This Week in Startups - Ask Jason: investing in similar startups, pitch deck tips + MycoWorks Co-Founder Sophia Wang | E1630

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

First up, Jason answers some founder questions! (1:46) Then, MycoWorks Co-Founder Sophia Wang joins for this week's edition of The Next Unicorns! (10:12) (0:00) Molly tees up today's segments! (1:46) Ask Jason! What happens if a VC finds a great startup/founder to invest in, but they've already invested in a similar business (4:31) Ask Jason! What is the ideal number of slides in a pitch deck? What are some general tips to spruce up a pitch deck? (8:34) LinkedIn Marketing -  Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at LinkedIn.com/nextunicorn (10:12) Molly welcomes MycoWorks Co-Founder Sophia Wang to discuss her founding story, why she got into Mycelium solutions, and more! (19:37) OpenPhone - Get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/twist  (21:05) Sophia breaks down the technology process at MycoWorks (27:39) MycoWorks's unusual fundraising journey (30:15) Blueground - Get up to $1000 off your booking at https://promos.theblueground.com/twist  (31:43) Sophia explains her role as Chief Culture Officer, and explains some of the brands they work with FOLLOW MycoWorks: https://twitter.com/MycoWorksInc FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1

Hey, everybody. Happy Wednesday, big show today. We're almost done with this season of the next unicorns. And today we have an awesome interview for you. This is right up my alley. It's all about mycelium, my new favorite thing. But first, Jason is back to answer some ask Jason questions from our founder, University founders. And then my mycelium interview, I'm interviewing Micow Works co-founder Sophia Wang. Microwworks is a biomaterial startup that's actually developed, a natural alternative to leather, among other things, using mushroom mycelium technology. It's fascinating interview. It's all about art and technology and a whole new kind of material. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing. To redeem a free

$100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to LinkedIn.com slash next unicorn open phone. As a startup founder, a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back, but using your personal cell phone number as your company number isn't one of them. Open Phone makes it easy to get business phone numbers for you and your team right on top of your existing devices. Visit openphone.com slash twist to get 20% off your first six months. And Blue Ground is revolutionizing the rental game with its global network of designer furnished apartments that can be seamlessly booked for a month, a year or longer. Get up to $10,000 off your booking with Blueground. Visit promos. Theblueground.com slash twist for more info. Feel at home, free to roam with Blueground. Question from April, who is the founder of Future Identified. What happens if you find a great

startup to invest in, but you already have invested in a direct competitor or a company that could be considered a competitor? Great. If you are a venture firm, you are going to be investing in maybe 30 names, 30 logos, 30 companies per fund. You don't want to have two companies in that fund in the same space. You don't want Uber and Lyft. You've already placed a bet on a market, so you're going to pick Uber or Lyft. Now, sometimes you may have invested in a food company like Postmates and DoorDash, and you invested in Uber.

And then Uber says, by the way, our plans are to launch a competitor. That's not your fault. That's not the venture capital firm's fault. It's nobody's fault. and in that case, as an investor, you would create a firewall between the two companies. One partner would be on the board of one company, the other would be on the board of the other, and they would not share information, they would keep it at arm's length, and you can generally trust a VC firm to be professional about that. They have no interest in causing

problems or having reputation damage. Now, in an accelerator, Ycombinator launches accelerator found a university, you might have hundreds of companies a year, tech stars, and so you do not have competition rules. If you're going to an accelerator, do not expect there to be any rules about competition. There's just too many companies, and the companies are so nascent, they're so early that they're going to pivot. They're going to change their business plans. What frequently happens, this happened to us in a space called influencer marketing. We had companies like Grin and Captivate, and we had another one called Statosphere. All three of these companies had completely different influencer marketing products. One of them was a marketplace,

one of it was doing SaaS, another one was doing micro influencers. Over time, they all started to overlap a little bit in terms of providing software to people who were hiring influencers. So we've had to, okay, if all three of them went through our accelerator, they all kind of found the same answer, which was we should charge for software, and on the margins, they overlap a little bit. So we just have to be careful not to share information between those companies and those companies, I think, understand, hey, they were part of an accelerator. That's what's going to happen here. You do, as a founder, want to research the venture firm and make sure that they haven't already invested in Uber if you're making an Uber killer. If you're making a Slack killer,

you don't want Slack as one of Slack's venture capital firms who's on the board. You don't want to go pitch them. You want to take them off your list. And if they ask you to pitch, you say, Well, we think it's, you just tell them straight up. Don't you think this is competitive with Slack? We're building another communications platform that competes with it. So just understand that. And that's your job. Question from Helen, founder of Jovial.

What is the ideal amount of slides in a deck when pitching investors? What are some pitch deck strategies to help founders raise money? Okay, great question from Helen. Generally, people are today sending a short deck, which could also be called a teaser deck by email. Five to ten slides. It gives you the overview of what the company is. he's doing, but keeps you wanting more. So it's enough to tease you into taking a meeting.

Just like a three-minute pitch, like you'll hear at an accelerator, we call it the trailer of the startup. It's like a trailer of a movie. It's not intended to give you the full experience of the movie, but boy, it's so exciting. You're probably want to go see Lord of the Rings, right? The trailer is so good. And so that's the goal of a short deck, five to ten slides, a teaser deck. And then the full deck, I think people generally are looking for a 15 to 20 minute pitch, and a 15 to 20 minute pitch means some people think a slide should move every 30 seconds, other people think every 20 seconds or a minute. I like one slide having one message. So if you're going to put four different messages on one slide, consider breaking that up. If that slide with four messages on it would have taken a minute to explain, you were going to do four 15 seconds slides. People have all kinds of different opinions about this. I think what's important is that the deck does not have superfluous information. Superfluous information should go in an appendix. So if you have 15 slides and they explain the business perfectly, great.

Then if you have market research or if you have a detail like our product roadmap, you can put that into the appendix. So, okay, you get to the 15th or 16th slide. That ends our primary slide deck. In the appendix, I have some things you can look at like market size, the competitive analysis or a deeper competitive analysis so you can go there. And I think that is the state of the art today in terms of decks. Make sure a deck is gorgeous and simple, clean. And remember one other tip I have for people is,

in addition to one slide, one point, you're making one point per slide, not eight or nine, is don't make slides text heavy. Some people take their notes, a paragraph, and they put it on the slide. And then they start talking about 10 different things while there's a paragraph on the slide. It's too much information. If you find yourself wanting to write paragraphs, that's another format for raising money. It's called the deal memo format. You should do both. You should write a deal memo and you can look up YouTube's deal memo. That's the internal document written by venture capitalists to their other partners in the firm. And some founders, correctly so, are writing deal memos to explain to people what they're trying to do with their

startup. And so a deal memo can be a great way for you to write a lot of copy, you know, maybe two or three pages, maybe a thousand words in, you know, call it five, six, seven sections. And that's like a narrative version of what you're doing. The visual version is the deck. Some VCs are obsessed with decks. Some VCs are obsessed with deal memos. Some folks like me want a quick product demo and then I want to talk to you. Every VC's got a different style.

If you have each of those available, you're going to look really sophisticated. So if you say to a VC, I've got three choices for you. I could run you through my deck. I could do a product demo. live product demo, or I have the deal memo. We could just read the deal memo right now together and just take two minutes to read it. It's a two or three minute read and then we can have a discussion. If you do that, you look like you're super confident and competent. And that's what you're trying to do when you're meeting with investors is look more competent,

more capable in the fundraising process than other founders do. If you look super capable and competent when you're pitching your company and during the fundraising process, your diligence is great, your deal memo is great, your terms are reasonable, you've got a great attorney, all of those things signal, hey, this is a great investment for me to make. This is a great person for me to partner with on the next 10 years on this business. So I hope that was helpful and we'll see you all next time on Ask Jason. Hey everybody, I'm here with my pal Tom Eshbacher. He is the senior sales manager at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. And today, We're going to talk about marketing for startups.

And LinkedIn did a great new internal report called today in startup marketing. Welcome to the program, Tom. Thanks, Jason. One of the main topics covered in the report is validating product market fit. That's so essential. So how does marketing play a role in validating PMF? One of the challenges from the pandemic was it disrupted normal feedback loops that startups get. And particularly when trying to scale assumptions based on small sample sizes.

You can't go to conferences anymore. You can't do events. And so we've seen a clever adoption of LinkedIn's free analytics tools here. And one that's become table stakes, and I mean 92% of Series A startups are using it, is the LinkedIn Insight tag. A feature here is the website demographics functionality that provides a valuable view on your site visitors' professional attributes. What's their job function, their seniority level, what company are they at,

the industry, the company size. This is all a bunch of actionable insight. that you can use to back up your instincts around who your addressable market is and help inform early marketing strategies. We think your B2B marketing on LinkedIn ads and get $100 credit on your next campaign. I kid you not, a hundee coming to you in free advertising and marketing. Go to LinkedIn.com slash next unicorn to get $100 off. Again, LinkedIn.com slash next unicorn for $100 off.

Of course, terms and conditions do apply because they're giving you a hundee. Hey, everybody. All right, if you have listened to my Sunday interviews for this weekend climate startups, you have heard me talk to Joanne Rodriguez, the CEO of a company called Mycocycle, which has created or is creating a fungus-based process to turn manufacturing waste into sustainable building materials. And I think an entire other company doing something similar, mushrooms and more specifically, mycelium is becoming quickly a major force in the future of sustainability. So today on Next Unicorns, we're talking to Sophia Wang, the co-founder, Chief of Culture, and former CEO of Micow Works. Micow Works is a biomaterial startup that develops natural alternatives to engineered wood, leather, and plastics using mushroom mycelium technology.

Sophia, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Let's go through your kind of crazy 2022 funding cycle to start. In January, you raised $125 million in the Series C, led by Prime Movers Lab. Then in October, GM Ventures made a $63 million strategic investment in Micowworks. Overall, the company has raised $188 million in 2022. Tell us about your momentum right now. Congratulations.

You're on fire. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Well, next year will be our 10th year. We incorporated in 2013. So it's definitely been a journey.

I would say the big focus this year, given all the fundraise, is scale up, as you know, the biggest challenge for a startup. So I'm actually, so my background is a view of our location in the Bay Area, but I'm actually calling in from Union, South Carolina, where we are building our newest commercial scale facility that is going to give us a capacity of millions of sheet of our material, a year. year. Right now, our capacity in the Bay Area is about 10,000 sheets of our material per year. So we are in the middle of a giant turning point for the company and a growth moment, and that includes growing our team by hundreds of people. So fundraising is there to support all of that. We also have an amazing run of product launches, which we can absolutely talk about. Definitely. Okay, so I want to talk about all of that. But first, I want to go back to kind of the origin story, 2013. What got you into, you know, mycelium is the hot new thing in climate tech now,

but back then, what led you in this direction and led you to start this? Yeah. So to take a step back, mycelium, new word for some people, but I would say increasingly over the last 10 years, more and more people know what this means. So just as a basic definition for our audience, mycelium is the root structure of mushrooms. So you can visualize it like a mass of fire. white threads that you'll find in the soil or in the forest floor. And we have a technology platform called fine mycelium that is engineering mycelium to grow into a durable and aesthetic and high performance material that has the qualities and hand feel and emotional aesthetic response that leather does. So it has applications in fashion luxury, automotive, and anywhere you find

leather today. So how did we get to this point? We are a biomaterals company started by artists. We are founded by artists in the Bay Area and this technology came out of an artist studio practice. So my co-founder, Phil Ross, back in the 90s, learned about mycelium first through medicinal mushrooms, actually in the 1980s moving to the Bay Area. It was the height of the AIDS epidemic, anti-retroviral medications were hard to come by, and alternative medications were what were available for patients of AIDS or cancer. And my co-founder was working in hospice care work at the time and learned about the remarkable immune-supporting properties of Rishi mushrooms, started growing Rishi mushrooms at home for medicinal use for his patients, and learned about the amazing qualities

of mycelium as a moldable, castable, material suitable for design, art, and architecture. So through the 90s into the early 2000s, he was creating artworks and sculptures out of mycelium and gaining the interest of entities around the world. Phil and I connected in 2007 through the art community in the Bay Area as an artist myself and we collaborated together. And as more and more people and entities around the world, we're interested in using Phil's mycelium materials for their products. Phil reached out to me, to co-found microworks. So that was back in 2012 when we started talking about it and we found it in 2013 and it's been a wild ride since then. That is so awesome. That is one of the best

origin stories I can think of actually. And I have so many questions about the nuts and bolts. Then where in that process did you sort of land on, okay, we should be replacing materials? And was that like a sustainability driven decision? Was it practical? Was it sort of like, okay, as we're turning from art to startup, that is where the market share might be? Yeah, great question. And so the first thing I'll point out is that we never set out to replace materials. What happened was mycelium presented itself through Phil's artwork as a remarkable new material. So we do talk about find mycelium is actually a new class of material. We're not out to replace leather or even plastic alternatives to leather. It is a new material that stands shoulder to shoulder with traditional

beautiful materials like leather. And our move to that as a product happened within the first two years of starting the company. So Phil's artworks had initially suggested more rigid structural products like things for building or interior architecture. And it was actually through connecting with the fashion industry with a shoe brand that we realized that more flexible forms of mycelium could be used as the upper for a shoe or for the insul or something like that. And it was an amazing fit. There was remarkable demand and interest. I think the aesthetic, the unique aesthetic qualities of mycelium appeals to designers and brands who are looking for new alternative materials that allow for new design possibilities and mycelium fit that bill. And so basically once we recognized

that there was that fit. Interest just grew and grew, and so it was very, very obviously where we needed to take the product. Talk to me about that aesthetic. Are you wearing it right now? Because you do have this sort of beautiful, for those who aren't watching, you have this sort of beautiful milky white button down. I was wondering if you were modeling. I am not yet, but I am so excited because my very first order of direct-to-consumer products

made with our material. And so the finished form of our fine my sealing material is called Rashi, which we named in honor of the mushroom that we use. And it's from our most recent product release, which is with Allen Street, which is a manufacturer of fine leather goods. And I got myself a wallet and a card holder and a laptop cover and a fanny pack. And I have to tell you, you know, it took nearly 10 years for me to be able to just, you know, go and have an online shopping experience to get a product made with our material. and I'm so excited to receive it and I bought multiple ones to give to my family because they've been asking me for years

like when are we going to be able to buy something? So now I have it. So I will have it soon. That's so awesome. Yeah. That's amazing. Well, so then tell us about, describe that aesthetic for us,

since, you know, many people may not be familiar with mycelium and then it's this kind of new material. Talk about the properties that make it so unique. Yeah. So we offer a few different, you know, skews or products of our fine mycelium material. And the natural, the most natural form of it, when it's first harvested, comes out somewhat like this sort of, you know, milky, milky white, off-white

color that I'm wearing now. But mycelium, because it's a mass of fine threads, it is interwoven, and it has its own signature grain. It is organic material. It is, like I said before, non-animal, non-plastic, our base material is entirely mycelium. So it has a buttery, smooth feel of a natural material and through the finishing process that we follow in partnership with our heritage tanneries, who are applying wisdom that they have from hundreds of years of knowing how to finish luxury leathers for the finest brands in the world, they are applying that knowledge and discovering new ways of working with a new material that performs like leather. but actually is an entirely different natural material.

So when people see our material, they say it has an amazing sheen, has an amazing warmth, it breathes, it transmits warmth, and, you know, has like depth depending on the color and the tanning and dyeing that we do. And so we have a natural, we have a white, and we have a black. Listen, lots of founders are Lucy Goosey with their personal phone numbers, and that causes tons of downstream problems. You start putting your personal phone number in company documents, you start using it for sales calls, and that makes things messy. You won't know who's calling.

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What is the, to the extent that you can without giving away the secret sauce? But like, how hard is it to do this? That's a great question. So the technology, we call it fine mycelium, both the new class of material and the process. And it has a fairly simple set of inputs, which is just, you know, wood chips, wood sawdust. That's what the species of mushroom that we use likes to eat. And a little bit of water. And the inoculum, so the spawn from the fungus.

And a little bit of nutrients. And we lay that into a tray, a proprietary designed tray, that is. is about two by three feet. It allows for gas exchange and control. And of course, we have an environment where we can do baseline temperature control and light control. And it grows in that tray for a series of weeks. And we do have some proprietary interventions and treatments that we do as it grows. And this is also the stage at which we can do customizations according to what our brand partners are looking for in terms of performance or adding in a composite material, for instance, like another textile.

And after a number of weeks, we peel the sheet off of the tray, off of its growing substrate, and then we stabilize it and then send it to our Tanri partners for the finishing process. So it's, yeah, it's a matter of weeks. And that is a remarkable advantage for our process in relation to the footprint, carbon expenditure of an animal-based material. Right. Like if you think about the process of just sewing a leather wallet, that sounds shorter than the process you've described. But if you think about raising an animal, all of the feedstock that would go into that, the slaughterhouse process, I mean, it's a lot more.

Yes. It's an entirely different world. A wallet effectively grows in a matter of weeks. Yes. Yes. How much space does that take? you know, when we talk about scaling a solution, what will it look like in terms of physical footprint? So right now, our facility in the Bay Area is about 25,000 square feet. And we are able to produce tens of thousands of sheets per year because we have a vertical racking system.

So the trays can move through a fairly dense storage system for the life of its cycle. And if you consider the footprint that's required for something that's based in agriculture or based in, animal, you know, livestock maintenance. This is a much tighter square footage in relation to that. Right. So it's more efficient space-wise. And then- Absolutely. And then how big is a sheet? Like, what can you make from a sheet? Our standard sheet is two by three feet, which aligns really perfectly with existing processes for our, you know, designers that we work with the brands. We are not constrained by size, however. Back in 2016, after we got through our accelerator program, We did the Indy Bio Accelerator program here in the Bay Area.

We, at Pitch Day, we demonstrated, we showed a sheet that was the size of a half cowhide to show that we were not constrained. It's really just your growing surface, your growing container size. Okay. So the future, you think, holds all kinds of goods. I mean, GM is a strategic investor. So presumably we're talking about, you know, car seats and as not car seats that babysit in, you know. Yes. The upholstery.

Appaltery. Thank you. All the upholstery and the trim everywhere that leather can go. And yeah, I think brands are quite interested in that aspect of our process where we are not constrained by size. We can actually grow to form potentially one day. And so what is the Micow Works business model? Like who are your customers? So our customers at current and you've named one of them as strategic partner GM. The first partner that we announced with was Hermes. And so the The strategy right now is to work with luxury and to also then expand out from that with partners like GM who have a volume in reach that can really help us meet the vision of the company, which is to grow the future of materials, which, you know, is an ambitious goal that requires broad impact, broad adoption. So the partners that we have been public with so far and we're working with many, many more that I can't disclose at the moment. Are Hermes and GM Allen Street that made the goods that I bought.

Your micro and a luxury hat designer based in L.A. Nick Fouquet. You should just know that the producer chat right now, we want and we immediately were like, mushroom Birkin, we want it. Yeah, so they, yes, we all do. Which leads we all do. But which leads me to a question about pricing. So are you working with premium providers right now because it's ultimately a premium price? Like is it still more expensive than, I don't know, Wilson leather or something? So I can't speak directly to price. And that's, of course, you know, specific to our relationships

with each brand. But I will say that Rishi, our finished fine mycelium product is an elevated product. It has the look feel of a luxury leather. And given the size and the avail of our operations right now, the availability and the demand and also the aesthetic quality, the performance qualities that we've achieved, the alignment with luxury just made sense. Right. Do you imagine a future in which you are growing, though, a product that could be pretty broadly accessible? Is that a matter of scale? It is absolutely a matter of scale. And I do think that the partnership with GM speaks to that ambition. I think, you know, if you think about the leather unit costs that go into automotive, this is a relationship that we're building now.

Yeah. And then do you intend to have the business model be this kind of wholesale model going forward? Do you imagine a scenario in which you would ever have branded goods yourself? Direct to consumers, obviously, a hard business. You know. Future is open. I think right now we are so busy supplying the brands that we are working with who are the most exciting brands in the world.

And I'm really looking forward to when we can share more names and then your future. So there's plenty to do in partnership with them at the moment that, you know, I'll leave that question open for now. Yeah. The future is unwritten. All right. So let's talk about the fundraising history a little bit on your March to Next Unicorn, which is, of course, what we're all hoping for here.

According to, so you founded Micowworks in 2013, according to Pitchbook, didn't raise any money until that accelerator you mentioned in 2016. Correct. And then didn't raise your Series A until 2020. Are you just incredibly capital efficient? or was this like a hard sell or maybe both? Yeah, I would say that, you know, in the nearly 10 years that we've been in the field, the knowledge and the understanding and the consumer prioritization, the values, shifts,

like all of that has evolved with us. So we were perhaps slightly ahead of that curve when we first started. We were also looking for our product market fit. As soon as we found that product market fit, which actually coincided with joining Indy Bio, the ramp up accelerated. And, you know, I would say that if, you know, the knowledge today that that has been built in the industry generally and also by companies that have been inspired by what we do has really informed the public as well as investors as well as media so that, you know, it's a much easier conversation to have now than it was in 2013. Yeah. And then talk about that sort of consumer conversation. Do you, is it an animal welfare conversation? Is an environment conversation? Like what is it? What type. of awareness is it that is driving this kind of additional interest? It's really coming from all of those

angles. I mean, there's there's an entry to what we're doing, no matter what your passion is. There's some people who just, as you said at the outset of the conversation, are just passionate about mushrooms. And it never occurred to them that they could be used in this way. There's also people who are passionate about, you know, reducing our carbon footprint, especially around the use of animal-based products. And then, you know, I would say the majority of our customers that we're working with are, you know, our brand partners and their consumers are just really moved by the aesthetic quality of this material. They say that, you know, they either say, I cannot believe it's not leather, or they point out all the ways in which it feels unique and compelling and enticing

and that they're really curious about using it. So the reason to buy might not even be, you know, we talk about, it might not even be a values-based decision. It's literally like, this is better. It is nicer. It is magical. It is. And that is a value in itself, right? And that's, I think, why fashion was such a great fit for us. It started out as an aesthetic material for an art practice. And that is what appeals to the, you know, the creatives we're working with material now. So I have to say the only regret that I have about the pandemic is that I did not appropriately take advantage of the opportunity to be a digital nomad. I did this recently in a house I rented. And it was incredible. I was so productive. It was so quiet. There were no dishes staring at me. I'm sure a ton of you listening right now are working fully remote. And we know that a lot of remote workers love living that digital nomad lifestyle. And if that nomad life is for you, you need to check out Blue Ground. Blue Ground is a global network of beautiful move-in-ready apartments that come with everything you need for working remote. This is such a genius idea. They manage over 10,000 apartments across 15 countries and 20,000.

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And here is the best part. Get up to $1,000 off your booking at promos. Dot theblueground.com slash twist. That's promos. Dot theblueground.com slash twist for up to $1,000 off. What is, I just have questions about you and your role there. Your title there is Chief Culture Officer. Talk to me about that.

What does that mean? As Chief of Culture at MicahWorks, I help steer the values and the culture of the companies. So we have a very strong foundation of values that come out of our founding story. And they are be mycelial, cultivate quality, and grow the future. And this is all about, you know, basically being an inclusive culture, being one that cultivates innovation from a diversity of thinking and one that's producing the highest quality product and the most versatile technology that we can with what we know. So I basically touch a lot of parts of the company. There's a lot of making sure that we are operationalizing these values and everything that we do internally as well

as externally. I mean, I feel like that's a really important part of your conversation here because it's a really different kind of company. It's a, it's a different, you've described it not as a replacement, but an entirely new product. And it sounds like you are all. also trying to build a different kind of company, which frankly, in the venture space, with our obsession with Manchild founders, we're just going there. Yeah, I like the idea of a next unicorn that is based in art and grounded in culture. I do too. I think it's an amazing opportunity to expand the conversation about what it means to be a

sustainable and ethical company and practice, what it means to have. positive impact. You know, I love that we're being framed in a conversation about, you know, the next unicorns. And that is for you to decide how you define what a unicorn is. But for me, that means you have positive, ubiquitous impact. And if we can build within our walls at microworks, the kind of team, community, culture that we'd like to exist in and be in in the world at large, that's a legacy that I could be proud of. And we're doing that by way of bringing into being this technology and new material that itself could be remarkably beneficial to the fashion industry, automotive and beyond. So we've got a mission and a vision that speaks deeply to how we want to be

as people, as well as how we want to impact the industry with how we make things. How does that or has it impacted how you approach the business? Are there, we're not going to name names, obviously, but are there partners you wouldn't want to work with? Are there products you wouldn't want to make. Are there things that you, decisions that you would make that are in keeping with this culture? The thing about being a biomaterial startup is that it is very hard. It is not like writing code or, you know, I mean, not that that that isn't that that's easy. I mean, that's hard too, but, you know, we're making a physical good. Right. Adams. Exactly. It's Adams. So actually, by way of finding the right partners, you automatically go through a process where you align in values.

If you aren't aligned in values as far as why we're working on this long-term project together and what our intent and output is that we agree on, it's not going to work as a partnership. So, for instance, Hermes, we've been in partnership with them since 2016, and we announced the partnership in 2020. So this is a long-term commitment with brands that see the value in being early adopters and partners in the development of this technology. And so by virtue of that, we know that they share our values in terms of, you know, taking the time to create something that is actually aesthetically excellent to our standards and

theirs. Got it. So like no one's coming. If someone's coming to you and they want this product and their consumers want this product, they are necessarily almost certainly aligned. Yeah. And if they understand the road that they will join us on, the journey that they'll join us on in bringing this to their customers to our standards and theirs.

Right. I don't think a lot of people, I did not realize that Hermes really does a lot of sustainability development work. That I wouldn't have thought of that brand as being aligned in that way. And so it's interesting how it's like a halo effect for the companies that you work with. Yeah, I think it's a look out for for companies and brands that are talking about their efforts in a slightly different way. Like there's a very obvious way to talk about sustainability. And then there's a way when you're talking about longevity or heritage or quality. because that in itself is a sustainability principle, right?

If you create for longevity, then it is by nature sustainable. Right. One Birkenbag forever. You just need one. You just need one. Some people need 10, 10, 20, but some people just need one. It's the most just one. All right.

Well, then this gets us to this sort of question of the future, which is ultimately, at least now, a question about scale, which is where we started. These raises are about scaling. how do you kind of broadly intend to scale? Are you just like go for it? Expand as fast as possible. Get this out there? Well, right now I'm in the thick of it. I'm in Union, South Carolina, you know, looking down the road at where our new facility is going to be. So at present, the idea is build a successful facility here that's going to take us to several million square feet of our material a year at full capacity. We have our partnership with GM that will support the development of, you know, technologies and processes at the scales that a company like GM

would need. So we are certainly looking towards additional facilities. And I think we'll do it in a very thoughtful way in terms of the brands who are walking alongside us. Where did it just sounded curiosity? Where in the Bay Area? Did you get started? I'm in Oakland. Yeah. Oh, so we literally started in a basement in San Francisco and we moved within a few years to a garage in Emeryville. And yeah, okay. The same corner now where we have our plant where we're doing 10,000 sheets of material per year. Okay. So the first plant is there in Emoryville. We could go visit if we needed to. Yes. Yeah, the interior will look just like this image in my background.

And then you've described so far, just like some bits and bobs, you've described so far products that are a little more like rigid leather in some ways. I wonder, like, what is the range of possibility? Could we see find mycelium genes in the future? So we're working with the full range of applications, accessories and articles of clothing across all of our brand partners. So really anywhere you can imagine leather going, we have been working on it. Amazing. And then how many like people work in a factory? What are those jobs like?

So a total team size right now is about 160. And with our growth here in South Carolina, we'll hire about 300, 350 more. So, you know, right now our manufacturing side of our organization is probably just under 50% of our team, but that's going to grow in proportion as we create more facilities. And then where do you get the feedstock, like the wood? They primarily would this kind of mushroom? Yes, exactly. Because it's a biomaterial and a biomaterial. Exactly. So if you think of the feedstock, the wood or plant sawdust or wood sawdust, it's really byproducts from, you know, lumber and agriculture. And so we have a supply chain team that finds, us, you know, masses of what our mycelium likes to eat. And is there, do you have any, have you been here by any supply chain constraints? Oh, absolutely. We're not, you know,

we're not alone in that, you know, the last few years through COVID, um, certainly challenging. And so it's a continuous evolution and response to our, you know, our materials environment to make sure that we have the inputs that we need. And is there any, um, like, cool story there, are the inputs that would otherwise be burned and released carbon or, you know, end up in landfill? Absolutely. What's your ideal feedstock situation? From the beginning, there was this vision about how portable this technology could be because, you know, fungal mycelium fungi, you can find it around the world.

And wherever it is, it is adapted to its natural environment there. It is eating the plant-based materials that are there. So if you think about, you know, a future where eventually we have, facilities around the world and you're using like a localized strain and you're using localized, um, you know, byproducts from your lumber agricultural industry. There's a lot of potential there. Absolutely. I love it. And then last question, are both or either of you still making art? I certainly am. Um, I would say that, you know, as you evolve as a founder, you take on different roles and you have to grow, you know, with non attachment to who you thought you were and who you

think you're going to be. And it makes for an art practice. that is very rich and inclusive. So for me, everything that I care about and I'm curious about is continuous with what I do at Micowworks. And it inspires me and absolutely a lot of work and writing has come out of what I'm doing for the company. Amazing. Sophia Wang is a co-founder, Chief of Culture and at one time CEO of Micow Works.

Hopefully, an ex-unicorn, already kind of an ex-unicorn, actually. Very unique animal in this world. I love it. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thanks for the time. All right. Thanks so much to Sophia.

but for joining tomorrow. Our guys, Vinny and Sunny, are back for another crypto roundtable. I know you've been missing that and there's a lot to talk about. It's going to be a great episode. Stay tuned.