The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - First Time Founders with Ed Elson – This Animal Rights Activist is Changing the Meat Industry

Episode Date: May 5, 2024

Ed speaks with Paul Shapiro, co-founder and CEO of The Better Meat Co., a food company that makes meat through fermentation. They discuss how Paul’s career in animal advocacy led him to start a company, his advice on fundraising, and why he believes saving animals can help save the planet.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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NMLS 1617539. Scott, have you ever considered going vegetarian? No, until literally recently. A couple of things. I have a very big dog, a Great Dane, and I've been seeing these TikToks with people stroking their cows. And these cows look kind of dog-like, and my Great Dane is just so sensitive and emotional

that it started getting me feeling about just how inhumanely we treat animals. So I'm not thinking about going vegetarian, but I am thinking about moving meat consumption from three times a day to maybe once or twice a day. Have you always felt this empathy for animals or is this a new thing because of TikTok? Well, I like to think I've always felt a little bit of empathy for animals, but something about having a beast, a really big dog and realizing it's probably not that different than many of the animals that we, I mean, basically just abuse and slaughter. So yeah, and I don't, I'm not sure I bind all the health benefits. I, you know, I don't know, maybe that's the problem. I've been eating beef my whole life. But I mean, the reality is, it's not that vegans are animal

lovers, they're plant haters. And I love that. Do the environmental and sustainability concerns around meat and our production of meat, does that play into your decision at all? It should, but it doesn't. It's not what's driving it. I'm just, I don't want to, I don't want people eating my dog or anything similar to it as the bottom line. Like methane, deforestation, climate change, yeah, it all, you know the data. It's probably one of the best things you can do

for the world is move from meat-based to plant-based calories. But my considering moving to a non-beef diet is just a function of, you know, my recent kind of concern or increased empathy or inability to ignore what it is we do to animals. Welcome to Firstline Founders. Here's a statistic that might shock you. In the US alone, we kill 4,000 cows, 14,000 pigs, and a million chickens every hour. And every year,

those numbers continue to grow. Now, we don't often cover animal welfare on this podcast, but it's an integral piece of one of the most important and rapidly evolving industries in our economy, namely the food industry. My next guest is a food entrepreneur and also one of the foremost animal rights activists of our time. As a high school student, he founded Animal Outlook, a nationally recognized animal advocacy organization. Later, he wrote the national bestseller, Clean Meat, and most recently, he decided to start a company. With $27 million in funding, five patents, and a 9,000-liter bioreactor facility, this founder is well on his way to accomplishing his company's mission.

Make meat without killing animals. This is my conversation with Paul Shapiro, CEO and co-founder of The Better Meat Co. Paul, thanks for coming on and joining us. Ed, great to be with you. Where are you zooming in from? I am based in and I'm zooming in from and live in Sacramento, California. We often call it the farm-to-fork capital of the country. However, given that I work in the fermentation space, I prefer to call it the fermenter-to-fork capital. Oh, very good. How long have you been there?

I moved to Sacramento about six years ago and I wish that I had some really awesome business reason for doing that. But the truth, because we know each other so well, Ed, I will confess to you the truth. The truth is I moved here for a woman who is my wife. And so it was a good idea. But I also started a company at that same time here in Sacramento. And so We've had guests on to talk about basically every topic you could think of. But for some reason, and I think this speaks to mine and Scott's and our team's own ethical uneasiness with this topic, we have never discussed animal welfare on this podcast. But I look at the numbers numbers and the numbers are staggering. So just from my understanding, we kill 650 million sheep, one and a half billion pigs, and 75 billion

chickens for meat every year. And those numbers have tripled in the past four decades, while the human population has only doubled. So in other words, the average human is now consuming more meat than at any time in human history. Now, I want to be upfront early with you, Paul. I am a meat eater. I have eaten meat my whole life, but I look at these statistics and I'm shocked by the scale and the proportion of death and suffering that we continue to levy on animals and at a rate that continues to increase. So let's just start with a very general question for you. How did we get here? Yeah, sure. So, Ed, I agree with the sentiments that you're expressing, although I wonder how

much the numbers matter, right? So you said there's 75 billion chickens who we're killing every year. If it was 45 or 25 billion, right? Those are obviously hugely different numbers, but to the average person, our minds are not equipped to grapple with such astronomical numbers because in our evolutionary past, there was no need to think about numbers in the billions. And so we don't really have an emotional difference to us when we hear 25 billion versus 75 billion. At the same time, it's important to remember that these are individuals. These are animals who feel pain and suffering with every bit as much intensity as our dogs and cats do. They are often smarter than our dogs and cats. And the only reason that we subject these animals to such cruelty and violence that we don't typically subject dogs and cats to is because of the way that we view them differently, not because of anything inherent about them. It's just because we view them differently. And of course, in some cultures, they do view dogs as food, just like in some cultures, they are horrified by the thought of cows being food. But the difference is how we perceive them. And now to me, the real concern,

yeah, I'm concerned about the number of animals who are being used. And that's a major environmental point, right? Like, because it takes so much land and water and greenhouse gas emissions to raise all these animals for food. But I think the bigger concern for me is just how much suffering they endure. If you think about the U.S. alone, 99% of the animals who we raise for food are raised on factory farms. We have this myth about animals being out in bucolic pastures. That's really not true. For the vast majority of animals, nearly all bucolic pastures. That's really not true. For the vast majority of animals, nearly all of them who we raise for food, they're living inside of typically windowless warehouses packed beak to beak where they are living in their own feces.

They can barely move. And in the case of the chickens who are raising for food, they've been selectively bred to grow so big, so fast that many of them can't even take more than a few steps before they collapse underneath their own unnatural bulk. And so even if they were in really bucolic, beautiful settings, they would still be prisoners in their own bodies because they're so big that they're in constant pain. So then when you consider the fact that, you know, we take nearly all of the egg-laying chickens in the world and confine them in cages where they can't spread their wings, or we take pigs and lock them in cages where they can't turn around for their whole lives. And you recognize that these are customary agricultural

practices. It's not a case of a few bad apples. It's not a case of just, you know, some rogue farmer that customary agricultural practices are so inhumane toward animals that if you were to subject dogs or cats to those practices in the United States, you would be criminally charged with animal cruelty. And so part of the reason why I think it's so important that we develop alternatives to meat and eggs and dairy is just that we cannot satiate humanity's demand for these products without inflicting wide-scale torture on animals. And even independent of the number of animals, which is, again, astronomical, it's just a torturous existence for them, and we shouldn't be doing it.

We'll get to the Better Meat Company, which is your company, in a moment, but I first want to just explore your career in this industry, which dates back actually to when you were in high school. At the age of 14, you decided to become vegan. And then you started this nonprofit organization, Compassion Over Killing, which is now known as Animal Outlook. How did that all begin for you? What was the inspiration behind launching this career in animal protection and animal advocacy? I have a lot to thank my mom for. She worked at a local animal shelter when I was growing up. And so I was sensitized to the plate of dogs at least. And so, you know, we always had like three or four of these dogs from the animal shelter on our house. And they were like siblings to me, right? They weren't just pieces of property. They were like, like real siblings. And so back in the early 90s, somebody showed me a video of animals inside of factory farms and slaughterhouses. And I remember thinking as I was watching these animals, you know, being hung upside down, having their throats cut, and I

was thinking, what if those were my dogs? You know, what would I do? And of course, the answer is that there's nothing I wouldn't do to prevent that. And so I started thinking, well, if I wouldn't want it to happen to my own dogs, why would I want it to happen to any animal? And there was no animal protection club in my high school. So I started this one called Compassion Over Killing that over a period of years transformed into a national nonprofit organization that I ran with offices on both coasts. And eventually that led me into a career of lobbying for animals in the state legislatures of the country, and then eventually into authorship about the alternative protein industry. And finally now to running my own alternative protein industry. And finally now

to running my own alternative protein company designed to recreate the meat experience without animals. So that's the past 30 years of my life, Ed, pretty much summed up in like two minutes. Yeah, that's a good summary. I want to kind of pivot to one thing that I know that you speak about a lot, which I find fascinating and also very true, which is that you have said that exploitation actually rarely ends because we decide that it's immoral or that it's socially unjust. And your point has been that it almost always ends because of some sort of technological innovation that makes it irrelevant, makes the exploitation obsolete in some way.

Could you take us through what you mean by that? Think about it like this. For thousands of years, the fastest way to get around was by whipping horses. So we basically had horses as our forced laborers, and they worked under threat of violence. And nobody stopped whipping horses because they cared about horses. In fact, if you go back to the mid-19th century, there were all types of animal welfare campaigns to get better conditions for horses. The ASPCA and other animal welfare groups that were founded in the 1860s and 70s were really founded for the purpose of trying to get

better conditions for horses. They wanted resting hours, Sabbath days where they could be rested for a whole day, mandatory watering stations, and so on. And yet, it wasn't those animal welfare campaigners who really liberated horses. It was Henry Ford. Through the creation of the car, or what was then called the horseless carriage, he liberated horses in a way that nobody ever dreamt of. These animal welfare campaigners weren't even trying to liberate horses. They were trying to just ameliorate some of their suffering. And as a result, we now consider a horse-drawn carriage a relic of an archaic past. Similarly, for thousands of years, we lit our homes with whale oil. And even if you go back 2,000 years ago, the Romans rendered some species of whales extinct in their waters because they whaled them

to such a vigorous degree. In the end, it wasn't humane sentiment or sustainability concerns that freed whales from harpoons. It was the invention of kerosene, which is a cleaner, faster, and cheaper way to light our homes. We used to live pluck geese, which is a torturous thing to do, but that's how we wrote letters. Nobody stopped using quill pens because they cared pluck geese, which is a torturous thing to do, but that's how we wrote letters. Nobody stopped using quill pens because they cared about geese. They stopped because metal fountain pens were invented and it was an easier way to write. And so the question is, if we used horses and whales and geese for thousands of years and then quickly stopped using them, might the same be true for chickens and pigs and cows, where we were using them as food sources for thousands of years. And then within a matter of decades, will we find new ways to create the same experience where we can enjoy high-protein delicious foods that don't require subjecting these animals to this type of torment?

Which I think brings us nicely to your company, the Better Meat Company, which you started back in 2018. I mean, you had a long career in advocacy and nonprofit work, and it sounds like you might believe that actually technological innovation starting this company would be a more effective way to protect animals. Would that be right? Yeah, I certainly hope so, Ed. That's the goal. So I think that it's very unlikely that humans are just going to give up carnivory and switch to lentil soup and hummus wraps and bean and rice burritos. That would be awesome. I would love it if people did that. Those are great foods to eat. But humans seem to really like meat. You know, meat demand is

going up, not down. And that's because people are escaping poverty. So in China and India, you have hundreds of millions of people who have left poverty and joined the middle class. And one of the very first things that people do when they escape poverty and join the middle class is they eat more meat. And of course, we want people escaping poverty, needless to say, but there is a side effect. And that side effect is a much heavier environmental footprint. And so the question is, can we feed all of these people, the 8 billion of us who we have today, and there's going to be another 2 billion of us joining the planet between now and the year 2050. So 25 years from now, we're going to have another 2 billion people on the planet. And, you know, we don't have another celestial body to farm. We're not going to be farming the moon. We're not going to be farming Mars. In the next 25 years,

we're going to have one celestial body to farm, and that's planet Earth. And we've already deforested a huge part of Earth just to raise animals for food. The number one cause of deforestation is raising animals for food. The number one cause of wildlife extinction and biodiversity loss is raising animals for food. And a leading cause of climate change is raising animals for food. In fact, according to the United Nations, the animal agriculture industry contributes more greenhouse gas emissions than the entirety of the transportation sector combined. More than all cars, more than all planes, all trains, all boats, all combined is animal agriculture. And so the question is, how can we actually reduce the number of animals who we are using for food in a way that still allows people to enjoy the foods that they really crave? And I believe that trying to recreate the meat experience without animals

is the way to do it. It's similar to needing to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels. But while it would be great if people wanted to walk and bike more, people really seem to like cars, right? People seem to like driving. And so we need to create cars

that don't rely on fossil fuels. Well, similarly, it would be great if people want to eat bean and rice burritos, as I mentioned, but most people want to eat meat. And so we need to create the meat without the animals. And that's what my company, The Better Meat Co., is seeking to do. I think when people think of meat alternative companies, the first two that come to mind,

I mean, for me, would be Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. But I know that Better Meat is quite different. So tell us what you're doing at Better Meat and tell us what you're doing that other meat alternative manufacturers are not doing. Well, first of all, Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have done a very good job. They've helped to develop this industry in a way that just hadn't happened prior. And we all owe them, I think, a great deal of respect. But what they're doing, as you pointed out, is different from what the Better Meat Code does. So Impossible and Beyond both make plant based meat, meaning they're taking plants and converting them into things that look like animal meat and taste like animal meat. And the way that you do that, let's just take Beyond as an example,

their star ingredient is a texturized pea protein. So how do you get that? Basically, you grow a field of peas, you harvest a field of peas, you mill it into a flour, that flour is very low protein. And so you have to strip out the fiber, strip out the fat, and then you concentrate it down into a pea protein powder that an athlete might take as a supplement. But that powder, while being proteinaceous, is not textured like animal meat. So then you subject it to something called extrusion, which is a fancy way of saying lots of pressure, lots of heat. And as a result, you get a texturized pea protein that has a more animal-like texture and you add other ingredients to it and you get the Beyondurized pea protein that has a more animal-like texture, and you add other ingredients to it, and you get the Beyond Burger.

Now, that's fine. I like the Beyond Burger, but there's a lot of things to do to get a pea to look and taste like beef. That's why the Beyond Burger is more expensive than slaughter-based beef, because it's not just made of peas, which are obviously cheaper than beef. It's made of a tiny portion of the pea, and all these other processes happen to it. So what we at the Better Meat Co. do is we don't rely on plants at all. We're relying on a different kingdom entirely of microbial fungi, otherwise known as mycoprotein. And the mycoprotein that we grow here in Sacramento is textured like meat naturally, no processing entailed. It simply happens through fermentation. And so we have a three-story tall

fermenter where inside of it, there is a fermentation occurring that transforms these microscopic spores into foods that look and taste like animal-based meat. They have that texture and straight out of the fermenter without any isolation, fractionation, extrusion, none of it, just simply in its whole food, all natural, unprocessed state, you have a mycoprotein that not only is textured like animal meat, but has more protein than eggs, more iron and zinc than beef, more potassium than bananas, more fiber than oats, and it naturally contains vitamin B12. In other words, you get all the things about meat that you want without the things about meat that you don't want. Sat cholesterol animal cruelty environmental degradation and more and so this is a promising way to make a whole food all natural alt meat ingredient that can not

only compete on texture but also can compete on price because it is a whole food we'll be right back. We're back with First Time Founders. It sounds like you get basically the best of both worlds with this fermentation process using fungi. Two things. One, how did you find out about this? And how did you know that this was the idea to pursue when you wanted to start a company? And two, why isn't everyone doing this? Why wouldn't Beyond and Impossible start using your process? There's a company called Korn, K-U-O-R-N, in Britain that for the last 25 years has been doing something similar. Now, they use a different species and a different process, but still they're using microbial fungi to create high-protein products. And it's a good product. I like it. I eat it. But it doesn't really taste like meat. It tastes good if you like

it. I liken it to tofu. Not that it tastes like tofu, but it's like, if you like tofu, you like tofu and you eat tofu because you like tofu, right? You're not eating it because you can't tell the difference between it and beef. You obviously can. You just you happen to like tofu. And the same is so with corn, Q-U-R-N. I think if you like corn, you eat corn and that's that. But I wondered, was there a different species or a different process that could create a more meat-like experience? Because corn has been marketed to vegetarians. And, you know, those are people who don't necessarily think it needs to be a spot-on replacement. They just want something that tastes good and has a lot of protein. You know, corn has built a very successful business.

They sell several hundred million dollars worth of product every single year, but it's all based on one organism. And so, and they control about 99% of the microprotein market today. So imagine if you only ate pork and you didn't eat chicken or beef or turkey or fish or anything, right? And yet the world of animal protein is very diverse. All of those species I just mentioned have different flavors, different textures, different nutritional profiles, and so on. And the same is so with plant-based proteins, right? Imagine if you only ate pea protein, you never ate wheat or chickpea or fava bean or soybean or whatever. Those are all different, right? And the same is true with microbial fungi. There's thousands of species out there, and they all have different nutritional profiles, textural profiles, growth rates, and so on.

And so what we did in the early days of the Better Meat Co. was basically screen large numbers of strains to see which ones were the highest protein, fastest growing, and most meat-like in texture. And then we developed a process around those strains. We were awarded numerous patents for our technology. And then we built a pilot facility here in Sacramento to prove this technology can scale outside of the lab, which we've now done. And the next step for us is to raise the capital needed in order to build a full-scale commercial production facility, which is the next thing that we intend to do. Now, to answer your second question, Ed, about why other companies don't do it. First of all, it's very hard. We're talking about biotechnology here.

It's not just like you can, you know, set up a farm and grow mushrooms. This is not like that at mentors. It's millions and millions of dollars of CapEx. And so that alone is prohibitive for some companies because they don't want to take that risk. But then the second problem is it involves years of research that many companies just probably don't want to do. Those type of companies are the type of companies that have an R&D cycle for product development that may be one to two years before they launch a new product, whereas this is a much longer timeframe. You're talking much longer, much more expensive, just because you're basically inventing new crops right now. Yeah, I mean, the idea of it being prohibitive

from a CapEx and time perspective for companies is interesting, but it also appears to me that that would be a constraint for investors too. I know that you've raised money from big names, including Steve Jurvetson. How do they feel about this? I think back in 2020 and 2021, which has only raised most of our capital, there was a lot more enthusiasm for these type of patient capital long-term bets. Today, it's harder in the venture capital world where there's a greater demand for profitability, whereas there was much more patient capital, I would say,

when the money was free-flowing and when interest rates were lower. Now, at the same time, people like Steve Jurvetson are futurists. His fund is called Future Ventures. He's concerned not necessarily about the technologies of, let's say, 2025, but rather the technologies of, let's say, 2035 and 2045. And for him, he recognizes that, you know, first of all, we're deep spoiling the planet by raising all these animals for food. And so we need ever going to escape our pale blue dot and start traveling the cosmos, you know, they're not going to be carrying Noah's Ark in tow, right? Like they're going to have to grow meat if they want to eat meat in space. If you're on long distance cosmic tourism, if you're on the ISS, it's one thing we can ship you up beef jerky, but if you're going to be traveling to Mars, or if you're going to be traveling for any extended period of time where there's not a supply chain coming from earth, you're going to need some way to grow meat or to grow protein.

And this is a very, very promising way to do just that. And so I think that for people like Steve Jurvetson, who really is one of the smartest people I've ever spoken to in my life, honestly, he's like a polymath. He knows so much about so many topics. But the point is that I think for them, what they see is, yes, this is a way to try to make life more habitable on our own planet, but it's also a way that in the future we're going to be feeding ourselves in long-distance cosmic tourism. On health and safety, I think one thing people are concerned about with these plant-based alternatives is just how many ingredients there are and how many sort of unrecognizable processed names go onto the label to make them feel like meat.

And I'm just going to name a few of the ingredients that I saw in the Impossible Burger list. Methylcellulose, dextrose, legumaglobin, niacin, sunflower oil, and I know there's a lot of negative press around seed oils at the moment, overall 21 ingredients in total. You compare that to a steak, the ingredients are steak, which feels as a consumer actually healthier and more organic to me in a lot of ways. So my question to you would be, do you have any concerns about the amount of processing and, you know, biochemical engineering that is required to produce these meat alternatives? And if not, how do we remove the negative stigma around them? Yeah, sure.

I think, you know, look, there's some people who have a fear of like anything to do with science and food, right? And so you hear a term, let's take the first ingredient you mentioned, methylcellulose. You hear that and it sounds something like you don't know what it is, but it's just plant fiber. All it is is just a scientific way to describe plant fiber. I mean, imagine if you found out that, you know, the local restaurant was lacing its food with sodium chloride and you'd think, oh, oh, my God, what are they doing? Well, of course, sodium chloride is just it's just table salt. Right. Like so if methylcellulose just had a name, that plant fiber that just sounded more natural,

even though it's the same exact thing, I don't think that there would be a concern about it. Now, at the same time, let's think about how meat is produced. You know, these animals are genetically selected to grow so big, so fast, so they can barely walk. They're pumped full of antibiotics. They live wing to wing, beak to beak

by the tens of thousands. And when it comes down to slaughter them, most people don't want to know what happens. And in fact, the raw meat is so dangerous that you're warned to treat it like toxic waste. If raw meat gets on your kitchen counter, you have to disinfect the counter. And the reason is because there's feces in meat. E.coli, salmonella, campylobacter, these are intestinal pathogens that can sicken us if we don't literally cook the crap out of the meat. That's what we're doing, cooking the crap out of the meat. And in the case of raising cells to make meat, you don't

need to worry so much about all those intestinal pathogens because you're not growing intestines at all. You're only growing the muscle that people want to eat. And so I would do more than merely look at a list of ingredients, many of which might just be normal spices or other vitamin fortifications like niacin, which is just, you know, it's just a B vitamin, right? You know, there's not anything to it. But the question is, you know, what's actually good for us? And in the case, just take a Beyond Burger as an example. You know, the Beyond Burger has no cholesterol, unlike a regular burger. It has dramatically less saturated fat than a conventional burger, and it takes up 99% less land to make it than a conventional burger. So I'm more concerned about

the total, like you looking at the macros on a product, like how much saturated fat, how many calories, how much protein and so on, than I am about, you know, some ingredient that may sound science-y, but in reality is totally fine. Beyond the animal welfare, there is this other elephant in the room here, which as you've hinted towards is climate change. So when it comes to this industry, meat alternatives, how important are the climate concerns as compared to the animal welfare concerns in your view? Which issue should we as consumers and just humans, which should we prioritize first, assuming we had to? Regardless of whether you're concerned about the treatment of the cows or the chickens, or whether you just want a survivable planet for our civilization,

I think it's very clear that the answer is to reduce the number of animals who are raising for food. But considering the fact that governments around the world right now are spending lavishly to try to ameliorate the effects of climate change, this is an important issue that we should be making sure animal agriculture is part of. I mean, right now in the U.S., we're spending literally billions of dollars to try to onshore our clean energy system with solar and wind turbines and so on. And we're not spending that kind of money to figure out the best ways to make meat alternatives, which we really should be. I'll give you an example. If you look at certain industries right now, we basically import all of our goods from those industries from Asia. So semiconductors, solar panels, wind turbines, pretty much they're

all coming from Asia and we're importing them. That's because Asia prioritized them when we didn't. And similarly, Asia is racing to become the leader when it comes to alternative meats right now, because they know that this is a big part of the future. I mean, just in China alone, African swine fever killed one out of every two pigs in the country. One out of every two pigs died from this one ailment. And so they know we need better ways to produce protein for our populations that don't involve raising so many live whole animals. And I don't want to be in a position as an American where we're going to be importing not only our solar panels and our semiconductors and our wind turbines from Asia, but we start importing our protein because they have cheaper, more efficient

ways to produce it than we do. And that is going to be a really big problem as from a national security perspective if it comes to pass. And so I think it's absolutely imperative for the U.S. government and any government concerned about food security for its population to accelerate their own path toward animal-free proteins by issuing grants and low-interest loans to the companies that are trying to create these nascent industries within their domestic supply chains. We'll be right back. We're back with First Time Founders. You are quite different to a lot of the guests that I've had on this podcast

in that you had an entirely different career before you started this company. What about starting a company has surprised you most or perhaps caught you off guard in a way that you didn't expect? There's a great line from Ben Horowitz, who's the co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital fund. And he says in his book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, he says that when you start your own company, you will sleep like a baby because you're going to wake up every two hours and cry. And that has definitely been my experience is that this is by far the hardest thing I have

done. And I don't say that in some way where I feel like a victim. I don't. I feel very, very honored to be doing what I'm doing. I chose this path and I could leave it if I wanted to, but I don't. And the reason is because I think it's so important what we're doing for the future of the world for both humans and non-humans alike. There's just such a difficult path for entrepreneurship that I liken it to the process of basically beating your head against a wall with the conviction that the wall is going to break before your head does. There are so many hurdles from raising capital to getting a product right, to getting distribution right, to getting marketing right, to attracting the right, to getting marketing right, to attracting

the right kind of people, retaining the right kind of people. And then you have to learn that, you know, people say one thing and do other things. So people will say they're going to make an investment or they say they're going to place a purchase order or they say they're going to take a job or whatever. You have to know, like, you know, it may not happen and you have to be able to have a kind of serenity that, you know, you just accept that bad things will happen regularly. And I am a firm believer in the saying that is commonly attributed to Churchill, where he said that, when you're going through hell, just keep going. And that is how I feel about doing this. There are a number of very great moments, though, that I've had, whether it's particular partnerships that were forged, products launched, and so on that I've been extremely proud of.

So I don't mean to paint it in just a draconian light, but it can sometimes feel like a Sisyphean feat. And so what I did was I actually commissioned an artist to create a piece of artwork for my desk, which is a portrait of Sisyphus finally triumphant. And that's what I use as like my North Star to remind myself that I have to have the faith that Sisyphus eventually will get to the top. The boulder will not roll back down the hill and he will have succeeded. I mean, it's interesting that you say this

about entrepreneurship, because I could imagine that it's a very similar feeling in non-profit work. I mean, banging your head against a wall, lobbying state legislature, that also sounds quite Sisyphean to me. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, when you ask them, oh, why did you start this business? They say, oh, the reason I started this business is because I wanted to make an impact. But when it comes to making an impact in your career, you've already done a lot of that. So I'm wondering if from your experience, has being a businessman detracted from your ability to focus exclusively on impact? Are you now balancing this economic side as well?

Or perhaps it's enhanced it. I believe it's enhanced it i believe it's enhanced it yeah so i mean if you think about public service which is a very noble field people who are elected officials have to care about lots of things that their constituents care about and the reality is is that i'm really laser-like focused on one problem and that is very tough to be a single issue politician because you don't attract a wide coalition of voters. And so while I agree with you, like what I was doing in the public policy world did sometimes seem Sisyphean, especially because even after you win, you might still lose because laws can be repealed, they can be amended, and so on. And so it's like a constant fight to safeguard even what you've already accomplished. My view is that in the business world that I'm actually able to make a far bigger impact because I'm able to invent the technology that may render the problems obsolete. So instead of getting better conditions for animals on factory farms, we can just render

the factory harming of animals a relic of an archaic past. That is my goal. For 30 years, this has been the issue that's animated my life because I think it's so important, not only for the moral progress of our society, but also for safeguarding our own civilization into the future. And as a result, regardless of what manifestation that may take, whether it's non-profit work or public service or entrepreneurial work, I'm so committed to this, it's hard to imagine doing anything else. It also sounds in a way that you've been disappointed by government's response to this issue, and hence why you decided, okay, screw it, I'm going into the private sector, I'm going to build it myself.

What could the government be doing more? Sure, you're right. I mean, I did find it very frustrating that what I perceived as extremely modest animal welfare improvements took Herculean efforts to enact. But to answer your question directly, Ed, the government should be incentivizing animal-free protein companies in the same way that it is incentivizing the onshoring of semiconductors and clean energy technology. The government should be offering grants and low-interest loans for the manufacturing of animal-free proteins here in the United States. We all know Tesla would have never survived if it didn't get government assistance. SpaceX, if it hadn't started getting government contracts,

would have gone out of business. Now, you know, the U.S. is dominant in electric cars and in space technology because of those two companies. And so while for a long time the government has dramatically supported the animal slaughter industry, it's time to start supporting the animal-free meat industry and create a new type of economy for food and protein production here in the United States that not only is good for our economy and our national security, but also will help dramatically reduce the environmental footprint of the food industry. How would that play out? You mentioned like low interest loans. The first thing that comes to mind for me is like the EV tax credits. Is that something you could see happening tax credits in some way to lower the cost of animal free protein and meat? That's a great idea. I

mean, the EV tax credit is something that the consumer gets like the person who buys the car gets. And so because, you know, they're making a multi 10 million five figure expenditure, it's harder to do when you're paying, you know, five or $10 a pound for meat on that particular thing is people are motivated by $7,500 coming back to them, whereas they may not be motivated by 25 cents or 50 cents coming back to them. But you could see, for example, like what happened in California with credits that automakers were getting that caused many of them to have to pay Tesla, because they weren't producing enough clean energy cars. And so you could see something like that for meat producers that could incentivize them to get into the animal-free meat game themselves. Ideally, what you would see is not a bunch of small startups like the Better Meat Co.,

but rather Tyson and Hormel and Maple Leaf and the huge meat companies themselves becoming the purveyors of these products, which would cause this to happen a lot faster. But we really need more manufacturing. Like, that's really what it comes down to here. More bigger fermenters, more manufacturing plants. And those are the types of things that agencies like the USDA, the Department of Energy and so on should be giving low interest loans or grants to helping create that domestic supply of biomanufacturing here in the United States. And so as an example, like my company, the Better Mico, you know, we need to spend tens of millions of dollars in order to build our own biomanufacturing plant to create our

mycoprotein-based products. Why should we have to go out and try to find venture capitalists to fund that, especially in a very difficult capital market like we have today for a startup venture? Instead, you Instead, the government could be offering 20-year low-interest loans or even grants in the way that they are now on semiconductors. They're giving literally billions of dollars of grants to semiconductor companies to build in places like Arizona and Texas. If a Maple Leaf or a Tyson, you woke up tomorrow morning and you saw a headline, Maple Leaf to build microprotein fermentation bioreactor facility. Would that be good or bad

news for you just as an entrepreneur who's trying to build and make a profit off of your company? Well, first of all, I would be elated because I think it would be really important for the world. Second, I would offer the devices to them, our technology, since we already have six years of R&D that we've done and numerous patents that are granted to us that they could benefit from. And third, the fact that they were doing it, I think, would interest other venture capitalists and funding other people doing the same because the VCs would say, hey, Tyson knows what they're doing. Let's do it ourselves too. So I think in all, it would be really good. Final questions. What is the biggest personal challenge that you have faced while building this company? There's so many, but I would say the frustration of being limited by the amount of capital

that we have is by far the biggest problem. I always joke that people say, oh, money isn't the answer to your problems. It's actually the only answer to the problems of entrepreneurship. That would solve every problem we have. Like that would solve. It's a great point. And so that is, I think, the biggest frustration is,

you know, trying to advance biotechnology on a truly shoestring budget where, you know, we are begging, borrowing to try to, you know, get the equipment we need to try to build the manufacturing capacity that we need. That's the biggest struggle. The Better Meat Co. is currently fundraising, and we have a great investor base. You mentioned Steve Jurvetson, but there's numerous other brand name investors who

are already part of this organization and who want to continue investing in it into the future. And so if somebody listening here is interested in owning a part of our company and therefore a part of the future of protein, I'd love to hear from you. Just go to bettermeat.co. Again, that's bettermeat.co and you can get in touch. And final question, if you could give one piece of advice to your former self when you started the company, what would it be? solution, get as much as you can. The number one reason that startups fail is because they run out of money. And so there's a theory of fundraising called the hors d'oeuvres theory, which is when you're at a party and the waiters come around with the trays of the hors d'oeuvres, the best time to take that hors d'oeuvres is every time they pass because they might not be back. You think there's an endless supply of

stuffed mushrooms back there in that kitchen, but in reality, there might be a limited supply of stuffed mushrooms. So, you know, every time, you know, that they come by and offer hors d'oeuvres, you should take it. And so, you know, it's hard to think about that at a time when capital was far more free flowing, like three or four years ago in the venture space. But now that we're in a more famine period and valuations are dramatically lower, you think back and look at other opportunities that you had and wonder, could we have done something differently and raised even more capital back then, even if we suffered more dilution? Take the stuffed mushroom. That's a good place to end. Paul Shapiro is the CEO and co-founder of The Better Meat Co.

Paul, thanks so much for your time. Ed, it's a pleasure to be with you. I'm giving you a virtual fist bump from Sacramento. There we go. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alison Weiss, and our executive producers are Jason Stavis and Catherine Dillon. Thank you for listening to First Time Founders from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Tune in tomorrow for Property Markets. Thank you.