This Week in Startups - Self-destructive traits of VCs & founders + Air Protein CEO Dr. Lisa Dyson | E1534

Episode Date: August 14, 2022

First up, Molly and Jason break down self-destructive founder and VC traits (1:37). Then, Molly interviews Air Protein CEO Dr. Lisa Dyson on how they turn carbon dioxide into protein and how they are innovating in the booming alternative meat space! (21:42) (0:00) Jason intros the Sunday show! (1:37) VC Sunday School: Self-destructive founder tendencies (9:15) OpenPhone - Get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/twist  (10:45) Self-destructive investor tendencies (15:13) How to do damage control if you take money from a disruptive investor (20:35) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist (21:42) Molly intros Dr. Lisa Dyson who explains Air Protein's founding story, mission, and the science behind it (30:35) Helpware - Go to https://helpware.com/TWIST to get $1000 off your first invoice (31:51) How Air Protein differs from traditional meat (36:33) Air Meat's fundraising history and creation process

All right, everybody, it is the Sunday edition of this week in startups. You know what we do here. Every Sunday, VC. Sunday school. Molly and I talk about the self-destructive tendencies, the unforced errors, the self-owns of VCs and founders. And we go through all of the behavioral warning signs that could kill your startup. Then Molly interviews Dr. Lisa Dyson. She is the CEO of a startup called Air Meat. Okay, airmeat is literally a startup pulling carbon dioxide out of the air and using it to create meat. I don't know. know nothing about science, but I'm looking forward to this interview. It sounds pretty crazy to me. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This weekend startups is brought to you by 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. Lemon.io. Need to speed up your product development without draining your budget?

Hire vetted engineers from Europe at lemon.io. Go to lemon.io slash twist to get 15% off for the first four weeks. And Helpware helps you outsource the tasks that slow your team down. From data entry to world-class customer support, helpware can help make you bionic. Go to helpware.com slash twist to get $1,000 off your team. first invoice. That's H-E-W-A-R-E dot com slash twist. All right, everybody. It's Sunday. It means VC Sunday school, and I did a little prompt.

I just thought we'd hear from the audience. We've done over six months of these where you had questions, I answered them. So maybe the audience wants to get in on the action. Yeah, love it. And so we got one. So tell us what the audience, and for those of you are tuning in for the first time, every Sunday, Molly and I will talk about her journey as a venture capitalist. She's now in her seventh month and she's made a bunch of investments. She's joined the point of a company. If you want to see her deal memos, the syndicate.com slash climate, you can join the party and invest as little as one, two, three, four, five, K. If you're an accredited investor, do your homework. A lot of disclaimers there, but it's only for accredited investors right now. Very apologetic about that, but eventually

we hope the SEC will allow civilians who are not accredited to come in and join the party and plays very small bets in companies that are very risky, but that could have great outcomes for society and perhaps even a great return on investment. So congratulations on your seventh month here. And what was the best reply we got? Yeah, it's really happening. Compuilize wrote to us and said, this is just sort of, this is definitely a prompt all in its own. Self-destructive behaviors commonly seen in startups. Okay, self-destructive founder tendencies. What are the things? Because look, we are betting, especially at this early stage, we're betting in, in great ideas, you have markets that in some cases still need to be proven with product

market fit that might be in progress. And sometimes everything seems to be firing on all cylinders, but great companies still go away. So like, what is it? What goes wrong? This question is self-destructive behaviors commonly seen in startups. So I am going to include investors in this. Ah, okay. Not just founders. Right. Because there are self-destructive things that investors do too. Let's start with the founders and the team. The most self-destructive behavior is distraction. Focus is what makes for great outcomes. And when you drift and you're not committed and you're not focused,

it's very hard to have a really world-class, game-changing outcome. The people who succeed in the world are the ones who are obsessed. Full stop. If you're not obsessed, it's not going to have an outlier. these things do not happen by accident. People like to think they happen by accident. And again, back to, you know, people's cognitive bias.

They will look at why Google was successful and give you every reason of why it was the free food. They'll look at Oracle and say it had to do with like they had a hard driving sales team. You know, they'll look at Airbnb and say it was because they were from RISD and their design was great. We look back at success and then we say, okay, it succeeded, therefore, what attributes did it have? And that's what we want to do,

you know, in terms of being better at our jobs, Molly, as capital allocators. And what I challenge myself to try to do is think about things, not based on the outcome, you know, necessarily, but what actually made, not in reverse from one outcome, but looking at a larger sample size, what do we see across all of the winning companies? And I can tell you, across all the winning companies, focus and a lack of distraction is what wins. and focus results in product velocity, in customer obsession and in team building. We're back to TPC, the team, the product, the customers.

And I'm going to keep banging my hand at this teleprompter every week that when you're focused, you build a great team. Look at the team here. I've recruited you, recruited Mike Savino. You look at our team here, producer Nick. He just recruited two more producers for this week in startups. It looked like we got great potential here. We recruit really great talent of this company.

High performers. High performers. And then we develop that talent. We have a relentless focus on that. And that's why we succeed. And then you look at our product, this product, this week in startups. We talk about J-trading. We talk about this week in climate, this week in streaming.

We talk about VC Sunday school. You and I debate it. Hey, what should be doing the show? Should we do more of this or less of this? Right. And that obsession with the product works. And then, okay, back to the customers. We really think about the founders and how do we support them.

We think about the noties. We recognize the noties. We keep a list of the noties. We send them Don Julio. We care about the customers. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, here we go. Focus, focus, focus, and distract.

There's no such thing in J-Cal's world as enough, just to be clear. Like, there's not a, like the best founders, much like you, don't rest. It's not like there's ever a point where it's like, this is working fine, leave it. It's like, this is working fine. How could it be better? You have that trait too, by the way. You just in places that nobody would listen to you.

That's true. And in fact, I can be super irritating on that front. And I acknowledge it. But frankly, it's great to be in a place where it's rewarded to keep pushing. Like, why wouldn't you always be trying to be better? They told you you were annoying. You were ambitious. They told you you were annoying.

They just, they had the A word. annoying the right word was ambitious you were ambitious and you were told you were annoying you know who you were told that by losers that's who you were told by who wanted to yes

that's what I would care everyone they were fine with the status quo yes exactly people who are fine with mediocre or like good enough and by the way little lady it has to do with your gender too yeah it does you're right woman comes out oh little lady's got an idea oh

okay little lady let me show you how this is run yeah you know and you know, we try to cultivate here, or at least in the companies I run, is a culture of ambition. You know, I was encouraging people to go around the backs of their managers. And if somebody tells you like, this company is an investable and you believe it is, well, you have my phone number, text me and tell me that your boss made a mistake or some, you know, if you're a researcher or an associate and some managing director, so I would never invest in this, don't even bring it to Jake Al. You want to hop the fence? You want to go over their head? I'm here for it. By all

means, call me on the phone on a Sunday and tell me, you know, Molly got it wrong or Savino got it wrong, or Jackie got it wrong, we need to fight for this company. Please, I'm waiting for that phone call. Yeah. I love it. And really, that's that bias for action we talked about in the blueprint this week on the show. Yeah. And that really is, in terms of self-destructive behavior is the number of, the lack of focusing. Distraction is one way to say it or lack of focus. And then conversely, what makes you succeed is focus for relentless focus. Now, on the investor side, Do no harm. How do we do no harm? Well, investors need to be clear with what level of service they're going to provide to the founders.

And I have been delighted where I've had people tell me, I am a cash investor. If you need some help, you want to talk or have dinner, feel free to call me. But I don't, I'm not coming to your office and running your company. There's a limited amount I can do. If you're looking for a cash investor, great. If you're looking for a cash investor who's going to roll up their sleeves and hire sales people for you, that's not me.

So I always tell people like, listen, I'm not going to do hiring for you. That's not, that's not me. I'm not a recruiter. If you want me to, you know, help you close a senior person, sure, I'll do a phone call or Zoom with them or have coffee with them.

I've done that before. I did it for the comm guys early on. They were trying to get somebody and they're like, Jake, you're a celebrity in Silicon Valley. Would you help us close this top engineer? And I did. On the program today is Derina Kulia.

She is the founder of Open Phone. Welcome to the show, Doreena. Thank you so much, Jason. Great to be here. You know, I've read the ads a couple of times here. It seems like you're charging too a little for this product. It's $10 a month per number. How are you able to do this so affordably?

$120 a year, $150 a year per person is nothing. So we're a very self-served product, which is why many of our competitors offer much more expensive tiers is that they rely on like a customer success rep or someone help you out to set things up. We are very self-served. Now, we do have customers. success managers who are amazing. A lot of our customers are founders and startups.

They like things to just work without instructions without. Yeah, they'll read the manual. They'll watch the videos. They don't want to talk to a human. They just want to set it up and go. And you made the product so simple. Absolutely. That's where the cost savings comes.

You don't have to have a sales team going out there selling it. And you know, the other big thing is that the way we also grow. And I think, you know, the way we get a lot of customers is that we have very strong word of mouth and people like tell others about us. And I mean, all of that contributes. Our business model kind of makes sense, it makes sense for us to be able to, to offer it at a very good price. All right, everybody, here's your CTA, the old call to action. Twist listeners, 20% off any plan for your first six months.

Just sign up at openphone.com slash twist. And if you got an existing number, no problem. They'll put it right over. Openphone.com slash twist. O-P-E-H-O-N-P-H-O-N-E dot com slash twist today for 20% off. I think the investors, just being clear about what their role is, And the distraction is the thing. So here we go.

Back to focus. Right, right. If your investor is a distractor. Oh, my Lord, especially the young ones. There's really like a number of archetypes here. Is it archetypes or archetypes? Arctype. Archetype.

Okay. There's an archetype of the investor who wants more data. Can we double click on this? And they have to show you in the board meeting how smart they are. And then there's like the archetype. And they basically want to run the company. But they don't realize they're an investor. And they're not on the court.

Yeah. So if you're Michael Jordan and you're no longer on the court, you have to play a different game as the owner of the Hornets. But you're an owner, not a coach, which seems important too, right? He's not the coach. He's not the player. He's not the coach. He's not the GM. I don't believe.

He's the owner. Because I could imagine a scenario where a VC would think, well, I'm a coach. And it's not even quite that. Right? It's like, well, yeah, there's definitely. the player thing. Or I'm the GM. They just believe

they're more involved than they are. I always take the approach. I'm going to lay back. I'm going to ask what I think are important questions to have thoughtful discussions just to

help the founder have clarity. And then if there's a serious problem, I might take the founder for a walk or do a one-on-one call with them, right? And just say, hey, I know you're struggling,

raising money. Is there a way I can be helpful here? And did you get any feedback? Like I used to tell people, like, you're not raising money because of these three issues. That was when I was a young investor. Now, I say, why do you think you were unable to find a lead for the Series A? And I just listen. And they don't give me the right answer.

They don't give me an answer. Talk about all the great things that are happening or the market or, hey, place blame, pity party, whatever. And then I say, well, how many investors did you meet with for your Series A? is that in a Google sheet? Maybe we are a Notion doc or Coda. Where is it? Is it an air table?

Maybe we should take a look at it. And they say, oh, I don't know. I didn't keep a list. I'm, oh, okay. If you had a list, we could talk about each one. And was it 10 or 20? And they're like, oh, a bunch. And I'm like, more than 10 or less than 10.

Like, I can start doing my Colombo, as I talked about in the book, Angel, and there are in 12 languages and thousands of five-star reviews. It feels timeless. I don't know. You know, you want to read a second time. Anyway. Anyway. I gave it out on Christmas.

That's it. It's like, Huckleberry Finn. I would say so. Got, you know, great expectations. I'm not putting it up there with any specific books, the Bible. Ambitious. Not for me to say. Not for me to say.

Here's the thing. After a series of these questions, eventually I get to the founder to understand the point I would have made by just telling them. So I kind of let them get there themselves. And sometimes they have met with 30 people. and they are in a database. But they never asked them, hey, thank you for the quick no. I appreciate it.

I could really use some help. Would you tell me the top three reasons why this is not an attractive investment in order, in as much or a little detail as you can give me, top three reasons why we're not a great investment in the minds of Acme Ventures? I would really, really appreciate

if you can be candid with me because I'm trying to learn as much as I can from this process. have you ever gotten that investment that question from a founder or have you gotten it yet in seven months now on the job? Only no only once in a meeting with you actually. Okay. Yeah. I remember the meeting.

Yes. The person said, can you please, Jake Al, I respect you. I'm a super fan. Yep. Can you tell me what would make this investable? Right. Yep. And I, you saw me the reticence.

I was like, I don't know if this kid wants it. Mm-hmm. But he seems to want it. He asked me like two or three times. And I just couldn't help myself and I told it to him straight. Yeah. And he really appreciated it. But I'm reticent to do it that way unless somebody really pushes me to.

But as a founder, I do think that's a secret. It's a good secret. So anyway, that's this week's this week. This VC Sunday school. Any questions? I love that it all boils down to that one thing because it feels like it could be so many things like, are you too cocky or are you accounting wrong or whatever? And it's like, no, you just have to have a relentless focus.

Okay. Quick follow on then. Let's say you have that investor, and the investor is threatening to become a distraction. How do you as a founder manage that? Like take a little bit back control of your own company, you know? Okay. That's like if the investors are being, if the investors are being onerous and obnoxious or. Or even if I, another investor, I'm in the room and I see that happening and I sort of want to say to this founder like, hey, man, it's your company.

Like, you know, I mean. Yeah, I had this happen recently. I talked to the founder and I said if this other investor is going to run rough shot over me given my stature in the industry and my track record which is

much greater than theirs objectively just like if you know I were to try to run rough shot over Bill Gurley not going to happen or Doug Leone or Ruloff or you know pick the legend like this woman was like kind of because they were putting a big check in was kind of like

giving me a hard time and I said you know what's going to happen next, they're going to give you a hard time. Yeah. I said, so I just want to let you know that you and I, as we go into these future board meetings, should be aligned with the understanding that this investor is quite aggressive. And I have seen this movie before. You're, they might start suggesting things to you like how to fill this other board seat that you have control over. And they might try to take control over the board and start to tell you. telling you how to run this company. Dead silence.

And I said, oh. Has it already happened? Did they? Yeah. And he said, you're so good at this. I said, what? He said, they literally just gave me a piece of paper with their board suggestions. I said, for the seats that you choose.

I said, let me guess. They work with these people previously at another firm? Yeah, two of the three. I'm abstracting this a little bit. Mm-hmm. And literally, I was able to tell just from the behavior of this person after meeting them briefly. Yeah. That this was like one of these Command and Conquer, you know, divide and conquer, command and conquer, type A personalities that's going to try to take over the board.

I've seen it. Yeah. So I said, listen, and I told him, I was like, listen, bro, you know, I'm already successful, already made my money. I wish your earliest supporter. This is your most recent supporter five years later. Just understand, I just want to see you win. No matter what happens with this company, it's not. going to move the needle for me. But it's going to move, it's 99% of your net worth. It's going to be,

you know, 1% at best of my net worth. I am here for you and seeing you succeed. That's it. This person has like issues with their firm, with their partners that have nothing to do with your success as a founder in this company. So you're going to need to balance this investor's issues with your baby and all the effort you've put into this company. And I'm here as your supporter. I'm your Obi-Wan. I'm your Yoda. You need me.

I'll give you the advice. If you need me to take the lightsaber out, I'll take it out. But I'm just letting you know, I'm a Jedi. I've been at this, I went through the fucking clone wars. I know what's up. Yeah. I know a Sith Lord when I see it. And so it may not seem like a Sith Lord to you, but there's some dark stuff going on

here and you're going to have to, at some point, you know, exert some control here. And sure enough, yeah, you know, they're, oh, these are great suggestions for the board. We'll pick our own. Thank you. Oh, we have our own. We're going in a different direction. And I literally gave them the language. So thank them profusely.

Tell them how great each of the meetings was. And then tell them, we've decided to go in another direction with this person because we think they're the best person for these three reasons. But we really do appreciate the thoughtful. of these and we'll keep them in mind for future opportunities. And it was great meeting them. I literally gave them the language because sometimes a new founder doesn't know the language. So that's how I handle it on the board.

It's a really great follow-up question, actually. Love it. Love it. Love it. Well, okay, next up on this weekend climate startups, a great founder who I am in no way worried about getting pushed around anywhere because she's like got a PhD from MIT and then, you know, was like at Oxford as a Fulbright scholar and has figured out how to make meat out of air. Like you do.

That's my bad ear. I think my monitor went out. Did you say make meat out of air? Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Turns, so Dr. Lisa Dyson is the founder and CEO of air protein. A company that has to, I mean, this is why I love the segment so much. A company that's developed a meat alternative called air meat by using microbes that turn recycled carbon dioxide into protein.

Interesting. Yeah, it's carbon negative. Like it could just take carbon dioxide. The output is like water. So she's protein. Jesus is what you're talking. protein Jesus. Yeah.

She turns, not water into wine, air into meat. Air into meat. No big deal. I like it. I like it. You're finding all these incredible people. I mean, is this the we live in the future segment or this week in climate? Like, kind of both.

Okay, kind of busts. Enjoy everybody. Molly's extraordinary run of climate interviews continues with Lisa Dyson, PhD, climate warrior, air protein, founder and see. Yeah, enjoy. Let me tell you a quick story. Drew Fabricant is a launch portfolio founder, and he runs a company called Scout. it's a lead gen platform. He's super talented, but he was recently under the gun to hire a developer with a very specific skill set. And lemon.io delivered a great candidate quickly, and they were a pleasure to work with, according to Drew.

Take it for me. Hiring developers is hard. I see this all the time, founders struggling with it. And so many founders struggle with doing it quickly. Well, lemon.io is going to help you hire better developers faster, just like they help my portfolio company and friend Drew. They have a network. of engineers from Europe and Latin America and every candidate has been tested and interviewed by their team. That's how Lemon.io can make your engineering team Bionic. No wasting time with unqualified candidates. That's one of the biggest problems.

And easy access to global talent. They can get your developer up and running within a week. And of course, it's more affordable. So go to lemon.io slash twist to get 15% off your first four weeks. That's 15% off your first four weeks at Lemon. slash twist. Dr. Lisa Dyson is the founder and CEO of Air Protein, which developed a meat alternative known as air meat by using microbes that turn recycled carbon dioxide into protein. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Did I describe that right? Because meat out of thin air, I mean, I literally like just

keep seeing this over and over. And every time I'm like, I must be getting this wrong. Well, in order to understand what we're doing, it might be instructive to go back to the origins this concept, which was the scientists at NASA, and during the space program, they were asking the question, how do we feed astronauts on long space journeys? This was back in the 60s and 70s. And if you go to Mars or a distant planet, you have to figure out how to make food and make it quickly, make it using minimal space and minimal resources. And so what they did is they started working with a class of cultures. Think of your yogurt cultures or your cheese cultures, but these cultures actually consume CO2 in order to grow instead of milk, for instance. And so an astronaut would breathe

out their air, which has carbon dioxide. As you and I are breathing out now, we're breathing out carbon dioxide. And those elements of the air, carbon dioxide, oxygen, you need a nitrogen source. These are all elements of the air. They would capture them. And then they feed them to these cultures. The cultures would grow and produce nutrients, which the astronauts would then eat. And then they breathe out that carbon in the nutrients in the form of carbon dioxide. They breathe out, you know, there's oxygen in the air and all those other elements. So that is why we call ourselves air protein. You are a scientist. You have a PhD in physics from MIT and MS in physics from the University of London, where you were a Fulbright scholar. How did all of that come together into

this particular project? Like what inspired you, you know, and when did you come across this research and go like, hey, I think we should be doing this on planet Earth, not just in space? Well, I'll start by saying, you know, it was not a straightforward path. But so my dad was an entrepreneur. And so I grew up really seeing business ideas essentially come to fruition and the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. And that caused me to go to the Boston Consulting Group after my degree to immerse myself in the business world, really to understand how you can solve business problems. But the trajectory that I'm on now really started in 2005 when after Hurricane Katrina hit, I was one of the many people who went to New Orleans to try to help rebuild the city. And just seeing the devastation

that actually happens as a result of a significant weather event got got me really thinking about the fact that climate scientists have been telling us and continue to tell us that these weather events are going to be more and more frequent and more and more intense. And that means more and more people will be affected very directly. And so I wanted to be a part of the solution. So myself and a colleague, Dr. John Reed that I knew for my time back at MIT. We both, he's very much been an environmentalist, pretty much most of his life. And we both were really looking to be part of a solution and decided that we wanted to create products that just were better environmentally.

We created a first company, Converty, to do that. And then we really started building air protein because we realized that the food industry was one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions more than the entire transportation sector. So is this solution for creating food, in this way, creating protein in this way, does it end up being carbon negative? I mean, you're literally, like are you using direct air capture carbon? Like, where does, what's the feedstock situation? Yeah, the process itself, we've done our own life cycle assessments. We've worked with

others to do it life cycle assessments. The product, the, the production process itself is actually carbon negative from cradle to gate. So that's a positive aspect of what we're doing it. And And what is interesting is that what goes hand in hand with that are other environmental benefits as well, significantly less land versus, say, making a stake today. Today, it takes two years to make a stake. And the technology that we use to make that steak a cow, it has the same greenhouse gas footprint as a car. Lots of land is either cleared or used to grow feed and lots of water is used as well. So not only is it carbon negative versus greenhouse gas footprint of a car, but it also uses significantly less land

and significantly, in fact, zero arable land and significantly less water. Walk me through the sort of science to commercialization process, because I know when you're talking about a venture funded operation, that can be a little bit of a barrier. The science? Well, just the process of commercialization. Okay, well, let's start with one thing at a time. How hard was the science? Well, you know, we definitely stand on the shoulders of giants, for sure.

And so we're leveraging work that the NASA scientists really started working on back in the 60s and 70s. And so, but, but you know, making protein out of air. But still, scaling. Exactly. Right. The most straightforward thing. And so we've been working to scale that up and we're costly working, currently working to scale that up now after having hit all of the kind of proof points and made the world's first air based, you know, chicken, we call it in 2019. and we've been scaling up the process to make protein ingredients from elements of the air

and ready to, you know, we're making great progress, not making an announcement at the moment, but in terms of timeline, but we're making great progress. And what we found and what's actually really a good thing about this moment in history is that finally, I'll say, more and more companies, investors, you know, consumers are really starting to focus on environmental solutions. And, you know, climate tech, the climate tech industry is growing. Companies are trying to find things that would allow their emissions to be decreased or targeting net zero by X, Y, Z date, 2040, 2030, 2050, depending on what company you're talking about. But at least they have those targets now.

So this is a moment where there's interest in our type of solution in particular. Before, you know, it was much harder. But now it's becoming, you know, quite novel. and one of the solutions that actually can help companies and investors achieve the target that they're looking for to deliver ultimately consumers products that they want to buy that are environmentally friendly. So what stage are you at now? You have successfully created chicken from air and you are what working to scale that up and get customers. Is it like a pilot stage? Yeah, chicken was where we started and we continue to innovate, of course, and fine tune our recipe and our way of developing that chicken.

we've also made air-based protein products that look like and taste like scallops. We've worked in the fish sector, air-based fish as well, and we're now working on pork and beef prototypes as well. So that's that kind of demonstrates the flexibility of the platform. We're actually innovating at the core of protein products. We're making a protein and different types of proteins that have different functional properties. That means water holding capacities, oil holding capacities. These are things that are all important as you go to create, basically apply culinary techniques to your ingredients to then make a great texture and make great flavor. And so that's really what we've been working on developing. And concurrent with

that, there's not a lot of air-based protein as an ingredient out there in the world. And so that's really where our main focus is and has been is on scaling up the volumes of air-based protein as an ingredient that's available so that we can make these products and bring them to market. And so when it's produced as an ingredient, how would it be sold? Who would the customers be then? We are making products that meat eaters love. The ingredient is an interim state. It's our unit of innovation. It's why we're different. And then we're taking that all the way to making products that meat eaters love. And the reason why it's meat eaters is, as I said before, meat is the biggest culprit when it comes to the climate issue and environmental issues. And so we want to

address that by making products that my husband loves. I'm a vegetarian, but my husband is very much an avid meat eater. And so if we can make things that deliver that experience he's looking for, then we're successful. Got it. So right now you've got this ingredient as an interim step that's like a flour. Is that right? Exactly. Exactly. It's just think of your wheat flour and then you apply culinary techniques and you end up with pasta or bread or, you know, a number of other things. So similarly, that's what we do. We have our protein flour made from elements of the air, really nutritious, a high in all the essential amino acids, rich in vitamins and minerals as well, including vitamin B12, which is lacking in a vegan diet. So we start with a very nutritional, nutritious ingredient as our

base. And then our focus is not only making products that taste great, but making them in a way that's very nutritious. Got it. And then eventually a steak, basically. Exactly. Exactly. You hear it all the time, but it's true. Time is money. And money helps keep your startup alive. That's why you need to check out Helpware. Helpler calls itself People as a Service. Basically, they are going to help you outsource the tasks that are slowing your company

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go to helpware.com slash twist to get 1,000 off your first invoice. That's right. H-E-W-A-R-E dot com slash twist for $1,000 off. What is the difference? You know, like not only between your eventual product and the meat products that we know today, but maybe the other alternatives like Beyond are impossible. Yeah. Well, obviously the difference between the animal-based products,

which is really who we're trying to compete against, is that huge, $1.4 trillion. industry out there of animal-based products. So we have a long way to go before we've kind of fully attacked that. So we're really focused on, you know, we exist because we're focused on the environment. And in terms of our products that we are developing, we're focused on nutrition. So I think that's one of the key differences. So we're, again, innovating in our core, we're not taking, say, soy protein or pea protein, which already exists and just kind of limited by what they can offer. But we're creating proteins using natural cultures.

in a way that delivers the nutrients that people need as well. Oh, totally, yes. I got that. I mean, what is the difference in texture and flavor and, you know, how close do you think you can get? Two-part answer. One, first part is we're doing work where we're comparing our delivery to directly to the chicken from a animal. And we're getting closer and closer to that. As we continue to innovate on chicken, which is our very first product that we worked on,

we're getting closer and closer scallops, our second product, we're getting closer and closer as well. but we're not limited by that. Again, we're innovating on the protein itself and we can just create different types of textures and experiences. Gotcha. So you don't have to try to copy a steak. Like you can make a food that is yummy and has all the, what's the, that flavor, umami. Exactly. Yeah.

Exactly. We have that freedom, that flexibility. As we start, we are targeting things that are more like and mimic what is known meat, animal-based products, but yes, we plan on innovating well beyond that. Gotcha. Okay. What does this market start to look like? Alternative protein has become, as you mentioned, like, you know, in general, there's

more money going into climate solutions, which is fantastic. Alternative proteins has been a very big and very trendy part of that. And I wonder how you see like the competitive landscape all of a sudden. You know, I'm excited that is becoming more trendy and more consumers that have won at this. You know, they're having more options out there. And so there's more companies that have emerged and that are emerging in this space, more investors that have invested in this space. And I think ultimately that's going to allow for a lot of the innovation that we need in order to bring great tasting products to market. And we're happy to be a part of that group.

And what we're doing is different in a number of ways. And it's largely driven by why we exist, which is that carbon negative piece, creating the world's first carbon negative protein, carbon negative meat. But going beyond that, our distinction in terms of the nutritional value that our protein ingredient brings is allowing us and will allow us to kind of focus on that too as we develop products. But yeah, we're excited by the interest in the space. Yeah. So if air meat is on the shelf next to beyond and impossible and I think there's another one doing fish whose name I can't think of right now, what will be the thing that makes me pick that? You will know very soon. we're not there at the moment.

We're not in the market. But we are doing our consumer focus groups, testing. For us, we're really all about being consumer-led, delivering products that consumers want. And we just finished a round of focus groups as well, like I think two weeks ago. So it's important for us to deliver what, you know, moms and dads and kids want in the world. You will know once we bring it to market. But what I'll say, though, what I'll say, though, what I'll

I'll say, though, is that we believe that we do have something that will stand out from that kind of first appeal, kind of novelty, the world's first airbase meat, the world's first carbon-negative meat, probably using different language, but this is something that is actually different. No one is doing it. And so that'll cause, we believe, consumers to, from the novelty effect, try us out. And then the flavor is really what we have to get down and get that right so that they keep coming back. And I've heard interviews to the effect that it will be helpful when people sort of stop calling this replacement meat or fake meat or even alternative meat, that really what we're looking at here is a food source, a new food source. Exactly. And that's why the way I talk about it now is

that we make, we are focused on making products that meat eaters love. So we have our target group and that target group are, you know, what experiences are you looking for when you bite into a steak or chicken? And can we deliver that with this new to the world protein that we're commercializing. So tell me about your venture funding. Are you 100% venture funded? Have you taken non-dilutable? Is there like a lot of CAPEX to this? We are 100% venture funded. And happily, we have Google Ventures, we have Barclays, we have ADM, their corporate venture group as an investor in Airporte. And we also have For Foundation. It's their investment that came through. And one thing that we love about having Four Foundation is that all of our investors are interested in sustainability.

which is great, but that's just kind of a part of the mandate in order to get an investment from Ford Foundation as well. So we have a great group of investors and we're, we continue to, we will be adding more in the future. Call us. What is the, what is the, you know, to the extent that you can tell me, what is the process like? I can. Like, where are you getting the carbon dioxide? I'm just sort of, is it like a tank? What do we? Yeah. So just think of your sparkling. water. Just think of it as growing sparkly protein. So sparkling water, of course, has CO2 in it. The other elements are oxygen, nitrogen. These are key elements that are needed for, you know, we need them as we, you know, you know, they're basically needed for these cultures to grow and produce the proteins that they

produce, all the essential amino acids. So the process looks like a fermentation tank. looks like brewing beer or making cheese or making yogurt. That's what it looks like. And so the source of our CO2 is the same source as the CO2 that ends up in your sparkling water. Okay. And then where does that come from? Typically that comes from fermentation, actually. So and that.

The carbon dioxide does? Like it's a loop? It's not a loop for normal fermentation because they don't consume it. They just emit it. So when you make beer, cheese, wine. yogurt, you're actually producing CO2. And so our process is similar to all of those, but we kind of flip it on the head. Instead of producing the CO2, we can take the CO2 that's food grade, beverage grade.

Obviously, you're making food. And then we can use that as an input to our cultures to then create a really nutritious protein flour. And then what is the byproduct? What's the waste product, if any? The byproduct is actually water. So in addition to the elements that I mentioned, hydrogen. So we start up with renewable power and we split water to create hydrogen.

So if you look at a protein molecule, there's hydrogen in there. And so we use that directly as an element. And so any hydrogen that doesn't end up in our ingredient ends up in water. So we don't want, we want to minimize the amount of water that's produced and maximize the amount of protein ingredient that's produced. But that's the main byproduct. Whereas traditional fermentation, the byproduct is CO2. So that's a difference.

And then what will the costs be? Will it be cost competitive with meat? That is our target and our goal. And it begins with the protein ingredient where our innovation lies. We believe that as we scale that, as we've done our techno economic assessments, that we can be competitive and lower costs than plant-based protein. You have your P-protein now,

which is kind of one of the key ingredients that's in many of these plant-based alternatives. We believe, based on our modeling, that we can be lower cost of P protein. So that's, you know, as we scale, we really want to increase access to the world to nutritious alternatives. And in terms of the flower product that exists now, who are the customers for that? We are focused on going all the way to the end ingredient.

But the reason why I mentioned the flower part of it is that if you look at, that's not a for sale product. Yeah, if you look at making an alternative with P protein versus an alternative with ours, kind of the base ingredient is already lower cost. We're vertically integrated. We go directly from our. ingredient that we produce into the product. And then furthermore, as we make different ingredients, those different ingredients will have the different functional properties that mean that you can make it

more efficiently. You can make the end product more efficiently, maybe using less ingredients, less other inputs, less energy, as it were, and other things as you're applying those culinary techniques. And so we believe that all those factors will come together to make us a really low cost and competitive option as we scale. What do you think this all starts to look like in the future? Obviously, agriculture is, I've been joking for several years, sort of a dark joke that we're in the like golden age of food, right? Where we sort of still get to like have meat and not think about how terrible it is, but that all of that is going to change. But it's still a really big industry. Like I wonder how you imagine this kind of disruption rolling across the world to both good and ill effect.

Well, it's something that we need because now the food industry as it stands has led to the clearing of a, amount of land that's equivalent to South American Africa combined in addition to all the other issues. So as we go to 10 billion people by 2050, where are we going to get all the land from? You know, in 2019, there was record fires in Brazil. And those were set to make room for cattle grazing. So we're burning down rainforests in order to feed cows, essentially, so that they then can eventually feed people, but there's more efficient ways of doing it. So, you know, I had someone, my husband's is Turkish and every time I go visit them there's a question how are we going to feed Lisa because since I'm a vegetarian and they're all none of them are.

It's a big meat, yes. Yeah, they're like, whatever you're going to feed them. I've spent some time in Istanbul. It's all meat all the time. And there's so many good side dishes that aren't meat full of meat, but they just can't this concept of eating without eating meat. And my husband was explaining to his mom the, you know, about this whole alternative meat industry, you know, plant base and all these.

there are types of companies out there. And, you know, she said something that actually is going to sound pessimistic when I first say it, but I actually look at it as very optimistic. She said, you know, I feel sorry for the future generations. And she said that because this is new and weird and odd, just like my grandmother was thought that a telephone was going to electrocute her. That was new and weird and odd. New technology typically is.

But she's basically saying that for tomorrow, it's going to be normal. Yeah. And that's what I'm looking forward to. I'm looking forward to the kids of today. who are thinking about the environment, who are thinking about their health, healthier choices, and them making these choices more and more so that it's just the way that food is made. And when you think about the as the effects of climate change get worse across the world, is this a process for making food that is extensible all over the world?

Is it the kind of thing that can also feed the world in addition to replacing this thing that's very damaging? You know, it is in a number of ways. you can deploy it locally. You need power and elements of the air, essentially, are the kind of the main inputs. And we use renewable power, solar energy, wind energy. These things are becoming more and more abundant and lower and lower costs. In fact, the lowest cost energy now is renewable. And, you know, there's hydroelectric, et cetera.

And so that's a trend that is and can be leveraged as the availability of these inputs continue to grow. And you can deploy it anywhere. You can deploy it in any geography, rain or shine, day or night, no arable land required whatsoever, a small bit of land, but it doesn't have to be farmland. It doesn't have to be where a rainforest sits today. So that leads to food security. As we see all these supply chain issues that, you know, countries and companies are having all over the world as they're trying to get inputs, as we're trying to get wheat, you know, basic things, this type of technology would replace that. It's a way of making protein using, let's say, a vertical protein farm, as it were,

so that you don't have to rely on these global supply chains in order to get the food, the basic nutrients that people need for everyday life. Lisa Dyson is the founder and CEO of Air Protein, like so specifically named, and yet right on the nose. Dr. Dyson, thanks so much for the time. Thank you for having me. Okay, everybody, I hope you made it through Molly's vacation week. I'm sorry she wasn't here.

I got a lot of Molly stands at mentioning me, when's Molly back? When's Molly back? She took a week of vacation. Calm down, everybody. She's coming back tomorrow. You just got to get through the next 24 hours and then you're going to get your Molly fixed tomorrow. Hopefully the three or four interviews she banked for you were enough. Some of you are so ungrateful.

She banked all these interviews for her and still you're complaining. Molly's not here every day. All right, the good news. She's back tomorrow. Tons of news. Tons of interviews. The show must go on. We'll see you tomorrow Monday.