132. Bond. Enzyme Bond. CurieCo's Erika Milczek on Replacing Chemicals with Biotech

[00:00:00] Karl: Ko, we are so glad to have you on the Grow Everything Podcast.

[00:00:08] Erika: Wonderful. I.

[00:00:11] Karl: So we've known each other for probably 10 years, if you can believe it. I mean, it's hard to believe you had started the company, out of gen space. Now I've been a gen space board member for three years, I think. But let's get some background on you, what your career trajectory has looked like and what motivated you to start career Co.

[00:00:32] Erika: Ooh. So I'm a chemist. my PhD is in chemistry. my undergrad was chemistry. I started my first career as a process chemist at Merck. but the irony is as much as, my foundation was in chemistry, I've spent most of my career replacing.

[00:00:50] Erika: Chemical processes or chemical, ingredients with biotech or biotech derived ingredients. and that's really what led me to starting reco actually. there was an opportunity, really there was a ton of regulation that was coming out, just it started in the US. Europe was a little bit more advanced.

[00:01:11] Erika: A lot of legacy chemicals that have been in consumer products for years. Regulators said that we're done. We're gonna clean up this space and we're gonna start to ban these chemicals. And that created an opportunity for new molecules to come to market and new technologies. And that's really how was born, this regulatory.

[00:01:32] Erika: left Merck, started the company in Gen Space. In fact, one of our first hires and oldest, colleague is Wil Dell, who used to be the lab manager at Gen Space. Space. and he's been with the company through Gen Space, J Labs, and now Raleigh, North Carolina. So we're now located Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

[00:01:54] Erika: We were one of the pandemic casualties of New York. Left the city. Love the city by the way. Love and miss, my hometown, New York. but it was a great move for us moving to rtp.

[00:02:05] Karl: Amazing.

[00:02:06] Erika: that's our story and gives you the,

[00:02:08] Erum: Yeah, that's great. I mean, I love that story. There's so much parallels between our own story. Carl and I met at Gen Space, so gen space needs to highlight these stories because there's been a lot of great things that, came from having this community, biotech, bio lab space and wow, look how far a lot of us have come.

[00:02:28] Erika: I so agree that was such a special space. I don't think that there are enough shout outs to Jen Space and how, so many companies, their origin story,

[00:02:37] Erum: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:37] Erika: know.

[00:02:38] Karl: For sure.

[00:02:39] Erum: Carl, bring that up in the board meeting next time.

[00:02:42] Karl: I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm, making a note of that right now because it's absolutely true. they don't do enough of those kind of case studies.

[00:02:48] Erum: Yeah. Yeah. So, I've heard about Kiri Co over the years. you've guys been going strong for quite some time. I looked at the, website recently, and there's this concept of elegant evolution at Kiri Co. How does this approach fundamentally change what's possible in consumer products compared to traditional chemistry?

[00:03:08] Erum: Love.

[00:03:09] Erika: Ah, okay. So, for us we use, a lot of directed evolution. a directed evolution is just a very fancy way of saying we are speeding up what naturally happens in. Evolves survival of the fittest. The only thing that we're doing is in a lab, we're accelerating that. so what we've done is we took a look at regulation and we said, are there large enough markets for us to go after?

[00:03:40] Erika: I mean, large chemical markets that make sense to drive a technology.

[00:03:48] Erika: For us, we thought that crosslinking chemicals were a really great starting point. Okay, so this is gonna sound really esoteric. Crosslinking chemicals.

[00:03:56] Karl: Yeah. What is that?

[00:03:59] Erika: Yeah. So if you have a wrinkle free cotton shirt. That's probably made with formaldehyde. If you have anything that's made with leather, like the leather in your car is probably made with chromium, canned leather. These are crosslinking chemicals, so these are small chemicals that can come in to natural materials.

[00:04:21] Erika: Find and cross link to give you additional strength and integrity in that material. So it makes a natural material have longevity and function more like a synthetic material. So it gives you longevity and function. Great chemicals, they have been used. Across multi verticals for years. We even use these chemicals, at least used to use them as preservatives.

[00:04:45] Erika: So formaldehyde and formaldehyde. releasers, really up until about five years ago, we were using them to preserve our shampoo market

[00:04:55] Erika: today.

[00:04:56] Erum: Oh Wow.

[00:04:57] Erika: pervasively used in construction materials in those cases it's used for microbial control. People probably know formaldehyde best for, embalming fluid,

[00:05:08] Erum: Oh yeah.

[00:05:08] Erika: preserving humanities, very versatile classes of chemistry, multi vertical.

[00:05:14] Erika: We need these forms of chemistry. Now the problem is a lot of these chemicals that I've just named off to you have either detrimental impact on the environment. Human health problems where you have carcinogens and off-gassing that's leading to health issues, things like that. So regulators are doing their jobs and they're saying, okay, we've been using these for years, but it's time to clean up industries.

[00:05:39] Erika: And that doesn't happen all at the same time. So. What hits, the shampoo market in Europe maybe doesn't hit the US market until years later. what's hit the US market for construction still hasn't hit markets in Asia like Singapore, China, et cetera. we at kiri co have taken a lot of time to think about where do we start.

[00:06:02] Erika: So where's a good starting point? We know that these technologies are. We know these chemicals are needed. Where do we launch first? Do we focus on construction? Do we focus on textiles? Do we focus on shampoo and consumer products? And then we take a big step back and we say, what's the most appropriate biology to replace that chemistry? Go into lab. And we set up a directed evolution campaign so that we can develop good molecules for those markets. that's the background in the market answer to what we're doing. but maybe to tell you a little bit more tangibly how we, stand up against these chemicals. if you take one metric ton of our bioactive, we can displace over 40 metric tons of formaldehyde.

[00:06:49] Erika: So biology, because biology is reacting with biology. It's a much more tuned solution to what you're needing. So for us, when we look at this, we say, okay, if we're gonna go after, let's say leather and use that leather example. Well, leather is biology. There's a biological solution for making skin or leather more durable and stronger. those are the kinds of solutions that we focus on. We then do a direct evolution campaign, which means for us, we know that we're bringing biological solutions into a largely chemical world. And so a lot of our evolution campaigns necessarily about fixing the biology.

[00:07:33] Erika: It's instead about teaching biology to operate in a largely chemical environment. So we introduce selection pressures that have say chemical. So a selection pressure could be as simple as saying, well, if we wanna replace formaldehyde and shampoo, let's just squirt shampoo in the presence of our biomolecule and see which ones survive and behave better.

[00:07:56] Erika: Those are mutations we wanna take. Forward, anything that was worse. We wanna move of the population and we just keep going through iterative cycles of this using automation and a lot of, quite frankly, computational work to handle these very large data sets.

[00:08:12] Erum: Yeah, that's incredible. I'm starting to think the gears are turning. I mean, we talk a lot about this world of consumer biotech, which is a world that you are supporting, creating this infrastructure, disability, these directed evolution campaigns. For some, I heard that phrase over 130 episodes.

[00:08:30] Erum: very interesting. But, I'm curious, how do you see biology based ingredients really transforming the supply chain aspect of business and not just making it incrementally better too, so the functionality of it as well?

[00:08:44] Erika: So there are so many ways to tackle that question. It's a great question. I think first, some of it is our existing supply chain really isn't set up for biological solutions, but in some ways, biological solutions could be much better. so lemme give you a couple of examples of what I mean.

[00:09:01] Erika: biological solutions oftentimes, are going to be, Quite frankly, just environmentally, friendly. And that means they can be food for microorganisms, which spoilage can be a problem, Think about food. We try to ship food around. Spoilage is a problem. So oftentimes you get some of these BioSolutions and they have to be refrigerated or cold store cold chains.

[00:09:27] Erika: Um.

[00:09:34] Erika: that infrastructure slightly exists, but it's not as robust in consumer products as it's in food and farming. So there's one, so it's kind of a negative. I think there are also ways of looking at it as a positive to supply chain. So like I told you, if one ton of our material can displace 40 tons of the chemical, well.

[00:09:57] Erika: Just what that does for traffic. Imagine what that does for emissions. and then imagine real estate footprint of our customers having to store that inventory, there are ways that we can simplify supply chain, but I would say in the short term, there are ways that maybe supply chain isn't quite ready for these new technologies and we're having to roll with punches and

[00:10:20] Erika: do temperature. We've done. We've said, okay, well we can make it room temperature stable with a little bit more, engineering. Or we can find cold chain storage so we can get a product to market faster, and be creative about leveraging different types of supply chains.

[00:10:37] Karl: Can you give us a specific example of how this. Works in practice. I mean, you mentioned leather, you mentioned, shampoo and, these kinds of things. But I think an example would be really useful for our listeners.

[00:10:49] Erika: Fantastic. happy to do that. So one of the products that we launched in April of last year is. this is a bioactive that's used in hair care. And so what we use this bioactive for is, bond building. So, making care stronger, more durable, but we also found that it pairs beautifully with proteins.

[00:11:12] Erika: Found products. So about 40% of all new haircare launches are formulated with a protein. So if you look on your shampoo, you're probably gonna see wheat, protein or so, or kerin. these are proteins that are formulated in shampoos so that you have very natural film farmers on hair and conditioning agents on hair. We created Curam to make new bonds with hair, to strengthen hair, to add more resilience and to take proteins and be able to seal them onto the surface of hair. So now, if you have a product that already uses protein in it, you throw in Curam, we can make that product anywhere from 30 to 60% more effective because that protein seals on the surface of hair rather than washing down the.

[00:12:00] Karl: Yeah. That's amazing.

[00:12:02] Erika: we also have to turn around and then make, demos of everything. So, Mina has a raw material that's on the market. It's a B2B raw material, but we do these leaving conditioners and masks and all sorts of different things that we put together for customers so that they can understand how to formulate and how to use this new ingredient.

[00:12:25] Erika: with that specific product, we've actually found that it's been really fun to partner with other companies on new launches. a really great example is there's a microfluidic company called Capsim. So they're a contract manufacturer. They use microfluidics to make all sorts of really cool cosmetic products.

[00:12:44] Erika: They've been a major player in skincare. hair care products market where we have, microfluidic beads that are made with our active and then protein on the other side, which is more of a condition and so a customer can pump at their home and activate the product at time of use and seal that protein onto.

[00:13:09] Erika: Their conditioning agent is in here. So it's this fully, green concept of being able to kind of do dual chamber activation at the home. So that's one example. So again, took inspiration from chemicals that were on the market. But then said, okay, well let's take this a step further. What are other trends that we can follow?

[00:13:29] Erika: to give some pretty unique claims to bring new bioactive to market. So that's what we're doing in personal care. and then we had a food launch about, three months ago in March. that one we're really excited about. in fact, I would say the whole company is really passionate about the food product that just came to market.

[00:13:47] Erika: So about one six of all dairy that's on the market, is never consumed. It's actually thrown away by either the retailer or the consumer. So about one sixth of all of your that comes outta a cow is just thrown away. and this is globally, it's a global problem. It's a problem with, spoilage and stability and, just really being able to get these dairy products from the manufacturer to the grocer.

[00:14:17] Erika: and we developed a really fun ingredient that stabilizes milk and of. The yield of cheese, over double, so cheese cold. And that also has an impact on waste streams because that whey waste stream, you're now getting more of the protein out so it's easier to process your waste streams. so we're really excited about that product and, of stabilizing dairy so it can to consumers and.

[00:14:52] Erum: Yeah, that this is, really interesting. Saying 'cause as Carl and I have been speaking to our guests and our clients, and really again, looking in this world of consumer biotech, there are what we call the value chain ecosystem. So people on the early stages that are first of course are making feed stocks, but then you're making the different ingredients and how the ingredients play together, and you are creating ingredients.

[00:15:13] Erum: Then you have the formulators and then you have. creating demo product for customers. and you mean the businesses not direct to consumer. not making products?

[00:15:25] Erika: Consumer.

[00:15:26] Erum: Not yet.

[00:15:27] Erika: is really because anytime you bring a new, technology to market, it's hard for adoption and that's hard for any company. It's not just startups. You bring a new technology to market, you now have to teach the market how to use that ingredient. and I would say the easiest way to teach someone how to use someone is to show them right, you

[00:15:46] Erum: Right,

[00:15:46] Erika: here's a product, play with it.

[00:15:48] Erum: right, right. Okay. That's really interesting. I love that. I mean, you have to make it in order to demonstrate. So totally get it. And then with this food, ingredient, , are all these made through bayou manufacturing of, It cellular? Is it self free?

[00:16:03] Erum: just curious. And you said directed evolution. Is that a fermentation process?

[00:16:09] Erika: So we

[00:16:12] Erum: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:15] Erika: Molecule discovery. Okay, so this is lead ID where we would bring a lead molecule through. That's what on directed evolution side. and tools. There are actually cell-free protein expression.

[00:16:36] Erika: Very interrogate what is.

[00:16:47] Erika: stability. We can do temperature stability, chemical stability, all these different types of things. and so we can tease out what are the phenotypes that we want and we can make that ideal candidate. So then directed evolution. We do those campaigns and we'll say take maybe three to five lead molecules.

[00:17:07] Erika: Through that, we then plug into expression strains. Now we're moving out of cell three. deferment. Okay. so at this point, we wanna make buckets of something when we're doing cell-free, we're making micrograms,

[00:17:23] Karl: Yeah.

[00:17:25] Erika: tiny little droplets. And that's good enough for us because all we need to do is eno type the phenotype and keep on running through.

[00:17:31] Erika: But then when we really need to. Plug them into expression organisms, and we have a lot of expression organisms within the company. We've looked at, both, bacterial and, fungal expression strains. So we have a lot of, I would say knowledge and expression strains in that category. then we do fermentation, once we've selected the right expression organism for that enzyme. It's as simple as doing a little more optimization, a little bit more on the process development. What do you feed the bug to make it make what you want the most? scale up. I'm making all of this sound easy. It's

[00:18:14] Erika: not

[00:18:14] Erum: gonna, I was like, oh,

[00:18:15] Erum: really? It's that simple.

[00:18:16] Karl: We know. Yeah.

[00:18:18] Erika: right. I mean, all of this years and years and years of work. so that's how we bring things through. At the very end, I would say the most important thing is, recognizing when we didn't quite get it right. sometimes that lead that we thought was a lead really isn't a lead and we have to fall back on one of these backups that we selected.

[00:18:37] Erika: sometimes we actually find that several things could work and we're like, but this is better for this industry and this is better for this industry. And so we can segregate that way. but that's how we, get the 80% of the way. So now at that point, we're about 80% of the way to solving a chemical problem, but we have that last 20%, that last 20% we oftentimes fix with formulation.

[00:19:04] Erika: I say, okay, now let's figure out how to make this to where when we add our ingredient into this onic surfactant, it doesn't precipitate well, can we do that with formulation effects by adding different types of excipients, to just bridge that last 20%.

[00:19:24] Karl: I'm super interested in this, Erica, because on the one hand you talked about having to create these products so that people get to know, what you're doing. On the other hand, you've described what the Discovery process looks like, what we see. Is that there's a challenge when it comes to commercialization of products.

[00:19:42] Karl: How do you guys address that a little bit differently? Like we've got plenty of people who are discovering great stuff. We've got a few people who are smart enough to do what you guys are doing, where you create products to make it easier for a potential client to see how it works. But making that bigger leap to commercialization is still very much a challenge.

[00:19:57] Karl: What guys doing to address.

[00:19:59] Erika: Yeah, we're doing every mistake that can.

[00:20:06] Karl: It's the only way to learn.

[00:20:08] Erika: yeah. so the way to be an expert is to literally make every mistake you can possibly make, then voila, you're an expert. I mean, humility, I would say is the key in this. we've tried a lot of different things. I honestly, cannot say the emphatically enough. Partnership is key to six. SaaS.

[00:20:27] Erika: there are so many companies out there that already know how to bring new ingredients to market. The trick is to show them that we can bring them value, and expand their market share if they partner with us, to bring new things to market. and I think this collaboration with CAP Some and P two, great example, Capso, they're already a contract manufacturer.

[00:20:49] Erika: They already are a major player like color, cosmetic, and skin. we can bring them into the hair care market. So that's a new angle for them to be able to pick up. P2 is already selling and having a lot of success in the conditioning hair care market. So for us to join up with these two really stellar companies, we were able to learn a lot from them.

[00:21:14] Erika: Frankly just broaden our reach. So that's a really good example. We have some other, really exciting partnerships that haven't been announced yet. They're coming out, I think one where we're actually launching in late July. so it's been fantastic working with these other companies and leveraging their knowhow.

[00:21:31] Erika: but from our side, it's trial and error. So I demo. We have a lot of humility when it comes to our technical docs and working with customers and just asking them, okay, what did we do wrong?

[00:21:45] Erika: This is how we, how did you do it? and just learning from that, learning from the mistakes and iterating just consistently it,

[00:21:53] Erum: Yeah.

[00:21:54] Erum: Yeah. Failure is a measure of success, I would say for sure. there's been a lot of talk of like, is there a way to share failure data because that's so important because.

[00:22:02] Erika: so.

[00:22:04] Erum: Save some time, All the hard, but you're looking at it as an opportunity and I love that type of thinking.

[00:22:09] Erum: True entrepreneur, true scientist. and then one of the things I wanted to touch on too is this strategy of looking at what's being regulated out. And so in today's world, that's, more topical than ever. we have RFK Junior talking about, removing, all, toxic food additives, specifically food dyes.

[00:22:27] Erum: but the two products you mentioned, was there, a regulation play, or is this something that you're, gonna still continue going after and then finally you might have that opportunity for you?

[00:22:39] Erika: Yeah. So I would say for us, when we do our early development, because development timelines in biology are so long, So, so long. When we do anything that's gonna enter early stage development, it has to be inspired by a regulatory trend that we know will sustain. So, when I was saying the cross-linking chemicals, we knew, chromium six has largely been banned in most countries at this point.

[00:23:07] Erika: Chromium three can still be used, but now you have an end of life issue because chromium three will readily go to chromium six. So we know that that's regulation, that's common. we can say that. So right now we may not launch a product for tanning. We can develop for it. Because having something that can do that, if you can modify the skin of a cow, hide well, you can also affect the skin of a human and sheep and alligator and all of these other things. If we can do really fun things with hair on a human, guess what? We can also affect, sheep and goat hair and et. Wool and, kir and all of these other really fun natural fibers that we love these natural fibers, but they just don't have the performance of synthetic fibers. So our goal is not to say, Hey, guess what?

[00:24:01] Erika: We're replacing PFAS? Or Hey, guess what? We're replacing polyurethane. That doesn't make sense. Instead we say. Hey, look, we know that you have to transition off of some of these synthetics to meet your corporate goals or regulatory requirements. We can allow you to go into a natural fiber and give you those performance claims that you are now losing because you lost this other material.

[00:24:26] Erika: So we're not trying to replace, we cannot give them the same thing. Chemicals and biology are just different. But the chemical going out created an opportunity for new technology. So that's how we view it. How can we tell the customer what we are giving you is the next generation. Let us give you performance.

[00:24:44] Erika: And so everything that we think about from a marketing standpoint, what product are we bringing to market? We say. We preserve or improve the performance of whatever that customer currently has. We don't wanna convince them that they don't wanna use what they have. We wanna say, yeah, keep using what you're using, but we're gonna either strengthen it or give you more longevity, durability, or improve some performance claims.

[00:25:11] Erika: And that's how we're coming out and trying to dovetail and slip in with these regulations.

[00:25:15] Erum: Okay.

[00:25:16] Karl: Yeah. I love that. I mean, I especially love the improving their performance because what we hear a lot is that's what people are looking for. They want that absolute, superior performance, that they can't get. If they're gonna have to replace these chemicals, yeah.

[00:25:34] Erika: Doing the replacement strategy doesn't always pan out. I love a veggie burger and in fact, I will go for a black bean burger over a real burger any day of the week. And I'm not gonna lie, I slip bacon on my black bean burger. I. Does that make sense? No vegans, please don't like throw stones at me, but I love a black bean burger.

[00:25:54] Erika: I think that they're fantastic, but I don't order a black bean burger because I think it's gonna taste like a cheeseburger, I want something different. I want a black bean burger. and I think that if you speak to the consumer in that way. and speak to the customer in that way. So for us, the customer is the formulator and they have to really respond to what a consumer wants.

[00:26:16] Erika: Don't tell 'em we're giving you the same thing. that was bad, but here's the new thing that's gonna give you the same. No, hey, here's something new. Are you interested in this? This is.

[00:26:29] Erika: It's you teach everybody why you're special and why you're new and why work.

[00:26:37] Erika: We have the right approach.

[00:26:43] Karl: Yeah, I mean, I think the approach works. and it reinforces what we are hearing, in the marketplace in terms of people just, want that, performance. it's not, the replacing doesn't work and, it's a harder sell, Much harder.

[00:26:55] Erika: Yeah.

[00:26:58] Karl: you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that you were victims of COVID. You guys ended up relocating to research Strangled Park, a very dynamic biotech community in North Carolina. what does that look like for you? what does your facility look like? what does Biomanufacturing look like in RTP?

[00:27:16] Erika: so our lab is literally like right there. Beautiful. yeah, I absolutely the space that we're in, and top notch colleagues. so really, really great team to work with. we moved here because we knew that there was a lot of industry and talent in our space in RTP, I'll give a shout out to, what was Novazymes is now Nous, which is, really , the largest biotech company in the world.

[00:27:43] Erika: Right. they are the leaders for anything industrial, biotech, and being so close to their North American headquarters for us was critical because great talent, they've been very collaborative with us. They're just wonderful, to have as neighbors, literally across the street as.

[00:28:01] Karl: Amazing.

[00:28:01] Erum: Yeah.

[00:28:01] Erum: Yeah.

[00:28:05] Erika: So. And I say commercial talent because there's a lot of commercial talent here. there's also r and d here, but there's much more focus on commercialization, manufacturing, getting to market, marketing, sales, these sorts of things. So we thought that this was a really great place to move for that next stage of commercialization.

[00:28:36] Erika: To do early stage RD. The talent is unbelievable. My colleagues in New York, I'm still in awe of, they're, great to work with everyone in Jen space, just the grit and the scrappiness and the cleverness and It's a great place to do. Early stage r and can't imagine place for it.

[00:28:56] Erika: but for us, I think, we needed to hit that commercial focus we needed to have a place that we can build, scale and grow. So RTP

[00:29:05] Erika: it was a good decision.

[00:29:06] Erum: Yeah, we say like, first of all, second, third, the fact that New York is a great ecosystem for early stage r and d. and just finding the people, finding the talent In New York, we say that, you hustle in New York. You grind in Boston or RTP or sf, just you're just doing and building and you already figured out everything for at least getting the first phase ready.

[00:29:27] Erum: so totally agree with that. thanks for sharing your thoughts on that. we also mentioned partnerships and the importance of partnerships commercial. Agree with that. takes a village. there's just so many partners that develop an ecosystem. So can you give us a little bit more insight on your strategy for building commercial ecosystems?

[00:29:49] Erum: So not just talent, but those partners, and how do you build it around these biological technologies to get it into the hands of consumers? what's that look like for you in your mind?

[00:30:00] Erika: Yeah. so it takes a lot different forms and I think each vertical is different. So the three spaces that. By far the most active in personal care food. And then, actually leather and textiles, which we're not very public about. and working in these three different spaces, partnership looks very

[00:30:19] Erika: different. and actually, how about I start on the.

[00:30:24] Karl: Yeah,

[00:30:25] Karl: sounds good.

[00:30:26] Erika: it's such a fun space to be in that, we know nothing about at Curri Co. and we always approach partnerships in that way. We tell them what we know is if you tell us what's wrong with this, we know how to fix it. We can commit to that. But what we don't know is we don't know cotton and we don't know, other cellulite.

[00:30:45] Erika: We don't know vegan leather, we don't know real leather.

[00:30:49] Karl: Right.

[00:30:50] Erika: What we can share with you is anything that we learn from chatt pt, right?

[00:30:54] Karl: Alright.

[00:30:55] Erika: Not bad, but that doesn't make us an expert in leather. the way that we play in that space is we will deploy a team to work on site, side by side with a partner.

[00:31:07] Erika: but it's them doing the heavy lifting. It's our partners who are saying, okay, this is how manufacturing works for BlueJeans, for instance, and walking us through what that looks. Like, or this is how it looks, going from cotton to the yarn, to the textile, to the et cetera, et cetera. and us doing a lot of listening and then saying, okay, well, where we think based on your process, where we think that we are gonna fit in the best is this part of supply chain right here.

[00:31:36] Erika: And that's not always with the first company that we start at. sometimes they have to then connect us with either someone downstream or upstream. Of where they are. We found that in the textile space. It's been such a beautiful space where people are very open about, that's not us, but you wanna go to the sky over here.

[00:31:56] Erika: they're also pretty good about knowing who's looking for new technology. so we found that, that textile and leather space very open, for telling us, who you wanna go to. Is this over here? The leather side. One of our favorite partnerships, is a vertically integrated, tannery fashion house.

[00:32:13] Erika: So completely vertically integrated. that, I can't tell you how powerful that is because they both know the market. They know the r and d side and they have their OEMs that they work with. So they know how to liaise with them. that partnership started less than a year ago.

[00:32:30] Erika: And we're already moving to a pilot scale now, less than a year. And this is for us not knowing anything about leather. So I just wanna acknowledge that's the partner just being so great and we had these regular calls. Anytime they had a problem, they said problem. That allowed us to go in and iterate, help.

[00:32:54] Karl: Amazing.

[00:32:55] Erika: Yeah, so leather and textiles that we've had, we've really enjoyed actually working with the customer itself, the user of our material food. Similarly, we work a lot with the customer itself. On the personal care side, we've actually found that it's been much more productive to work with B2B chemical companies. Fewer experts in this space and to partner with other ingredient providers or or chemical companies that know how to talk to the customer, that know how to formulate that, know what's gonna resonate. So for each field, we change a little bit, what's our strategy? And we're responsive to, who's looking for new technology and who is willing to follow with us on this journey of learning.

[00:33:41] Karl: Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, we know how important partnership is and we know how important it is to build out an ecosystem, especially with innovators. But it sounds like you guys have that. Wired in a very interesting way that other people could learn from,

[00:33:54] Erika: well, I definitely appreciate the accolades there, Carl. Totally take it. I would say we learn from each industry and it takes a little while to learn. And we're not so stubborn that we can't acknowledge that we did something wrong. And I say, okay, let's redirect.

[00:34:11] Erika: Yeah.

[00:34:13] Karl: Yeah. And then over the years you you've done some fundraising, it's been a pretty challenging fundraising environment, but you guys were somehow successful. What was the secret? What did you tell investors that convinced them to bring on. biology based ingredients in this process that you're talking about instead of investing in the latest SAS product.

[00:34:34] Erika: Oh gosh. Yeah. That's great. Great question. That's tough because honestly Carl, I'm gonna give you the same response. I entrepreneur gonna, one of the hardest things an you hear a lot. on powering through that. so I would say that, disproportionately here disproportionately,

[00:35:00] Erika: but I do think that what we were able to early on. Is fantastic investors. So our first investors helped us network to our next round of investors, which helped us to network to the next round of investors. So I cannot say emphatically enough how important it is. To get the right foundation of investors early on.

[00:35:23] Erika: And we, we were very fortunate, very, very lucky to have just really top-notch investors. the earliest were just angel investors, actually. Not really institutional money. It it was angel investors and then. I think for us, a big game changer was when Horizon's Ventures came on board and led our series A, and being a part of that whole portfolio and the network of companies because again, top notch companies, with going with these different groups, breakout ventures. So Breakout Labs, another great one. they so focused on bringing the companies and their portfolios together so that you can learn from each other

[00:36:02] Karl: So smart.

[00:36:03] Erika: yeah. Those founders became, my. Best friends, my advisors, my therapists, whatever you need at the time.

[00:36:13] Erika: when you have a group like that where it's a venture organization that brings everybody together rather than, allowing competition to happen, instead we're gonna bring this community and. I think Horizons has done that very well. Breakout Labs and Breakout Ventures has done that beautifully.

[00:36:29] Erika: There are a handful of investors, least that I would just shout out to, even some that you didn't fund Curri Co. But are also really good at creating that community because how you meet the next investors in the company is frankly either through your founder network or your investor network.

[00:36:47] Karl: Totally.

[00:36:48] Erika: That's the best way to do it. doesn't matter how many times I get on stage, there is nothing more powerful than a warm intro from another founder or from another investor. Yeah.

[00:37:00] Erum: That's incredible. Yeah, We see that in terms of we mentor. I mentioned to you earlier before the recording me they're like, oh yeah, you should, do a session here. I'm like, okay, we can, but it's also create space for the founders to talk to each other because they're all in it.

[00:37:16] Erum: They all have similar problems and different industries. A lot of playbooks can be exchanged and it sounds like you're able to leverage that too.

[00:37:23] Erika: Organizations are also just. network and t because it really, starts with the investor saying, we prioritize you guys making these relationships. And once they set the example, people follow the example and say, okay, we're not competitive. We're gonna share, we're gonna, resource to each other and that

[00:37:45] Erika: sort of thing.

[00:37:46] Erika: Even if you're in the same field.

[00:37:48] Erum: Yeah. Yeah. so for investors, I'm sure you also painted a five, 10 year picture of what is going to look like. , Can you share that with us? What do you imagine for the future? We want a visione, that's something we do here in the podcast.

[00:38:01] Erika: Yeah. Yeah. so when I started Curri, really the, vision that, The next big industry that's moving forward, that's dominating. So for the last hundred, 120 years, our world has been dominated by chemical manufacture, but now that's changing and we're moving into this world of bio manufacture. so these amazing companies like Dow DuPont, BASF, and then so many others that you maybe have not heard of, but big chemical players that have become the name of manufacturing, what we think of when we think of manufacturing, my hope is that Curri CO is that name for the next hundred to hundred 20 years.

[00:38:48] Erika: That's the dream that we're at the forefront of this wave of bringing in a new form of manufacturing. We're in that transition now. and I don't think that Curri CO was the only one, There are so many others that are also at the forefront of this wave. There's some that may have come out a step or two too soon, and it's heartbreaking because.

[00:39:12] Erika: I cannot say enough what Amherst did for this entire field

[00:39:16] Erika: and I don't think that they get enough credit for being the

[00:39:21] Karl: Right, right.

[00:39:22] Erika: mistake. Before you succeed, you don't know what success looks like until you try. and I think Amherst did a great job of that, and Am has had highs and lows and, what I'm reading for Amherst to still be a name, 50, a hundred years from now too, along with Curri Co and companies like Gel and Modern.

[00:39:47] Erika: Labs, right? I hope can help us transition from this world of synthetic and now into

[00:39:58] Erika: sustainable and bio.

[00:40:00] Erum: A lot of those companies, a lot of those founders are from New York City, so, or founded those companies in New York City, so,

[00:40:06] Erum: hello, hello?

[00:40:11] Erika: I'm speaking.

[00:40:12] Karl: let's not cast any shade on our, California friends.

[00:40:16] Erika: know.

[00:40:19] Erum: That's, yeah, please. I

[00:40:22] Karl: clearly, clearly. So one last question as we wrap this up, Erica, unless there's anything else that you wanna talk about, but as we think about, consumer biotech, consumer products, what do you think is most overdue for biological disruption? maybe some category that no one's talking about should have been disrupted by now.

[00:40:43] Erika: Oh gosh. So I'll tell you where I think the number one problem that we face in the future is going to be around packaging. either we need a completely new solution to move us away from packaging,

[00:40:58] Erika: so we need just a complete paradigm shift. How do we just eliminate packaging from the equation? Need a game changer in the world of packaging, and we are not going get that without incredibly strong regulation because right now it so cheap.

[00:41:15] Erika: Have a water bottle. Do you know this weighs nothing. that bottle weighs absolutely nothing. And glass weighs a lot,

[00:41:22] Erika: right? And there isn't enough investment in those biomaterials.

[00:41:26] Erika: And the infrastructure of these biomaterials are more biodegradable to really be able to bring something like this forward. I want to salute, the work that Cargill did the early work of, Cargill and Nature Works and the PLA story, but understand that that story started in.

[00:41:44] Karl: Yeah.

[00:41:45] Erika: Product, I don't even think hit the market until 2001.

[00:41:49] Erum: Oh wow.

[00:41:50] Erika: Yeah, Amy, actually, I'll tell you what, Carl, I think it's worthwhile. You need to bring Jill Zulu on this to talk about the story of Nature Works and, and how Cargill invested and really saw this future. But now here we are, 2025. They started this work in 1989.

[00:42:06] Erika: We're in 2025. A is only 1% of the market. It's, it's made from sustainable resources. It our plastic problem, it is less than 1% of. We need regulation. And I think that that's, anytime you look at the ocean plastic problem, anytime you look at the recycling problems and supply chain problems, a lot of this is coming back to packaging.

[00:42:33] Erika: We've gotta fix packaging now. And we can't just rely on, well, let's set down trees and needs more cardboard. and then let's recycle that cardboard. We need something disruptive. We need some game changing technologies here. We need some real brain power behind it. where I. Say if you are coming out of school and you are wanting to change the world and really disrupt, I would really urge our young population to take on packaging and I would encourage investors to fund it,

[00:43:04] Erika: to start regulating in this

[00:43:07] Erika: space.

[00:43:07] Karl: it's

[00:43:08] Karl: super interesting that you mention that because I have seen commercials, more than once where all these big, I'd say beverage companies are touting the fact that they're using more recyclable materials for their packaging, but clearly it's not enough. So I agree with you.

[00:43:22] Karl: I think there's a huge opportunity there.

[00:43:25] Erika: I really do. Yeah.

[00:43:26] Erum: Yeah, I mean this has been incredible That was a great call to action. I love that you're thinking of a bigger problem. You're not just like, oh yeah, we need new, better, ingredients. You know, it wasn't just for Curri Co. By the way, curri Co. After Mary Curie. Love it.

[00:43:43] Erika: I'm sorry, from a scientist perspective, first of all, chemist, shout out to a really phenomenal chemist, but, the first scientist to win two Nobel prizes. And I think that, you can talk about gender, you can talk about whatever you want, but just the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes.

[00:44:01] Erika: I thought that struck the

[00:44:02] Erika: right.

[00:44:03] Erum: Yes. I love it. I love it. Now, this has been incredible. Thank you so much, Erica, for coming on the podcast. We wanna talk to you again 'cause I know you have some new announcements coming out later this year. as we dig more into consumer biotech and working on creating more ecosystems and strengthening, improving and enhancing, not replacing, we've learned that

[00:44:23] Karl: High

[00:44:23] Erum: High

[00:44:24] Erum: performance.

[00:44:25] Erum: Yes. Yes. You've shown your leadership, you,

[00:44:30] Erum: I.

[00:44:32] Erika: Thank you. Really appreciate

[00:44:37] Karl: Yeah. Thanks so much here.

[00:44:38] Erika: so good to talk as always.

[00:44:41] Erika: so good to see you.

[00:44:43] Karl: Good to see you too. Are you coming

[00:44:44] Karl: up, for suppliers day?

[00:44:45] Erika: I am only for one day, so I'm there June 3rd. So anyone who wants to see me would love it if you would stop by our booth. We have so much fun stuff planned. So Javit Center,

[00:44:56] Erika: and we are Booth.

[00:45:04] Karl: Yeah, it'd be great to see you in person.

[00:45:06] Erika: It be so good to see you too.

[00:45:08] Erika: Yeah.

[00:45:10] Karl: Well, thank you so much, Erica. Look forward to talking to you soon. Hopefully seeing you in a couple weeks and, keep at it. Bye.