26. Breaking Bad Hair Habits with Biology: Suveen Sahib's K18 Rescues Your Strands

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

[00:00:22] Shara: Yes, absolutely. C 16 Biosciences is decarbonizing consumer products through next generation ingredients, and specifically we're focused on next generation oils and fats.

[00:00:37] Shara: Uh, we've actually just announced our consumer facing solutions platform, uh, which is called PLIs and PLIs. Is, as you might have guessed, a, an alternative to palm oil. Um, and maybe I'll jump in to sort of why we care about palm oil, if that's okay. Why do we care about palm oil? Uh, palm oil is in 50% of products on supermarket shelves.

[00:01:05] Shara: Wow. It is found in everything from soap and shampoo to lipstick to the foods that we eat, like Nutella or Oreos. And sometimes it's even used as, as cooking oil or as an input for biodiesel. So it's, it's truly ubiquitous. It's grown tremendously over the last 60 years, and many people think it's grown because it's just really cheap, which is certainly true for some applications, but in fact, it's the most popular vegetable oil in the world because it's just really good at what it does.

[00:01:38] Shara: It is what helps the color stay on your lipstick. It is what makes the soap or the. Body wash in your shower, foam and cleanse. It's what makes Nutella spread. Just that perfect sort of spreadable, spoonable nature. But the problem with palm oil is the way that it's produced and really it comes down to the sort of concept of industrial agriculture that's focused on better, cheaper, faster, and not taking into account.

[00:02:07] Shara: Cost, such as the use of our land biodiversity and climate impact. We're reimagining our relationship with nature and looking to transition from a world in which our relationship with nature is highly extractive,

[00:02:21] Shara: To a future where we have a relationship that's symbiotic with nature, and we use nature in a more powerful way to make better performing and more sustainable ingredients and products.

[00:02:36] Karl: I think it, I think it's great. Like, I know, um, for me, the palm oil thing struck, uh, you know, a few years ago we were in Costa Rica.

[00:02:46] Karl: We were taking the bus from San Jose, uh, to Panama, which we used to do a lot as a kid. And, um, just. Seeing mile after, mile after mile of these palm trees and going, uh, wow. What the hell happened here? I don't know what, how long that has been there, there been there planted there, but I was really struck by this idea that, um, you know, these trees were being, you know, we're replacing the, the jungle.

[00:03:15] Karl: And, um, I also remember seeing like this picture of the last. Orangutan and Borneo or something like that. And you have a story that you talk about going to Singapore, uh, and you know, and just like how dirty the air was. Could you tell that story? Because I think it's important to put this into context for people.

[00:03:31] Shara: Yes. So in my past life, I, I did not work in biotech. I worked on Wall Street. Um, but that's actually where I learned about. Palm oil for the first time. So about 10 years ago I was working on Wall Street. I was working for Goldman Sachs and I covered some of our accounts in Asia and I was taking a trip to Asia to meet with some of our, our customers, some of our clients in the region.

[00:03:55] Shara: And Goldman sent me over with a stack of N95 masks, so before my flight to Singapore. They take care of their employees and they say you need to bring these N95 masks. Um, this was 2013. I did not know what an N95 mask was, nor did I know why I was wearing it. So I land in Singapore and there's this thick haze.

[00:04:17] Shara: There's this, this thick smoke, and I, I have a picture of myself, um, up at. Um, marina Bay, Sam's the big hotel there. The, the sort of big hotel with a big ship on it and the air is just black and it's because the air quality index in Singapore when I landed was over 400. And anything over 300 is considered highly toxic.

[00:04:39] Shara: Just to put that in context, we live in New York. We're all calling in from New York City, big city. You'd think we'd be used to sort, sort of pollution and bad air quality. The air quality index in New York this morning was 44. 44 versus 400. So I'm in Singapore. This you can feel this pollution in the air.

[00:04:58] Shara: They've canceled schools. They've asked pregnant women not to walk outside and I asked my colleagues what's going on and they said, oh, our neighbors are are burning forest for palm oil production. By the way this happens, this happens every year. We deal with this every year. So I was shocked by this. It was my real introduction to, to palm oil.

[00:05:18] Shara: And I think honestly, it was the first time I had seen climate change in real life and, and I'm not sure that totally. Hit me until a few years later. Uh, it's kind of hard to remember, but 10 years ago we weren't really talking about climate change. We didn't have the IPCC report warning us about how, how urgent this was.

[00:05:37] Shara: Um, but it was the first time I had seen it. And it's interesting, Carl, that you mentioned Costa Rica, because the way that this came about and into our founding story was a few years later, I met my co-founder, Harry, and he had. Basically similar, almost identical story to you in Costa Rica where he went to go see the rainforest and it was gone.

[00:05:58] Shara: There was no rainforest, it was just this monoculture plantation of oil palms. And I, I just had deja vu. It was about, it was about three or four years later and I had this crazy deja vu and we started looking into it and realized how. Ubiquitous palm oil was, and also how was there was this clear demand statement to have a better alternative.

[00:06:21] Shara: There were hundreds of companies and in fact, nine countries which had called out the palm oil problem, but they'd been unable to do anything because there was no viable alternative, because agriculture was sort of failing to solve the problem. So we started asking the question, what if biology could solve this problem?

[00:06:39] Shara: What would that look like?

[00:06:42] Karl: And, and I, I think what's amazing about this kind of origin story and thinking about the countries that have been been impacted, I mean, we both mentioned Costa Rica. Costa Rica's supposed to be this country that, you know, very much protects its natural environment. They're probably one of the few countries that have met the, you know, climate goals.

[00:07:00] Karl: And, uh, yet. They've, you know, destroyed the rainforest to put in these trees. But why don't you talk about, you know, what does the technology look like? How does biology solve this palm oil problem?

[00:07:11] Shara: Great. So I, I said this lofty thing about sort of reimagining our relationship with nature. So that sounds beautiful, but, but what does it mean?

[00:07:19] Shara: The way that we think about that is, you know, I've, I've talked about palm oil, which is the most popular vegetable oil, but really we're focused on the broader oils and fats. Problem the, the broader oils and fats landscape. So what we try to do is reimagine the way that we make these oils and fats today.

[00:07:40] Shara: We find, we use, we make oils and fats from either animal sources, animal fats, or plant sources, these vegetable oils and oil seeds, which include palm oil, coconut oil, canola, grape seed oil, soybean oil, and so forth. And what our technology at C 16 does is say. Let's stop relying on the plant and animal kingdom and let's shift to the fungal kingdom.

[00:08:08] Shara: So let's look to the sort of microorganisms rather than these organisms that we've been working with. So instead of using animals or plants in this highly extractive way, we use microorganisms, and specifically we use. A yeast, we use a yeast, which has in fact evolved for centuries to become really good at making oil.

[00:08:30] Shara: So nature actually did a lot of the work for us, which is one of the really exciting things about this field. As we start to be able to identify new microorganisms, new strains of yeast, and develop tools for harnessing them, it opens up a lot of things that weren't previously possible. And I think our technology is one example of that.

[00:08:51] Shara: So we found this yeast, and essentially from here we combine ages, old technology called fermentation, which we've used for centuries to make. Medicine like insulin and food products and also cosmetic products like hyaluronic acid is, is largely made from, from fermentation, but we have improved our ability to use it as a technology.

[00:09:17] Shara: We've improved the precision of it by using some of the. Latest, most developed, most innovative tools in biotechnology, such as the ability to sequence the genome, read, make edits to the genome, evolve the strain, and do sort of, uh, engineering to the process to improve the product that we make, how large we can scale that process, and how cheaply we can scale that process over time.

[00:09:46] Karl: That's awesome. I didn't realize you guys were, were using yeast. Um, we, uh, asked on Twitter, and you may have seen this a couple weeks ago, where we were like, what's the economic value of yeast and e colic? Those are basically the two workhorses of biotech and, uh, rum uncovered, uh, uh, a stat that said, uh.

[00:10:05] Karl: Yeast alone is a $900 billion industry. It's like almost 3% of the US economy. When you take into consideration Yes. Personal care, brewing, baking, and then all the other products that are produced with yeast. So, um, that's

[00:10:19] Erum: today,

[00:10:20] Karl: that's, that was in 2018.

[00:10:23] Erum: Wow. Yeah. And so about to explode. I'm sure you're thinking that Shara,

[00:10:27] Karl: like

[00:10:27] Erum: all the possibilities.

[00:10:29] Erum: I love that stat. I'm gonna take that

[00:10:31] Shara: there. I'll at you. Of course.

[00:10:32] Karl: There. I think that it comes from a book called The Rise of Yeast. Mm. Um, so we'll, we'll find it and we'll send it to you. I love, I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Someone commented, do we control the yeast or does the yeast control us? I think that's a question that we ask a lot when it comes to, you know, microbiome.

[00:10:49] Karl: Um. Well, it's so funny.

[00:10:51] Shara: I'll just, I'll just jump in because we have a, we have a meme wall in our lab and it's just, it's just covered with yeast memes. So when you get to come visit, you'll, I think, I think that question of, do we, do we control the yeast or does the yeast control us? Shows up all over our meme wall.

[00:11:08] Shara: So come see it.

[00:11:10] Karl: I, yeah, I can't wait. So, um, you know, you guys. Have come up with this technology that basically harnesses yeast, you're fermenting palm oil and um, you know, are you guys, you know, doing the manufacturing yourselves? I think our, you, our question is, you know, you mentioned, you've mentioned that you're partnering with manufacturing companies to use existing infrastructure.

[00:11:31] Karl: What does that look like as opposed to doing it? You're yourself, what's that model?

[00:11:34] Shara: Yeah, so you, you sort of just. L led with a very relevant stat, which is that, you know, the yeast is currently a $900 billion economy. So there are a lot of people and capabilities and assets and infrastructure already dedicated to fermentation of yeast.

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

[00:12:14] Shara: Because we're solving a climate change problem because we're focused on decarbonization and we're short on time, so we have urgency because we're problem solvers and we wanna move fast, but we have urgency because the problem demands it. So being able to work with existing infrastructure is really, really valuable.

[00:12:33] Shara: And what that basically means is, you know, as you mentioned, we have our, our lab, our headquarters here in New York City, got a 20,000 square foot lab in the middle of Manhattan, which is. Very cool, but we do not have, you know. Thousand liter tanks or tens of thousand gallon tanks in the middle of Manhattan, that wouldn't really make sense.

[00:12:58] Shara: We work with partners, manufacturing partners that already have these tanks. So as you painted a picture. Sphere, uh, or ethanol are sort of two examples of largely scaled fermentation industries today. And we work with manufacturers who have assets like that. They have big steel tanks and we use them as a sort of toll manufacturing model, and it allows us to move really quickly and allows us to focus on.

[00:13:22] Shara: The things that we need to innovate around. It allows us to focus on the r and d and also the brand and go to market, which is a really, really important and powerful part of what we do and, and outsource building of a plant, capital, expenditures of a plant, and all these things which don't necessarily add value to our innovation.

[00:13:40] Shara: We get to let somebody else do that and partner with 'em.

[00:13:43] Karl: What does it look like? Um, like on an international basis? Like I think, you know, I look at the deforestation of the rainforest, you know, which is largely done to grow protein and palm oil. You know, you're, you're, they're growing cows and soybeans.

[00:13:57] Karl: Yes. And in my thinking, it's always, can't we just put a bunch of breweries down there, teaches people how to brew? Yes. It's a different kind of labor. You know, requirement versus chopping down trees and plowing fields, however it could solve the problem. Um, so what's your kind of distributed model when it comes to international?

[00:14:16] Shara: I think this is still, this is still in our vision for the future, I think for the entire industry and for, for us. But, but I have the same vision for the future. I think in the past we've had these sort of. Mega factories be the solution. You get something to this sort of massive scale. You make it all there, and then you send it around the world.

[00:14:35] Shara: That, that's true in, in maybe the the synthetic biology world, but in a lot of industry too, as we've seen sort of globalization rapidly expand. Countries have specialized and then they've exported and imported things accordingly. But as we look around the past couple of years, from a macro perspective, allow me to sort of, you know, think about the macro economy for a second.

[00:14:58] Shara: We're starting to see things change and with oils and fats, for example, over 80% of soy soybean oil comes from the region around Ukraine. And as we had. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and war breakout, that supply has vanished overnight. Just a few months later in, in May of this year, Indonesia, who exports 60% of global palm oil, decided overnight they were going to stop exporting palm oil and just keep it for themselves.

[00:15:34] Shara: They've reversed that, but they've also since made. Big climate commitments, which involve taking the Pomo that they produce today, which is largely used in food across the world, and shifting that to biodiesel production inside the economy to meet some of their net zero emissions goals. So as we think about what the future might look like, I actually think it's really powerful for countries or regions to be able to rely on themselves to make the products that they need.

[00:16:03] Shara: And I think that. Biology and fermentation in particular, really unlock that because the problem with palm oil is that it can only grow in certain parts of the world. It can only grow right around the equator, which is why people start burning down that forest and why it only comes from certain countries.

[00:16:19] Shara: But fermentation is limitless. It can happen anywhere in the world. And so absolutely, you can start to think about having. A sort of a, a biomanufacturing facility for making oils and fats in North America that leverages feedstock from North America and supplies North American customers and one in Southeast Asia that uses those feedstock, that that stays in that part of the economy and contributes to the GDP there and supplies those, those, those, um, those customers and those consumers as well.

[00:16:52] Shara: And we're not there yet. I wanna be clear, you know, as an, as an industry, we're not there. But I believe that's where we're going. I believe it's a really powerful vision for what the future of this industry might look like.

[00:17:04] Karl: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I also think from, uh, you know, one of the things that COVID did was I think it, you know, it, it.

[00:17:12] Karl: It shined a light on the fragility of supply chains. And so I think as a result of that, many companies, many countries realized, Hey, we're, you know, importing things you said from Ukraine, um, or, you know, we're, we're importing things from China or wherever. Mm-hmm. Why are, why are we so dependent on these supply chains?

[00:17:31] Karl: What can we do to localize them? So I think, you know, what you're saying makes a lot of sense. And, and I'm totally in agreement because I think that there is kind of this. Decoupling of supply chains that is happening that people might not realize because people want that kind of security internally in their countries.

[00:17:47] Karl: But then it doesn't have to just be in country. It could also be regional. And then from a, from a climate change perspective, then you're not shipping, for example, liquids. You know, why are you shipping liquids around the world? It just, that makes no, no, you know, sense. Um, but I would also imagine that.

[00:18:05] Karl: Potentially from, from a manufacturing point of view, you can also localize, like you can, you can be next to p and g, you know, in, in Cleveland or Cincinnati, wherever they are. Or you could be next to, you know, Cargill down in, you know, somewhere in the south, wherever there headquarters is. And like you, what you're talking about allows you to really be local to whoever you're manufacturing for.

[00:18:29] Shara: Yeah, and you know, we often talk about sort of performance and sustainability and of, and of course cost as the kind of three levers that that matter to buyers of these bio-based products. But you've just hit on something that I think has been subtle, which has come to light, but from our perspective has always been a major unlock.

[00:18:50] Shara: For a buyer of a pom oil alternative, whether that's a, an agribusiness company like Cargill, or whether it's a consumer products company like Proctor and Gamble, being able to have predictability of the quantity, the cost, and of course the quality of their inputs. Critical and they don't have that today.

[00:19:14] Shara: So being able to have a facility of an ingredient of a key ingredients manufacturer, co-located to their site where they know how much. The cost of that and the quality of that is something that does not exist and would be a really big unlock for, for a lot of components in that go into our consumer products.

[00:19:35] Shara: And you know, we call ourselves a consumer biotechnology company because we're focused on solving problems that impact consumers. Um, so that's what I know and that's what I can kind of talk about really LA really broadly. But if you think about everything from. Inputs for plastics to palm oil and oils and fats to proteins.

[00:19:54] Shara: There's so much that this industry can unlock from that secure and stable and predictable supply chain.

[00:20:01] Erum: Sha, you were mentioning that different countries could have different feed stocks. I'm curious, what feedstock are you guys using?

[00:20:08] Shara: So this is, I think, a big advance in the industry and you know, reflected by, by our technology.

[00:20:15] Shara: So when you look back maybe 10 years ago, you really only had one or two microorganisms that could be used as factories and they could be kind of particular. So they might only be able to eat sucrose. Cane sugar, um, they might only be able to grow in really tight temperature conditions. And I was alluding to this earlier, but one of the really exciting things about the, the future of, of biotechnology is we find new microorganisms every day.

[00:20:43] Shara: We're able to sequence their genomes, we're able to develop new tools for growing them. That is a capability set that has never existed in in humanity. And so I think there's a tendency to look back and say, well, we tried this thing and it didn't work, and so it won't work again. But that's completely ignoring the fact of a.

[00:21:04] Shara: This unlocked potential that's coming as the field advances. And I think our company and our technology is one example of that. So, you know, I alluded to the idea of being able to grow our product in different countries with different feedstocks. Somebody you know, uh, well studied in the industry might say, well, that doesn't make sense because your organism probably has to grow in a certain type of sugar.

[00:21:26] Shara: What we've demonstrated with our technology is that some of these new microorganisms, in fact, can do that. So our yeast actually can grow on every primary carbon source. So we've demonstrated its ability to grow on. Glucose, sucrose, glycerol, orose, we've, we've demonstrated its ability to grow on non pure feedstocks as well, opening up the potential to really innovate around upcycled or waste stream feedstocks.

[00:21:55] Shara: Again, there's still innovation that needs to happen, but I think that points to a really promising set of options in the future that this industry is just really starting to stumble on. And I think we're really just hitting the, the sort of, the height of the s-curve for, for our industry as we start to unlock these new, these new tools.

[00:22:15] Karl: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I know you're gonna ask about personal care products. I just wanna mention that, you know, we as an industry, I mean, you guys are using yeast. We talked about it being a $900 billion in the us, you know, industry on its own. But we still, the, you know, biotech still relies on a handful of organisms.

[00:22:35] Karl: And so the, you know, there, the, a handful of the. Uncountable number of organisms that exist on this planet. And so you're totally right in, in terms of unlocking them and getting them to usability. Um, you know, the, the so-called organism readiness levels. I think that that's gonna also just unlock a lot of potential innovation.

[00:22:57] Karl: I don't know. Go ahead, IAM. I'm sorry.

[00:22:58] Erum: No, it's okay. No, I was just also going to comment that, you know. You're checking off a lot of boxes, you know, with being sustainable, looking at, um, waste feed stock, which is huge. One of the companies that we speak with is Poly Bion. I'm not sure if you know of them, but mm-hmm.

[00:23:12] Erum: They're, that's their goal to be a hundred percent sustainable. But as Carl uh, mentioned that, um, I, and then, and, 'cause I went to your, um, event. We, uh, I heard of your entry into the personal care space, um, and that Palmas product. Can you talk about that? Because I know that's, this can go in so many directions and you chose that.

[00:23:31] Erum: Why did you chose it? Uh, choose it and please talk about it.

[00:23:34] Shara: Yeah. W we've spent the, the most of the time today talking so far about, you know, about the problem and about the technology. Technology is super important. Technology is foundational. If you don't have the technology to solve the right problem and to solve a real problem that exists, you don't have a business full stop.

[00:23:53] Shara: However it takes more than that. You know, I think we are doing, we're, even what we're talking about today is something that the average consumer, at least in America, does not think about and, and probably doesn't even know is an option at this point or an opportunity. So I think we often have to take a step back and just remember that, that we, we eat, sleep, and breathe this, but the average consumer probably doesn't even know about it.

[00:24:20] Shara: So we think that. Brand and communication and storytelling and simplicity there are critical for bringing these solutions to the forefront. And you know, impossible Foods was one of really the first companies I think to be able to do this. And they were a company that inspired my co-founders and I a lot.

[00:24:41] Shara: And that simple branding of Impossible Burger on the menu in. Momo Kushi here in New York when they rolled out was, was innovative and bold, but powerful for driving that consumer pull through. Because in this space you have to sort of work on supply and demand. You have to work on the big players and the supply chain, the big goliaths, and getting them to change, but also consumers.

[00:25:08] Shara: To to drive that change as well. And they as well, and they do and they want to and they're willing, but they have to know what the options are. So we recently launched Pless, which is our consumer facing brand solutions platform, and it's essentially our intel. Inside it is the brand portfolio under which we will release a series of products because.

[00:25:34] Shara: Our technology is essentially a platform for making multiple products. The po, the first product is an alternative to palm oil, which is in and of itself a platform product. And we'll start to roll out multiple ingredients, solving problems in the personal care and beauty space, in the home care space, and in the food applications space.

[00:25:55] Shara: Under that Pless brand and Pless is a way for us to be. Loud and clear about who we are, what we do, and why you care. And it will go unpack with our customers like, like Intel inside, to communicate to their consumers really clearly what they're doing, both from an innovation standpoint, but also from that sustainability standpoint.

[00:26:20] Shara: And I think it was just really important for us to be. Clear in building a brand that was driving home the message because consumers are so overwhelmed with information. And so that's, that's what Pless is, and you'll see first Pless products on shelves and early, uh, 2023, which we're very excited about.

[00:26:39] Karl: Wait, and I just want to, sorry, Irun, I just wanna be clear. Um. Pless is gonna be both your direct to consumer brand, but then also, let's say I'm p and g and I'm using one of your products, it would still say it would also be branded as Pless Inside. As it were.

[00:26:56] Shara: Pless is gonna be anything that touches consumers.

[00:26:58] Shara: That's right.

[00:26:59] Karl: Okay.

[00:27:01] Erum: So what specific products can you share that.

[00:27:04] Shara: We, so we're starting in skincare. So beauty and personal care industry is about a, about a $500 billion market today. Um, which is hilarious because the number of people who have told me that they think it's, you know, sweet that we're starting in a niche industry.

[00:27:21] Shara: Like the beauty industry and I, I have to, you know, inquire as to when a $500 billion market became a niche market. But, um, it's a massive market. It's a really interesting market, and we have found customers that love our ingredient across the personal care industry because it hits that intersection of innovation and sustainability.

[00:27:42] Shara: And, and brands and product manufacturers in the personal care space are so focused on those two. Two Es innovation and, and values of doing the right thing around sustainability. So within personal care, skincare is where we're starting. We found with the most, um, we found some really exciting customers to work with there.

[00:28:05] Shara: The products that we're launching is an oil. So oil has a lot of benefits on the skin for hydration, but also for delivering other ingredients and its role in complex formulations for all the things that you want your skincare products to do. Um, but we are working, you know, in body care and hair care and uh, hopefully in cosmetics and colored cosmetics as well.

[00:28:27] Karl: That's exciting.

[00:28:29] Erum: Yeah. Abs. Um, so I actually was really interested in learning more about. You're talking to these companies, they're going to put pless inside the products. How do you make the case to them to switch over to using palms upside to sustainability? That's like a slam dunk. We know that, that's great.

[00:28:46] Erum: But in terms of the the financial ROI, is it cheaper to produce pless than using palm oil in the bad traditional way?

[00:28:55] Shara: It's not cheaper, it's better. It's a, it's a great product. And you know, we've, we've just announced plys earlier this month, a few weeks ago. Um, we, we launched on, on CNBC and that was really our announcement of our entry into the commercialization stage and also our announcement that we're ready to talk about what we're doing.

[00:29:16] Shara: And until then, sorry. Since then. We've been stealthy. We weren't in stealth mode, but we were quiet. We were heads down focused on the r and d, on the product, on the safety of the product, on our intellectual property strategy, making sure everything was right and ready to take to market before we really started talking about it.

[00:29:38] Shara: Yet despite that our first customers found us. So I think that sort of says two things. One is there's, there's clear demand for this solution. So much so that these customers are, you know, scouring the internet looking for a solution and, and stumble upon us and reach out to us. Even though our website at the time was, you know, very minimal, we didn't really say much about what we did, but we, we, we spoke enough about the problem for them to reach out.

[00:30:08] Shara: And then the second thing is, you know, the good thing about your CU first customers finding you are. They're, they're the leaders. They're the innovators. So these are customers who are really pushing boundaries on innovation and on sustainability, actually on both of them. And so they're really willing partners to be able to take your product and test it and try it.

[00:30:29] Shara: And they also have a very high standard. So that's been really good for us. And I think the way that this has really come about has been our first customers have found us. They have been, you know, hard customers, really testing, but also showing how this product outperforms again, on sustainability, but also on the, on the innovation side.

[00:30:49] Erum: Yep. Your first customers can also be your salespeople. So I'm excited to see how they start advocating on behalf of. And C 16. So that's, they're, and, and we

[00:31:00] Shara: love that because they have a whole base of loyal customers who trust 'em and follow them. And so that's a, that's a community that we get to reach and, and grow with.

[00:31:13] Shara: And so we're really excited to have these first customers be, be our evangelist and sort of be our marketing arm, if you will.

[00:31:21] Erum: Are there, um. Different like functionality or quality between the traditional palm oil and your palm oil

[00:31:31] Shara: slightly. Um, and I think that's part of, part of the storytelling that we do around the benefits.

[00:31:39] Shara: So an example. Palm oil made from the sort of agricultural technology does have carotinoids. It has betacarotene in it naturally, and sometimes that's stripped out. Um, but the betacarotene gives it this sort of reddish orange color. Our oil also has carotinoids, but in fact, they're totally novel carotinoids that come from our yeast.

[00:32:05] Shara: Our yeast makes these carotinoids or produces 'em. Wow. We are the first people in the world to commercialize. These Carotinoids because they come from our yeast, and we're really just starting to understand, you know, carotinoids are antioxidants, so there's a clear benefit for skincare and what that can do for appearance of fine lines, for example, but also for sort of edible consumption of antioxidants.

[00:32:31] Shara: Um. Really, really exciting we're, because we're the first people, the onus is on us to understand the impact and find the data to support that, but it's something that some of our customers are very excited about, and I think it's a massive sort of performance benefit that comes from this, this sort of new twist on, on sort of natural production from bio, from microbiology.

[00:32:55] Erum: And so since you can engineer, um, these microbes to produce different types of molecules, have you thought about other types of molecules to produce to like, uh, you know, like really, um, kind of hit it outta the water and just make just different types of personal care products mentioned? It's.

[00:33:14] Karl: Are you talking about enhan further enhancing the palm oil?

[00:33:16] Karl: Yes. Yeah. Further enhancing the palm oil.

[00:33:18] Shara: Yes. And you know, I think one of the, one of the tricks or one of the challenges of being in the biotech business is you have so many things you could do. We've got these tools, we've got these platforms, we've got these shiny, shiny objects that we could chase. So one of the things we have to always root ourselves in is, is this solving a problem?

[00:33:41] Shara: For the groups that we're focused on for our customers. And so we have a lot of ideas. Some of them come up, we have sort of 10% projects within the company where anyone from a first year research associate up can promote a project, a topic to spend 10% of their time on, and they've actually come up with some really interesting.

[00:34:01] Shara: Product ideas like this, but we also have to make sure that we're focused on solving real problems. And so we spend a lot of time with our customer base trying to understand where are current oils and fats not good enough from a performance perspective. In, that's largely in the food and the food applications area, talking to large food manufacturers, and I think there are a lot of areas where current bats and oils are not good enough from a performance perspective, but in the beauty industry and the personal care industry, which is our first market, a lot of the problems are sustainability and understanding where are the areas where people are saying that their product is clean, or saying that their product is sustainable, but it's greenwashing, it's bs, and and, and where could we make those products?

[00:34:48] Shara: Because they're still natural and they're highly innovative, but they also allow you to make these sustainability claims. So the answer is yes. We have to be careful not to chase shiny objects all the time because there's so much that we can do. And I think that's, that's a lesson that a lot of us have learned, um, from our predecessors who have, who have taught us so much.

[00:35:09] Shara: Um, and so we, we sort of solved that by really rooting ourselves in customers and trying to understand what their pain points look like.

[00:35:18] Erum: Awesome. Um, again, then just kinda my final question really about the in impact and outcomes. Um, so C 16 is replacing traditional a agriculture and there's lots of people that work in agriculture, the farmers.

[00:35:31] Erum: What happens to those farmers when C 16 and other companies start, you know, fermenting these products?

[00:35:40] Shara: This, this may be, or maybe not. I'd actually be curious to hear what, what other guests are saying. This may be a contrarian view, but like my perspective is we need all of it, we need it all done responsibly.

[00:35:52] Shara: And you know, I'll just root this in, in some data because that's how we think. You know, the, the global oils and fats market today is about $250 billion. By 2050. It's projected to be. Almost a trillion dollars, about 900 billion. So that's a three to four X growth in the next 30 years. And of course, it's driven largely by population growth.

[00:36:15] Shara: That's expected by 2050. That is a tremendous amount of growth. And I think, you know, this podcast is called Grow Everything. The reality is we have a lot to grow and it is a growing pie. And so in a growing pie, it's important to think about how we all contribute to solving that problem, but by doing it responsibly.

[00:36:41] Shara: And so I think, I think that the answer is. There is a future where agriculture exists very similarly to how it exists today, but we have to have strict bounds on how it's done responsibly. And there is a part of of that solution set where biotech and precision fermentation solve problems, but it has to be done responsibly and it has to be done sustainably.

[00:37:04] Shara: And I do think biology is at the heart of all of it. Yeast are the new trees, but trees are still trees. And how can we use our existing biology toolkit to improve the way that trees are grown? The efficiency, all of them. I think there's a bio, there's a bio toolkit that can solve all of it, but I really do believe that agriculture and sort of bio-based manufacturing will and have to coexist because we have such a massive sort of set of problems to solve and we need all of 'em.

[00:37:33] Shara: Yeah,

[00:37:34] Karl: I totally agree. I think like I. I look at all the solutions and I go, we need those. Times 10. Mm-hmm. And, uh, you know, there is no, uh, I think rum, you bring a super interesting point up and people bring it up all the time. You know what happens to the farmers? We need them. You know, we, they, they're not gonna go away.

[00:37:52] Karl: And, um, they might just be doing something slightly different, um,

[00:37:55] Shara: slightly different, and let's do it better. Like a lot of farmers in palm oil today, the reality is like they make nothing. Their wages are withheld from the plantation. Exposed to toxic chemicals, they're, they're often, they have to bring their children into support production.

[00:38:10] Shara: There are so many ways that we can improve those jobs, and I think by pushing the envelope here, we can help elevate what those jobs look like, whether they look sort of similar to how they are today or whether they look radically different to, to how they are today. Um, it's all about sort of improving what that looks like for, for, for healthy people and healthy planet.

[00:38:32] Karl: So I'm k I'm kind of curious, Shara, because like you, you, you gave a little bit of the origin story for the company, but you, um, I would say you're a very different kind of symbio biotech, CEO What's the background? Like, what's the Shara origin story?

[00:38:47] Shara: Yeah, I would, I would agree with that and I, I think what makes me different is I didn't grow up in this industry.

[00:38:55] Shara: I wasn't rooted in this industry. I don't even have a PhD and, um. I think that, you know, the origin story as I laid out is. Everything about this company has been rooted in the problem and solving the problem, and, and I think that's a massive benefit for us and I, I think we see it in the culture of our company and the focus of our company, but everything has been rooted in the problem and starting from first principles of how do we solve this problem?

[00:39:24] Shara: Is it even possible? We weren't even sure that this was the right toolkit. We didn't have a toolkit, we didn't have a hammer. We just wanted to. Solve the problem. And we found this yeast, which we really believed in, and this, this solution set, and we started building that. But um, even though we didn't sort of grow up in this industry.

[00:39:42] Shara: And I, I bounced around. Uh, I've always, I've always loved biology, so my father was a scientist. My father was an, an academic research scientist in the neuropharmacology field, and I always loved it and I was always pretty good at it. And I thought about pursuing that as a path. I just, I didn't, you know, I ended up on Wall Street, which was really different from that.

[00:40:06] Shara: And by the way, wall Street was an incredible place to start my career. I think it really taught me to work, uh, and it, it introduced such a, I think, you know. Yeah, like a, a work ethic and a structure for sort of driving myself forward. But it was not for me. I did not care about my day job and I had, I sort of, I joke I had like my quarter life crisis where I sort of, everything was great about my job.

[00:40:33] Shara: The company is great. It was fun. I liked the people I worked with. But I didn't care about the fundamental thing I was doing, and so I asked myself if that mattered. And it turned out for me that it did matter that if I'm going to spend the bulk of my waking hours at work, I want it to be on something that's meaningful to me.

[00:40:51] Shara: So I did a little bit of soul searching to understand what that was, and kept coming back to biology and life sciences. And I spent most of my, my career sort of applying that in the field of healthcare. So I, I left Goldman. I went to go work in global health. Um, and it was a big leap. Uh, and it was a big pay cut, but it was really sort of my entry into it.

[00:41:13] Shara: And you know, now I'm working even closer to the source and commercializing biology and life sciences. So non-traditional for sure. A bit roundabout, but I think always rooted in that, that love for biology and the love for science.

[00:41:25] Karl: But how'd you make the leap from, uh, you know, global health to entrepreneurship?

[00:41:30] Karl: You know, was, had you been like an entrepreneur when you were a kid?

[00:41:34] Shara: No, it was, it's all about the problem. And I would say, you know, I mean, I talk about this a lot and you know, I, I talk about entrepreneurship. I talk to people who wanna be entrepreneurs, and part of the message that I try to get across is there's not one path for this stuff.

[00:41:49] Shara: You know? No, I was not, you know, out there, you know, trying to start a mail order business when I was five or something. Like, I just, I, I, I had a different path, but. For me, the path into entrepreneurship was seeing a problem being outraged. Trying to figure out if I could do something about it and then going to do it.

[00:42:13] Shara: And that's entrepreneurship. Like entrepreneurship is seeing a problem and doing something about it. And did I follow the normal path? Did I ever think I would start a company? Did I ever think I had the quote unquote risk tolerance to start a company? No. And that's okay because there's not one path.

[00:42:30] Shara: There are so many things that can make successful entrepreneurs and successful founders. As long as you really care about the thing that you were doing, because it is an extreme job, so you have to really care about the thing you're doing.

[00:42:42] Karl: And, and you know, you're, you're focused on, you know, what we call consumer biotech.

[00:42:48] Karl: You know, you even use a term which we love, and, uh, you're based in New York City. Why did you choose to, you know, build your company here versus Boston or San Francisco?

[00:42:58] Shara: Yeah, so we started in Boston because, uh, I was getting my MBA at Harvard. My co-founder was getting his PhD at Harvard, and my other co-founder was, uh, an undergrad at MIT and we met at a little place called the MIT Media Lab, which is known for these sort of, you know, wacky, wacky science commercialization concepts.

[00:43:18] Shara: So we met there and we got started with, um, we won the sort of Harvard President's Innovation Challenge and we got $25,000 on. Big check, which is still in our office. So we started in Boston and we, we got at one lab bench and we started doing experiments there and we kept testing and getting feedback.

[00:43:36] Shara: And again, none of us had plans to be entrepreneurs. We all had different plans for our careers, but we were drawn to the problem. And so we kept, we kept nibbling at it and we kept seeing if we could solve it in this way. And so we started the company there. But as we, as we decided to take the leap full time into building the company.

[00:43:56] Shara: We also needed to grow, and we looked around and we looked at Boston. We looked at parts of California. And we looked at New York and the long story short is we, you know, took a vote. All eight people on the team at that point decided they were gonna move down to New York. We packed up our lab in a U-Haul and I drove it down I 95 with our intern, and we moved to New York in the summer of 2019, I think.

[00:44:25] Shara: And we picked it because, I mean, I think one New York City and state. We're really investing in life sciences and nobody thinks of New York as a biotech hub, but it is changing, and I know you are advocating for this change and we are all sort of telling the story why. But part of it is that the city and state really want to invest in this industry.

[00:44:45] Shara: They, they view this as the future. They view it as a way to solve problems. They view them as great jobs, and that was attractive for us as a place to grow a company. We wanted to help. Grow this ecosystem. And the second part of it, as you said, as a consumer biotech company, you know. That's New York. Every consumer company is based in New York.

[00:45:07] Shara: All of our customers are BA based here. And I think New York has found a really good way to sort of lean into its unique advantage as the center of commerce and even brand and marketing to attract companies like ours that are maybe doing something that New York's not known for, like biotech, but lean into its benefits.

[00:45:26] Shara: And so for us, I think it just felt like a perfect home.

[00:45:30] Karl: Yeah. I always say, look, if you are, you know, if you're in New York, everybody comes here for one reason or another, usually about money. But if you're gonna build a brand, this is, you know, totally. I think there's probably no better place. And if you are looking for financing, eventually you're gonna end up here, which I think is one of the things that makes it really dynamic.

[00:45:48] Karl: If you wanna meet someone, they're either here or they're gonna be here at some point.

[00:45:52] Shara: And I also think, you know, I think there's a lot of advantage to building a company in the sort of known hub because you have this concept of talent density and you're able to recruit people who have been at your sort of similar companies, similar peer companies, and take their learnings and bring them in.

[00:46:08] Shara: First of all, we have that. We've recruited multiple people who have moved from California to New York to come join us. But I think more importantly, it's actually become an unfair advantage for us because there are a lot of those people who wanna live in New York or need to live in New York. And we get to sort of bring them onto our team.

[00:46:26] Shara: 'cause we're one of the fastest growing and obviously one of the best. Biotech companies in New York. That's right. So while it seems like it might be a disadvantage because you don't have the talent density, I actually think it's become a massive advantage for us in terms of even recruiting. And then sort of last but not least, this type of biotech is different than pharma.

[00:46:47] Shara: Consumer, biotech must be deeply cross-functional, and so being able to pull people in from all these different functions who come from outside the industry, I think puts us a step ahead in rethinking there's no playbook here, so we have to sort of build the playbook from scratch. And so being able to recruit.

[00:47:05] Shara: Best in class from different companies and industries in New York, I think has been a, a, a really big brush of breath, air, fresh air as we sort of try to build that, that playbook and, and product launch.

[00:47:16] Karl: And do you have any sense, um, you know, from your point of view, you know what the relationship is? You know, between a big city like New York or Boston or San Francisco, these biotech centers, and say a place that's more rural like Kansas or Nebraska, what do you see as being that relationship as it advances into the future?

[00:47:36] Shara: Well, you know what I said before is sort of. So what we do here in New York is the r and d, the innovation, the lab scale work. But then we gotta go scale this thing. Palm oil is sort of million tens of millions of metric tons today. You cannot manufacture that in a big city like New York or, or Boston.

[00:47:55] Shara: The rent's just too damn expensive and it doesn't make sense. And so we have to find places to scale this up. And our company is nothing without scale. So the two coexist and, and places. You know, in, in the corn belt, our perfect partners for that, you have the people who are skilled in the scale up and transfer of large scale fermentations.

[00:48:22] Shara: You have the assets and industrial partners and companies that are experts and have the distribution arms. And so I think that they are really, really nice compliments and, and, and maybe they're sort of, you know, odd partners, but they're critical partners, uh, at different parts. Of the sort of deployment timeline.

[00:48:41] Karl: Yeah. We've heard from our friends in climate tech that, you know, if you want to do a big infrastructure project, you'd go to the corn belt or the rust belt. That's, you know, a much easier place to deploy these things. I wanna be very mindful of time, uh, IAM. I don't know if there was anything else that we missed that we should have asked, or Shar, if there's anything else you want to say.

[00:49:02] Karl: I know we could keep talking for a long time.

[00:49:04] Erum: Well, we have our fun questions and maybe you'll be able to answer one of these Shara. But, um, you know, you were, you're not a native biotech person. You had a, you kind of became one over time. Um, were there any books or movies or anything in pop culture that you like, that you read that you can recommend?

[00:49:21] Erum: I,

[00:49:22] Shara: I read a lot of papers. I read a lot of research papers, and you know, that's how like everybody in this industry is a constant student. So yes, I, I come up to speed and I do it by reading sort of primary sources what's happening in, in academia and elsewhere. So does my team. And I think, you know, this is one of the things I love about, about our team.

[00:49:43] Shara: You know, we love MOOCs, like, uh, massive online open courses. Um, my team is currently, they're experts, but they're currently doing a MOOC that's run by the University of de. The University of Delta is sort of best in class on fermentation, and even though my team has spent decades in fermentation, they're going through this MOOC together.

[00:50:04] Shara: So I, I mean, I think education has been so sort of decentralized that's been, you know, papers are kind of the opposite of that. Papers are all behind paywalls and then MOOCs are free and open and, um, it's been a really fun way for us to sort of grow and learn together.

[00:50:18] Karl: Yeah, I've done the, uh. University of Delft, uh, industrial biotechnology course.

[00:50:24] Karl: Yeah.

[00:50:24] Erum: Yeah.

[00:50:24] Karl: So its, they're excellent. It's tremendous. Yeah.

[00:50:27] Erum: I, um, one more question. So, um, are you hiring, you know, there's a, you talked about the talent pool and, you know, there's a lot of talent out there since all these tech companies, um, had to let all these, you know, amazing people lead. Yeah. Or go. So anything, I guess hiring.

[00:50:41] Shara: Yeah, we're always hiring and you know, I mean, I think this is, this is sort of a new stage for the company. We have been primarily an r and d company to date, and we will continue, of course, always to be an r and d company and we will always be growing there. So we're always hiring scientists and engineers and manufacturing experts.

[00:50:59] Shara: But we're just entering commercialization. And so we're, we are thinking about sales and business development and marketing and comms and all of these things that are new for C 16 and for our brand poli. So I think for people looking to, to take their sort of functional skills and build something fresh, we have a lot to do.

[00:51:23] Shara: So, um, we're hiring across the board, but I think particularly on the commercialization side.

[00:51:28] Karl: That's fantastic. Well, listen, thank you so much Shara, for taking the time, uh, to speak to us today. We're looking forward to having you back on as a, you know, early friend of the pod and, um, you know, we wish you the best of luck.

[00:51:42] Karl: We're excited for you, we're excited for C 16 and of course we're excited for New York City because we think this is the future.

[00:51:48] Shara: Me too. Glad to be a friend of the pod and can't wait to wait to host our next event at our space together.

[00:51:55] Karl: Awesome. Yeah. Looking forward to it. All right. Well

[00:51:59] Shara: thanks Ari.

[00:51:59] Shara: Thanks, Carl.

[00:52:00] Karl: Okay. Bye.

[00:52:02] Shara: Bye.