179. D.C. Climate Week LIVE: The Road to Remake Everything

[00:00:00] Karl: All right, Veronica Breckenridge of Biowell and First Byte Ventures. We're so happy to have you here today. Um, sorry. We're so happy to have you here today.

[00:00:14] Veronica: Thank you very much for having me.

[00:00:16] Karl: So you in, uh, you know, in talking and in seeing you around in some of your quotes, you've said that Biotech are the biggest. Sorry, let me just say that again. You've said that the biggest innovations of the century, meaning this the 21st century are going to be at this intersection of biology and technology.

[00:00:34] Karl: And that view really reminded us of what Steve Jobs said. Can you elaborate for us what that convergence means to you and why is now the time for that?

[00:00:46] Veronica: Absolutely. When you, and certainly because I'm from Apple, I have to say that is sort of where it originally came from. And because I heard Steve actually saying that. And, um, when I heard that, I have to say this was probably early, I think 2009, 2010, um, a couple of years before he passed away. Um, I didn't really fully understand it.

[00:01:11] Veronica: And, and it wasn't until sort of later on, I would say in my career, as I see the convergence happening that it really dawned on me, this is the massive, probably the most massive opportunity. And the, the way I would like to think about is to think about, you know, using the example of the printing press versus the computer. We are really at the cusp of unlocking biology, which is really mother nature, the, the massive sort of mother nature's. Magic in creating all of us, including, and this world, uh, and how to make it better in the sense of how can we make our species like we have, um, today, lots of challenges, especially health nutrition.

[00:02:00] Veronica: Uh, disease, right? And we just experienced COVID, um, all of these things are created by nature. Uh, and we have chemicals, microplastics, and these issues that now is endangering our species survival. If we were able to unlock biology, um, to its core and use the power of nature to create. Recreate our physical environment.

[00:02:29] Veronica: This is going to be making us to live on this planet much longer, right? When you think about that, so that's the outside of the opportunity. And when you think about what has been in the last. Decades. One is the science of biology has really, really accelerated from really 1950 when we first discovered the genome and now to early 2000 when it cost hundreds of millions of dollars to sequence a single genome to today where we are able to sequence them for a hundred, just, you know, a hundred dollars that dropped the cost of sequencing that genome dropped a million times. And when you look at the computing technology, how computing has developed AI and a lot of these tools, they've accelerated the development cycle as well. So it's not only the cost has come down, but also we've, we've gone from taking months. To sequence a genome to minutes, right? So these are things that it's so massive.

[00:03:37] Veronica: It's gone beyond, um, you know, everybody talks about in computing world of Morse law, which is every 18 months, you double the performance and half the cost. And the last 2030 years, we have seen that being driven by the computing industry has the massive transformation that computing industry has gone through.

[00:03:57] Veronica: Because it has followed Morse law, but what people may or may not realize the cost of biology has actually dropped faster than the Morse law. And then when you look back, the other thing that I, I think I love this, how Doug Cameron, I think a lot of people probably in this space know him talks about how.

[00:04:17] Veronica: Scientists believe there are over a trillion microbes in this world, and up to date, we probably really only manage, you know, something like 10 to 15 of them. Well, the opportunity set that's out there for us to unlock is tremendous, and that's why we, you know, I like to make the analogy of the printing press versus the computing.

[00:04:40] Veronica: It is a massive disruptional and just transformational opportunity. If we were able to unlock it to make the world so much better and technology is helping us to drive the cost and the discovery cycle down to a point. And as it, if it continues, as it continues this pace. We're going to be discovering things that we had never understood and we're, we're beginning to already understand things a lot better.

[00:05:07] Veronica: And, and we, and through that discovery, if you look at human history, we're going to bring so much more, making it so much better for us.

[00:05:16] Erum: Thanks so much for that. I mean, spoken like a true tech and biotech leader. Um, it's, it's always good to have that perspective and you shared some new insights and new ways of explaining the history and acceleration technology that I have never heard before. And it's always good to remind our audience that we are best time to, I mean, obviously it's going to get better at the best time to really leverage technology in a way that's more democratized because it's more affordable.

[00:05:45] Erum: Um, and this, it sounds like this perspective comes from your incredible background. You said you worked at Apple and you were able to hear Steve Jobs talk about this intersection between biology and technology being the biggest innovation of our, of our century. Um, and you worked in a variety of deep tech fields beyond mobile phones, smartphones, you worked with electric vehicles, um, and now you're here in volume manufacturing, venture capital and accelerating these companies.

[00:06:14] Erum: What, how have these experiences shaped your vision for a bio well and first bites and your investments at first bite?

[00:06:25] Veronica: Yeah. So when you look at my career, I think one of the things I have, um, part of it is because I come from an academic family. So I have this insatiable curiosity for real, true innovation that brings massive transformation. And so that, you know, I was involved in early days in academic, I was in semiconductor and part of the whole, my dissertation was on optimization of productions, Yes.

[00:06:52] Veronica: Fab production scheduling, um, in semiconductor fabs. So that is, um, so that, you know, the whole semiconductor industry obviously brought on, enabled the computing industry, uh, to develop. And then when I. Left, um, I was at McKinsey and then when I left McKinsey for Motorola, really was this passion for also real tangible results.

[00:07:19] Veronica: So I love transfer financial things. I like to see them in action and getting it action, making it happen. Be part of that. That gets me excited. So I joined, left a Motorola, joined Apple. It was because I see Motorola wasn't able to continue to bring. Mixed level of innovation to mobile device and apple was actually at that cusp.

[00:07:44] Veronica: Um, it was before that phone base, but it was at the cusp of actually doing something very innovative. When I joined Tesla, I remember the first time that was actually during my interview set in. A Tesla Model S, and that was a moment I really realized how revolutionary this product is and how this mode of transportation could transform the world.

[00:08:10] Veronica: Right? So that is, I definitely think one of the my. Drive or passion is about huge transformational things that brings incredible benefits to humanity that, and I really believe now, biology, especially industrial biology, is that thing that's going to transform our physical world. I constantly talk about how I believe industrial biology will change, transform our physical world, just like computing changed or created this digital world. Um, the second thing is, I think, you know, as an industrial engineer by drinking, I constantly love, I guess I love process oriented stuff and efficiency to me, you know, making things efficiently run and driving things to get to results are very, very important. And when you look at whether it's Apple, Tesla, or Motorola, all of these companies I worked for had incredibly sophisticated and complex supply chain and had to do manufacturing.

[00:09:21] Veronica: So they all had physical, tangible product that they have to deliver, and they had to scale that operation to massive scale. And that is something that, you know, both I studied and also I find that's something that drives my passion. So when I found. Industrial biology and saw the challenge of commercializing because we haven't had this is one of the spaces that we've had very few success, lots of failures where I immediately recognized the issues of.

[00:09:54] Veronica: Why we had failed, which a lot of it, some of it is cost driven and commercial, but a lot of it is about scaling and making that process for the ultimate product actually cost effective. So you can actually, you can get consumer to adopt it. If this consumer understands the benefit, if we can have every chemical that we use today, be biologically produced and non toxic, everyone would use it, but they won't use it if it's 10 times more expensive.

[00:10:23] Veronica: So once, if we can solve the cost parity issue and say, no, not only we can, you don't have to, for a consumer, they don't have to change anything. It, they use the exact same thing, but everything is less toxic and much better for us as human beings. Guess what? Everyone is going to switch. That is going to be the inflection point and driving to get to that is.

[00:10:50] Veronica: One of the most important things, and that's all around process efficiency, manufacturing efficiency, um, and make that commercialization and that happens to be something that, you know, I, both I studied, but also something I find myself to be very passionate.

[00:11:07] Karl: Yeah, I mean, you're, you're talking our language, Veronica, um, you know, scale up and cost parity and, uh, you know, the ability to get people to understand, um, you know, how disruptive this is and is going to be are all things that, you know, we think about talk about all the time. Um, I find it super interesting that, you know, you did your thesis on semiconductor fab, um, you know, and this is not in our questions because like one of the things that we talk about is like how quantum computing may change, um, you know, biology, but then I was, I also, I also say that, um, biology is going to change the way, you know, chips are designed and manufactured as well, um, because the amount of, of, uh, information that biology, you know, so.

[00:11:55] Karl: Has is more than current chip designs are able to, um, you know, to handle. Am I right? Or is that, I mean, you're nodding your head. So I must be, you must be thinking something.

[00:12:07] Veronica: No, I agree. I mean, if you think about how much, uh, you know, DNA in term information that can store in DNA, I know that we're already studying it. Uh, because if the Morse law is supposed to continue, um, physically right now, it's almost impossible to continue the Morse law for much longer because we can't reduce.

[00:12:26] Veronica: Basically the spaces between much more before the electrons are going to have too much interference between them. Right. So, um, a different architecture of doing it to, to build the chips in a fundamentally different way, uh, could be the architecture that's going to lead to continuing that, continuing that curve, right.

[00:12:51] Veronica: For computing. So I definitely think biology, uh, I'm not a quantum. know, computing expert, but I feel biology on that front could really unlock something that's, um, just from a paradigm perspective, paradigm shift for, uh, computing.

[00:13:12] Karl: Yeah.

[00:13:15] Erum: Yeah, I mean, oh

[00:13:16] Karl: you move the, you move the questions. Does that mean you're going to ask the next one? Cause I can

[00:13:19] Erum: can't, I can't ask it for, of course. Yeah. So yeah, I'm moving it because it, you know, Um, since we were talking, so to talk a little bit more about Buy a while and you know, your investments at first bite, you really are looking to invest in by manufacturing and one of bio wells.

[00:13:37] Erum: Key missions is to help startups across the notorious valley of death right between innovation and commercialization. And when we spoke with you beforehand, it was like, you have a great thesis. I'm really excited to have you on because you know, this is where we need to dig, right? We're talking about prosperity, process, efficiency, your background.

[00:13:56] Erum: It's like the perfect conversation. And But can you share some standout strategies that BioWall employs to support these early stage synthetic biology companies?

[00:14:09] Veronica: Yeah, so in fact, we created like, you know, like everybody else, acronyms, not the easiest ERBA. So it's industry research and business acceleration. So what, what it means really, we think there are three pillars that currently needs to be addressed or, um, three core areas in terms of, um, scaling from a lab to actual manufacturing that a lot of these, uh, companies are missing.

[00:14:38] Veronica: The first one is actually industry engagement. So working with actual manufacturers, actual. You know, product providers who have a keen sense of where the applications exist or and what cost structure that they can understand and also the manufacturing and supply chain early on. This is 1 of the things, you know, as an industrial engineer, I studied in the 80s where the Japanese came out and Sloan actually foundation developed this whole book called machine that change the world.

[00:15:15] Veronica: That, uh, talks about how Toyota, uh, essentially revolutionized industrialization in terms of process, continuous process improvement, right? To make it, uh, manufacturing more efficient. Um, and one of the ways they did it, it's called design for manufacturability. Which is making sure when you're in the lab, you understand the constraints.

[00:15:38] Veronica: When you're building that prototype, you understand the manufacturing constraints. And, you know, we have a lot of the founders are scientists. They have never even worked in a manufacturing environment, never seen one. Um, so having industry players who have that supply chain perspective, have manufacturing talent and, uh, understanding to work with sciences at an early stage.

[00:16:03] Veronica: In terms of vetting or hiding the development of that science, uh, to make sure that it is going to be actually manufacturable. So we call it manufacturability is critical. So that is 1 of the areas and understanding there is a market, right? So, so we want to bring and 1 of the things we do is bring these strategic corporates to who are willing to help and to be, uh.

[00:16:30] Veronica: Mentor for these companies and guide them through their commercialization paths and provide that guidance. So they're not developing something that's in vacuum, um, that works in, in a lab very well, will never work, um, in, in a manufacturing environment. The second dimension we are bringing to life now is the research and pilot facility.

[00:16:55] Veronica: One of the key challenges for most of these companies. Is unfortunately this is manufacturing and it does require process sort of validation before you can, uh, it's hundreds of millions of dollars that you're going to put in, in a plant. Well, nobody's going to put that much into this technology until it is proven somewhat and de risked.

[00:17:18] Veronica: And for most, and so when you're just in the lab in a life scale, nobody's going to just trust that it's going to work. So a pilot facility and a pilot production with. It's sufficient hours of process. Actually, it's validated. You can also as a product commercial product, you need to get to specific range of specific specification that you can consistently hit.

[00:17:42] Veronica: Right? Your manufacturing process needs to be consistent. For quality control and to be a commercial product and to have that you need a pilot facility and you need to be able to run ideally 1000 hours according to, you know, the industrial engineering, certainly principles that you have collected enough data around that process.

[00:18:04] Veronica: You can validate the process is stable and is consistent. And you can optimize it as well. So from that perspective, that is an expensive investment for most startups. And after that phase, they'll go to commercial and they don't actually need that facility anymore. So for all of the startup as they go through scaling, if everyone has to invest to build something like that, that is significant risk for investors.

[00:18:36] Veronica: But also significant waste that we're creating because after they are done, they basically, there is no value for that pilot facility. So one of the things we're creating is a pilot facility for a common pilot facility that allows us to kind of house these startups so they can lease. The facility have these expensive access to these expensive equipment and test the other process at that kind of scale.

[00:19:07] Veronica: Do the validation they need, and then they move up and then we can have other than new startups to use that. So it becomes a lot more capital efficient for the startups as they overcome this scaling issue, instead of putting tens of millions to build that power facility, they can rent it for, you know, maybe.

[00:19:27] Veronica: Much more reduced, probably 10 order of magnitude, uh, cheaper to actually do that. And the last thing that we talk about is the business acceleration. And in this case, it's, it's not the traditional sort of venture. If you hear, you know, the business center, we really specifically tailor our program to how do we.

[00:19:49] Veronica: Teach, if you will, a scientific founder to become a business leader. So we, they have their specific areas that they're not very good at. They're great at science, but there's so many things, other things about business that they don't understand, like how to tell a story, how to engage investors, how to build a team, how do you engage with corporates?

[00:20:15] Veronica: How do you sell, right? So those are specific skills. Um, and even fundraising, like, where do you get the funding? They are very good at getting grants, but how do you talk to investors? So we specifically tailored our program around those type of skills and build mentor around that to help the scientific founders and help them to become business leaders.

[00:20:42] Karl: I, I love that so much, Veronica. And I feel like we've been super lucky because we've had like the series, like you're falling into this series of, you know, we had Doug Friedman of BioMaid talk about public private and what they're doing. We had Massimo Portin Cosa talk about, um, you know, Arsenal and like their model for, you know, doing industrialization of biology in the lab, but also thinking for the process.

[00:21:08] Karl: And then you guys also kind of modeling that same thing. And I just see like these synergies between all of you that I think are super interesting. Um, but what no one has really talked about it, this idea of these kind of, you know, how do you turn scientists into business leaders? I mean, I think so much of it is learning as you go along.

[00:21:26] Karl: Um, so I really super appreciate, you know, you being on here with us now. And then also just telling us that story. Now you guys are based in Houston and Houston is one of these places that has this incredible chemical, uh, engineering ecosystem, and there's all this processing manufacturing facilities. Um, How does that influence what you guys are doing at Biowell?

[00:21:50] Karl: How does it influence your strategy and what are some of the opportunities that that brings to, you know, early stage, earlier stage companies?

[00:21:57] Veronica: Yeah, so one of the things that I identify earlier on, I have to say is, and I think people in this space understand this is really to commercialize a product. It's really a multidisciplinary effort and requires cross discipline to talent and. One of the areas is, even though we keep talking about is biotech, um, the commercialization step, part of it involves lots of the chemical engineers and chemical engineering and process engineering.

[00:22:30] Veronica: Um, and that's one of the things that Houston is really interesting. It has a traditional sort of Strength in chemical engineers, but by the way, Houston actually has the largest medical center in the world. It sees 10, 000, 000 patients, Texas Medical Center. It's 1 of the largest and they train a lot of biologists.

[00:22:53] Veronica: So you actually have. In Houston, one of the very unique things where you have the raw talent of biology and chemistry and chemical engineers and process engineer and manufacturing working together, you could bring that together. It's like hardware and software. You need both because if you only develop the software, eventually you're going to be limited by the hardware capability in terms of how fast you can run that software, right?

[00:23:19] Veronica: And biology and chemistry and these other disciplines are kind of Yeah. In a way, they really work like that. They need to work in parallel and in unison to make eventually in biology and biomanufacturing work. And Houston has the basic disciplines and these different type of talents that already exist.

[00:23:43] Veronica: We just, if we were able to create, make them connect to understanding the needs of biomanufacturing. I think Houston has. From talent base, probably the easiest to approach both sides to come in and, and support this. The other nice thing about Texas and Houston in general is obviously cost of living, workforce, transportation, logistic from a supply chain perspective.

[00:24:09] Veronica: So there are just lots of other aspects that makes Houston also a good spot for pilot or even eventually some commercial. Manufacturing capabilities here because the infrastructure that exists here. And the other thing we talked about is cost, you know, it needs to be cost parity. So, obviously, Texas in general, not just Houston, has lots of land and the cost of labor and everything is much cheaper and the, um, it's much less regulated, so you can actually stand up a facility and one of the things, you know.

[00:24:50] Veronica: More successful companies in the space, they basically stand up their pilot facility in 11 months, right? So that's, that's kind of the speed we need to execute in order to kind of accelerate this as well.

[00:25:04] Erum: Yeah, well, I mean, there's, you've really thought this through, right? Like there's, um, I feel like throughout our podcast, we've been hearing like pieces of the solution, like of solutions required to scale up by a manufacturing and, you know, getting all the ducks in a row, but you're doing it. And it's so exciting to hear.

[00:25:23] Erum: It's very refreshing and it's almost like a plug and play model. Just, you have an idea, come to BioL. You know, we'll be able to, you know, help you get through it. Um, and if you helped some of the companies that, you know, we had it, we had, so let me rephrase this. So you also, from first bite invested in our previous guests companies.

[00:25:44] Erum: So we've interviewed Mojit Karimi of Sun Vita and Noah Hellman of industrial microbes. And you've also put together a broad range of partnerships like Goodyear and Sparity. It's great to just hear a little bit more about how these collaborations strengthened by the value manufacturing ecosystem and drive commercial success for portfolio companies.

[00:26:07] Erum: And if you can give us an example of one to like ground the, um, this concept in, that'd be really helpful, whether it's one that you invested in or, you know, another company that you've seen that has pulled this, pulled this off.

[00:26:24] Veronica: Yeah. So like I said, one of the key things is actually bringing them together because, um, you have one of the earlier days, I remember having this conversation with a particular corporate and, um, I love the perspective. They, they, they actually, you know, a lot of the big corporations understand exactly what they're good at.

[00:26:44] Veronica: And so they, they, they actually said, we're good at manufacturing and development, we're not good at innovation and the startups, that's what they're good at, the scientists are good at innovation, so this is why they need to work together. So you want to, one of the reasons we created bio well was that we need a Because for the innovation to actually get adopted by a corporation, it's a long process.

[00:27:17] Veronica: And if you immediately, if you put in, this is why a lot of innovation actually dies within companies, right? And I, I know I, I've told you the story. One of the things I was, when I was at Motorola, I actually, um, was the one that found, um, The client server voice technology at Stanford Research Institute brought it to Motorola.

[00:27:46] Veronica: We end up doing a prototype of it, um, on, um, on the cell on the mobile device. But it worked really well. But in the end, Motorola decided not to. Move forward with it because we had no operating system to actually implement it. It was basically either Nokia Symbian or Windows mobile and the product manager who worked with me end up Who developed that prototype end up leaving Motorola and taking that technology?

[00:28:18] Veronica: essentially became a EIR raised money and it became Siri and it was Then bought by Apple, right? So we've heard so many stories like this, even Apple's, you know, graphic user interface and mouse. They were actually developed by Xerox, right? So there was, you hear stories like this all the time in the industry, how an incumbent. For whatever they're good at, even, you know, Kodak is another good, great, good example. Um, they developed the digital technology, right? So digital camera technology, but eventually digital camera title killed Kodak, right? So, so it's, they're very good at doing the same thing and improving it and improving it because there's so much CapEx.

[00:29:05] Veronica: That's already invested. So now as they look for incremental returns, they're just looking at how to lever, how to leverage their existing cab X to generate more margin. They don't want to put in new investment to do new processes. So they're really not very good at innovation. This requires like scientists and to be unencumbered by all those perspectives, but with a good sort of understanding of.

[00:29:31] Veronica: Once something works, they could scale it, right? So that's why we developed this sandbox program to really help these startups and to allow the companies to have mentors, but without really. It's not going to be inside the company because inside the company, the innovation is just going to get killed to allow these innovators to work outside of the company, but leveraging some of the expertise and people there, um, and to help them to build their innovation and grow their innovation here in BioWell.

[00:30:08] Karl: Got it. Yeah. No, that's super. I think it's super interesting because you're right. And, and we, sorry. Um, I think it's super interesting and you're right because we see both sides of it. Of course, you know, we talk to innovators all the time. We see the challenges that they face when it comes. to scaling. And then we talked to big companies who they're looking for the innovation.

[00:30:27] Karl: But like you said, they're more interested in, you know, the transformational technology that they can just plug and play. And they're not necessarily interested in, they're not necessarily interested in, um, you know, going through the process of scaling it up and really incorporating it into their existing processes.

[00:30:46] Karl: Now, um, you were referred to us by Noah Hellman of industrial microbes. Who, you know, spoke hot, who has spoken very highly about your work and, and, uh, we, I've known Noah for a very long time. Um, how has, you know, mentorship and collaboration influenced your journey and the, and the development of what you guys are doing at, at BioWell and also at First Byte?

[00:31:10] Veronica: it really, um, when I first started really getting excited about industrial biology, this was it. 2021. Um, it was more, uh, just the fact that I saw how we talked about how biology could really, I felt this is a moment in time that biology finally got, we got the cost to a point where we could unlock the power of biology for many things, but they just needed to scale. And over the last, Three years as I set up the fund, start working with these scientific founders and companies, it's really helped me to, I would say, refine that thesis in terms of where we want to focus as well as what are the areas that these. As we talked about founders really lack and how can we, why, you know, when they fail, it's not just because they didn't know how to scale.

[00:32:18] Veronica: They just didn't know what they didn't know. And one of the biggest ones is telling their story, right? They don't understand what is the right story to tell to investors and to. Understand the second is determined commercial viability, so they don't understand what it is. So they think they figured out the biology.

[00:32:41] Veronica: It's done. It's not right. We have to figure out what the product is and through that whole product, which is a whole downstream processing is very, very important and critical. Where your feedstock is coming from that whole supply chain full cost analysis to get to and. And it's not just you're able to do this.

[00:33:01] Veronica: Are there other competitive methods that actually can deliver this as well? So you can't just look at it to say, Hey, I'm able to do this, but, um, what's the traditional method? And, and what's the cost of that? What's your method? What's the cost of it? And are there other alternative methods? It's not biological based.

[00:33:21] Veronica: that also can come to this point and what's their cost. So understanding commercial viability, what defines a commercial lab just because the biology work doesn't mean that you necessarily have a product. Um, so that's something that a lot of the scientists didn't understand and just kind of get excited by the science.

[00:33:43] Veronica: Um, and The other thing is the, um, way that a startup company needs to work from it, especially if you're looking for investors, the velocity investors going to require versus doing scientific research when you're getting grants and you just kind of, you know, deliver, you don't have to deliver anything.

[00:34:06] Veronica: Investors require very concrete milestones. And if you delay on that, it actually causes a lot of companies die because they ran out of cash. Not because they have the bad idea or by, you know, so managing cash, man, being like when we talked about being a business leader is really, really important. And that's, those are some of the, as I work with these founders of over time to kind of discover the key areas that they need help on.

[00:34:36] Veronica: And that's where it helped us to also refine both the programmatic Elements that we offer in BioWell, but also the board that we construct to help these companies, um, the type of advice and experts that we help to engage with these founders to make sure that they understand how to address that.

[00:34:58] Erum: Yeah, that's, I mean, it's, it's incredible. It's something that we see very acutely when we work with startups or talk to them. I mean, um, you know, we also work in the world of biopharma and so there's a lot of scientists there that are trying to make a deal with big pharma and, um, you know, this one particular, um, founder scientist.

[00:35:18] Erum: Um, genius, um, is, you know, banging his head against the wall. I was like, they don't get it. Like these investors aren't getting it. I'm like, cause you're speaking to them in biology. You've got to speak to them in money. Like, how do you speak the language of money? Cause that's what they understand. So rather than the, you know, molecules moving around, how does the money move around?

[00:35:38] Erum: Hopefully that got to him, but, um, you know, I'm going to see him pitch again.

[00:35:42] Veronica: Yeah. Like, yeah. Very simple question. What's the exit? Like they're looking at making money, right? Because the investors don't invest if it doesn't make money for them. Exactly to your point. And they need to understand. And I come from an academic family because my grandfather is a professor. My dad's a professor.

[00:35:59] Veronica: So I totally understand how they think it's like, Oh, the science is like, so such great science. But. Business is completely different and it moves at a different cadence as well, right? Because science papers take a long time, get peer reviewed and all of that. And in business, we have to like get a product out, get a product out and see if, you know, talk to customers, determine whether.

[00:36:24] Veronica: There is some, someone who actually wants it in science. Like I built something novel. I'm just going to publish it, but that's the end product. That's it. I don't care if people actually want to read it, I'm just going to publish it. But in business, you have to have a product that people actually want to buy

[00:36:41] Erum: And the whole world isn't you reading her paper. So that's, that's another thing, you know, the New York times isn't going to pick it up and announce it to the world that you publish his paper. So, yeah, but, um, but yeah, it's hard, right? Like it's completely, it's hard, but so it's wonderful that you've set up this ecosystem for nurturing and investment and collaboration with industry, which is so important.

[00:37:05] Erum: Um, I'm just interested to learn, you know, by manufacturing is vast. It hits different industries. Um, you know, by will helps startups. Are there any types of startups that are on top of your mind that you're looking for for bio? Well, in the industry or any, um, problems out there, you're looking for solutions for just out of curiosity.

[00:37:27] Erum: If anything, I'm sure, you know, you'd accept new ideas, but curious representing on top of your mind.

[00:37:35] Veronica: yeah, right now we're actually much more, I would say first bite is more focused because we are, um, this is where the difference between, I would say, call a distinction between BioWell and FirstBite, because BioWell is a nonprofit accelerator, so in some ways, BioWell is willing to take a little more risk.

[00:37:53] Veronica: Getting a little more, a little earlier, whereas Fristbite, we really do need because it didn't, we have, it's a 10 year fund. This is something I also tried to drill into a lot of the founders. So that means I'm looking for an exit in six to eight years. So when I invest, it has to be, I feel like you can commercialize this product in the next three to five years.

[00:38:14] Veronica: And, you know, I can exit in 6 to 8 years. Right. So, so from that perspective, um, I would say first bite, we look really focused on dropping chemicals. So, when you look at our portfolio, we've invested in, um, a Genesis, which is a biodegradable microplastic free polyurethane. We invested in I microbe, which uses ethanol and bio based acrylic.

[00:38:41] Veronica: And we've invested in the solace, which has a bio pathway to multiple molecules because they have a platform molecule that gets to terpene solvent and even saf in the end. So, um, we are, but these are all existing. Dropping chemicals and I call it molecules that we know has a market. We know exactly who produces them We know what application is.

[00:39:05] Veronica: We know what the spec is. We know what the cost The petroleum based cost is so we understand what costs you need to drive to to be competitive in that market So even though your bio, but here's the cost marker that you have to hit Or be close enough to it that, um, that we feel like you have a viable market.

[00:39:27] Veronica: But what is nice about that is we don't take product market risk. I thought it was because we don't do novel novel product actually requires a much more different process and more significant downstream, uh, even application go to market to educate consumers why this is better. Um, we don't do that. We just kind of focus on dropping chemicals that we know has a market.

[00:39:53] Veronica: So we take more engineering risk at first bite. We don't take. Scientific risk that we do need to see solid data, but we do, we're willing to take some engineering risk to assess whether we think you can scale. And we would work with you to find experts to help you scale your technology. That's sort of the risk we're willing to take, but we're not willing to take product market risk, which is very different from, um.

[00:40:20] Veronica: From traditional venture in software, um, they take a lot of product market risk, right? So, um, so that's kind of, um, I would say that is, um, that that's one of the fundamental different, whereas bio, well I think we're a little bit more open because Bio Well has, um, we're in the process of, um, securing facility that has 13,000 liters of fermentation capability.

[00:40:45] Veronica: So, um, we really are willing to work with much broader set. Of, um, bio manufacturing startups in terms of scaling up their manufacturing and helping the labs and also downstream capabilities to help them to get a product or sample, get to that, um, get to those processes done. So that is, um, to buy was more of a, that facilities more of a service if you think about it.

[00:41:14] Veronica: So we don't, um, We're willing to help much broader set of companies who are doing other, maybe other innovations, and, uh, could be, you know, companies doing materials and, uh, other things that we are happy to kind of help them to scale.

[00:41:37] Karl: Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, um, uh, I just love hearing like the differences and I think that'll be really helpful for the audience. I don't know. Um, Veronica, like I put this question in here about your October event. I don't know if you want to talk about that at all, but if you do, can you share some details on what you're putting together?

[00:41:56] Karl: And, you know, if people are going to be attending, you know, how does it capture the spirit of innovation at Biowell? Awesome. Thanks. And, and what First Byte is trying to do.

[00:42:06] Veronica: Yeah, so the event that we're thinking of putting together this fall is we want to, it to be, uh, very focused on commercialization and building the foundation ecosystem around helping companies to commercialize. So 1 of the things we said we will not be is an academic, so it's not going to be a place to show off technology.

[00:42:32] Veronica: It's going to be really focused on startups, but also capital providers and corporates because that is the foundation. We believe the ecosystem and the resources that's needed to help successful commercialization. So we want to make this a really great networking event. And make people understand the different resources that they could access, both the startups, but also the corporate to understand the innovation and the startups to understand the resources that corporate could offer.

[00:43:04] Veronica: Um, and it, because we, so we want to showcase what is possible today in terms of products and applications that these startups are already working on, we want to be able to provide, um, different type of capital providers. Because this is an industry that is not, that shouldn't be just a venture capital.

[00:43:25] Veronica: Um, and then, and so we want non dilutives of federal government. We want real estate investors. We want, uh, project finance investors. We want those types. We want to bring those types of investors to come to this event to understand biomanufacturing and meet companies and see opportunities. And we want corporates who are maybe user companies.

[00:43:46] Veronica: And right. And then we want manufacturers like BSF, you know, all coming to bring, to understand the innovation better. And. Explore how they can help it. Also, there are a lot of service providers here, especially in Texas, right? We have a lot of chemical engineers. So, you know, cook modular who specific.

[00:44:06] Veronica: They're very good extraction. They can help. They have a lot of we have a lot of 3rd party service providers who can help, especially on the DSP side for. These companies to scale. So we want to bring all of that together, really focused on the theme of commercialization, not on, you know, scientific innovation, but really commercialization and bring those people, the people that's needed.

[00:44:31] Veronica: Building that ecosystem and have that as a foundation that they can take back when they leave this event is that they now have made connections to help them think about how they can scale their company.

[00:44:48] Erum: Yeah, that sounds like an amazing event. And just like buy well, just like first bite. It's very thoughtful. Like you thought of everything that would be required or necessary for a company to thrive in this, um, by manufacturing space. Um, and it's been great. I've been so insightful. Um, but as we round this interview out or this conversation out.

[00:45:13] Erum: What is the one piece of advice that you would offer a startup, a founder in this world of volume manufacturing to be successful in it? You gave a

[00:45:26] Veronica: I think the biggest thing that

[00:45:27] Erum: the advice you gave a lot,

[00:45:29] Veronica: thing I say a

[00:45:30] Erum: yeah, I mean, and it was great, but

[00:45:31] Veronica: technology alone doesn't make a company, right? Because like the, and the best technology will not win, right? So, um, and I, I'll use the example all the time because, you know, everybody knows it. It dates me a little bit.

[00:45:46] Veronica: Beta max versus VHS. Everybody uses that as an example. And if you think about, I know I joke about it, but I do, because I, I can say that because I, I was from, I worked for Apple, you know, Microsoft doesn't have the best technology, um, but everybody uses it. Every corporate in this world uses it. Right. Um, so marketing and operations, there's lots of things that comes to, uh, You know, and Microsoft dropped the top, top five, most valuable company now in the world.

[00:46:18] Veronica: So technology alone will not win. If you think you have a great technology that is so far from being successful. So there's so much more that they need to learn. So don't just. You know, don't pitch your technology. Think about all. If you don't know it, definitely. We're happy to help you come, come to us.

[00:46:43] Veronica: And we're happy to tell you all the things that you don't know. You need to learn all those things to if you really want to build a successful company.

[00:46:52] Erum: that's amazing, amazing advice is I was talking, yeah, so that's amazing advice is absolutely necessary. I mean, it's incredible what you guys are doing, as I mentioned, I think if I were to start a company, I'd be coming to you, you know, you, you've had this experience, you saw the success of other industries, the challenges and you're bringing it to buy a manufacturing.

[00:47:12] Erum: So we really want to thank you too, because. You know, we're, we're beating this drum, you know, we've met you recently and we know that we'll be interacting with you, um, many more times in the, in the, in the future, in the, in the coming years. So just wanted to thank you again. And, um, you know, we look forward to seeing the success at buy well, seeing the success of your portfolio companies and, um, you know, being a part of this journey with you.

[00:47:37] Erum: Absolutely.

[00:47:39] Veronica: Well, thank you. Thank you for taking the time. I really appreciate it and appreciate what you're trying to do as well, because this industry needs. Um, a lot, like I think we said, a lot of search storytelling. So I heard your last podcast and it was the same message, right? Everybody realize how important storytelling is and making people understand the simplicity.

[00:48:02] Veronica: And one of the things I learned from Apple is the simplicity is better than complexity. Actually, if you can tell a simple story that people can understand, it's better than, you know, explaining how complex your technology is.

[00:48:17] Karl: Totally. Thank you so much, Veronica. Really appreciate it.

[00:48:22] Veronica: Thank you.

[00:48:24] Erum: All right.