10. Season One Done. What You Missed and What's Next

[00:00:00] Karl: Hey rum.

[00:00:01] Erum: Hey Carl. What's.

[00:00:03] Karl: Hey, I'm super excited because we're about to interview Sha Tku of CCC 16 Bioscientist.

[00:00:09] Erum: Yes, I'm very excited about her too. I'm definitely a fan girl. She's just so impressive across the board. Great leader ceo. Interestingly, she doesn't have a biotech background, spoiled it for the. Interview, but she is by all means, very intelligent and comes at biotech very thoughtfully and very deliberately. And just for our audience to hear her story and what they're doing, it's going to be opening people's minds.

[00:00:35] Karl: I'm also a, a huge fan of shas and have been telling people about C 16 for as long as I've, I've known them. We met her early on before the pandemic. The company was still very young, but what I was very impressed by was the fact that they were moving their company from Boston to New York City and. That was something that we had not seen before. Typically, people start companies in New York and move 'em to Boston or San Francisco, but we're starting to see this wave of new companies that are moving to New York and since they work in the consumer biotech space, it's our theory, you wanna be in New York City if you're gonna build a consumer biotech brand.

[00:01:11] Karl: This isn't to discount any of the other biotech hubs, but it is a really nice place to be building that kind of company. So I'm excited for the interview as well.

[00:01:19] Karl: So we're super excited to have you, Shara. We see you as a shining example of, New York biotech so for people who don't know anything about C 16 Biosciences, can you tell us about your company and, and where are you?

[00:01:35] Shara: Yes, absolutely. C 16 Biosciences is decarbonizing consumer products through next generation ingredients, and specifically we're focused on next generation oils and fats. We've actually just announced our consumer facing solutions platform which is called Pomas and Poma. Is, as you might have guessed, an alternative to palm oil. And maybe I'll jump in to why we care about palm oil, if that's okay. Why do we care about palm oil? Palm oil is in 50% of products on supermarket shelves.

[00:02:13] Erum: Wow.

[00:02:14] Shara: It is found in everything from soap and shampoo to lipstick to the foods that we eat, like Nettella or Oreos. And sometimes it's even used as, cooking oil or as an input for biodiesel. So it's, truly ubiquitous. It's grown tremendously over the last 60 years, and many people think it's grown because it's just really cheap, which is certainly true for some applications, but in fact, it's the most popular vegetable oil in the world because it's just really good at what it does.

[00:02:46] Shara: It is what helps the color stay on your lipstick. It is what makes the soap or the. Body wash in your shower, foam and cleanse. It's what makes Nella spread. Just that perfect spreadable, spoonable nature. But the problem with palm oil is the way that it's produced and really it comes down to the concept of industrial agriculture that's focused on better, cheaper, faster, and not taking into account.

[00:03:15] Shara: Cost, such as the use of our land biodiversity and climate impact. And so what C 16 does is we're reimagining that. We're reimagining our relationship with nature and looking to transition from a world in which our relationship with nature is highly extractive as we see an industrial agriculture for oils and fats today.

[00:03:37] Shara: To a future where we have a relationship that's symbiotic with nature, and we use nature in a more powerful way to make better performing and more sustainable ingredients and products.

[00:03:50] Karl: I think it's great. Like, I know for me, the palm oil thing struck a few years ago we were in Costa Rica.

[00:03:58] Karl: We were taking the bus from San Jose to Panama, which we used to do a lot as a kid. And just. Seeing mile after, mile after mile of these palm trees and going wow. What the hell happened here? I don't know how long that has been planted there, but I was really struck by this idea that , these trees , were replacing the jungle.

[00:04:21] Karl: I also remember seeing like this picture of the. Orangutang and Barney or something like that. And you have a story that you talk about going to Singapore and just like how dirty the air was. Could you tell that story? Because it's important to put this into context for people.

[00:04:34] Shara: Yes. So in my past life, I, I did not work in biotech. I worked on Wall Street. But that's where I learned. Palm oil for the first time. So about 10 years ago I was working on Wall Street. I was working for Goldman Sachs and I covered some of our accounts in Asia and I was taking a trip to Asia to meet with some of our clients in the region.

[00:04:57] Shara: And Goldman sent me over with a stack of N 95 mass. So before my flight to Singapore, they take care of their employees and they say you need to bring these N 95 masks. This was 2013. I did not know what an N 95 mask was, nor did I know why I was wearing it. So I land in Singapore and there's this thick haze.

[00:05:17] Shara: I have a picture of myself up. Marina Bay, Sams the big hotel there, the sort big hotel with the big ship on it. And the air is just black and it's because the air quality index in Singapore when I landed was over 400. And anything over 300 is considered highly toxic.

[00:05:35] Shara: Just to put that in context, we live in New York. We're all calling in from New York City, big city. You think we'd be used to pollution and bad air quality? The air quality index in New York this morning was 44. 44 versus 400. So I'm in Singapore. you can feel this pollution in the air.

[00:05:53] Shara: They've canceled schools. They've asked pregnant women not to walk outside and I asked my colleagues what's going on and they said, oh, our neighbors are are burning forest for. Palm oil production. By the way, this happens, every year. So I was shocked by this. It was my real introduction to to palm oil.

[00:06:12] Shara: And I think honestly, it was the first time I had seen climate change in real life. And I'm not sure that totally hit me until a few years later. It's kind of hard to remember, but 10 years ago we weren't really talking about climate change. We didn't have the I P C C report warning us about how urgent this was.

[00:06:29] Shara: But it was the first time I had seen it. And it's interesting, Carl, that you mentioned Costa Rica, because the way that this came about and into our founding story was a few years later, I met my co-founder, Harry, almost identical story to you in Costa Rica where he went to go see the rainforest and it was gone.

[00:06:46] Shara: There was no rainforest, it was just this monoculture plantation of oil palms. I just had deja vu. It was about three or four years later and I had this crazy deja vu and we started looking into it and realized how. Ubiquitous palm oil was, and also how was there was this clear demand statement to have a better alternative.

[00:07:08] Shara: There were hundreds of companies and in fact, nine countries which had called out the palm oil problem, but they'd been unable to do anything because there was no viable alternative, because agriculture was failing to solve the problem. So we started asking the question, what if biology could solve this problem?

[00:07:26] Shara: What would that look like?

[00:07:27] Karl: What's amazing about this origin story and thinking about the countries that have been impacted, I mean, we both mentioned Costa Rica. Costa Rica's supposed to be this country that, very much protects its natural environment. They're probably one of the few countries that have met the, climate goals. yet, destroyed the rainforest to putting these trees. But why don't you talk about, what does a technology look like? How does biology solve this palm oil problem?

[00:07:52] Shara: Great. So I, said this lofty thing about reimagining our relationship with nature. So that sounds beautiful, but what does it mean?

[00:07:59] Shara: I've talked about palm oil, which is the most popular vegetable oil, but really we're focused on the broader oils and fats landscape. So what we try to do is reimagine the way that we make these oils and fats today. We find we use, we make oils and fats from either animal sources, animal fats, or plant sources.

[00:08:23] Shara: These vegetable oils and oil seeds, which include palm oil, coconut oil, canola, rape, seed oil, soybean oil, and so forth. And what our technology at C 16 does is say, Let's stop relying on the plant and animal kingdom and let's shift to the fungal kingdom. So let's look to the microorganisms rather than these organisms that we've been working with.

[00:08:47] Shara: So instead of using animals or plants in this highly extractive way, we use microorganisms, and specifically we use. A yeast, which has in fact evolved for centuries to become really good at making oil. So nature actually did a lot of the work for us, which is one of the really exciting things about this field.

[00:09:09] Shara: As we start to be able to identify new microorganisms, new strains of yeast, and develop tools for harnessing them, it opens up a lot of things that were not previously possible. And I think our technology is one example of that. So we found this yeast, and essentially from here we combine ages, old technology called fermentation, which we've used for centuries to make.

[00:09:35] Shara: Medicine like insulin and food products and also cosmetic products like hyaluronic acid is, is largely made from fermentation, but we have improved our ability to use it as a technology. We've improved the precision of it by using some of the. Latest, most developed, most innovative tools in biotechnology, such as the ability to sequence the genome, read, make edits to the genome, evolve the strain, and do engineering to the process to improve the product that we make, how large we can scale that process and how cheaply we can scale that process over.

[00:10:14] Karl: That's awesome. I didn't realize you guys were, using yeast. We asked on Twitter, and you may have seen this a couple weeks ago, where we were like, what's the economic value of yeast and e coli? Those are the two workhorses of biotech and IAM uncovered a stat that said Yeast alone is a $900 billion industry.

[00:10:32] Karl: It's like almost 3% of the US economy. When you take into consideration Yes, personal care, brewing, baking, and then all the other products that are produced with yeast.

[00:10:42] Shara: that's today,

[00:10:43] Karl: that was in 2018.

[00:10:45] Shara: Wow.

[00:10:46] Erum: it's about to explode. I'm sure you're thinking that Shara , like all the possibilities.

[00:10:51] Shara: I love that stat. I'm gonna take that you. Of course

[00:10:54] Karl: That it comes from a book called The Rise of Yeast. we'll, we'll find it and we'll send it to you. Someone commented, do we control the yeast or does the yeast control us? That's a question that we ask a lot when it comes to, , microbiome.

[00:11:07] Shara: I'll just jump in because we have a meme wall in our lab and it's just, it's just covered with yeast memes. That question of, do we control the yeast or does the yeast control us? Shows up all over our meme wall. So come see it.

[00:11:21] Karl: I can't wait. So you. Have come up with this technology that harnesses yeast, you're fermenting palm oil and are you guys, doing the manufacturing yourselves . What does that look like as opposed to doing it your yourself? What's that model?

[00:11:36] Shara: Yeah, so you, just led with a very. Stat, which is that, the yeast is currently a 900 billion economy, so there are a lot of people and capabilities assets and infrastructure already dedicated to fermentation of yeast.

[00:11:51] Shara: That is a good thing. Part of what we are doing is highly innovative. We are the first people in the world to do it, which is a great thing, but we also do not want to be the first people in the world to do everything. We want to find ways where we can plug into existing infrastructure, existing supply chains, because that will help us go faster and we have a real urgency.

[00:12:13] Shara: Because we're solving a climate change problem because we're focused on decarbonization and we're short on time, so we have urgency because we're problem solvers and we wanna move fast, but we have urgency because the problem demands it. So being able to work with existing infrastructure is really, really valuable.

[00:12:32] Shara: We have our lab, our headquarters here in New York City. Got a 20,000 square foot lab in the middle of Manhattan, which is very cool, but we do not have, Thousand liter tanks or tens of thousand gallon tanks in the middle of Manhattan, that wouldn't really make sense.

[00:12:51] Shara: We work with partners, manufacturing partners that already have these tanks. So as you painted a picture, Fear or ethanol are two examples of largely scaled fermentation industries today. And we work with manufacturers who have assets like that. They have big steel tanks and we use them as a tool manufacturing model, and it allows us to move really quickly and allows us to focus on.

[00:13:15] Shara: The things that we need to innovate around. It allows us to focus on the r and d and also the brand and go to market, which is a really, really important and powerful part of what we do, and an outsource building of a plant capital, of expenditures of a plant, and all these things which don't necessarily add value to our innovation. We get to let somebody else do that and partner with them.

[00:13:35] Karl: I look at the deforestation of the rainforest, which is largely done to grow protein and palm oil. you, They're growing cows and soybeans.

[00:13:43] Shara: Yes.

[00:13:43] Karl: And in my thinking, it's always, can't we just put a bunch of breweries down there, teaches people how to brew? Yes. It's a different kind of labor. requirement versus chopping down trees and plowing fields, however it could solve the problem. So what's your distributed model when it comes to international?

[00:14:00] Shara: this is still in our vision for the future, for the entire industry and for, for us. But, but I have the same vision for the future. In the past we've had these , Mega factories be the solution. You get something to this massive scale. You make it all there, and then you send it around the world.

[00:14:15] Shara: that's true in, maybe the the synthetic biology world, but in a lot of industry too, as we've seen globalization rapidly expand. Countries have specialized and then they've exported and imported things accordingly. But as we look around the past couple of years, from a macro perspective, allow me to , think about the macro economy for a second.

[00:14:35] Shara: We're starting to see things change and with oils and fats, for example, over 80% of soybean oil comes from the region around Ukraine. And as we. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and war breakout, that supply has vanished overnight. Just a few months later in, in May of this year, Indonesia, who exports 60% of global palm oil, decided overnight they were going to stop exporting palm oil and just keep it for themselves.

[00:15:10] Shara: They've reversed that, but they've also since made. Big climate commitments, which involve taking the Pomo that they produce today, which is largely used in food across the world, and shifting that to biodiesel production inside the economy to meet some of their net zero emission schools. So as we think about what the future might look like, I actually think it's really powerful for countries or regions to be able to rely on themselves to make the products that they need.

[00:15:39] Shara: Biology and fermentation in particular, really unlock that because the problem with palm oil is that it can only grow in certain parts of the world. It can only grow right around the equator, which is why people start burning down that forest and why it only comes from certain countries.

[00:15:54] Shara: But fermentation is limitless. It can happen anywhere in the world. And so absolutely, you can start to think about having. a biomanufacturing facility for making oils and fat in North America that leverages feed stock from North America and supplies North American customers and one in Southeast Asia that uses those feed stock, that that stays in that part of the economy and contributes to the GDP there.

[00:16:19] Shara: And supplies those customers and those consumers as well. And we're not there yet. I wanna be clear, as an industry, we're not there. But I believe that's where we're going. I believe it's a really powerful vision for what the future of this industry might look like.

[00:16:34] Karl: One of the things that C did was it shined a light on the fragility of supply chains. And so as a result of that, many companies, many countries realized, Hey, we're, , importing things you said from Ukraine or, we're importing things from China or wherever. Why are, why are we so dependent on these supply chains?

[00:16:53] Karl: What can we do to localize them? , , what you're saying makes a lot of sense. And I'm totally in agreement because I think that there is this. Decoupling of supply chains that is happening that people might not realize because people want that security internally in their countries.

[00:17:08] Karl: But then it doesn't have to just be in country. It could also be regional. From a climate change perspective, then you're not shipping, for example, liquids. Why are you shipping liquids around the world? That makes no, sense. But I would also imagine, Potentially from, from a manufacturing point of view, you can also localize, like you can, you can be next to p and g, in Cleveland or Cincinnati, wherever they are. Or you could be next to, Cargill down somewhere in the south, wherever their headquarters is. And like what you're talking about, allows you to really be local to whoever you're manufacturing.

[00:17:42] Shara: We often talk about performance and sustainability and of course cost as the three levers that that matter to buyers of these bio-based products. But you've just hit on something that has been subtle, which has come to light, but from our perspective has always been a major unlock. For a buyer of a PO oil alternative, whether that's a, an agribusiness company like Cargill, or whether it's a consumer products company like Proctor and Gamble, being able to have predictability of the quantity, the cost, and of course the quality of their inputs.

[00:18:23] Shara: Critical and they don't have that today. So being able to have a facility of a key ingredients manufacturer, co-located to their site where they know how much. The cost of that and the quality of that is something that does not exist and would be a really big unlock for a lot of components in the go into consumer products. We call ourselves a consumer biotechnology company because we're focused on solving problems that impact consumers. So that's what I know and that's what I can talk about really broadly. But if you think about everything, Inputs for plastics to palm oil and oils and bats to proteins.

[00:19:02] Shara: There's so much that this industry can unlock from that secure and stable and predictable supply chain.

[00:19:10] Erum: Sha, you were mentioning that different countries could have different feed stocks. I'm curious, what feed stock are you guys using?

[00:19:16] Shara: Well so this is, , a big advance in the industry and reflected by our technology. So when you look back maybe 10 years ago, you really only had one or two microorganisms that could be used as factories and they could be particular. So they might only be able to eat. Sucrose cane sugar they might only be able to grow in really tight temperature conditions. And I was alluding to this earlier, but one of the really exciting things about the future of, biotechnology is we find new microorganisms every day.

[00:19:49] Shara: We're able to sequence their genomes, we're able to develop new tools for growing them. That is a capability set that has never existed in humanity. And so there's a tendency to look back and say, well, we tried this thing and it didn't work, and so it won't work again. But that's completely ignoring the fact of.

[00:20:09] Shara: This unlocked potential that's coming as the field advances. Our company and our technology is one example of that. , I alluded to the idea of being able to grow our product in different countries with different feed stocks. Somebody well studied in the industry might say, well that doesn't make sense because your organism probably has to grow in a certain type of sugar.

[00:20:29] Shara: What we've demonstrated with our technology is that some of these new microorganisms, in fact, can do that. So our yeast can grow on every primary carbon source. So we've demonstrated its ability to grow on glucose. Sucrose, glycerol, Aras, we've, we've demonstrated its ability to grow on non pure feed stocks as well, opening up the potential to really innovate around upcycled or waste stream feed stocks.

[00:20:57] Shara: And again, there's still innovation that needs to happen, but that points to a really promising set of options in the future that this industry is just really starting to stumble on. And I think we're really just hitting. The height of the S curve for our industry as we start to unlock these new.

[00:21:14] Karl: I know you're gonna ask about personal care products, ioma, I just wanna mention that, , we as an industry, I mean, you guys are using yeast. We talked about it being a $900 billion in the us, industry on its own. Biotech still relies on a handful of organisms. And so you're totally right in terms of unlocking them and getting them to usability. the so-called organism readiness levels. that's gonna also just unlock a lot of potential innovation.

[00:21:41] Erum: You're checking off a lot of boxes, you know, with being sustainable, looking at waste feed stock, which is huge. One of the companies that we speak with is polyon. I'm not sure if you know of them, but they're, that's their goal to be a hundred percent sustainable. But as Carl mentioned I went to your event. I heard of your entry into the personal care space and that Pless product. Why did you choose it and please talk about it.

[00:22:05] Shara: Yeah. We've spent the, the most of the time today talking so far about, , the problem and about the technology. Technology is super important. Technology is foundational. If you don't have the technology to solve the right problem and to solve a real problem that exists, you don't have a business full stop.

[00:22:24] Shara: However it takes more than that. Even what we're talking about today is something that the average consumer, at least in America, does not think about and, and probably doesn't even know is an option at this point or an opportunity. We often have to take a step back and just remember that we eat, sleep, and breathe this, but the average consumer probably doesn't even know about it.

[00:22:47] Shara: So we think. Brand and communication and storytelling. And simplicity there are critical for bringing these solutions to the forefront. Impossible Foods was one of really the first companies to be able to do this. And they were a company that inspired my co-founders and I a lot. And that simple branding of Impossible Burger on the menu in.

[00:23:14] Shara: Momo Fu here in New York when they rolled out was innovative and bold, but powerful for driving that consumer pull through. Because in this space you have to work on supply and demand. You have to work on the big players and the supply chain, the big goliaths, and getting them to change, but also consumers.

[00:23:34] Shara: To drive that change as well, and they do and they want to and they're willing, but they have to know what the options are. So we recently launched pomas, which is our consumer facing brand solutions platform, and it's essentially our intel. Inside it is the brand portfolio under which we will release a series of products because, Our technology is essentially a platform for making multiple products.

[00:24:03] Shara: The first product is an alternative to palm oil, which is in and of itself a platform product. And we'll start to roll out multiple ingredients, solving problems in the personal care and beauty space, in the home care space, and in the food applications space. Under that Pless brand and Pless is a way for us to be.

[00:24:24] Shara: Loud and clear about who we are, what we do, and why you care. And it will go unpack with our customers, like Intel side, to communicate to their consumers really clearly what they're doing, both from an innovation standpoint, but also from that sustainability standpoint. was just really important and for us to be.

[00:24:46] Shara: Clear in building a brand that was driving home the message, because consumers are so overwhelmed with information. And so that's what Pomas is, and you'll see first Pomas products on shelves in early 2023, which we're very excited about.

[00:25:02] Karl: I just wanna be clear your Pless is gonna, Both your direct to consumer brand, but then also let's say I'm p and g and I'm using one of your products, it would also be branded as Pless Inside. As it were.

[00:25:14] Shara: Pless is gonna be anything that touches consumers. That's right.

[00:25:17] Erum: So what specific products can you share that.

[00:25:20] Shara: We're starting in skincare. So beauty and personal care industry is about a, 500 billion market today. Which is hilarious because the number of people who have told me that they think it's, , sweet that we're starting in a niche industry like the beauty industry.

[00:25:37] Shara: And I, I have to, , inquire as to when a 500 billion market became a niche market. But it's a massive market. It's a really interesting market. And we have found customers that love our ingredient across the personal care industry because it hits that intersection of innovation and sustainability.

[00:25:55] Shara: and brands and product manufacturers in the personal care space are so focused on those two axes, innovation and, and values of doing the right thing around sustainability. So within personal care, Skincare is where we're starting. um, we've found some really exciting customers to work with there.

[00:26:15] Shara: The products that we're launching is an oil, so oil has a lot of benefits on the skin for hydration, but also for delivering other ingredients and its role in complex formulations for all the things that you want your skincare products to do. But we are working, in body care, in hair care, and hopefully in cosmetics and colored cosmetics as well.

[00:26:36] Karl: That's exciting.

[00:26:37] Erum: You're talking to these companies, they're going to put Pless inside the products. How do you make the case to them to switch over to using Palms Aside, the sustainability? That's like a slam dunk. We know that, that's great. But in terms of the, the financial roi, is it cheaper to produce pless than using palm oil in the bad traditional?

[00:26:58] Shara: It's not cheaper, it's better. It's a, it's a great product. We've just announced Pomas earlier this month, a few weeks ago, and we, we launched on, on cnbc and that was really our announcement of our entry into the commercialization stage and also our announcement that we're ready to talk about what we're doing.

[00:27:19] Shara: Since then, We've been stealthy. We weren't in stealth mode, but we were quiet. We were heads down focused on the r and d, on the product, on the safety of the product, on our intellectual property strategy, making sure everything was right and ready to take to market before we really started talking about it.

[00:27:39] Shara: Yet despite that our first customers found us. That says two things. One is there's clear demand for this solution. So much so that these customers are, , scouring the internet looking for a solution and, and stumble upon us and reach out to us. Even though our website at the time was, , very minimal, we didn't really say much about what we did, but we, we, we spoke enough about the problem for them to reach out.

[00:28:06] Shara: And then the second thing is, you know, the good thing about your first customers finding you are. they're the leaders. They're the innovators. So these are customers who are really pushing boundaries on innovation and on sustainability, actually on both of them. And so they're really willing partners to be able to take your product and test it and try it.

[00:28:25] Shara: And they also have a very high standard. So that's been really good for us. And I think the way that this has really come about has been our first customers have found us. They have been, , hard customers, really testing, but also showing how this product outperforms again, on sustainability, but also on the, on the innovation side.

[00:28:45] Erum: Yep. Your first customers can also be your sales people. So I'm excited to see how they start advocating on behalf. Pless and C 16.

[00:28:54] Shara: And we love that because they have a whole base of loyal customers who trust them and follow them. And so that's a community that we get to reach and grow with. And so we're really excited to have these first customers be our evangelist and be our marketing arm, if you will.

[00:29:14] Erum: Are there Different like functionality or quality between the traditional palm oil and your palm oil?

[00:29:23] Shara: Slightly. And I think that's part of the storytelling that we do around the benefits. So an example. Palm oil made from the agricultural technology does have carotinoids, it has beta carine in it naturally, and sometimes that's stripped out. But the beta Carin gives it this reddish orange color. Our oil also has carotinoids, but in fact, they're totally novel carotinoids that come from our yeast.

[00:29:53] Shara: Our yeast makes these carotinoids or produces them. We're the first people in the world to commercialize. These carotenoids because they come from our yeast, and we're really just starting to understand, , carotenoids are antioxidants, so there's a clear benefit for skincare and what that can do for appearance of fine lines, for example, but also for edible consumption of antioxidants.

[00:30:17] Shara: Really, really exciting we're, because we're the first people, the onus is on us to understand the impact and find the data to support that, but it's something that some of our customers are very excited about, and it's a massive performance benefit that comes from this, this new twist on natural production from microbiology.

[00:30:38] Erum: Right. And so since you can engineer these microbes to produce different types of molecules, have you thought about other types of molecules produce to like I know like really hit it outta the water and just make just different types of personal care products?

[00:30:53] Karl: Are you talking about further enhancing the palm oil?

[00:30:55] Erum: Yes.

[00:30:55] Karl: Yeah.

[00:30:56] Erum: Further enhancing the palm oil.

[00:30:57] Shara: Yes. I think one of the, one of the tricks or one of the challenges of being in the biotech business is you have so many things you could do. We've got these tools, we've got these platforms, we've got these shiny, shiny objects that we could chase.

[00:31:12] Shara: So one of the things we have to always root ourselves in is, is this solving a problem? For the groups that we're focused on for our customers. And so we have a lot of ideas. Some of them come up, we have 10% projects within the company where anyone from a first year research associate up can promote a project, a topic to spend 10% of their time on, and they've actually come up with some really interesting.

[00:31:40] Shara: Product ideas like this, but we also have to make sure that we're focused on solving real problems. And so we spend a lot of time with our customer base trying to understand where are current oils and fats not good enough from a performance perspective. In, that's largely in the food, in the food applications area, talking to large food manufacturers, and there are a lot of areas where current bats and oils are not good enough from a performance perspective.

[00:32:08] Shara: But in the beauty industry, in the personal care industry, which is our first market, a lot of the problems are sustainability and understanding where are the areas where people are saying that their product is clean, or saying that their product is sustainable, but it's greenwashing, it's bs, and where could we make those products?

[00:32:26] Shara: Because they're still natural and they're highly innovative, but they also allow you to make these sustainability claims. So the answer is yes. We have to be careful not to chase shiny objects all the time because there's so much that we can do. That's a lesson that a lot of us have learned from our predecessors who have taught us so much.

[00:32:44] Shara: We solve that by really rooting ourselves and customers and trying to understand what their pain points look like.

[00:32:50] Erum: Awesome. Okay. And then just kinda my final question really about the impact and outcomes. So C 16 is replacing traditional agriculture and there's lots of people that work in agriculture, the farmers. What happens to those farmers when C 16 and other companies start fermenting these products?

[00:33:09] Shara: This may be a contrarian view, but like my perspective is we need all of it, we need it all done responsibly. I'll just root this in, in some data because that's how we think. the global oils and fats market today is about 250 billion by 2050. It's projected to. Almost a trillion dollars, about 900 billion. So that's a three to four X growth in the next 30 years. And of course, it's driven largely by population growth. That's expected by 2050. That is a tremendous amount of growth.

[00:33:44] Shara: This podcast is called Grow Everything. The reality is we have a lot to grow and it is a growing pie. And so in a growing pie, it's important to think about how we all contribute to solving that problem, but by doing it responsibly. There is a future where agriculture exists very similarly to how it exists today, but we have to have strict bounds on how it's done responsibly.

[00:34:11] Shara: And there is a part of of that solution set where biotech and precision fermentation solve problems, but it has to be done responsibly and it has to be done sustainably. And I do think biology is at the heart of all of. Yeast are the new trees, but trees are still trees. And how can we use our existing biology toolkit to improve the way that trees are grown?

[00:34:34] Shara: The efficiency, all of them. I think there's a bio, toolkit that can solve all of it, but I really do believe that agriculture and bio-based manufacturing will and have to coexist because we have such a massive set of problems to solve and we need all of them.

[00:34:50] Karl: Yeah, I totally agree. I look at all the solutions and I go, we need those. Times 10. I Rome you bring a super interesting point up and people bring it up all the time. What happens to the farmers? We need them. They're not gonna go away. And they might just be doing something slightly different.

[00:35:05] Shara: Slightly different, and let's do it better. Like a lot of farmers in palm oil today, the reality is like they make nothing. Their wages are withheld in the plantation. Exposed to toxic chemicals, they have to bring their children in to support production. There's so many ways that we can improve those jobs, by pushing the envelope here, we can help elevate what those jobs look like, whether they look similar to how they are today or whether they look radically different to, to how they are today. It's all about improving what that looks like for, healthy people and healthy planet.

[00:35:37] Karl: I'm curious, Shara, because like you, you, you gave a little bit of the origin story for the company, I would say you're a very different kind of symbio biotech ceo. What's the Shara origin story?

[00:35:48] Shara: Yeah, I would, I would agree with that and what makes me different is I didn't grow up in this industry. I wasn't rooted in this industry. I don't even have a PhD and , , the origin story as I laid out is. Everything about this company has been rooted in the problem and solving the problem, and I think that's a massive benefit for us and I, I think we see it in the culture of our company and the focus of our company, but everything has been rooted in the problem and.

[00:36:18] Shara: Starting from first principles of how do we solve this problem? Is it even possible? We weren't even sure that this was the right toolkit. We didn't have a toolkit, we didn't have a hammer. We just wanted to solve the problem. And we found this yeast, which we really believed in, and this, this solution set, and we started building that. Even though we didn't grow up in this industry, And I, I bounced around. I've always loved biology, my father was an, an academic research scientist in the neuropharmacology field, and I always loved it and I was always pretty good at it. And I thought about pursuing that as a path.

[00:36:52] Shara: I just, I didn't, , I ended up on Wall Street, which was really different from that. And by the way, wall Street was an incredible place to start my career. It really taught me to work. And it, it introduced such a, a work ethic and a structure for driving myself forward.

[00:37:09] Shara: But it was not for me. I did not care about my day job and I joke I had like my quarter life crisis where I sort of, everything was great about my job. The company's great. It was fun. I liked the people I worked with. But I didn't care about the fundamental thing I was doing, and so I asked myself if that mattered.

[00:37:28] Shara: And it turned out for me that it did matter that if I'm going to spend the bulk of my waking hours at work, I want it to be on something that's meaningful to me. So I did a little bit of soul searching to understand what that was, and I kept coming back to biology and life sciences, and I spent most of my, career applying that in the field of healthcare.

[00:37:47] Shara: So I, I left Goldman. I went to go work in global health. And it was a big leap. And it was a big pay cut, but it was really my entry into it. , now I'm working even closer to the source and commercializing biology and life sciences. So non-traditional for sure. A bit roundabout, but I think always rooted in that, that love for biology and the love for science.

[00:38:08] Karl: But how'd you make the leap from , global health to entrepreneurship? Had you been like an entrepreneur when you were a kid?

[00:38:15] Shara: No, it's all about the problem. I talk about this a lot and I, , I talk about entrepreneurship. I talk to people who wanna be entrepreneurs, and part of the message that I try to get across is there's not one path for this stuff.

[00:38:27] Shara: You know? No, I was not, trying to start a mail order business when I was five or something. , like, I just, I, I, I had a different path. For me, the path into entrepreneurship was seeing a problem being outraged. Trying to figure out if I could do something about it and then going to do it.

[00:38:48] Shara: And that is entrepreneurship. Like entrepreneurship is seeing a problem and doing something about it. Did I ever think I would start a company? Did I ever think I had the risk tolerance to start a company? No. And that is okay because there is not one path. There are so many things that can make successful entrepreneurs and successful founders.

[00:39:07] Shara: As long as you really care about the thing that you were doing, because it is an extreme job, so you have to really care about the thing you are doing

[00:39:14] Karl: You're focused on, , what we call consumer biotech. , you even use a term which we love, and, uh, you're based in New York City. Why did you choose to, , build your company here versus Boston or San Francisco?

[00:39:27] Shara: Yeah, so we started in Boston because I was getting my MBA at Harvard. My co-founder was getting his PhD at Harvard, and my other co-founder was an undergrad at mit and we met at a little place called the MIT Media Lab, which is known for these , , wacky, wacky science commercialization concepts.

[00:39:45] Shara: So we met there and we won the Harvard President's Innovation Challenge, and we got $25,000. Big check, which is still in our office, . So we started in Boston and we, we got at one lab bench and we started doing experiments there and we kept testing and getting feedback. And again, none of us had plans to be entrepreneurs.

[00:40:04] Shara: We all had different plans for our careers, but we were drawn to the problem. We kept nibbling at it and we kept seeing if we could solve it in this way. And so we started the company there. As we decided to take the leap full time into building the company, We also needed to grow, and we looked around and we looked at Boston.

[00:40:24] Shara: We looked at parts of California. And we looked at New York and the long story short is we, , took a vote. All eight people on the team at that point decided they were gonna move down to New York. We packed up our lab in a U-Haul and I drove it down I 95 with our intern, and we moved to New York in the summer of 2019, I think.

[00:40:48] Shara: And we picked it because, , one New York City and state. We're really investing in life sciences and nobody thinks of New York as a biotech hub, but it is changing, and I know you are advocating for this change and we are all telling the story why. But part of it is that the city and state really want to invest in this industry.

[00:41:07] Shara: They, they view this as the future. They view it as a way to solve problems. They view them as great jobs, and that was attractive for us as a place to grow a company. We wanted to. Grow this ecosystem. And the second part of it, as you said, as a consumer biotech company, you. That's New York. Every consumer company is based in New York.

[00:41:29] Shara: All of our customers are based here. And New York has found a really good way to lean into its unique advantage as the center of commerce and even brand and marketing to attract companies like ours that are maybe doing something that New York's not known for, like biotech, but lean into its benefits. And so for us, it just felt like a perfect.

[00:41:51] Karl: I always say, if you're in New York, everybody comes here for one reason or another, usually about money. But if you're gonna build a brand, there's probably no better place. And if you're looking for financing, eventually you're gonna end up here, which is one of the things that makes it really dynamic. If you wanna meet someone, they're either here or they're gonna be here at some.

[00:42:08] Shara: And I also think, there's a lot of advantage to building a company in the known hub because you have this concept of talent density and you're able to recruit people who have been at your similar peer companies, and take their learnings and bring them in.

[00:42:23] Shara: First of all, we have that. We've recruited multiple people who have moved from California to New York to come join us. But I think more importantly, it's become an unfair advantage for us because there are a lot of those people who wanna live in New York or need to live in New York. And we get to bring them onto our team cuz we're one of the fastest growing and obviously one of the best.

[00:42:43] Shara: Biotech companies in New York. That's right. While it seems like it might be a disadvantage because you don't have the talent density, I actually think it's become a massive advantage for us in terms of even recruiting. And then last but not least, this type of biotech is different than pharma.

[00:43:01] Shara: Consumer, biotech must be deeply cross-functional, and so being able to pull people in from all these different functions who come from outside the industry, puts us a step ahead in rethinking there's no playbook here, so we have to build the playbook from scratch. And so being able to recruit.

[00:43:17] Shara: Best in class from different companies and industries in New York, as we try to build that, that playbook and, and product launch.

[00:43:24] Karl: And do you have any sense , from your point of view, , what the relationship is, , between a big city like New York and or Boston or San Francisco, these biotech centers, and say a place that's more rural like Kansas or Nebraska, what do you see as being. Relationship as it advances into the future?

[00:43:42] Shara: So what we do here in New York is the r and d, the innovation, the lab scale work. But then I gotta go scale this thing. Palm oil is million tens of millions of metric tons today. You cannot manufacture that in a big city like New York or, or Boston.

[00:43:58] Shara: The rent's just too damn expensive and it doesn't make sense. And so we have to find places to scale this up and, and our company is nothing without scale. So the two coexist and, and places. In the corn belt are perfect partners for that. You have the people who are skilled in the scale up and transfer of large scale fermentations.

[00:44:23] Shara: You have the assets and industrial partners and companies that are experts and have the distribution arms. And so I think that they are really, really nice compliments and maybe they're , , odd partners, but they're critical partners at different. Of the deployment timeline.

[00:44:40] Karl: Yeah. We've heard from our friends in climate tech that, , if you want to do a big infrastructure project, you'd go to the corn belt or the rust belt. That's, , a much easier place to deploy these things.

[00:44:50] Erum: You're not a native biotech person. You kind of became one over time. Were there any books or movies or anything in pop culture that you like, that you read that you can recommend to.

[00:45:01] Shara: I, I read a lot of papers, , I read a lot of research papers and , that's how like everybody in this industry is a constant student. So yes, I, I come up to speed and I do it by reading primary sources what's happening in, in academia and elsewhere. But so does my team. , , this is one of the things I love about, our team.

[00:45:21] Shara: , we love MOOCs, like massive online open courses. My team is currently, they're experts, but they're currently doing a MOOC that's run by the University of Dell. The University of Delta is best in class on fermentation, and even though my team has spent decades in fermentation, they're going through this MOOC together.

[00:45:40] Shara: Education has been so decentralized that's been, you know, papers are kinda the opposite of that. Papers are all behind paywalls and then MOOCs are free and open and it's been a really fun way for us to grow and learn together.

[00:45:51] Karl: Yeah, I've done the. University of Del industrial biotechnology course.

[00:45:55] Shara: Yeah. Yeah. Excellent.

[00:45:57] Karl: It's tremendous. Yeah.

[00:45:58] Erum: I have, um, one more question. So are you hiring, , you talked about the talent pool and, , there's a lot of talent out there since all these tech companies. How to let all these, , amazing people go. So anything, I guess hiring.

[00:46:09] Shara: We're always hiring and this is, a new stage for the company. We have been primarily an r and d company to date, and we will continue, of course, always to be an r and d company and we will always be growing there. So we're always hiring scientists and engineers and manufacturing experts.

[00:46:26] Shara: But we're just entering commercialization. And so we're, we are thinking about sales and business development and marketing and comms and all of these things that are new for C 16 and for our brand Pomalyst. For people looking to, to take their functional skills and build something fresh, we have a lot to do.

[00:46:49] Shara: So we're hiring across the board, but particularly on the commercialization side.

[00:46:54] Karl: That's fantastic. Well, listen, thank you so much Sha for taking the time to speak to us today. We're looking forward to having you back on as a, , early friend of the pod and , we wish you the best of luck. We're excited for you, we're excited for C 16 and of course we're excited for New York City because we think this is the future.

[00:47:11] Shara: Me too. Glad to be a friend of the pod and can't wait to host our next event at our space together.

[00:47:17] Karl: Awesome. Yeah, looking forward.

[00:47:20] Karl: Wow, that was a fantastic interview.

[00:47:23] Erum: When she talked about her company and what they do in the beginning of the episode, she didn't mention biotech once. , one of the things that I've seen in the past is when people start talking about biotech, those that are not in it, Like their eyes just lays over.

[00:47:37] Erum: They're like, wait, what? ? They're like, oh no, we're going to something deep. But she really brings it to the people and I really respect her for doing that.

[00:47:44] Karl: Yeah, absolutely. She speaks to this idea that at the end of the day, most people don't care where a product comes from. They just want to know the product works.

[00:47:52] Karl: I don't think anybody really cares how a product is necessarily manufactured, what feed stock, if it is even made with biotechnology, that's a bonus. It could potentially, Premium and price at the beginning, but I don't think it necessarily has to do that.

[00:48:05] Erum: I can't wait to get my hands on. Those products are coming out next year. When I went to our lab, I saw some of those products. They are this beautiful, orange-ish red color, and I think that's a color of their brand as well. But to get your hands on the product to think of how this product was made, even though she doesn't talk about it in the commercial marketing of it. But now that people know, especially those that are listeners, but even for myself, like wow. This product was made from microbes rather than chopping down a palm tree. , it's just a brand new world. I wanna say .

[00:48:38] Karl: You don't get that feeling when you drink a beer or eat yogurt.

[00:48:42] Erum: No, because I don't know if those are engineered organisms.

[00:48:46] Karl: I think for cheese it is.

[00:48:47] Erum: Oh yeah,

[00:48:48] Karl: yeah.

[00:48:49] Erum: Well we have to dig in cheese.

[00:48:51] Karl: Most cheeses. Yeah.

[00:48:51] Erum: I love cheese .

[00:48:53] Karl: Yeah.

[00:48:54] Erum: Wow. I wanna know which cheeses. Made through an engineer organism versus just like an evolution, like just an organic evolution, I guess. , that would be a good podcast. Good. Yeah.

[00:49:08] Karl: I'm, the RET that gets used in, in most cheeses is genetically engineered, and it has been for a while because it used to be an ingredient that was, I wanna say extracted from sheep or

[00:49:20] Erum: like the stomach. Sheep or something like that. Yeah,

[00:49:23] Karl: something like that.

[00:49:23] Erum: I saw documentary on cheese. Remember I love cheese. So Yeah, I've heard of that. It helps like curle it.

[00:49:29] Karl: Yeah, exactly.

[00:49:31] Erum: And she talked about the technology's important. She's really creating a platform, and there's several ways that this can go, and what I hope the audience took away is that she's just barely scratching the surface of what's possible. If you have an engineer organism and you can engineer it to use a specific feed stock, you can create so many different biomolecules. For a company to succeed like hers, she needs to be hyper focused. She can't go in too many directions, but other people can. Other people can build something new, build something different. So I just think that she is a good example. She's someone that everyone should be paying attention to. I keep tabs on her and just very impressed with the way that she explains what her company does, and she checks off so many boxes, the sustainability box, the social responsibility. The distribution model, like everything, and it's just so great to unpack

[00:50:24] Karl: Right. Well, and I think, , one of the things that I really took away from that conversation is also her problem orientation. That is their point of focus is that idea of is this gonna solve the problem? And that keeps them hyper focused on what they're doing. So I thought that, Super useful. And if you're not an entrepreneur, you're thinking about being an entrepreneur, I can't think of a better way of focusing yourself and your company.

[00:50:49] Erum: Share thoughts. What do you think about engineering molecules for personal care, for food, the way that SHA approached it? Do you have a company that you would start theoretically or really ?

[00:51:00] Karl: It was a great podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. And , share our podcast far and wide.