental health and some of the drugs that are being

applied in that area. This is the power of the technology that we have as it applies to cannabis. And even in the context of VINIA, we see today that that there are as a result of us today having VINIA actually purchased by now more than 14,000 people and we're about to massively scale in the US. We have amazing feedback because it's all through e-commerce, direct to consumer and we have today just in the US we have more than 700 reviews with a 4.8 out of 5 verified rating. We know that Viniar today is able to address a number of indications today where people are struggling with actual cures because of the increase in blood flow that is a that it's able to achieve,

which is helping, for example, people with ginger vitus. I don't know if you know this, ginger vitus, lack of blood flow to the tissue around your gums and your teeth. So we have many people now that are taking vina, we have severe ginger vitus and we're seeing some amazing, amazing results in that area. And there's other areas in your you you can think through that are all related to blood flow, whether it's Raynard's disease, which is a lack of blood flow to your finger your fingertips and your toes, Mania's disease, which is a lack of blood flow to your inner ear. These are all potential areas that we can take vinaire and start to validate whether VINIA is able to adequately address these conditions.

We've seen from our 14,000 consumers some really interesting results in these areas, including erectile dysfunction, again, linked to blood flow. We've seen enough evidence that as told us to start to spend more resources, to do more investigation work, more clinical trials. We just took on board a few months ago an amazing chief medical officer to the company that's going to really focus and prioritize on driving those clinical trials in the case of Viniere and obviously in what we're going to be doing in the cannabis space. So that's why I'm excited because we have this amazing technology where we can leverage the power of the 500,000

plants that God gave us on day three of the world and start to bring the power of these plants to the people in a way that's actually going to be able to make our planet so much better from a sustainability perspective. And it's not using a lot of water, power, like no land, right, other than the building. We're utilizing, I shared some numbers on Thursday night with our shareholder partners and they were just absolutely blown away, but just to give you some perspective in the case of Vinnia,

where we're growing, as I said, our red grape cells, the Pyrecyd Resvera trail, each bioreactor, every three weeks, because it takes us to three weeks cycle, produces the same amount of Pyshide Resvera trail as what you would need 20,000 square meters of land. And I'm doing it in one and a half square meters. Wow. Okay, just to give you some kind of perspective.

Yeah, throw those numbers out there. Yeah, so one bioreactor for our veneer product is producing the same amount of pass heat risk veritrol every three weeks because the three-week cycle is 20,000 square meters of land. So normally, let's assume you have 12 cycles in a year. It's 240,000 square meters of land that one actual bioreactor, which is one and a half meters by one and a half meters roughly,

is utilizing from a space perspective. If you talk, like, for example, cannabis, let's talk water. When you look at the number of grams of dry flour per gallon of water. Indoor cultivation of cannabis, which is the high end of cannabis, achieves roughly five grams of dry flour per gallon of water. By harvest cannabis achieves 260 grams.

That's roughly 54 times more. If you look at, say example electricity productivity, again, grams of cannabis per kilowatt, Indle cultivation, it's 0.8 grams per kilowatt. By harvest, we're at 6.2 grams, that's 8 times more. And the one that I really, really care about as well, given fossil fuels, is carbon intensity, which is the number of pounds of electricity-based CO2 equivalent utilized per gram of cannabis produced. And indol cultivation is about 1.25, and we're 8 times less at 0.15. So this technology, and kudos to Dr. Jochie Kha'Gai, our co-founder and Dr. Zachi Raqib, the two co-founders of the company.

When they built this technology, and again, they started in 2008, we spent $60 million already on building the platform out of them. Sustainability was at the core of the technology. You have companies today when it comes to sustainability or what they call ESG. Basically, it's like an add-on to their business and it's something that they have to do because of the regulators.

But ultimately, it shouldn't be an add-on. It has to be at the core of your business. It has to be a lens that you make every single decision through your business. What is the be, you know, it lands that you make every single decision through your business. What is the impact to the environment? Am I leaving the planet in a better place for our children and our grandchildren? And that's what purpose-driven companies are all about. And it starts at the core of the technology. So you guys must be way ahead of the regulators then. You know where other companies are like,

they told the line they're like, oh, we can only use this much of this and they get right up to it. I mean, I assume you guys are blowing them out of the water. So clearly, the regulators in all the markets are, let's take the US for example today. You have massive drought in the US. I'm hitting the West Coast and the Southeast and even drought in the US, hitting the west coast and the southeast and even parts of the east coast, where the regulators, where government is basically regulating heavily to minimize the amount of water and for people to really start to

have another degree of responsibility as it relates to the use of water. Same thing in the context of electricity, you look at cannabis companies and say, in Colorado, right? Utilizing roughly 2% to 3% of the electricity grid. It's crazy. So obviously, our technology helps to solve a lot of challenges that the regulators are dealing with. But that's not enough.

We as a company, we've got to, as I said, continue to make decisions all the time that are congruent with the values of the company. You know, we just, last month, we purchased a major drying machine for our veneer product. And we actually scoured the world to look at the best in class technology. And a core part of this brief for this particular drying technology, as we started to scale our veneer business, was to make sure that we didn't just have the best technology

as it relates to the quality of the polyphenols. But it had to also make sure that we were significantly reducing our utilization of water and our utilization of energy. And we purchased an amazing piece of German equipment from a company called Pushner. Family company, they build maybe three or four machines every single year.

And just top-top engineering, this machine actually reduces the amount of energy used versus what we've been using previously by 5.2 times and the amount of water by six times. So again, you've got to be consistent in how you're applying the sustainability. It has to permeate impact every decision that you're making across your business.

Not just to kind of dress your company up to look good from a shareholder perspective or from a regular perspective, it's got to be at the core of every decision you make and therefore it's got to be at the core of your technology. I mean but that's exactly what we're running out of right it's like water, energy, I mean it's across the board so it's one thing to have you know a new idea and a great supplement but it's one thing to have, you know, a new idea and a great supplement, but it's like People love this like alternative milk, right? They go to Starbucks. They get like oat milk or whatever different one Almond milk and they're they're trying to be dairy free and they think that there's some sort of like that helps the environment but

Growing those things take so much more water. Nobody puts that stuff together. And it's almost like the intention is good, but the result is a disaster. Well, it's actually a very interesting point that you raise, and I think part of the responsibility of companies like ourselves is around education. And I can foresee very soon in the future, and it's been done in some countries in Europe,

in Scandinavia, where on every single product, it's actually gonna have, just like you have today, very clear labeling related to the amount of sugar in a product or the amount of oils or salts in a product. There's gonna be regulated, regulated, sustainability metrics where people understand how many liters of water was actually consumed to make this product, how much of this water was recycled, similar for energy, similar for the carbon footprint, because ultimately consumers today have much greater visibility and knowledge of it to some extent, but once

companies like ourselves and other responsible companies out there start to be transparent in actually helping people understand not just the calories in a product, but actually understanding what it does it take from a water usage electricity usage carbon emissions for the products. This gives a level of transparency where I think people ultimately will choose the brands that they want to be part of their daily lifestyle based on not just the overall health and wellness of the product but also based on the ability for that product to live in harmony with the planet. And I think this is something that's gonna come very quickly in the next five years, at least 10 years,

regulators will start to demand this. And I think this is gonna really put all companies on a new level setting. And it will re-build the equilibrium across those that really care versus those that kind of care. Right. And then the advantage, which goes into another point that we've got to talk about, is the connection to future space travel and being able to come on, this is fun for everybody, but being able to grow nutrients when you don't have land and you don't have this kind of ability, I mean, in the future, if Elon Musk has his way, he's putting people on Mars, right? And there's a big push for this stuff.

It's a long way off. But it's not how it, you know. It's actually, Adam, it's not. It's not, and, and, you know, it's kind of interesting with, you know, the stars lined up for us. And I talked before about us being the global leaders in plant cell biology.

So if you really are the global leader in plant cell biology on Earth, you have to be the leader leader in plant cell biology on earth. You have to be the leader of global plant cell biology in basically other hemispheres, right? The rest of the solar system. And, you know, we were really, really fortunate. I had an opportunity, it must have been about a year ago, to meet one of the most remarkable, remarkable human beings on this, on this, um, world, on this planet, and who I can actually say is a personal friend of mine today and a very, very important friend and partner of the company. And that's a Colonyl Chris Hadfield.

And for those people who don't know who Colonyl Chris Hadfield is, he's probably, I would say, one of the most famous, most decorated living astronauts. Colonel Chris Hadfield was captain of the International Space Station. He actually went to the ISS, the International Space Station on three missions, did two space walks, and basically is just a phenomenal human being. He was in Israel about 12 months ago and I had an opportunity to meet with him.

And I managed to convince him to come and to see our factories and our R&D labs. And it was really a gift from God that he came and he saw what we did. And basically, he opened up a whole new world for us, which is really around this whole world of how we actually leverage zero gravity environments to be an in space,

to bring actually better products to Earth. And I'm gonna talk about that in a second. We're very, very fortunate that from that connection with Chris, he is now a very important part of our advisory board and is helping us be the best, the global leader of plant cell biology in space. And really, what's happened in the whole space environment, in the last, call it five years with the space race, Elon Musk, even what, you know, the space programs that NASA's doing and many other country space programs, what's landed up happening is that

in 10 years time, there will be settlements in space. There will be people living in space in settlements for long periods of time. Fact number one. Fact number two. Why? Why? Because what's happened now is the technology has advanced so much as a result of the space race and this competition between all these amazing global thought leaders and their teams. And what's happening now as well

is that the cost of actually building space stations and space settlements and the cost of going to space, traveling to space and back has come down dramatically, absolutely dramatically. So, in fact, today, on the International Space Station, there are companies doing experiments to understand the power of a zero gravity environment on their products. And that's where we're in the next 12 to 18 months working with a company called Space Tango, which is a middleware company that we're going to be working with to look at how we take our bi reactors and adapt our bi reactors to an environment in space. Why? Because in space there's zero gravity, what they call microgravity. And in our case, plant cells grow differently. We know in a zero gravity environment. How differently? We don't know until we actually go and do an experiment. So imagine, imagine at them. Then in the case of posad was veritrol in our red grape sill. Today on Earth we increase the Possead by

a hundred times. Maybe in space I could increase it by a thousand times. What could that do as an amazing, amazing active ingredient that we can bring back to Earth because it's actually now much cheaper to actually grow products in zero gravity, microgravity, environment in space, bring it back to earth and actually be able to sell it on earth, specifically when it has huge medical applications. Same thing with cannabis. Can you imagine in cannabis, the minor cannabinoids today are so important for critical palliative conditions, like whether it's glycoma, fibromyalgia, ALS,

a lot of the minor, minor cannabinoids that are found in such small levels in the plant, we are able to increase them in our technology, but maybe in space I can increase them again another 100,000 times, and then bring them back to Earth and be able to take that into a botanical drug that's able to treat major, major, palliative indications. What a game changer that can be for the world. Today there are companies on the International Space Station that are using stem cells to

grow artificial retinas, to grow artificial livers. Why? Because you can't grow a liver on earth because there's gravity. So there's no layers. All the layers that you need for the stem cells to grow cannot be actually grown in a gravity environment. So with space travel coming down and with the fact that there are companies now who are looking to build space stations, commercial space stations for companies like ours to actually grow their products in space and then bring them back to earth with their unique benefits that they can offer consumers and specifically in the health and wellness space. So this is one big area that we've focused on. The second area is there will be space settlements as far as just, you know, the huge zest to explore other solar systems and there is enough technology today to keep people in space for long periods of time.

However, there's only so much can tuna. You can take in a spaceship up to a space there. Yeah, no doubt. So they need to be able to be self-sufficient from an overall food perspective. So again, this is an area that we have the ability to impact with our bioreactors to actually be able to grow actual plant-based proteins

with all the amino acids, which can be an important source of food for those people living in space settlements. And then lastly, what's also very interesting that most people don't realize, and I didn't realize this until Chris actually shared this with us when he was with us in Israel. The biggest challenge, you know what the biggest challenge

for astronauts are when they're in space? You know what? NASA's checking all the time. If they can breathe. If they can breathe. Yeah, they're bodies. Well, that's important. But they're also checking,

which is links to if they can breathe, because they're in a very high level of radiation in this microgravity environment, you have very very high levels of oxidation of LDL cholesterol. Oh. And that's the linkage back to vina, because vina significantly reduces the oxidation of LDL cholesterol. So, these are the three areas that are like the, I guess, the opportunities for collaboration areas.

And obviously, we've prioritized the importance of doing an experiment in the next 12 to 18 months on the International Space Station. And now we're working on an R&D path to be able to get us there. It's going to be super interesting because who knows what we're going to find when we start to grow plant cells in this microgravity environment. And for sure, for sure, it will have significant utility value to be able to bring back for people and to improve the overall health and wellness. Yeah, and if saying that you have space weed isn't the best marketing I've ever heard of in my life, I don't know what is. That's that will be perfect.

I mean look there's a there's a marketing story but the most important story goes down to anchoring in the purpose and for me what makes me really excited as I said earlier is those minor cannabinoids we're talking about THCV CBDV CBC as an example. they found in such, such low levels in the actual cannabis plants here when you're growing it. Without technology, we take them up significantly. But if I can maximize that, wow, it really is a game changer for people's overall health and wellness. And in five years' time, the cost of travel to and from space will be like, you know,

the cost of travel from the west coast to the east coast. It's gonna get, it's gonna get there, and it will get there much quicker than people think. And that's why Kudos and to, you know, Elon Musk and the rest of the, the rest of, you know, the players in the space race, Kudos to him and Mr. Bezos, so Richard, for really driving this because it's definitely going to make the world a lot better from an overall health and wellness perspective. And I don't think most people have got it. They're still thinking about our space travel and traveling, but the benefits that are going

to come from being able to manufacture breakthrough products in a zero gravity environment. This is going to be a game changer for future generations, and I'm not talking about too far in the future. It's going to impact your children and my children, and that's cool. Yeah, I mean, 10 years off, having people in space. I know people make these different predictions and it's so hard to know what is happening, but in the world of space travel, I mean, especially since Elon, I mean we have shot up so fast that I could believe it. I really could. Now we're getting close to the end of this, but what I what I want to know now is so what what is next for you guys? You're opening up

expanding into the US, you're getting these products over here, what's the next move? So for us, one thing that 18 years at the Coca-Cola company taught me what to do was to stay focused. So with our polyphenol antioxidant vertical with what we have with VINIA and our olive cells and our pomegranate cells, the size of the prize is so significant

in the markets that we're operating in. So, you know, we'll be double downing on that as we scale the business and get regulated in more countries, you know, not just in the U.S. but getting regulated in Canada, in Europe, in China, in Japan, in South Korea, so we can really bring the power of veneer to so many millions of consumers. On cannabis, right now we're busy finalizing our entry strategy into the US market, and we're going through a process of finding perfect anchor partners to partner with us, to be able to bring our cannabis products on a state-by-state basis to consumers.

And this is a big focus for us in the next six months. And the beauty about our platform technology is that we have the ability to take any plant out there. And I think people are starting to realize the power of the planting. I mean, in fact, I even believe farmer companies today are starting to realize the importance of going back to their roots. Because people forget that farmer companies

actually started originally with the plant. Aspirin was from the plant. And then obviously, as the need required for more consistency and for patentability and just general corporate meeting general corporate objectives, they moved to synthesize chemical compounds. Now, there's been a lot that's been achieved in the farmer world in the last 50 years,

but today as we stand with the state of the opioid crisis, with the state of the crisis you're dealing with from a mental health perspective, there's a lot of unsolved areas. And I believe that there are some really good farmer companies there that at their core, their purpose driven companies. And these are companies that will partner with us to go back to the plant, to find the right plants with the right compound in their full spectrum composition, to be able to be grown on our platform

which can grow it consistently, which can give them the ability to do patents because what we do is different, you know, versus what's originally found in the plant. We increase the levels and therefore we can get patentability. And to bring these products to consumers in the mental health space. So whether it's, you know, psychedelics, whether it's their world of traditional Chinese medicine, our technology can go in these areas.

So for the short term, we're very focused on scaling our veneer business, obviously starting to drive our cannabis business in critical markets like the US, but we're also working on what's that third vertical that we can bring to the world, leveraging the power of our technology so that we can bring the power of the plant back to the people With purpose and in a way that we're making sure that we're leaving the planet in a better situation for our children and our grandchildren Well, look Elon. Thank you for the work that you're doing ever since I heard about this company It's like every time I talked to you are I'm more blown away with another amazing story of the stuff that you guys are getting up to. And

I'm sure of it. It's like one of those things. I can't wait to see what you guys are able to do and how this impacts Just kind of the world in a positive way and not only that getting These kind of supplements that get people moving and feeling good. Like this is exciting stuff. I'm looking forward to trying all of the different ones that you have. And definitely the space weed. Let me know when that's ready.

Thank you Adam. I really appreciate this opportunity to talk a little bit about my journey. And I guess ultimately at its core, the responsibilities that CEOs have today, who are driving leading purpose driven companies. And I think that the average investor out there, and specifically also the average consumer out there, are looking more and more for purpose driven companies. This is an amazing opportunity to be able to play an important leadership role. We're doing our best to be able to make significant strides every day in this area.

I'm very, very blessed to have an amazing team. And I'll share this with you one of the facts that I'm most proud of in our company is that 50% of our workforce is above the age of 50. Now that, for me, in the world of biotech, because we're a biotech company, experience is everything. And you know, we have people, I have technicians who are over the age of 70 working in our business. And these people are phenomenal. They have such amazing experience. And this is what the world of biotech is all about. And I,

again, it goes back to purpose driven company companies ages, you know, age me, you know, literally this, the, the, the, from an a overall age perspective, it's all about experience. And that experience is so critical to be able to bring better products for the next generations to come. So thank you for this opportunity. And I really enjoyed the discussion and the questions and probing that you did. Thanks, buddy. Yeah, and look, guys, I hope you enjoyed this. There's going to be links in the bio, a lot of information connecting to their site, the technology, check it out, there's videos on there. They kind of explain how this stuff goes, and this is one of those companies that I'm going to start doing series of just bringing good information to you guys like this finding super interesting people like Elon and really just keep

a keep an eye out for this watch this company as it grows and hopefully you know you can see how big it's gonna get. I'm really excited and thank you Elon for today. I appreciate it buddy. Thanks a minute Adam. Take care. Alright see ya.