195. Because You’re Worth Biology: Olivier Rolland Talks Biotech at L’Oréal

Speaker [00:00:00] it's about managing the trajectory. Every plan doesn't go, as expected. There will be abundance, but there is this ability that we need to be able to monitor, to measure, and to re-steer, towards, the end goal

Karl Hey, Ren, what's going on?

Erum Carl, I just came back from another dimension.

Karl Yeah, I know you did. Let's talk about it.

Erum I went to the Elements Festival, which is an electronic dance music festival in the Poconos of Pennsylvania, which is the woods, and it was four days long and just insane. I mean, I went with my girlfriends from college, so that was super fun.

Erum So that is another dimension, 'cause I don't get to hang out with, you know, these four particular, uh, women as often as I would love, 'cause they're the best. But, um, we went back to our old ways. N- nothing haven't changed, they all live in the suburbs of Pennsylvania, And, I would say, like, I they're not soccer moms, but, like, they do take their kids [00:01:00] to sports.

Karl Yeah. Hey, I, you know, you're a soccer mom, and I was a soccer dad, so-

Erum Yeah ...

Erum So anyway, like, so you have a certain lifestyle, and then you go to an EDM concert, or not even a concert, it's a festival.

Erum A festival is insane. Like, I didn't really know what to expect, and I will say that We were all out of our comfort zones, but I had said before, outside of my comfort zone is my comfort zone. So it was amazing. Like, I just learned so much.

Erum and there was four stages, and they each kind of had their own EDM. One was, like, very techno-heavy. One was a little bit more pop, and this is called the Elements Festival, so each stage has, uh, an element associated, so fire, water, air, and earth.

Erum And since there's four of us, we were each one of those elements.

Karl And I hope that the air stage was kind of, like, the chill-out, ambient stage.

Erum Uh, it had some of that, but it's still kind of, you know, gotta ramp up the energy. It went up and down. And it was that stage that was in the woods, so it was like, [00:02:00] um, they had, like, almost, like, tree houses, so you could be in one of the tree houses and look at the stage, which was really nice.

Erum and the people, all sorts of people.

Karl Yeah, yeah.

Erum I mean, I live in... Yeah, we live in Manhattan, so we see lots of people. Um, and it's great to see different types of people. But it was funny th- they all embraced, like, a certain type of just wearing whatever or nothing that you want to wear. I don't wanna t- I don't know if I can say this, but there was a lot of assless chaps going on.

Karl Oh, wow. Interesting.

Erum A- of, and people of all ages. I haven't seen... Like, I've never seen that many butts,

Erum Well, yeah ...

Erum that's, that's what it

Karl feels like I, I'm just gonna say as long as, you know- We're not shaming any ages here, and-

Erum No shaming ...

Karl to me it's like if you, if you can have, older people with young people dancing, in their own worlds, then what kind of festival is it?

Karl And I'll just make a comment. So also this last weekend, and I've been kind of living vicariously on YouTube, was Rebellion Fest, [00:03:00] which is like a four-day punk rock festival that takes place in Blackpool, England. And so it's also, like this has been going on for like 30 years, and it's also funny to watch the videos because like on the one hand you have like these people who are all punked out, leather jackets, spikes, mohawks

Karl very spiked hair.

Erum Yes.

Karl But then when you're- Just love

Erum that, man.

Karl Yeah. And then, but when you're scrolling through who are the people on the street, a lot of old dudes in shorts with paunchy bellies and I'm like, "I guess that would be kind of me." I'd be in sh- black shorts with a beer in my hand, but, you know, all ages, all people coming together to celebrate, music is a great thing.

Erum I, I would say I was on the older side

Karl But not on the oldest side.

Erum Not on the oldest, definitely not. but just in terms of, the spread, I would say like most of the people were younger. and I, another woman came up to me and my friends and gave me a sticker that said, "Rave cougar."[00:04:00]

Karl That's awesome. Yeah.

Erum Yeah. I was like- All right ... "Oh, nice."

Karl Yeah. That's awesome. Okay, so, uh, this is the Grow Everything podcast where we talk about the impact biology has on all technologies, and we do occasionally digress into dance music and just music in general. But let's reel it in. Let's talk about what's been in the news lately.

Karl You brought up a bunch of things that like this "New York Magazine" article with our previous guest, Mike Levin.

Erum Yes. Wow.

Erum Mike Levin is a professor at Tufts University. He also has a position at Harvard University the convergence of disciplines that Mike Levin operates on is amazing, and he makes sense of it.

Erum So it's, embryology, it's, and developmental biology, and behavioral science, and physics, and mathematics. Like this, it's just insane. So this article is titled, "What's It Like to Be a Cucumber?"

Erum Okay? So we've been talking about convergence. What is it like to be a cucumber? And I [00:05:00] read this article. and we've talked to Mike Levin. We actually are part of this organization called The Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms, and, and it's started by Mike Levin, Josh Bongard, and a few other people.

Erum And so we've heard Mike Levin speak about this- discipline that he's looking at. And a lot of it is about this idea of consciousness on different levels, so that cells have their own agency and that there's agency on different scales. And when I was reading this article, I really had this out-of-body experience because a lot of it talked about embodiment.

Erum And I'm like, "Wait, so I'm just in this body?" And it completely shift the way I think about my presence and who I am. It's one of those articles, and like, it's, I- it wasn't just that article. We have talked to Mike Levin so many times, and I've also listened to him on different podcasts. So it's a complete body of work, and if you, I [00:06:00] feel like if you constantly read it, it's just

Karl whew.

Karl Are you sure you weren't coming off of the Elements Festival when you read this article?

Erum I actually did read it right after. Because- But I wasn't, you know, on anything trippy. Besides the Elements Festival, you don't need to do drugs when you go to these types of f- festivals because the production quality is insane.

Erum Like, it's insane.

Karl All right. Well, I didn't read this article, and I'm gonna have to read it, and then we'll come back to it. But we will put a link to this article, to the New York Magazine article in the show notes. It is behind a paywall, but, um, figure out a way to remove the paywall and read it because we know, Mike Levin is a very deep thinker.

Karl And if you had a out-of-body experience, I'm sure I'm gonna be blown away because every time I listen to him I'm blown away too. The first time I heard him was at a NYD Sci conference and, I immediately said, "We need to get this guy on the podcast." Like, the way he thinks is just so next level.

Karl And, when we were at the WCDO meeting, he was talking about being able to translate alien languages [00:07:00] because how do you talk to cells? You know, cells have their own language. so-

Erum Yeah, they have their own language, their own consciousness, their own purpose and intent. reading it in a meta way, like applying what he's saying to you and your experience, it's like that's what really creates out-of-body experience.

Erum Rather than looking at him as a scientist spitting out facts- putting yourself in his mind and like trying to listen to him that way is when you're like, "Wait, wow, there's a lot to..." I could listen to him to talk for hours, but I- the application of it, and that's when it gets interesting 'cause he's not just talking about woo woo, like this is just theoretical.

Erum All the work that he's doing is experimental and then focusing on applications, and there's some things he has coming out too, um, when it comes to anthropods and xenobots, which are these new organisms or new life forms that have purpose and agency, on the micro level. But it's... They're either for cleaning up the environment or for helping [00:08:00] with tissue regeneration or human health.

Erum So it's fascinating. Anyway, we gotta move on.

Karl All right. Well, listeners, go back and listen to the Mike Levin episode. We'll leave a link to that one in the show notes as well. Iram, you also flagged another article that I didn't read. So where has Carl been?

Erum Carl, you've just-- You know, you need to take some time off.

Erum It's okay. We have been really busy at Messaging Lab, so I totally get it. and I-- This stood out to me 'cause I saw, Bristol Myers Squibb spending $2 billion for a manufacturing campus in Houston, and Houston in particular is a flag because you'll be going to Houston next month for, an investor summit that is part of World Bio Markets.

Erum And I'm like, "Okay, maybe I'll send this to Carl. You have to go down and check out what's going on on the ground when you're there." But this $2 billion for a pharmaceutical company to be making a manufacturing plant in Houston, I thought it was so interesting, that [00:09:00] they're looking to make jobs there.

Erum Houston is known for having a lot of scientists down there because there's a lot of oil and gas, a lot of chemists. and then we have our friends at First Byte that are down there and other biotech companies. But did, did you check this out a little bit?

Karl Yeah. No, actually, this article I did read.

Karl I was thinking about the next one that you brought up because, Houston's already well known for the MD Anderson Cancer Center, and in this article, BMS said that they looked across the country to figure out the best place to make this investment. And typically, biopharma tends to be located either in Boston or in South San Francisco.

Karl This is where they're really the hubs of the biotech industry, and yet there has continued to be a lot of cancer research and research down in Houston. So BMS said that they looked at a lot of different locations, and Houston came out on top. so I mean, I'm excited for the people of Texas. I think this just makes, what they're doing, just validates it to have BMS down there.

Karl And, it's a huge deal. It's gonna create a lot of construction [00:10:00] jobs, and it's long-lasting work. It's not just like these data centers where it's like a bunch of jobs are created at the beginning, then you've got like five people running this massive data center afterwards. So, congratulations to BMS.

Karl Congratulations to the people of Houston. I think this is a big, really important development. For biopharma

Erum Yeah. I'm sure this is kind of the, the normal price tag to build a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant, but, I think of our friends at Neon Bio. I'm like, should they be building farms?

Karl Right. Exactly. Well, that's a different thing, For those of you who don't know, go back and listen to the Neon Bio episode so you can understand how they're biomanufacturing using chickens and eggs. and I think BMS is doing both research and biomanufacturing there, so, um, I think it's a great thing.

Karl I mean, what I didn't mention is, of course, New Jersey is the pharmaceutical state, and, the pharma manufacturing capital of the world. and biotech is San Francisco and, Boston. [00:11:00] So I think this is really good because I think it's important for the knowledge and the manufacturing to be spread out.

Karl You don't want things to be too concentrated in one place. a hurricane could come and wipe out the infrastructure, which is what we don't want in any industry.

Erum Right. Right. Exactly.

Karl All right. So now here's the article that I didn't read- ... that you were like, "Carl, how come you haven't read this?"

Erum Yeah. Yeah. This one was a good one written by Jake Wintramute. working on, an agency called American Wetware. And so this article is called "Bio-AI is All Atlases and Nowhere to Go."

Erum really meaning that, you know, there's a lot of platforms that are being developed, but what are those platforms enabling, right?

Erum And the beauty of this article, I mean, I wanna give them such a shout out because they are incredible writers. And the way this article starts out is making an analogy between AI and creation of this infrastructure, but

[00:12:00] what is it being used for with the automotive industry?

Erum And it really highlighted on the Michelin brothers who were part of the rubber industry. And rubber was the picks and shovels of the automotive industry, right? there was just r- rubber parts being sold, then tires, and every car need tires, so that was the platform being developed, but the cars needed somewhere to go.

Erum And they really saw that they need to inspire people with cars to go places, and they created the Michelin Guide, which was in 1926. And At first, it mapped out roads, but then it started adding the restaurant review and changing the behavior of people to go to destinations. And so the idea is what are the destinations in biotech?

Erum What products are being developed? What innovation's being developed, and how do you facilitate that? And they saw [00:13:00] that-- They took the analogy of the MIT Media Lab, what they did for tech, when they created this consortium of industry to work with, MIT and just academics to create shared IP, and it's this culture that they created.

Erum I mean, MIT Media Lab folks are great. I've been there a couple times. and it just, it was very inspiring, and I think it speaks to a lot of what we talk about here. So we certainly should get Jake on and talk to him about it,

Karl Yeah. And like, after this article came out,I haven't read it, so I have to go back and read it. And I do think that we could do a better job as an industry to let people know what we have. So Michelin clearly, roadmap and then restaurant reviews. What do we have that's the equivalent? I think June Axup was working on something similar to start, like a database of all biotech produced products, particularly on the consumer side.

Karl But as this article came out, Christina [00:14:00] Agapakis posted a video where she sequenced her genome and then she started reading it like astrology. what would happen if you took your genome and you were able to really decipher it the way that people look at the stars?

Karl And I suggested to her that she should connect it to like an MCP server like Open Ephemeris, which actually does read the stars. So what would happen if you had your genome and you com- you know, invented your own algorithm so that you could look at the stars and, really understand your biology better through what is happening in astrology, which is like, for a lot of people is a pseudoscience.

Erum Mike Levin will be like, "You know what? Not pseudoscience, you just gotta do an experiment and see," you know? Yeah.

Karl Exactly.

Erum His whole thing is like nothing's crazy, you just gotta do an experiment and see.

Erum And then he talks about higher order intelligences too, so maybe there's something going on with the stars. But one thing I did want to bring up, the Michelin Guide for biotech, it's us, Carl.

Karl Yeah.

Erum It's this podcast.

Karl We, we, yeah. [00:15:00] Yeah. I mean,there's gotta be a way that we can take what we've done and make it, you know, map it out like a Michelin Guide- Yeah.

Karl or something like that.

Karl And I love that Mike Levin says,test and experiment because, like, in-- and I hate to go down this road because now, like, people are gonna be like, "Carl, where, what have you been reading?" But, in the world of modern magic, not Harry Potter, but, like, this kind of Aleister Crowley, kind of chaos magic tradition that kind of lives, it's all about experimentation.

Karl It's about setting up experiments to see what you can do to change reality. so that is not what I'm reading. I'm just bringing back things that I have read in the past.

Karl And just so you know, I have been reading a lot, but I've been reading-- I read, like, a mystery novel that took place in Wyoming, and that's the Landemare, I think is the series that's on AMC. So that's, uh, kind of fun for me. And then I'm reading a Spanish novel, actually a Catalan novel called I Gave You Eyes and You Turned [00:16:00] Towards Darkness.

Erum Carl, now I know why you probably aren't reading these articles about the industry. Like,

Karl I'm reading in the, the Catalan novel is all about like a, basically like a haunted house, and tons of people making deals with the devil, so it's a lot of fun.

Erum Carl's fantasy summer is happening right now.

Karl Short nov- short novel. Okay, so let's bring it back for listeners who, who know, we've done this extensive series on bio colors. And, a lot of the reason we've done that is because we're interested, but also because there's been regulatory tailwinds.

Karl You know, there's been a ban, they want to pull synthetic colors out of food because there's a lot of questions whether they're safe or not. So the Trump administration just proposed new regulations for food additives, and what the FDA wants to do is to make companies document and submit their safety rationale for any new ingredient.

Karl So this would include colors and bio colors. So right now, as we've said on the podcast, companies can self-regulate [00:17:00] with the generally recognized as safe or GRAS, regulations. You know, you can put, food together and you can say it's safe, you're self-regulating.

Karl They want to change those rules. Of course, there's been some pushback on this because it does require a lot of work on the part of industry. Arun, we've been close to the color, to the all these bio dye manufacturers. what's your take on this?

Erum I mean, I think it's a good thing. It should've happened from day one, but you know- Yeah

Erum we've learned, And, it says it's mandatory to report all these new ingredients. fine, but then if, if they're not reported, I'm just kind of curious what the consequences are. Like, I don't know if you saw that and then read this article. This is one I did not read.

Karl I think, you know, I mean, a lot of cases it feels like the consequences are nonexistent so far, but, you know, government, I think works a little slowly even though this government has tried to work a lot faster on these things.

Karl So I think eventually there's gonna be fines or things are gonna be pulled off the shelves.

Erum Yeah. Yeah, and I think, it's a good thing.rather [00:18:00] than seeing it as like a regulation that you're mandated to do something, it's more like let's just collaborate and get everyone put their cards on the table to, so we know what ingredients are out there so we can help like pinpoint w-what are allergies, what is influencing what, you know?

Erum And, I, I know that there's probably some molecules that are, a lot of molecules that are proprietary, but you don't have to give them like the actual, molecular structure, I don't think. I don't know, um, that level of, disclosure that needs to happen. we should all be safe and transparent.

Erum Like, that's always my thing. Like if you're not transparent, then what are you hiding type of situation.

Karl Yeah, exactly.

Erum I get protecting IP, but like that's, we can work around that. and it's good for the consumer, right?

Erum But also you want an informed consumer to share the information. You want them to understand what you're making, 'cause you wanna make something that's for them versus like just giving them whatever is out there.

Erum but you know, there's been a lot of great things coming from these companies, so, it should be helpful for [00:19:00] everybody. I, I don't think there's a, a loser here if you disclose your ingredients.

Karl Yeah, I mean, being transparent about safety is a win-win for everybody, and I think that that's the perfect, transition to today's guest.

Karl today we're very happy and pleased to introduce Olivier Roland, onto the podcast. Olivier has spent his career building value chains that make the bio economy real. So he most recently has been at L'Oréal, where he's the

Karl global director of strategic initiatives and sustainability. So he leads science-based work

Karl to shrink the company's Scope 3 footprint through new technologies.

Karl before that, he spent 15 years developing sustainable products. He was at Michelin, interestingly, and, uh, also was at TotalEnergies working on sustainable, aviation fuels. and he also ran the Toulouse White Biotechnology Center, which is a public-private institute that turns leading-edge R&D into pre industrial [00:20:00] projects and startups.

Karl And we've worked with companies from Toulouse White Biotech in the past. MicroPep is a company that came out of there, um, that we worked with early on So with that, let's let Olivier take it away

Karl Olivier Rolland, we are so thrilled to have you on the Grow Everything podcast.

Olivier Well, thank you very much for, uh, for your invitation. Uh, hi, Arun. Hi, Carl. Hi. Uh, very nice to be here with you and to chat about biotech in the next, hour, I guess.

Karl Yeah. So at L'Oréal, you had this really unique role. You were Global Director of Strategic Initiatives in Sustainability, Research, and Innovation. What did that role entail? Like, you're talking about a massive monster of indirect carbon footprints and things that are created outside of the walls of the company and maybe by your suppliers or customers, and these things are known as Scope 3 emissions.

Karl How do you tackle [00:21:00] that? It's a big, big challenge.

Olivier So Carl, there are a lot of different, uh, questions in the, in the first question, actually. So, so maybe about my role first. with, uh, our strategic initiative department, our mission is basically to provide to L'Oréal group some, options, some directions, some position when it comes to reducing its environmental impact on what we call the Scope 3 of the value chain.

Olivier And what this entail is basically the upstream part of the value chain, from the extraction of natural resources to the raw material that we buy and formulate, and the downstream side, the use phase and the end of life of our product. And we, within research innovation, we are focusing on the ingredients and the formula.

Olivier So we are focusing on the, on the content of the, of the product that we sell. And you know, we have three major strategic axis. one is actually carbon, the one you were referring to, with CO2 emission. and here we are really, uh, here to support [00:22:00] the group in, in deploying its decarbonization strategy that is relying both on low carbon solution and defossilized solution.

Olivier Number two is, streamlining the use of water because we, when we look at our value chain, we are always drawing water, uh, you know, when we are producing bio-based ingredients for the production of crops. And also each of us in our bathroom, when we need to rinse off our product, uh, we're using water.

Olivier And finally, as we are defossilizing, we are using more and more bio based ingredients, and so we need to increase the resilience of the value chain, of the supply chain, if you wish, of these bio-based ingredients.

Erum Yeah, that is a lot of work. That is a lot of work, but it's so exciting that you have, first of all, that this role exists and, you are really looking at all different parts of this, sustainability initiative.

Erum But let's take a step back a little bit and look at what brought you here today. So your [00:23:00] career spans biomaterials at Nisshinbo, jet fuels at Boeing and TotalEnergies, and now, this world of green sciences at L'Oréal. I'd love to know what took you from, this greening heavy aircraft, like this huge industry, down to the molecular level of consumer beauty?

Olivier Well, you know, it's, uh, at the end of the day, it's all about, uh, chemistry and molecules- Mm-hmm ... if you wish.

Erum Mm-hmm.

Olivier let me just tell you a story. when I started my, my career with, uh, with Michelin, I, I was looking at the opportunity that, uh, synthetic biology was representing in order to diversify and secure, our raw material supplies when it comes to producing, synthetic, uh, elastomers, which is basically a way to get, I would say, similar performance, not the same, but similar performance as natural rubber.

Olivier And when we talk about this, we are ta- we are talking about w- the big family of isoprenoids. And guess what? When I was [00:24:00] developing, sustainable aviation fuel with Total, uh, this was based on an, a specific, uh, isoprenoid called farnesene. And actually, the company I was, you know, we were collaborating with, Amyris at the time, was developing, a new way to source squalene, which is also an isoprenoid.

Olivier So long story short, you know, it's, it's basically a molecular journey, but beyond that, I think it's also about, how we can get a new innovative and sustainable way to source these molecules, and this is about industrial biotechnology. And, what I learned about that, it's, uh, uh, there is a huge potential, uh, in term of, I was saying, you know, securing, diversifying, uh, the supplier for materials, but it is not that easy to achieve it from an economical standpoint.

Olivier And actually, it is sustainable by design, but it is not sufficient to make a business case. And so that has been kind of my, [00:25:00] uh, you know, my red line in a way. How can we make industrial biotech, economically valuable as input?

Karl Yeah. That, I mean, it makes sense. It is a lot about what we talk about here on the podcast and in general with our friends and our clients.

Karl now I do remember we were lucky enough to work together on this report for AB4S, which we'll get into in a bit, but you said that good science isn't enough, which sounds like something we talk a lot about when it comes to commercialization and reaching the market. And the reason good science isn't enough is due to cost gaps in climate innovation.

Karl When a biotech startup pitches a beautiful green molecule to a company as big as L'Oreal or a company like Michelin or, you know, TotalEnergies, what's the ultimate economic reality check that they need to be taken seriously?

Olivier I would actually reframe a little bit because I think it's not just about the economical reality.

Olivier Uh, let me maybe, maybe take a step back. if we think about

[00:26:00] biotech products, this is today, a massive industrial and commercial reality. You know, uh, let's talk about S&L. It's eighty million ton a year that is being produced. Let's talk about amino acids. We are talking about several millions ton per amino acid being produced.

Olivier And so we know to produce industrial biotech-based products at the right specification, at the right scale, and at the right price point. We know that. What happened is that, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, uh, there was this emergence of synthetic biology. You know, the ability, to engineer living systems so that we can drive to a specific properties, performance, specific feature.

Olivier and we massively invested, in this respect. at the beginning it was on biofuels, uh, you know, in the two thousand and ten, but then when the barrel of oil dropped from one hundred to, fifty dollar a barrel, uh, then biotech was not competitive anymore for [00:27:00] fuels. And so this is where, the sector pivoted toward, food and feed, agriculture, cosmetics, and so on and so forth.

Olivier But, when you think about the, the level of expectation that was raised at the time, we actually did not meet that. the pace and the scale of this transition did not meet our initial collective expectation in this respect. And so I have one hypothesis for that, which is that we, we as a community, we demanded, to do all the things at the same time, meaning we needed to get sustainable products, you know, like net zero, that have equal or better performance than the incumbents, uh, that was produced at scale in a cost competitive way with, uh, the fossil-based incumbents.

Olivier And I believe this is the conundrum we, we were in, and that, make this, large scale deployment difficult. And so to your initial [00:28:00] question, when we meet those startups in biotech developing these new products, it's more about where do we find the sweet spots?

Olivier And again, sweet spot being, specification of the products to make sure that it will meet the customer needs. the economic equation that, if we can have additional performance, we can have additional value on the market. And number three, it has to be sustainable. But how do we find the sweet spot?

Erum Wow. Yeah, that's, definitely where biotech commercialization has to grapple It's like you can't have all three. But obviously, it's something that we all are trying to work towards, getting, checking all those boxes off. And especially on the sustainability side, we always hear is s- sustainability isn't enough.

Erum You know, it has to have the performance, it has to have the price point. But it is still very important. And really the breadth of your work, looking at scope three emissions, because that, they occur completely outside of, a supply chain.

Erum How can consumer [00:29:00] goods giants use biotechnology to redesign or clean up a supply chain that it doesn't directly control?

Olivier so if I take the example of L'Oréal. you know, L'Oréal has, been leading, the sustainability journey in our beauty industry for now more than 30 years now.

Olivier today we are, at the middle of our second cooperate-wide sustainability program for L'Oréal for the future. And one of the major pillar of this program is how to defossilize our raw material portfolio

Olivier Our objective by 2030 is to

Olivier achieve 75% of our, raw material being either derived from nature, meaning bio-based, or for inorganic compounds derived from abundant minerals or from recycled materials. And today, I mean, you know, at the end of 2025, we were at 67%. Oh, wow. And

Olivier in order to do that, [00:30:00] we actually define what we call the Green Sciences program. You mentioned the Green Sciences earlier. Yeah. So, so basically this is about defining, what are the, most environmental friendly processes that should be used in order to produce the ingredients that we formulate. And so we are looking at, green extraction.

Olivier We are looking at, green chemistry according to the 12 principle of green chemistry, and we are also looking at biotechnology. there is a, a, a specific point I want to make with regard to scope three emission, and this is something that is, uh, yeah, usually overlooked,in biotech and also in, in the cosmetic industry You know, biotech, and that's my personal belief, is not at a point today where it can have a massive impact on scope three emission.

Olivier And why is that? Because when you look at scope three emission, most of it is coming, and I'm [00:31:00] speaking, speaking across sector, is coming when it comes to chemicals, ingredients, material. Most of it is actually coming from a commoditized molecule, meaning large volume, very low cost, and biotech is, is not there to, to achieve this low price point.

Olivier So my perspective in this respect is that biotech is more about innovation that is actually sustainable by design, right? And so, coming back to your question about how we engage with our, upstream partners because this is done under our, our control, well, we, we engage with them to find innovative solution in order to deploy our biotech ingredients.

Olivier So, I can give you just a few examples. We are collaborating with Microphytes, which is a French company that, has developed microalgae, based cultivation. And we have been combining that with our unique expertises in skin science, so that [00:32:00] we can actually develop the n- the new generation of microalgae derived cosmetic ingredients, for longevity.

Karl Oh, wow. You know

Olivier what, another example is one product that is already on the market called Endobioma, and so this, uh, was developed with Micreos. And, and what it's about, it's about, the Micreos isolating endolysins, which are enzymes that can actually destroy the cell walls from phage, uh, organisms.

Karl Mm.

Olivier And so we managed to develop this product to target selectively, Staphylococcus aureus that is responsible for, inflammatory skin disease such as eczema. So you see, it's, it's really about innovation, I believe from, from a biotech standpoint.

Karl Yeah.

Erum Love it.

Karl Yeah. I love that. Now, I know that you're based in Toulouse.

Karl I didn't realize until we wrote these questions that you had been leading, uh, Toulouse White Biotech [00:33:00] and, I am friends with, um, Pierre Monsan and had worked with Thomas Laurent of MicroPep, who also came out of- Yeah ... Toulouse White Biotech. And you were there and you were focusing on this idea of transitioning academic research into industrial startups

Karl Can you give an example of something that either worked really well or failed spectacularly that changed how you think about scaling up biology?

Olivier So yeah, yeah, that's right, uh, Cal. I actually took over Pierre, who was a founder of, of TWB. and maybe just for the, the one who are listening to or watching us, I think it's important to understand that TWB, it's a public-private partnership, that is developing innovative biotech solution for industry, and we are looking at TRL, you know, three to five.

Olivier my, my major learning at TWB and also before, you know, when, when I was engaged with, uh, TotalEnergies and Amyris developing sustainable aviation fuel, is that, scaling biology is about, doing three [00:34:00] major things. One, You have to optimize the microbial catalyst or biological catalyst, and this is super deep tech

Karl Yeah.

Olivier Two, you actually have to get this catalyst into an industrial setup and get it up and running, and this has to be super low tech And then number three, you actually need to sell these products to consumers. So you need to make sure that these products will meet consumer, expectations. And so my learning, been working a lot with startups, it's incredibly hard to be able to do all these three things at the same time by a unique organization like startups.

Olivier And, and to me, we really need to think about it differently. We need to de-risk upfront. Now, there are different ways, we can do that. one is how can we reasonably achieve, target costs? [00:35:00] And I have seen a lot of time, and I have been part of this, where we fool ourselves with some, unrealistic price targets, right?

Olivier and so basically what we need is strong modeling, being able to deliver strong techno-economic analysis right at the bat that will be refined, as we progress in term of technical performances. So that's one, it's about cost and technical analysis. The second thing is, and we developed that actually in the Advanced Biotech for Sustainability first report, how can we reduce the variable right at the gate?

Olivier one of the major issue that we are facing, it's companies or startups failing at the scale-up and industrialization. and because, you cannot de-risk everything in, in the lab. you actually need to scale up, and that's what it is for.

Olivier and now what we see is, a new wave of project, that are trying to de risk right at the bat. And the, the way they do that is they are constraining themselves. So let me give you an example. We are seeing more and more project [00:36:00] that want to retrofit SNL facilities.

Karl Yeah.

Olivier Why? Because the CapEx is already there. but, there is a consequence to that. You have to go through a, an anaerobic process. so basically you are already constraining yourself, and you will not be able to do, whatever you want. but I think, this type of retrofitting, type of co-production completely makes sense.

Olivier And then number three is basically about your industrial partners. How can you onboard your industrial partners, in order to cover the whole value chain? And, this is something we also learn at L'Oréal since we launched this Green Census program. And, what we're trying to achieve is to, to partner both with innovative startups, but also with a partner, one of our chemical suppliers who can actually help scale up and industrialize the product as the right specification that we'll be able to source.

Olivier And you know, that's basically what we put together with, uh, the agreement we announced, I think it was two years ago [00:37:00] now, with Abolis, a French synbio startup, Evonik, a ch- a chemical suppliers, and L'Oréal to basically develop the next generation of innovative ingredients.

Erum Wow. I love how you broke it down to the three, the techno-economic analysis, looking at constraints, which I really, appreciate that. It reminds me a lot of the space science. We've had a lot of people who was working on space biotech, and they have a lot of constraints and, you know, the innovation that comes out of that versus, just doing anything willy-nilly, and the constraints coming from the industrial partners.

Erum By the way, we did recently have Amyris on. We had Debut, which, we could talk about that. we know that they have, a relationship with L'Oréal as well. but I do wanna kind of tug on this thread of, biology and deep science. You know, you have this research that happens and, scientists, they just wanna optimize, optimize.

Olivier Nothing's perfect, you know? They wanna make sure they have the perfect thing and, commercialization, you can't wait for perfection. [00:38:00] So how do you bridge that gap between public research or private academic research and corporate industrialization? Well, you, you might be surprised. I think at the end of the day it's about, alignment on expectations. let me share with you, a story that I experienced several time in the past. So I have been involved in different instances in due diligence

Olivier in order to put together partnership between startups and large corporation. And there is this common thing that I have seen repeating and again, again, and again, and, I'm talking about, the time that goes from the 2010s to now, which is you do a due diligence, you sign the contract, and when you actually start the collaboration, you are never at the level of maturity you had thought you would be.

Olivier Mm-hmm. And, and, you know, it's [00:39:00] okay as long as we can manage it. And for me, it's more about expectation and how we ensure that, we align in between the executives of the startup, executive of the large corporation, the expectation. Because, the drivers are orthogonally different, right?

Olivier One, you know, a startups, it needs to survive, it needs to develop, it needs cash, it needs finance. Whereas a large corporation, it's here to, for the long run, right? it's about, developing, the next innovation that will, generate great value, in its business. And so, it's about, trying to, plan ahead and to be able to, design milestone that will meet the expectations.

Olivier it's about managing the trajectory. You know, every plan doesn't go, as expected. but there is this ability that we need to be able to, monitor, to measure, and to resteer, towards, the end goal. So the end goal should remain the same, or we can [00:40:00] actually stop the project, and that's fine, or we actually manage the trajectory to get there.

Olivier So, I answer maybe differently to what you expected your question, but for me it's really about expectation at the end of the day.

Erum Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's well said.

Karl Yeah. I mean, I think it's something that the people, need to hear over and over again, you know, especially when it comes to these partnerships between a startup or a emerging company and a big company, because the expectations are different, and the way that you, meet those expectations is by c- constantly communicating with each other and making sure that expectations are met on both sides.

Karl now Olivier, you've talked a lot about, academia and large corporations, but now, now let's bring government into the mix. You were appointed by the French government to serve as an ambassador for sustainable materials in France 2030. What do you see as being the biggest bottleneck in European biotech infrastructure that stops local startups from scaling and becoming

[00:41:00] global players?

Olivier Sobefore I answer you directly your question, let me give you a few context elements. I've been, active, a long time in the US, and I have seen the US funding a lot biomanufacturing.

Olivier US has been massively investing in biomanufacturing for a long time, for a matter of national sovereignty, but also now it's a competitive tool, in the global setup.

Olivier and, you know, looking back now in Asia, and particularly in China, China has been, ramping up industrial biotech, like crazy. it is amazing now, when you go to China and you meet these, uh, pretty young companies who has state-of-the-art, technology platform.

Olivier They can do research, innovation development, but they also have access to, huge pilot facilities and large scale manufacturing.

Karl Yeah.

Olivier and Europe has been really great, and is still great in term of innovation. Innovation is, popping out in different places in Europe, so it's kind of spread out.

Olivier [00:42:00] But great in innovation, but had a hard time to materialize this innovation into a, an industrial reality. And, and to your question about, what has been the, uh, the major bottleneck in this respect, my perspective is that it has been extremely difficult for successful startup to bridge a scale-up gap.

Olivier So to bridge a Series A's gap. Yeah. And why that? Because, uh, there is a lack of investors in Europe. And when I say that, let me be clear, I feel like, we have much less investor than what you would find in the US or in Asia. And the the investment envelope for biomanufacturing is much lower by an order of magnitude, at least, to what you will find in those two areas.

Olivier And so for me, that is something that, Europe needs to tackle. And actually this is part of, the revision of the bioeconomy strategy that has been published by the European Commission last November. so this is a clear, topic that they [00:43:00] identify that they need to solve, a clear challenge,

Olivier and we'll see because, they are now working on translating this revision into the EU Biotech Act number two, which will be a legislative act this time in order to really pull the, um, the biomanufacturing demand. Yeah.

Karl Yeah.

Erum one region that needs the funding for bio manufacturing, I would say it's Europe because they are the one region that really embraces sustainability as a narrative and the regulatory that's around that.

Erum so if they had that type of, private capital and the mix of government and other types of financial mechanisms, it could really scale up fast, and it's exciting that it's becoming a, a legislative, effort now. So I'm excited to see what Europe's going to be doing in industrial bio manufacturing.

Olivier And actually, Aram, on, on, on this side, you mentioned a point which is Europe is pretty advanced when it comes to sustainability, and that's true.

[00:44:00] But you know what we've seen in the last couple of years is that, um, sustainability by itself is not sufficient anymore. I'm not sure it has been su- sufficient in the past, but here it- we clearly see now that we need something more.

Olivier And what we have seen, with the implementation of the CSRD, which is a corporate sustainability, reporting directive, larger company had to go through,the double materiality analysis, which is basically an analysis that look into how, The value chain of a given company is impacting nature and is impacting the, ecosystem delivered by nature, like biodiversity, like water, and vice versa, which looks at how nature that is being evolving, because of climate change is impacting, the turnover of large Corporation.

Olivier Wow. And so we have this new notion that is a resilience of the business, and it's, it's interestingly, it's interesting because it [00:45:00] is intertwine with sustainability by design.

Erum Yeah.

Olivier And so I think now there is also this new thinking that we see about how, as a company, how can I make my value chain resilient for the long run?

Olivier because this will lead to my turnover at the end of the day. And so I think this is also where biomanufacturing, biotech has a critical role to play in this respect.

Karl Yeah, I mean, as we are recording this, you know, we've seen the Strait of Hormuz close and open and close and open, and I think many countries are looking for ways to kind of achieve, either energy sovereignty or, you know, manufacturing, and one of the ways you solve that is through biomanufacturing.

Karl We actually met and worked on this report for AB4S, the Advanced Biotechnology for Sustainability Coalition, report, and Olivier, I just wondered, were there any big takeaways from [00:46:00] that report that you might wanna mention in how they impact your thinking about growing the bioeconomy?

Olivier the way I think about Advancing Towards Sustainability, was initially kind of, of a think tank gathering different players from this value chain, who had one thing in common, they, wanted to promote biomanufacturing. So they, basically analyze, what has been going on, what was the bottleneck, and see how we can unlock or unleash the potential of biotech. If we look at the first report, I would say there were two major insights that were quite differentiating

Olivier from what I have seen earlier. One is about the sustainability potential, of industrial biotech. we had a 360 look from an analytical perspective about the real potential of biotech, not just about carbon, but about water, about land use, for instance.

Olivier the second actually, takeaway for me was the frame that was proposed at the end of [00:47:00] this first report, and this frame was about three major guidelines. One we already discussed was how we can reduce a variable, from a scale-up and industrial standpoint right at the beginning of the project. The second one was, and we also alluded to that a little bit earlier, how can we make a deep tech into a low-tech process?

Olivier And the third one was about standardization. Can we actually standardize a little bit this industry? Because, when we think about biotech, lot of people are thinking about, the pharma industry.

Karl Yeah.

Olivier And it's amazing how pharma has been able to standardize the whole process of development of a given, molecule, right?

Olivier And you know, th- this helps a lot because this, you know, we are talking about expectation before. Well, when you are preclinical or when you are clinical trial one, you know exactly where you are in term of your maturity, what risk you are taking, how much you will have to spend, in order to get there.

Olivier We don't have that in industrial biotech, Yeah. And so I think that's the type of thing that we, we, we need to push for so that we als- uh, speak the same language, and so we all have[00:48:00] the same, uh,

Olivier level of expectation.

Erum Yeah, yeah. I really enjoy that whole process of, speaking to all the stakeholders that are a part of the Advanced Biotech for Sustainability coalition and being able to understand where they see some challenges and opportunities. And, this podcast is called "Grow Everything," so there's a lot of opportunity.

Erum Where do we focus? what can be manufactured that's, the low-hanging fruit. and I really appreciated that we brought this report together to help guide industry and say, "Hey, look, take a look at these molecules. Take a look at how this can be done, and then, we're here to help."

Erum So, I just love the commercialization of it because the, the think tank part's great. The-- we got all the information, all the insights, but then, what's next? And, like I appreciate, the [00:49:00] action part after we have the ideas.

Olivier Yeah. And actually, Advanced Biotech for Sustainability, it's not a closed group of organization.

Olivier the objective is basically to gather the, the interns that are willing to promote and to unlock biotech. And so, now we are entering to this new phase. We are transitioning from this think tank type of activity towards what I call the reduction to practice of what we have been preaching, so that we can really demonstrate experimentally, that we can go faster, that we can go cheaper, and we can get there at the end of the day.

Erum Yes. Yes. And then standardization and aligning on these ideas, such a great opportunity. I love the idea of having coalitions to help transition big industry. I mean, it's always kind of been there, but I think because everyone saw so much success in the idea of like one company dominating from the world of s- software and Silicon Valley, that venture capital and one company winning it all is like this new model.

Erum But in biotech and trying to [00:50:00] make this huge transition, you can't just do it alone. You have to do it collaboratively across many different stakeholders and do it in a way that, everyone can understand and, work together. So, I, I do appreciate that part. You know, just the fact that these companies came together and they're open and they're wanting to, do more, and actually do work.

Erum we've heard the conversations and like, "Let's do this. Let's do this." And it's like, "Oh, okay, great." Like people are moving and, I love that part of it.

Olivier Erum, if I can, if I can just- Yeah ... uh, slip in here. I feel that, we are also now, starting to think differently about this, uh, this whole value chain.

Erum Mm. You

Olivier know, in the past, if we go back to the 2000s, uh, with synthetic biology, the way I, I see it is that there was this huge investment, mainly in the Silicon Valley, mainly from investor who were coming from the digital world and they were looking for the next revolution.

Karl Yeah.

Olivier And so they're investing massively in those, uh, synthetic biology, uh, companies. One of the major [00:51:00] issue was the fact that you had to build a platform, a technology platform, so it took a lot of money, a lot of investment to do that. Mm. And the second thing was you had to develop a, a molecule, so after developing the raw catalyst and process, you had actually, to put feet on the ground.

Olivier So there's a lot of CapEx. So basically at the end of the day, uh, it was becoming harder and harder in order to get an okay return on investment. And we saw billion of dollars being spent, at that time. And what we are seeing today is actually we are seeing this, uh, value chain becoming much more fragmented, and, uh, we are seeing players we were not seeing before.

Olivier And so that's, and that's, you know, one of the key learnings in my career in biotech, which is, one organization, will most of the time not be able to do it itself. And so it, it will take, uh, basically a combination of different organization that can really [00:52:00] bring on each step of the value chain, their technologies, their capabilities.

Olivier And, and at the end of the day, it's, uh, I think how we make it. So this coalition, aspect, I think it's critical.

Erum Yeah. Yeah, very critical. startups still exist. They still need a pathway. They still need inspiration. And, you've been talking to a lot of startups.

Erum There's been the, the Green Scientist Incubator. I want to know a little bit more about, Are you looking for companies that are creating entirely new high performance novel molecules or cheap bio-based drop-in replacements for chemicals you already use?

Olivier so first, we have some voluntary commitments. I mentioned our defossilization, objectives, but we also have a net zero objective.

Olivier And, you know, by twenty thirty we want to reduce by twenty-eight percent, roughly our, uh, CO2 emission coming from the upstream part of our value chain. And, uh,w-when you think about that, this is something that is related [00:53:00] to, large volume ingredients. So we're talking about functional ingredients.

Olivier So we are talking about ingredients that are commoditized. And, again, I don't believe that biotech is today at the point where it could solve for this. And so, so here we are active with our supplier, but we are more looking at, what we call low carbon solutions when it comes to, to biotech, and innovation in general, there are different ways we, interact with startups.

Olivier it goes from, some tripartite agreement as I was mentioning earlier, you know, with, uh, a seed bio startup like, Arboles supplier Evonik and L'Oréal. we have some, direct relationships as the one I was mentioning with, Microphyt on the, algae side. we do some, uh, acquisition as well.

Olivier you know, we acquired a few years ago Lactobio, microbiome, based company in Denmark. And you mentioned there is a, a Greensets incubator. And so this incubator, the way you can [00:54:00] think about it is it's not a physical incubator, it's more a model. It's more an agile model by which we are working with startups.

Olivier And, and the whole point of this is when you have some startup that are developing some technology and products, there is a question about can we leverage that, uh, for the beauty industry, for our end of our sector? And so it's really about demonstrating the proof of potential of what the startup is developing, in other area for the beauty industry.

Olivier It's typically a twelve to twenty four months, collaboration. we, L'Oréal, we are funding, this work and, at the end of the day, there is a go, no go. If there is a go, we define, or we carve out, a field in which we are continuing to develop, this, uh, technology to incorporate our in development pipeline.

Olivier And if there is a no go, we, actually, uh, retro cedes the right to use the IP generated during the, [00:55:00] uh, during the collaboration. And this is super important for the startup because that way, they can leverage what they have been doing with us. And, I think the philosophy in all these different relationship at the end of the day is to ensure that when a startup engage with L'Oréal, this generates value for the startup whenever we stop, if we, if we have to stop.

Karl Yeah. I, I think that makes a lot of sense. you talked about, these efforts around defossilization and decarbonization, and you've seen this both in the aviation industry and in the beauty industry, but what's one major lesson, that you l- took from SAF or sustainable aviation fuel that could be applied to the beauty industry?

Olivier I have, uh, heard a lot people out there looking at the cosmetic industry as kind of the grail, to deploy biotech-

Karl Yeah ...

Olivier and to deploy, defossilized [00:56:00] products. And, and you know, when I started to interact with L'Oréal, I actually joined the scientific advisory board there, and I actually realized that I had a complete misconception of this sector.

Olivier And, and what I mean by that is, think about, uh, the product. the shampoo, makeup. Think about the content of the, of this product, the formula. The formula is composed of active ingredients and functional ingredients. The active ingredients is the basis of the claims, the scientific claims, and the performance, for the customer, right?

Olivier Now, the functional ingredients is basically, to ensure the texture, to ensure, all the sensoriality of it. And you know, in our, in our industry, in our sector, there are large volume functional ingredients. There's the surfactants. you know, the foam when we use our products.

Olivier There's the, the [00:57:00] solvents. There's the preservatives. All this material are large volumes and are actually, very low price in the market. Those are commoditized ingredients.

Karl Yeah.

Olivier And so to your question, when you think about SAF, sustainable aviation fuel, it is a commoditized, product.

Karl Yeah.

Olivier And at the beginning when I was working in that, I started there in, in, uh, 2010. I realized that, there was no way that, sustainable aviation fuel could emerge without the right regulatory setup. And the reason is pretty simple, is because, let's say, let's take Europe.

Olivier we have been, mandating, incorporation rate of biofuels, in, fuel for cars, trucks, at the gas station, right? And so, if you take a, a refiner, if he

[00:58:00] has the choice between, producing biofuel for, cars or biofuel for, aircraft, they will go for cars because there is a mandate.

Olivier You have to comply with the mandate. And actually, it's less expensive to go for car than to go for, for, for sustainable aviation fuel. there's been a, a pivot, uh, the past few years because we started to see some mandatory incorporation rates,in order to deploy SAF.

Olivier And so I think that's something I think we need to think about when it comes to, the defossilization of commoditized raw material that we use, is how we create the right market pull in order, to transition those raw materials from a fossil base to a bio-based one. And, I'm not advocating for mandates, but I'm just saying we need to have the right, regulatory scheme in this space.

Karl Yeah. Makes sense.

Erum Yeah. Yeah, and the regulatory scheme in the United States here is just changing a lot. It's very challenging [00:59:00] to, pin it down at the moment. but you know, we are seeing, a lot of companies here reformulate because they've seen some regulation shift and, and they're making big decisions.

Erum I I'm thinking of the, CPG world of, like snacks and foods, you know, like Mars pulling their blue M&Ms and brown M&Ms because, they're not meeting the standards that they now have. and maybe there was some regulatory push there as well as, and market pull, like market demand too.

Erum I mean, consumers don't want to eat that stuff anymore, so it's very interesting to see that.

Olivier we also need to think about incentives.

Erum Yes. Yeah.

Olivier Uh, because, you know, at the end of the day, it's really about covering the green premium.

Olivier intrinsically- when you compare fossil based products and bio-based products, there is a premium. Why is that? Because when it comes to fossil based products, we are talking about, uh, extracting

Olivier fossil resources that are super concentrated in carbon, in specific region of the [01:00:00] world, going into super large and optimized for a century or more, refinery and petrochemical plants.

Karl Yeah.

Olivier When it comes to bio-based content, and I think this is super important to, to have in mind, we are talking about a resource that is spread out first, that is much less concentrated in carbon.

Olivier Why? Because you have oxygen. And so the first thing that you need to do is you need to remove the oxygen in order to, fuel or to feed the existing infrastructure. And so this has a cost. it might be simple to think that way, but, but it show that there is a premium and we need to be able to cover for this, green premium.

Karl Yeah.

Olivier And incentives could be actually a, a right way. When I talk about incentives, I was talking about, VAT reduction, I'm talking about, a tax credit, these type of things that can help cover the green premium between the suppliers, uh, the B2C

Olivier and the consumer. And to maintain, you know, the competitiveness to ma- to maintain the purchase power and so on, and so forth

Erum I [01:01:00] think you sort of answered my next question, but I, I would love to ask it again and see if you, change your answer.

Erum So there is this green premium now, and how do we get to a place where it's gone and we, we have this consumer standard that we're all paying the commodity price? You m- mentioned incentives. What else needs to happen? And tell us like what, where do you see this bioeconomy developing now and then in the next five years, five to 10 years?

Olivier The green premium will remain valid as long as The pricing, does not take i- into account sustainability on one side or as long as, this more sustainable product will have to compete at par with fossil incumbent

Erum Yeah

Olivier And I think this is what we need to solve for

Erum Mm-hmm

Olivier And as we said, it's, it's not an easy one because [01:02:00] sustainability is not sufficient-

Karl Yeah

Olivier in term of added performance to be priced on the market Right. Yeah.

Erum Yeah. There needs to be a fossil fuel premium to, to pay for the- Yeah. I know that's pretty blasphemous, but, um, anyway.

Karl But

Olivier for me there is a, there is real hope. And going back to, the global context, in China we see now that biomanufacturing is at the same level as, uh, you know, sixth generation communication featured on the next five-year plan of China.

Olivier Mm. I think there will be massive deployment of, biotech. We see India as well, that is, getting bigger and bigger in this respect. At the same time, US is continuing on its, uh, history of investing into biomanufacturing domestically.and Europe is gonna, put in place the EU Biotech Act.

Olivier So, so I think there will be the [01:03:00] framework with the different region of the world that will really help foster, industrial biotech. Yeah.

Erum Mm-hmm.

Olivier But there is also another side about it, which is, when it comes to comparing, bio-based product with fossil-based product, we have this tendency to go from a one-to-one replacement.

Olivier We keep the same molecule, right? And- Yeah ... and then we just try to change the sourcing. there is another way we do that, and actually, you know, in L'Oréal we cannot do that for everything, so that's why we're also looking at what we call iso-functional solutions, meaning we are looking at same of or improved functions- Mm

Olivier through different molecules that are more sustainable by design.

Karl Yeah.

Olivier And that also could be,you know, part of the solution.

Karl Yeah, absolutely. I think that's something that, it, it brings up two things that we, we do talk about. One is that, for example, when it comes to formulating with bio-based products, it's still n- relatively new.

Karl It's a different, kind of a different world than formulating with [01:04:00] chemistry. And then two, many of the bio-based ingredients can have multiple functions. So you might have a color that's also a preservative that maybe has some enzyme activity, and I think there's a lot of that that we're learning and will continue to learn.

Karl And so I think that's one of the things that makes this so interesting and,g- also gives me a lot of hope. we're getting to the point, Olivier, where we're gonna just ask you some quick-fire questions. We're very excited to do these. I'll hit the first one. You answer how you feel and, um, and then Erum will do another one.

Karl But what is the single most overrated sustainability myth in the beauty industry?

Olivier Well, I guess this is what I was telling you before, which is,you have different type of ingredients in the beauty industry, and actually the largest volume are functional ingredients that are commoditized.

Olivier And so, it is untrue that, beauty sector can pay for a huge premium for those ingredients.

Erum Yes. awesome. Okay. If nature had a startup [01:05:00] pitch deck, which raw plant or microbe are you investing in?

Olivier Okay, that's a tough one. let me just tell you about, one startup we are collaborating with right now called Plantible, and they developed this, uh...

Olivier It's a US-based one, and they developed a, a cultivation process of duckweed, which is also called Lemna. And it happened that it is the fastest growing plant on Earth, terrestrial plant. so it's, it's basically, generating a lot of biomass. It's a sink of CO2, and the, the use of water is minimal. Wow. So I am pretty excited by the potential of this, uh, of this plant.

Karl I love that. what is one biological superpower you wish industrial fermentation had right now today?

Olivier it will be to, be able to translate lab performance at industrial scale in a very cheap [01:06:00] and fast way.

Erum Yes. Cheap and fast, that's the w- that's the way we like it

Karl Yeah. When

Erum it comes to industrial processes. I don't know about other things.

Karl Well, Olivier, this has been a fantastic, conversation.

Karl We thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to speak with us today.

Olivier Well, thank you. Thank you very much for, uh, for the question, for, for the discussion. Thanks a lot, everyone. Thanks a lot, Carl.

Olivier Thank you. It was a pleasure to be with you

Erum So Carl, what'd you think of that episode?

Karl I mean, Olivier is very smart and very interesting, and I'm glad he was able to come on because what he, pointed out is that biotech's core bottleneck is this trade-off between sustainability performance and cost competitiveness. We talk a lot about how performance is really where biotech wins, and we've seen this with companies like K18 Hair.

Karl biotech is still expensive in many cases. Yes, there are products that are produced using biotechnology at the, millions of liters scale, but if it can't compete from a price point of view, no one's really gonna pay attention to it, and sustainability isn't enough to drive a product's success.

Karl What did you think, Hero?

Erum Yeah, that's the song we sing. It's, it's not just about sustainability, it's about high performance and being able to be cost competitive for sure. and th- this is what we need our startup community, those innovators that want to work with [01:08:00] these large companies, these large brands, brand houses like L'Oréal, to know that There's multiple things that these companies care about, and there's expectations that startups have of, working with a, like a L'Oréal, that they like your innovation and then they're gonna all rally around it and do all the lift when it's quite the opposite actually.

Erum Like, the startups really have to, know how to engage in a way that gets in their mind. And we talked a bit about this with Joshua Britton of Debut in our previous episode, they actually have a collaboration with L'Oréal. And really it's what Joshua said, it's like just aligning on the timeline, the maturity of the technology, and what the outcomes are.

Erum Um, so we heard from Olivier today, but

Erum it was great to see this concept, this idea Olivier shared applied through our conversation with Joshua Britton. So it was really great to see that firsthand. So it's not just all talk.

Erum Olivier [01:09:00] sharing his story through, L'Oréal was, it's very, very interesting.

Karl it goes back to this idea that the best way to improve your odds of commercialization of any product is to de-risk as early as possible. You know, you need that, in many cases, that techno-economic analysis.

Karl You need to have your process designed. You need to have partnership models in advance. And the more that you can do that before you scale up, the easier it's gonna be for you to commercialize and get the interest of big partners if that's what you're looking for I will say, I, I will just add one thing as we close this out.

Karl You know, Europe has been very strong at biotech innovation, but maybe a bit weaker at turning it into industrial scale because of the investment gap that exists in the US and and China. On the other hand, Europe has been really great at driving regulatory, and I think that that's really important for the rest of the world to pay attention to because we don't want it to all be the Wild West.

Karl China will produce anything. We have a history of doing the same thing in the [01:10:00] US without really thinking of the unintended consequences that happen down the road. So, I'm glad that Olivier talked about that.

Karl for those of you who've heard us talk about the Advanced Biotech for Sustainability Coalition, Olivier has been one of the driving forces behind that coalition.

Karl So you might wanna take a look at their website. AB4S puts out a report every other year. They've just put out a great report called, The Molecule Manifesto that we were a part of, and Olivier, was one of the voices behind that report. So check that out, listeners. It's v- it's very much worth, reading.

Erum a great conversation with Olivier, and I cannot wait to talk to him again. so that's our episode. Would love for you guys to join us in person at World Biomarkets in Omaha in September. If you are attending or want to attend, there is a promo code.

Erum It's GrowEverything for a 25% off discount. Fun times. I cannot wait to go there.

Erum Thanks for tuning in to the Grow Everything podcast. If you have any questions, [01:11:00] comments, want to drop us a line, drop us some tea. If you know anything going on behind the scenes that you want to tell us, tell us. So our information is in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening, and let's grow.

Karl Let's grow.