27. Charting the Unexplored Microverse for Biological Gold with CULTIVARIUM’s Nili Ostrov

[00:00:00] Karl: Phil Morrell. We've known each other for a really long time, and I'm so happy to know you. I'm so glad that you're taking the time today to join me on the Grow Everything

[00:00:11] Karl: podcast.

[00:00:12] Phil: Any excuse to talk to you, Carl. I always love something new, so, let's go. Yeah.

[00:00:17] Karl: so you and I have known each other probably for 10 years through Symbio Beta and, you're down in Australia or up in Australia, however you wanna look at it. And what I wanted to talk to you about today was really about ecosystem orchestration, and tell me a little bit about your background.

[00:00:37] Karl: And I will get into more of this, but just give people like a high level, who

[00:00:41] Karl: is Phil Mor? What do you do?

[00:00:43] Phil: Well,

[00:00:44] Phil: like many people involved in venture and entrepreneurship, I have a very odd. Background. We all come from different places. People think we're all ex bankers or something, but people come from different parts of life and, apply that to what they're doing in Bedford. In my case, I actually started my professional career working in the theater business, and I was a theater director for the first 10 years of my life.

[00:01:09] Phil: And, I, directed a theater company that was based in London and also in Australia. Yeah, being in theater is, you don't do it for the money. let's say that. And in fact, no one's doing it for the money. You need to figure out a different way of effectively doing the sales, recruiting the team, getting that revenue, which is getting the audience along and.

[00:01:31] Phil: we'll maybe get into that a little bit later in this orchestration discussion, but some of those sort of big ideas around orchestration of what it actually is comes from that. But of course, working in theater, doesn't pay the rent. And, I am a technical person as well. And so this was in the early days of, the Mozilla brows or the beginnings of the dawn of the internet. and I was busy making websites for people at the time, and I was a sort of side hustle programmer, and that's how I paid the rent on top of the theater production. And it, got to a point where I needed to decide to get onto the train of the worldwide web or just let it sail away.

[00:02:12] Phil: And I decided to get on the train. And I realized when I did that, and I began leading technical teams, that I was effectively doing the same thing. But when I moved from theater to technology, I thought, gosh, I'm gonna have to have a sabbatical every year where I go and just make some art because otherwise my soul will be crossed.

[00:02:32] Phil: and I realized that actually, I,equally love bringing teams together to make other things. and again, pulling this into the orchestration debate, that there needs to be some pleasure and delight and focused in on that. what are the magic combinations that we can bring together here to make something incredible happen?

[00:02:51] Phil: And so I've, I now go to the theater and watch. Performances. I love it, but don't feel like I have to create them anymore. I express myself through helping other people build these great businesses. And yeah, as I moved my way through the career, I became a chief technology officer for,one of the big files sharing companies, I guess at the kind of peak of that, which is a company called Kaza, which was 80% of internet traffic at the time, at its heights.

[00:03:20] Phil: It was huge. and I really got the bug through that about, working in a startups, creating something new, that is very impactful globally, that you see millions and millions of people using. And I wanted to do that again after I'd completed that project. And I looked around for the next startup to join, in Australia at the time.

[00:03:42] Phil: and there really weren't any, it, this was in the days of, The kind of early to mid two thousands and, there just wasn't much going on. And at the time, Australian entrepreneurs would, of which there were many already at that time, but the path was you would go to America and, most people would very quickly land in California, and start building their company there.

[00:04:05] Phil: And that's why there are many Australians in Californian, startups. and so the solution to that, if I wanted to stay in Australia was to create an organization that would create startups, startup. And, myself and my co-founder, Mick Lebinski, we created an organization called Pollenizer, which was, Australia's y Combinator, really.

[00:04:29] Phil: And, that was this 10 year journey. Actually realizing that, there needed to be pattern, a repeatable way of thinking about what is it we actually do when we have an idea or we wanna turn that into a company. so we spent a lot of time in Pollenizer actually doing that work, actually just saying, what is it?

[00:04:47] Phil: What do we do? In what order? Who do we work with? How do we train other people to do that, to make it scalable? and of course part of that as well is how do you actually build out the ecosystem? Because to different degrees and different industries, we can't just fund it ourselves, build ourselves, create the supply chain ourselves, understanding what regulations are needed ourselves, and then change those regulations.

[00:05:16] Phil: So all the things like the gazillion things. you know, at the time there was, no other accelerators. the venture capital pool in totality in Australia was smaller than one of our fund vintages in main sequence today. So very tiny amounts of capital. And in fact, in the Pollenizer days, we created, about 25 companies ourselves over that time, over a nine year period.

[00:05:45] Phil: And we did that with, under $5 million of capital. So we ran a company of 70 people building these companies with $5 million and, spell of an oily rag, but learned a lot. and then by the time we were done. There was no need for Pollenizer anymore because the ecosystem had risen and filled in a lot of the gaps.

[00:06:06] Phil: And

[00:06:06] Phil: I moved on to what I'm doing now, which is doing that company creation work. But in the context of science and

[00:06:13] Phil: venture capital, that means the.

[00:06:15] Karl: Amazing. Well, one of the

[00:06:17] Karl: things, that. You recently wrote had to do with this idea of orchestration, and you said, in an article that the technology to make circular materials, is not a pipe dream. It's already here. And what you did was you mentioned a deal that a company called Samsara did with Lululemon, and it took them 10 years to go from the lab bench, to get an offtake agreement with Lululemon.

[00:06:41] Karl: And that required really orchestrating an entire ecosystem. Can you walk us through the deal and explain how you think about value chain creation versus just backing

[00:06:51] Karl: science?

[00:06:52] Phil: Yeah, sure.

[00:06:53] Phil: Samsara is a great example. So, it didn't take them 10 years. In fact, I think the great example of Samsara is it's only taken them four years so far, and they have a 10 year offtake agreement with Lululemon. Now, the Samsara eco business began four years ago with a market pull, desire from the big company here in Australia that we ended up co-founding the company with Woolworth and Woolworths is our Walmart.

[00:07:22] Phil: It's our big retailer here in Australia. all big retailers, they have this enormous problem of plastic waste. And, as we all know, plastic is a fabulous product. in all respects until you have to get rid of it at the end of life. And then we have this enormous problem and Woolworths have,this particular problem of mixed bale, plastic waste.

[00:07:46] Phil: you know what happens when you've just got a big pile of plastic. Some of it's PET, some of it's polyester, some of it's polycarbonate, some of it is nylon. What do you do with that? You, the sorting is as big a problem as the actual recycling of it. And so we wanted to start a company with Woolworths to go after that problem.

[00:08:06] Phil: And this is the sort of first principle of orchestration. We did not, find a great founder, exclusively and then just put them to work to build a company on their own, in their own isolated environment. We knew that we needed to understand exactly how the supply chain works and we knew we needed pull from a customer that would actually set the momentum very early on, in the company's life.

[00:08:35] Phil: so we created this company under a model we have here at Main Sequence, which we call venture science. We call it venture science because when we talk to a research organization, we say, this is how venture causes great science to be created inside your organization. And then we co-found companies with founders that bring advantage from the first day.

[00:08:58] Phil: And so the case of Samsara Eco, the founders were main sequence. Our job is to actually bring all the elements together in the early risk capital, a executive founder as we call it, which is amazing. industry leader here in Australia called Paul Riley, who's still the CEO of the company, Woolworths, as I mentioned, who gave us the access to the market, the understanding and the first bit of pull.

[00:09:24] Phil: And then Australian National University, the A NU, where we discovered this incredible enzymatic. Technology, which used enzymes at almost room temperature to depolymerize these multiple plastics back to the mono so that you could for the first time infinitely recycle the plastics.

[00:09:45] Phil: But of course, the plastic supply chain, it's not like you make a Samara, a widget and then make a website and say, who wants to buy our widget? it's incredibly complicated. It's in different parts of the world. and as we move into the, textile side, which I'll come to how we got there, it's very,very particular, a lot of it's in China and Southeast Asia, and then the, you've gotta turn.

[00:10:10] Phil: Monomers into polymers, you've gotta turn those into threads, and then the threads turn into textiles, and the textiles turn into clothes, and then the clothes are shipped into the different markets. And, all of that needs to work so that the cost works at the end. And yeah, this is a huge thing that we've been learning, everything just has just gotta come down the landing, the right industrial endpoint. And so you need to know all the things in there that kind of get to that point. But coming back to Lululemon, had the benefit of having Woolworths on the first day, which meant we were already a significant company with proof that we could do it because we had the a NU technology, we could show demonstrations of infinite recycling happening at the lab scale.

[00:10:55] Phil: The Woolworth, CEO declared it to the market that we've created this company together and this is what we intend to do. and that created quite a noise in the market, which allowed Samsara to be instantly credentialed

[00:11:09] Phil: and to talk to other people. this is what caused a conversation with Lululemon, where we realized that the first polymer that we needed to go after was in fact, not PET, but was nylon because there was no solution for nylon.

[00:11:26] Phil: And so much of the polymer waste is in clothes, and then the mixed veil problem is even bigger because it's all woven into the same, you can't separate what's nylon and what's cotton in this t-shirt. and it was about a business model, just samsara, and it lined up with a strategic.

[00:11:45] Phil: Urgent strategy that Lululemon had to pull that technology into market. and the same thing that happened with the Woolworths. CEO. Lululemon said, we are going to do this. We're going to do this with Samsara. And they've made a commitment that by 20, 30, 20% of their clothing is going to be infinitely recycled using the Samsara technology.

[00:12:12] Phil: Now, is really important and this is my, big push around orchestration at the moment, which I think is an unlock for all of us in this industry and why Lululemon have led, us with a great example. if we look at what Lululemon have done, they have basically said to everybody else that might support Samsara.

[00:12:34] Phil: We want this, we are going to organize our supply chain, with Samsara to make this possible, and we are gonna commit to this kind of volume and this kind of revenue over the next little while. That's different to funding a startup, if you think about everything, that we normally do in startups is we go to companies like Lululemon and we say, we need you to give us $10 million or $5 million, whatever.

[00:13:01] Phil: It's, and they said, well, your company's just too risky. Why should we give you $10 million? And I realize now, especially as a venture capitalist, this is where there needs to be a very strong relationship between the venture capitalists and the corporate off takers where we say we stay as venture capital.

[00:13:20] Phil: What we need you to show us is this sort of high fidelity plan for the future that we believe in for this company, that we can see where it's gonna go, and then our risk capital should help get the company there. And that's exactly what's happened with Samsara. it has been so much easier than many other companies to bring the capital into the company to keep it moving forward with confidence and certainty and forward towards Lululemon.

[00:13:48] Phil: And so that included lemon's more likely to get their outcome, that Samsara is going to be funded. It's not gonna end up in a situation that so many of these companies do where they're stuck in a not quite having enough money to build the first of a kind to actually get the result that the companies need and get stuck.

[00:14:07] Phil: And so this is the solution we need to solve through

[00:14:10] Phil: orchestration.

[00:14:11] Karl: Yeah. I'm like so

[00:14:12] Karl: fascinated by this story because when I read it,I am fascinated by the fact that, you've got these countries that end up being these dumping grounds for just clothing. I think of the Chilean, clothing pile in the Tama Desert and what that looks like as a business opportunity.

[00:14:31] Karl: And so that was part of the reason why I was like, I gotta talk to Phil and get him on the podcast because I wanna hear more of the nitty gritty. and so I think we should have another conversation about like, how do we take this idea and move it into these countries where right now they're dumping grounds and they could become manufacturers of these monomers that in turn can be return to the world

[00:14:53] Karl: and infinitely recycled.

[00:14:55] Phil: That's right.

[00:14:55] Phil: that it's actually feedstock now and, that's gonna be the new contested,

[00:15:01] Phil: resource I think in the future.

[00:15:03] Karl: absolutely.

[00:15:04] Karl: So you talked about working in theater as that being your origin and you've also, I've seen you say that, being a VC is more like being a movie producer than a banker. And you've also suggested that every entrepreneur should go to drama school because theater teaches you to convince people to join a mission without a, without money.

[00:15:22] Karl: How do you feel like all those ideas connect and how do they shape the way you work

[00:15:26] Karl: with founders right now?

[00:15:27] Phil: Yeah, I mean, going back to the theater

[00:15:29] Phil: days, the sort of classic. Example of how you get started is you would, for example, pitch to a international arts festival that you've got this great idea for a performance that you're gonna create and you say what's gonna be happening and who all the characters are and what the staging will look like.

[00:15:49] Phil: And then you create visuals to show what it'll be like. But really you are a year away from having anything. you haven't had one minute in a rehearsal room, you don't know what it's gonna look like. All you have is that first narrative about what it might look like and all that ends up in the brochures for the events.

[00:16:07] Phil: And way back then, you do it kind ofa year before. You've gotta tell people what to imagine until you have it before you have it. And then you start using that same collateral, build another layer on it that says why the actors. To come and join you and get paid not enough money for too long to start building this whole thing together and all the other people that you need.

[00:16:29] Phil: You're using it as your recruitment and your capital raising that's still needed for the theater. And you are really doing all this with no money. Perhaps you've had a small, prepayment for me from the arts festival, but essentially you are trying to get everyone to imagine wanting to see something great and come in behind that.

[00:16:51] Phil: And,this is why theater is a very good,environment for this because there's no confusion, about money versus the vision. it's the vision drives the creation of something and the something can't be built without all these people coming together.

[00:17:07] Phil: So you learn that impulse. and I just bring that to startups today. It's not about, because unless you have that, you can't mess it unless you have that, you can't bring the whole thing together. it's the same with big companies. I think when we go to a big company or a university to co-found a company or get involved in a company, when we get bogged down in term sheets,the financial transaction of the whole thing, the next moment we're just looking one step ahead.

[00:17:37] Phil: The gate that we've all got to get through, it's just not exciting enough. and we don't start the company in the right way. If we start the whole company. Like that posture we have at the beginning of a performance that we're planning to build. And everyone's thinking. They can imagine the factory on the hill in the future that's gonna be this new sovereign industry or whatever it is that we're building. that's worth going through all the pain that's between here and there and people committing to it and going for it. And so I think that's what I've, learned, and that's, how I still,orchestrate the culture of all the players that are around

[00:18:15] Phil: these, businesses.

[00:18:17] Karl: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It's like you gotta have that story and that vision so that you can get your followers and you can bring people along. And if that vision isn't big enough or bold enough or inspiring enough, you're

[00:18:29] Karl: just not gonna get it.

[00:18:30] Phil: That's great. And it, andjust

[00:18:31] Phil: coming back to this sort of movie producer, showrunner type of analogy. I think, people often think of a VC as a banker or a sort of capital allocator. And in fact I think too many VCs actually think of themselves like that today.

[00:18:46] Phil: And I think Silicon Valley of the last 10, 15 years has almost made that worse because Silicon Valley has become software driven and has become such a sort of fertile pool of capital that in Silicon Valley it's really just a battle of deploying capital and getting enough ownership. And then there's enough of a ecosystem in Silicon Valley for the vc just to allow the ecosystem to go to work at a company to hopefully rise.

[00:19:16] Phil: But I think, modern VC has forgotten the origins of vc, the origins of vc. That were, Boston Semiconductor or something like that, that is hardware is hard. Things, is factories, and, building companies that have this huge motor around them because they were hard to build in the first place.

[00:19:39] Phil: but you can only build those companies if you have a highly collaborative way, which just brings us back to this sort of producer showrunner. you can't make a movie by saying, hey, John Smith, here's some money. Good luck. you bring the talent in, you package the whole thing up, you crowd in finance from all kinds of places.

[00:20:01] Phil: You do the distribution deal, you have to participate. In our world of venture building, Carl, bio manufacturing and synthetic biology, if we stay in our silo, it's much less likely to succeed.

[00:20:15] Phil: So we have to take that producer posture.

[00:20:18] Karl: Yeah, I mean I think it

[00:20:19] Karl: goes back to,using the Samsara example, the fact that they had, first of all you guys orchestrated the relationship with the University of the Australian University with Woolworths, and then that in turn attracted Lululemon. And I could see, and we do see it, it's like a lot of the startups that.

[00:20:38] Karl: we visit or we get to know. It's like they don't have that full vision. And a lot of times it's just because they're very science focused and they're focused on the technology and they're not really thinking about what the greater impact is. And yet we see the same thing on the other end sometimes with the big, companies that are looking for a technology or they need a solution, but they don't really understand what this other ecosystem is that they need to build.

[00:21:02] Karl: So I think you're in a really interesting place, I'm looking forward to learning more about, the playbook that main sequence has developed over the years. But let's go back to Pollenizer for a minute. You said that basically you founded, I don't know how many companies and 70 people for $5 million.

[00:21:19] Karl: There really was no startup ecosystem. when you started that, but now you're spinning out global companies from, the big research organization in Australia, csiro. did you have to build the ecosystem from scratch? And what did it teach you about

[00:21:34] Karl: creating these bigger value chains?

[00:21:35] Phil: Well, there's a

[00:21:36] Phil: humbleness to doing this right, because so much of the work becomes participation, not claiming that you've done all the work yourself, but participating and paying attention to the aspects which are removing the blocks around.

[00:21:52] Phil: People. we take where we are today with the research system here in Australia,and where we got to with Pollenizer with them,at Pollenizer we had done the work on figuring out what you do on day one to actually start a company. When someone says, I've got a great idea for, in the Pollenizer days it was a, restaurant booking app.

[00:22:13] Phil: great business around restaurant bookings. but I don't have an engineering team and I dunno how to do sales and I dunno how to pitch it and I dunno how to raise capital. And so we, we did all that work to figure out, well, what's the playbook for that? And then that becomes, well how do you scale that?

[00:22:29] Phil: So who are the other people that can help with that and how do you connect with them and what's that way of working? So that just starts to move everything, get the whole system starting to work. Then as we got towards the final years of pollenizer and the whole system was getting good at that,that's when we started to look at the research system and C-S-I-R-O, which is Australia's National Science Agency, they, they have been tasked by the federal government here to try and do something to stimulate the incredible research here and to turn it into companies and to capture the value here in Australia.

[00:23:07] Phil: Now, if you look around the ecosystem, at the time there were no accelerators in the universities. there was no commercial muscle, there was no connection with industry and manufacturing and supply chains. and CSRO wanted to create a national accelerator. Program that could just start to move that.

[00:23:30] Phil: And Pollenizer was given the job of designing that and executing that over the first, couple of years. And I still remember to this day being in the first bootcamp we called it, and we had a hundred scientists from all over the country coming in with, their companies. And I asked them to say, tell me what's valuable about what you are doing. And not only did I not understand what they were doing, but no one else in the room understood it was the quite literal Tower of Babel where no one understood each other. but as we started to find the way of communicating it, I'm thinking, oh wow. Like how incredible are humans that we are? We have this capacity for invention and look at what these people are making.

[00:24:21] Phil: It's this whole new world of, yeah, this was not, booking a table at all restaurants, this was removing methane from livestock and this was whole new foods, and this was quantum computers that would massively revolutionized how we compute in the future. And I was blown away both with the capacity for value creation and the absence of capability to turn that into a company.

[00:24:48] Phil: And that's what began that whole journey. Now, 10 years into the future there, Australia has intervened as a community. Every university has multiple, accelerator programs. The common language where the Tower of Babel has gone away. Everyone has come, connection with industry.

[00:25:07] Phil: There's lots more. Venture capital, main sequence is a billion dollar under management fund fueling these things. we're collaborate with the, national Reconstruction Fund here, which is another government program with $15 billion to take what we're doing and move it into industry.

[00:25:24] Phil: This whole thing has blossomed and it comes from, again, coming back to orchestration. It's a, everybody talking about what we are doing and what we are doing collectively and where there is a gap and how we can help each other. and this is how the ecosystem unfolds the next layer.

[00:25:45] Phil: as somebody that's an old timer and been doing it for, 20 years now in Australia. I like to say to people, I'm often asked on panels and podcasts, what's missing and how's it going? And I always say, look, we're doing great. Of course this thing's missing, and we'll keep building, but look at where we've come from and look at what's happening.

[00:26:05] Phil: So let's just keep going and just, and fill

[00:26:07] Phil: in the gaps as we go.

[00:26:09] Karl: Well, so one

[00:26:09] Karl: question I wanna ask is, since you guys, you said that there was, it was this Tower of Babel, all these scientists that you met with all telling these stories, maybe not even understanding how they could translate into a company. How do you get founders like that, or all founders to really understand that they need to have an ecosystem script, like a story that gets regulators, corporates, and consumers, all playing their parts, but also really excited

[00:26:36] Karl: about what the tech might be.

[00:26:38] Phil:

[00:26:38] Phil: we create, arenas in which, that is exposed and where the opportunity is exposed and the gaps are exposed. And, and we have to work a bit, I must say, because I think everybody involved in a company comes at it from their own perspective. So if you are a scientist. it's very common for us to meet scientists who think it's self-evident.

[00:27:00] Phil: If I tell you the performance of my yeast strain or I tell you about how many cubits, I have in my quantum computer, or how many,megawatts of energy I can store, it'll be self-evident to everybody that it's valuable. They don't understand that other people are just not seeing the so what from that.

[00:27:22] Phil: They also think that when they stay, that technical aspect, that then the industry will come rolling in and the supply chain will automatically change, and the regulators will say, of course, I've been wanting this for years. thank you. And of course, as you get to that actual point in your life, you realize there's a headwind.

[00:27:41] Phil: even pitching. We have very technical co-founders who, they're not seeing that in a pitch meeting with a new investor or a customer, and that person is just not seeing why it's valuable and then you help them, I had an experience just a month or so ago where, the founder literally said to me, I don't intuitively understand why it's valuable and why you want me to do this, but I trust you.

[00:28:09] Phil: I'm gonna go and do it. And he, we went through this whole sort of pitch clinic process where he figured out how to share what he's doing, and then he came back and said, I understand. Because he literally seen, all of a sudden the conversations became engaging and people were leaning in and saying, how could we do this together?

[00:28:28] Phil: It all made sense. another, just a much bigger example, is I'm in the middle of our deep tech week here in Australia where all our founders and investors come together, and we tried, a, component of that we called Moonshot Cancel Moon.

[00:28:43] Phil: like how do we convene to look at our collective moonshot? And so, for example, I had a group of, government people, CEOs of big industry from different countries, startup founders working in, biotech food companies. And we made a list of the blockers that were in place. We then, created a series of projects which were intercompany inter organizational projects for the year that would actually help us reach this moonshot.

[00:29:16] Phil: and it's just forcing that arena, as I said at the beginning. these things always begin. People go, gosh, is this really gonna help? And then at the end of it, it's like,ah.

[00:29:25] Karl: this was a,good example of something I've heard you talk about, which is breaking down the silos of, between scientists and commercial teams, like having a moonshot council. But I'm curious about a deeper challenge. How do you help, scientists and you hinted at this, how do you help scientists understand that the breakthrough isn't just a better product, it might require building an entirely new market, really completely transforming its supply chain.

[00:29:49] Karl: How do you coach them to think like

[00:29:51] Karl: ecosystem architects?

[00:29:53] Phil: Yeah, this is a big problem to solve because I think, scientists and I'm generalizing, are very uncomfortable talking about something which they haven't absolutely proven that this is the first sort of cultural thing to navigate between the sort of venture world and then a scientist.

[00:30:13] Phil: And of course we must do that. We must talk about the evidence we have of what we know and why we should feel very confident about where we are today. But we have to see the beacon on the hill as well. We have to know what's possible. We have to figure out. How we can talk about a future state.

[00:30:29] Phil: and there's two reasons for this. One is, as I said before, this is how we get everyone excited to go on what will be a very difficult journey. So everyone has to be bought into an aligned view of the future. Understand the future might not end up being exactly what we thought about at the beginning, but if it's anything like it, it'll be exciting and it's worth the effort.

[00:30:51] Phil: I think the other thing is we need to understand what are the properties of that working successfully on an, at an industrial scale. and I think that so often these products are developed, so they're kind ofplatform technologies. They're things that which would work really well in a big sort of patent, IP library.

[00:31:12] Phil: the sorts of things which we think about where we're building IP strength inside a university, but they're just not valuable, in terms of getting you to industrial scale. And companies like Samsara, companies like Cauldron, which are our big biomanufacturing company, companies like Hulu that are making, new polymers with seaweed as a feedstock, that only matter if you know,or you have belief and you have a, for them working at a big scale.

[00:31:40] Phil: And Michelle, who's the CE of our, Cauldron, biomanufacturing company, she has this great phrase, which is, unless it involves a forklift truck, it's not relevant.

[00:31:50] Phil: and I think that's why we've kind of got to get to, it might be the most remarkable science, but if it will never transfer to pipes and tubes and, 500,000 TED Bioreactors. In that case, it's almost irrelevant. And I think as well, scientists tend to, because they build this sort of broad, patent portfolio and technology platform, it becomes a very fat front to kind ofmove forward into industry. when I look at the Biomanufacturing industry, what I see is this, that front of innovation that's stuck here and it can't get through.

[00:32:28] Phil: and I think we just need to be doing less. We need scientists need to talk with commercial people, with engineering people that turn what they're doing into factories. And we need to drag this whole thing through to scale. And then when we get it to scale. And that's sending the message back through the ecosystem that what the scientists are doing now is turning into real impactful scale that we should all lean into and make happen.

[00:32:56] Phil: And we had the opening of the first infinite plastic recycling, facility in Australia. So big factory that Samsara opened, last week. And we had three ministers that came from the government to look at the whole thing. And there was this very innocent comment, but it was profoundly important, where one of them said, this is really good because we're often on lab tours around the universities and things. And I quietly think to myself, that's really interesting, but. How does that end up, manifesting in something that's new jobs, new industry, all these things which are really important. And so, yeah, we need to get the scientists thinking more about the forklift trucks and how it applies and putting that ingenuity there.

[00:33:44] Phil: And then, creating a, where, We're heading towards the first manifestation of it.

[00:33:54] Karl: Yeah, I find it super interesting and I'm glad you mentioned,Michelle and Caldron, who we've had on the podcast and really love and are watching and paying attention to what she's doing. and, caldron is building this, precision fermentation at infrastructure.

[00:34:09] Karl: You know, it's almost like. Precision fermentation as a service. And this is a multi-billion dollar infrastructure challenge. It just doesn't exist. And what we've seen is that most, investors avoid this, but there are some investors who are really interested in infrastructure investments. You guys seem to embrace this despite the challenges,associated with it.

[00:34:33] Karl: Are you betting that whoever controls this kind of manufacturing, biological manufacturing infrastructure is gonna

[00:34:38] Karl: control the next economy?

[00:34:39] Phil: Yeah, that's

[00:34:40] Phil: it. I think that's a good way of putting it. it's very clear from where I'm sitting that the maturation of various technologies combined with the needs that Earth have for different manufacturing systems, all the calls for sovereign manufacturing capability, everything that's happening with geopolitics. There is going to be a, great rise in new industrial platforms all over the world that this technology needs to step into. And,we need to roll out this infrastructure that means we need a different approach for sure. But I was talking with another investor last night and I'm very glad I'm not a software investor because all I can see is with the rise of ai, these are gonna become very volatile, almost temporary businesses with very limited moats around them,

[00:35:34] Phil: right?

[00:35:35] Phil: And so, yeah, we can make them quickly, but that's the problem. Everyone can make them quickly. And,I don't wanna downplay what it takes to grow a business around a software company, but. What we do know is how hard it is to build these big new industrial companies. But once, we've got them and not only have we figured out how to build them at scale industrially, but we've embedded them in a supply chain that is a very deep mode around these companies.

[00:36:02] Phil: Then those things must grow to a big scale. I mean,the Biomanufacturing solution isn't about companies like Cauldron building one factory somewhere. There needs to be hundreds of them all over the world. Samsara needs hundreds of recycling facilities and that whole stream of industry must flow through them.

[00:36:22] Phil: And, that is a huge opportunity. And often in conversations with my venture is that we need to find the way of leaning in. To CapEx again, like we did in the origins of venture,

[00:36:33] Phil: and to capture this opportunity. And,wish I could see more of it. There aren't enough of us out there doing it, but we're finding ways to do it.

[00:36:41] Phil: One thing I'll say is I think, the big problem to solve today is that capital tends to, have its own silos, right? So you have angel investors that do a certain kind of investing, have a certain risk profile, will put a certain amount of money in venture capital, institutional venture capital.

[00:37:01] Phil: The next little bit we're also risk tolerant, but venture capital is starting to get really worried if we might get diluted round after round after round whilst new factory gets built. and so at the moment there's a little bit of a gap between. What we do in venture and what project financing, institutions deliver.

[00:37:24] Phil: And we're seeing the rise of new funds that are filling in that gap and there's more and more of those coming and we need to, we've got people on both of those silos if you like, to stick with that idea of just trying to reach across and find a way of just touched enough and then just pull a company along and we'll get better at that.

[00:37:43] Phil: I think that's a little bit of the ecosystem growing unless realizing what we have to do. but there has to be a definite plan and I think if you and I look back and the listeners look back at the history of these incredible, the companies we see pitch for the first time at MB Beatta and then we watch their journey, so many of them get stuck at this

[00:38:04] Phil: second valley of death point.

[00:38:06] Phil: And that makes them weak. It's not their technology that's weak, but like technology rarely fails. It's technology is rarely the reason for a company to fail. It's usually a human issue or a capital issue or a kind of, getting the cost right

[00:38:23] Phil: to work in industry. issue

[00:38:24] Karl: But when you think about Biomanufacturing and,I think you and I have talked about this before, and we think about, distributed biomanufacturing and like you're talking about Samsara, you're talking about cauldron. these companies that are building these, picks and shovels

[00:38:38] Karl: that are necessary? is there a model for that? is there a model that we can look to and say. and I, for me it's like the microbrewing industry, it's like, it's a lot of independent little companies. Sometimes they get bought by a big brewery, but you're able to set up these, usually pretty profitable, micro breweries anywhere in the United States.

[00:38:59] Karl: We say everybody's a mile from one where I'm sitting in Brooklyn, I probably got five within, five miles, maybe more. but I don't know if like investors necessarily see that model as saying, okay, for buy manufacturing, we can replicate that and we're gonna help build like a cauldron and we're gonna see cauldron facilities in every country in the world.

[00:39:19] Karl: are there other models that we could look

[00:39:21] GE - Ep: at

[00:39:21] Karl: that, show us that?

[00:39:22] Phil: the analogy I have to give around industrial biomanufacturing and cauldron is, data centers.

[00:39:28] Phil: Yeah. these are ultimately, massive, expensive pieces of infrastructure. Now, the difference between a bio FB that cauldron might build in a data center is that we know the business model of data centers.

[00:39:42] Phil: Now you can go to the bank, you can get project financing. Everyone knows the return on investment that happens there. Everyone knows how it works. You have confidence in the offtake if you like, and you, just build it. You build the next one, you build the next one. and the market is so, has so much momentum.

[00:40:01] Phil: That just independently all over the world, people are saying, I'm going to build the data center, build the business case, get the money, get it built so that's one thing. And I think what that means we have to do as a community around bio manufacturing is we have to the path to showing this working at scale in the first of a kind, next of a kind, kind of stages.

[00:40:25] Phil: And once we're through that, then whoever you are in the world, it's much easier to do the next one, the next one, the next one, the next one. that's job number one. And for me that is an unlock not just directly for companies like Cauldron, liberation Labs and all of us that are trying to do these things.

[00:40:43] Phil: It is an unlock for the rest of the industry because that's how the rest of the industry gets the belief that it can be made at the right price and there is enough capacity out there to do it. that's point number one, just showing that it can be done and then we can have data center type dynamic in the industry.

[00:40:59] Phil: The second thing is, coming back to your question about scientists and founders, thinking about how the whole thing is going to work in the future. And what I find, or what I used to do myself, I must say, is you would think about a company doing it all themself and you would say, okay, so this is what we're gonna do.

[00:41:21] Phil: We're gonna build our pilot plant, and then we're gonna raise this much money and we're gonna build our thirst of a kind commercial facility, and then we're going to list, and then we're going to build the next 10 ourselves. And there's a kind of. arrogance to that, which comes from wanting to control it, own the most value.

[00:41:42] Phil: but really, do we want to learn to reinvent the wheel to do everything that needs to be done there? And really can we, as a single organization that today is four years old or whatever, have the audacity to do that and actually have the global impact? The answer is probably no. So then that leads you to the question, well, okay, well

[00:42:03] Phil: do we work with in the supply chain? What is our business model so that we grow, over time sustainably, but other people are motivated to actually do their part? what I'm now learning and I'm really enjoying understanding more about is, there are a world of engineering firms, for example. Every day invisible to us.

[00:42:27] Phil: Innovators are just rolling out carpets of factories and infrastructure all over the world, and we need to be working with them. And if I look at the Samsara plan now and I think about our board meetings in the work that we're doing, that's what we're doing. I mean, we actually have a plan for the next 50 Samstar facilities, 4-year-old company.

[00:42:50] Phil: And who's building them, how they're motivated, what the business model is, and we're working with all of those people now. I'm the first of the kind. And I think the more we can do that, the more we've got this

[00:43:02] Phil: pathway for scale and impact.

[00:43:06] Karl: Yeah, I think we need to

[00:43:07] Karl: see more of those because I've got two examples. One, on a podcast episode we did, and actually both the people have been on podcasts. I'm not gonna mention them by name, we'll let our listeners go back. But one, these guys had built like this incredible facility.

[00:43:21] Karl: They're very successful selling product. And when we brought up this idea of okay, you've got this facility, why don't you replicate the facility, in multiple places like that, thought, had never even crossed their mind. I think in many cases, the founders and the companies as, as successful as they are, they might not realize that they can multiply their impact by thinking that way.

[00:43:43] Karl: And I get it, they're a founder, they're focused on building a company. It's, you have to be focused as you say, there's these engineering firms, there's all this other ecosystem that you could build. So it could have that bigger impact. But what I'd like to see is not only like the Samsara model rollout, but I'd like to see someone, again, someone who's been on the podcast where they could take what they're building or they could take what they're doing.

[00:44:03] Karl: They've got a first of a kind, facility. They're able to produce a lot of product. I'd like to see them start thinking about, okay, now we can start producing this, next to,we can do it in Italy where they're gonna use our product. We're gonna do it, in this place where they're producing shoes, we're gonna, so that way other people can start to see this example kind of multiplying.

[00:44:23] Karl: And I think. you passed by the, geopolitics that we're living through right now. But I think that this is absolutely necessary and so it makes it an even more

[00:44:32] Karl: compelling opportunity right now.

[00:44:34] Phil: it really does. And,

[00:44:36] Phil: I think if we take a customer perspective of all these companies that we're working with, so our companies that are making new textiles, our companies that are doing recycling, our customers that are doing new dyes and things like that in, fashion. if you are a customer, if you are Lululemon, if you are Nike, if you are,fast fashioned in Japan, you have to believe that there's gonna be sufficient scale for you to to go.

[00:45:04] Phil: It's coming back to the, what I was describing before, you have to know the beacon on the hill.

[00:45:09] Phil: You have to enough, it's gonna be big enough. It's gonna be cheap. Enough company's gonna there if all the company has got is that single factory, and that's all they're talking about. And it only do 2% of the capacity that this is ever gonna need as a customer.

[00:45:29] Phil: I'm not comfortable anymore. I'm worried I'm putting my own future in the hands of this subscale startup.

[00:45:37] Phil: And that's another reason why

[00:45:38] Phil: we need to have this sensor.

[00:45:40] Karl: But how do you think

[00:45:41] Karl: that contrasts with this kind of there's a trend that I'm seeing too, where you've got these companies that they're really focused on complete vertical integration. they're following like a Tesla or a SpaceX model, and there's other ones where they just want complete control of a supply chain.

[00:45:57] Karl: How does that sync with

[00:45:58] Karl: this thinking?

[00:46:00] Phil: well. I what companies other than SpaceX and Tesla don't have is the CEO doesn't have billions of dollars of their own money

[00:46:09] Phil: to actually put into the business. And Yeah, no question. It's very inspiring to, read about how this happens and how SpaceX, doesn't buy these expensive components from existing supply chain and it engineers its own, which is a hundred times cheaper and more fit for purpose.

[00:46:29] Phil: And it's of course very valuable to do that. But I guess a contrast would be in China where that whole manufacturing system has been optimized for a supply chain to rise. And, we see whole car companies. Appear in two years out of, a company that used to make toasters, right?

[00:46:50] Phil: A company that's good at taking in components for other people, then innovating around assembly and then building a big factory and then pushing it out. this huge scalability of that. and it's reproducible on an industrial scale. It doesn't need Elon Musk specifically with his specific bank account to actually get it there.

[00:47:08] Phil: and so it's much more efficient. But I think, we always have to be, I'm always careful to say,we can't be religious about these things. we have to say, look, what does my company need? And I would say that as a VC looking and participating very closely in Biomanufacturing and, andall of these molecule making incredible innovations that are happening.

[00:47:30] Phil: I think there's been lots of wrong steps, people choosing the vertical integration path. 'cause what actually happens if you're not Elon Musk and I know where it comes from. It's because if there is no factory, I must build a factory. This is how I've been control of my destiny. But there's so many companies which are almost raised enough money, but in the meantime, they're stuck.

[00:47:53] Phil: they're stalled with no factory because there's no factory. They can't make it the cost of goods and the volume they need to make. And so they can't do anything. They're catch 22 precarious situation. So my, general posture at the moment is invest in manufacturing companies that do manufacturing really well.

[00:48:13] Phil: Invest in product companies that do products really well and then stick them together.

[00:48:18] Karl: to me it sounds like your approach is fundamentally different. from most vc if you're gonna focus on building a, tech startup. As well as the person who's gonna manufacture it, as well as this distribution infrastructure.

[00:48:31] Karl: What you're really doing is you're creating these systems, you're orchestrating system change rather than just optimizing individual companies. Do you think more VCs, should be thinking this way, or do you think that's the evolution we're gonna see? you mentioned, capital is siloed and we see that we want more of that capital to be talking to each other.

[00:48:49] Karl: Do you think we need VCs to kind of,move towards

[00:48:52] Karl: this model?

[00:48:53] Phil: I do,

[00:48:53] Phil: I have a fairly strong belief that gets proven every day that. none of us can do this on our own. if we really are in the business of building moonshot companies, then we need, Apollo mission style collaboration that brings everyone together. and even VC to vc. We need to know how do we each get enough returns from our investors by working together on something and then, deliver the growth together into the companies.

[00:49:26] Phil: And the more of us that exist, the different pockets of the world with our own proprietary relationships, with industry, with our own understanding of the market, with our own ability to crowd in capital, and that we do that together. And that's what allows us to keep these companies moving and not failing just purely because there's a missing bit or the $10 million short or whatever it is.

[00:49:51] Phil: So, every day in my work,proves to me that when we do that, we're more

[00:49:56] Phil: likely to move forward.

[00:49:57] Karl: So one of the things that we

[00:49:59] Karl: talk about, is that we believe that really the first, trillion dollar biotech company outside of Biopharma is gonna look more like a lifestyle brand than a traditional tech company. And you're backing companies that are literally changing what we eat where, and really how we think about waste, and turning waste into finitely recyclable products.

[00:50:19] Karl: Do you see any of your businesses or any of the companies you guys are investing in becoming cultural movements, not just successful

[00:50:25] Karl: businesses?

[00:50:26] Phil: Yeah, I think so.

[00:50:27] Phil: and I'd say there's two, Approaches to this one is how do we find the collective narrative around some of this new technology that gets the whole world, first of all, understanding, then comfortable that excited about something. and I think we do the opposite of that intuitively out of the labs towards industry.

[00:50:52] Phil: And, I was at a gathering, of the,synthetic biology food industry people here in Australia, about a month ago. And, someone very rightfully said, you guys need to hire a marketing agency. It's not like you, that company or you, that lab.

[00:51:09] Phil: It's like you as an organization need to have a common story where you're not. Talking in scientific terms, having horrible phrases like synthetic and genetically modified and all these things, and we need to help the world understand that it's, like making wine and it's like making beer and it's like a, it's nature.

[00:51:31] Phil: It, we're learning from nature doing things which will naturally be good for the planet because that's what nature does. It makes things which are sustainable and they work. And having that narrative around things is important. Another part of the narrative is, something that VCs do very badly.

[00:51:49] Phil: We talk about disruption, we talk about change, we talk about automation. Now, many of these new industries that we're building are going to rise in regional parts of America and Australia, and they're not. Capital city, that it's not Silicon Valley. this is the point. And all the biotech stuff we're doing here in Australia is gonna naturally occur in places where today, farmers live there, coal miners live there.

[00:52:18] Phil: people that are pipe fitters and plumbers that work around that industry, they live there. They want to understand why them, what is this business for them? And then they become part of the crowd that wants to make this whole thing happen. Not the people that go get off my lawn, you are not welcome here.

[00:52:37] Phil: And this is what happens all the time. And so there's so many parts to the narrative that we need to get right. that's one thing. And then slightly related to the disruption story. that takes us to the other pathway, which, we're doing a lot of work on right now, which is, so much of this stuff doesn't need to be a conversation with the public. it's just something we should do for industry, make industry more resilient, make industry or profitable, and,just make these new ingredients. Help food companies make more money. if we go back to the sort of the Headie days of the beginning of Impossible Foods and Perfect Day, that these early symbio food companies, think about the rhetoric, the story that we heard, it was ending animal agriculture.

[00:53:24] Phil: It was disruption, it was replacing traditional farming. served the single purpose of creating an enemy which didn't need to be there.

[00:53:37] Phil: and we were talking about this the other day. It all culminated in a Super Bowl ad that sort of defined ultra processed food as a concept that just weaponized the whole general public against everything that we were trying to do.

[00:53:51] Phil: Whereas if we look at where we are today, you've got big food companies that are literally running out planet to actually make the raw materials, to make the products that they wanna make. And we all have a solution with these next generation food products, for example, in the food industry that we're making.

[00:54:11] Phil: Same thing in fashion that I know you are involved with a lot. it's harder for these big capitalism driven companies to just keep taking oil-based products to make these, it just gets harder and harder to do it. We have a solution, and doing it in a hybrid way, almost silently to consumers in some places, as long as everyone's making money and the whole thing

[00:54:33] Phil: works, then,

[00:54:35] Phil: that's a good way to do it as well.

[00:54:36] Karl: Yeah.

[00:54:37] Karl: It's amazing. Phil, you and I could keep talking for the next couple hours, but I wanna be mindful of your time. So what I'd like to do, if you're okay with it, is do some quick fire questions before we say goodbye. And

[00:54:48] Karl: what's a scientific breakthrough in your portfolio that becomes critical infrastructure

[00:54:53] Karl: for reshaping industry?

[00:54:54] Phil: I

[00:54:55] Phil: think I would have to

[00:54:55] Phil: say for this conversation, it's cauldron's Hyper Fermentation technology, because it delivers the solution to companies making products at the right price, at the right volume, through building a global tapestry of infrastructure, which isn't too expensive. And so it's an unlock for all the companies that are making, especially commodity priced

[00:55:22] Phil: products with biology,

[00:55:24] Karl: Yeah, very excited about Cauldron.

[00:55:26] Karl: looking forward to talking to Michelle again soon. Beyond storytelling, what's the single most important

[00:55:32] Karl: skill you teach founders?

[00:55:33] Phil: synthesis. how to. Look at the whole environment around you, how to listen to everybody and how to reform that into your own thinking on strategy. So you are always learning, but always bringing everything together into

[00:55:49] Phil: cohesive direction.

[00:55:51] Karl: And this isn't really a

[00:55:52] Karl: quick fire because it's like we could have a whole episode about this, but collaboration versus competition. Why?

[00:55:59] Phil: first instance, there's no point in competing in a market that doesn't exist yet. The first job we have to do is to make the market together and then go for your life and compete with each other. and also I think that, especially in this, in the domain of what are the collective stories and things like thatthat we were just talking about.

[00:56:20] Phil: when people compete early, they generally attack their own value proposition as well, because what they say to the market around them is. That synthetic biology company is really bad for these five reasons. And then that company is really bad for these five reasons, but we're really good. But what the market hears is five bad, five bad, something good.

[00:56:41] Phil: And then you add all that up and all people. Here is all the reasons to be worried about synthetic biology companies, biology. and instead what we need is a way of collaborating on what is the consistent way of all of us rising as an industry with a common story and then

[00:56:57] Phil: we can compete.

[00:56:58] Karl: Couldn't agree with you more. What's an unconventional metric that deep tech founders should be tracking?

[00:57:05] Phil: I thought

[00:57:06] Phil: this was the best question I've ever been best and it's really got me thinking 'cause I want to think about more of them. But the one I landed on this podcast was organizational velocity. So how do we track how fast we make? Decision, who's involved? How do we make the decision?

[00:57:26] Phil: How quickly do they make the decision? And this is very important because these companies have to decide quickly. You've got engineers, scientists, and commercial people all deciding together. Together they can slow each other down. That slowness creates burn on a daily basis, which makes the company more fragile.

[00:57:46] Phil: We need to figure out how to move forward quickly. Different companies will measure that organizational velocity in a different way. but it's just things like, we look at speed of decision making on our boards, for example, so that we're all part of the same

[00:57:58] Phil: culture to get that done.

[00:57:59] Karl: Amazing. And what do you think the biggest advantage Australia has over Silicon Valley?

[00:58:04] Phil: I think for all

[00:58:06] Phil: science driven companies, one of the most valuable things we have is we have a, text. Benefit here called the r and d tax credit. And this is where anyone doing r and d in Australia gets half of that money back every year as a tax credit. And if I look at all of our companies, you look at the burn down cash chart, it looks like a saw tooth.

[00:58:28] Phil: It goes down and then up and then down and then up and those up motions. So when the r and d tax credit comes in, and if you think of that in terms of runway for a startup, it moves the line out because you get like an extra year for free of development, which is extremely valuable and not anywhere else in the world.

[00:58:47] Phil: And then that combined with, unfortunately for the rest of the world, which is, has got quite a volatile geopolitical landscape, we are very stable here. We're probably gonna have the same government for, at least two cycles. And so this is a good place to sort of come and sort of dig into getting things done. And just finally with. biotech that you and I are just so passionate about, we are the second biggest agricultural lamb mess in the world. We have a lot of feedstock, both primary feedstock that we grow like sugarcane, and then we have all the waste that comes out the other side of that, which is now the sort of feedstock of the future.

[00:59:27] Phil: So Australia is the company to build a global scale

[00:59:31] Phil: biotech industry

[00:59:32] Karl: Amazing.

[00:59:34] Karl: Well, Phil, I thank you so much for your time. It's always a pleasure to speak with you. we could have spoken for another two hours, but I wanna be mindful of your time and so we'll have to just have another,

[00:59:43] Karl: conversation.

[00:59:44] Phil: always would love to do that. Carl, thank you.

[00:59:46] Karl: Thank you.

[00:59:47] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Hey, Carl. I'm excited to talk about how bio, uh, how biology is transforming business, technology and culture, which we had a lot going on the past couple of weeks. It's been very dense, I will say, in terms of experiences both professionally and personally. Wow. I mean, I don't even know where to start. Do you wanna start with something?

[01:00:13] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: There's just so much to choose from.

[01:00:15] Speaker: I mean, look, we came last week.

[01:00:17] Speaker 2: We teased the fact. That we were in London for a week for, um, bio fabricate, for the bio fabricate fair. And then, um, last week in New York City was New York Climate Week, which coincides with the UN General Assembly. So both of those things on their own are huge. And we were in spaces.

[01:00:37] Speaker 2: We were in a space together where we saw. John Kerry, um, who had been a presidential hopeful a few years ago. And then I was, uh, downtown near Wall Street and I saw the Korean president emerge from the New York Stock Exchange, and there was a huge crowd of people taking his picture, and he came out and he waved.

[01:00:54] Speaker 2: And so that was a lot of fun. But, um, if you're in New York City during climate, during the UN General Assembly, it tends to be pretty chaotic. But we attended a number of events. We were at Indie Bio. Twice in one day. And uh, you were at New Lab that same day, and that's just one day. Like there was stuff going on every single day last

[01:01:15] Speaker: week.

[01:01:16] Speaker: What was the highlight for

[01:01:17] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Yeah, I ping ponged from Indie Bio eight 30. Then I went to a new lab for their Climate Futures full day event. But then went back to Indie Bio for Bio Fabricate, um, and Juniper's, uh, bio Cultures event. Then back to New Lab to just wrap it up. 'cause I live in Brooklyn and New labs in Brooklyn. So it was like back and forth, back and forth, and there was just so much.

[01:01:41] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Carl, let's just talk about. New lab for to start because first of all, great space, hard to get to, but you know, for those that go there from Manhattan, the hack is to take the ferry if it all lines

[01:01:54] Speaker: you took the ferry, which is pretty smart,

[01:01:56] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: it's super and it's great.

[01:01:57] Speaker: so it's the only way to get around. It's a great way to get around

[01:02:00] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: you're, and it takes you right there to the Navy yard.

[01:02:02] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: And it's just a, you know, a few, um, steps away from new lab and new lab's a great space, right? They, um, welcome companies that are across deep tech. A lot of it's, you know, people are, oh, it's like a lot of physical tech. I mean physical, we say in terms of, um. Uh, energy companies, robotics, um, manufacturing, but they have bio mobility.

[01:02:24] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Yep. Mobility, transport. And um, then they had biotech companies there too. Um, our friend Alex Rose was presenting, um, the Cascade Bio. Uh, they do, um, enzyme, IM mobilization, so shout out to all the cell-free engineering folks, Alex, good friend of ours. And there was companies that made, um, there's biotech companies that were creating new.

[01:02:48] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Um, air pathogen detection devices, um, which is really cool. And of course the energy too. Like, I mean, this was climate week and there was a company that had a new type of fusion reactor that they were creating. And fusion was actually pretty dominant, I would say. I mean, PE when I was meeting people and talking to them about what they were seeing at the climate events that they were going to, they're talking about fusion, they're talking about nuclear, um, and.

[01:03:18] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: It's great. I mean, energy is what drives all of our comings or all of our doings and happenings and everything that makes, you know, our, our business or our society, um, move. And so great fine energy, great conversations. Um, and I think that, um, this whole energy mix thing, um, I have to say this because. It was incredible.

[01:03:46] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: One event I did go to, and we'll talk about other ones, um, was, I'll talk more about it later, was this Future Fungi Award. Um, uh, social gatherings, a luncheon, and the environmentalist, hunter Lovens was there and it was, this was like a luncheon for about like 25 people. So very intimate, and I got to speak with her for an hour.

[01:04:08] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Like we were just socializing and what she said, 'cause she looks at energy a lot, she's a thought leader in the environmental space, has been for so many years and was saying, look, the number is 3 cents per kilowatt hour. Whatever energy you want to bring to the market, that's the number you have to get to.

[01:04:28] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: And so that was interesting 'cause then she was sharing what she was saying, um, in. In the market, and it's really funny because there's also this guy that was sitting next to us who had brought a new type of battery or energy device that he found. In a lab in China, and it was, I don't wanna, I can't talk too much about it, and I wanna take a photo of this crazy thing.

[01:04:54] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: And it was like a, it was handheld thing and he was like, we can't take pictures of this. And I was like, okay. Um, and

[01:05:00] Speaker: Wow.

[01:05:02] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: you know, the way that Hunter Lemons described it was like, is this like a semi perpetual motion machine? And he was like, you can say that. And I was like, oh, okay. Because like we could take the battery out.

[01:05:13] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: And like, um, they just used like a battery and like a circuit and like a little tiny light bulb to kind of demonstrate this. And so the battery now was there and then they took the battery out and the light bulb stayed on for like 30 minutes. So I was like, and this was just like a small circuit. He is like, well you could do, you know a lot more and I'll stop there.

[01:05:33] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: You know? I bet there's these, um, energy engineers think saying like, Romy, you don't know what you're talking about. And I don't. But like, um, it was just fascinating. Like just, just, just to have a demo to see things. I mean, that's the world that we need to live in. But I can go on. What about what else? What did you take away from, let's say, indie Bio, the new bio event?

[01:05:54] Speaker: I mean, so there were two events

[01:05:55] Speaker 2: that I attended at Indie Mayo. One was, um. An early morning event, the, the one that you attended. God, I can't even remember what it was. Hold on a second. Um, and, um. That event focused on expanding sustainable innovation. And we know sustainability is kind of a dirty word on the one hand.

[01:06:15] Speaker 2: On the other hand, we know that long-term investors don't really care what's going on politically. What they care about is being able to sustain capital for long periods of time, meaning decades. So sustainability and the health of the planet is very, very important to them. And, um. I think that, you know, what that group talked about, which was open innovation, had included, um, professionals from L'Oreal, from Science Co.

[01:06:42] Speaker 2: And, um, uh, from, uh, the, and it was moderated by guy from Cambridge University's innovation arm. You know, they were talking about sustainability, but they were also talking about some of the challenges that investors face, particularly when it comes to understanding the macro market, which is something we're gonna talk about today in this podcast.

[01:07:00] Speaker 2: So I really enjoyed that event because it gave me kind of this macro view and it confirms the point of view that one of the points of view that we take on this podcast on grow everything, which is you need to be able to not just collaborate, but orchestrate these ecosystems so that you can go from innovation to market impact.

[01:07:19] Speaker 2: It's not enough. To be inventing something, you need to be taking this macro view. The bio-fabricated event at the end of the day led by our friend Suzanne Lee, who's been on the podcast twice, was also incredible because it introduced us to, you know, a kind of a group of new people that were not, uh, in London with us.

[01:07:39] Speaker 2: And it also included the investor from Juniper. And I think that they are very interesting because they're a deep tech fund focused. Also on materials, which we know has been a very challenging space to be investing in. You were there with me, rum. What was your biggest

[01:07:55] Speaker: takeaway from the Indie Bio event?

[01:07:57] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Yeah. Um, I would say, lemme just see when there's one thing I wanted to,

[01:08:02] Speaker: Sorry, I don't know if that was a good, I don't know if that was the best way to lead up to that.

[01:08:06] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: No, it's all good. No, it's all good. Um, lemme just try to think of like, there was something that the Juniper VC guy said is gonna come to me. Um, well, I think kinda the big thing that again, speaks to pretty much a topic that we're going that, um, our guest today talks about that you, you interviewed our guest today and you mentioned it earlier about this ecosystem orchestration and, um, Michael from Juniper VC that was on the stage talked about, um, new types of funding that's required, being able to, um.

[01:08:42] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Venture capital's one way of investing in biotech, but there needs to be more and there needs to be more collaboration. Um, and our friend and our friend of the podcast, um, oh God, what's her name? Uh, our friend of podcast, Erica Mill check was also on stage and she talked about partner partnering and some of the benefits and challenges of partnering with other companies to collaborate on, on a product.

[01:09:10] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Uh, that's a. Consumer product. Um, 'cause Erica, um, uh, Erica mil check of, oh my God, Carl, this is okay. Erica Mil, check of Ricco. They, um, make different types of ingredients for hair care, personal care, and they collaborated with another ingredient, um, innovator and a manufacturer of. Uh, personal care and beauty products that do end-to-end product manufacturing.

[01:09:39] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: So that three of them collaborated and created a product that got a lot of recognition and they did it together. And so how can we put collaboration front and center when it comes to business and whether that they got, um, whether their ROI was revenue or marketing value. 'cause they got more intention because of their collaboration.

[01:10:02] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: There was value to be had. I mean, we saw it firsthand when we went to suppliers day, months ago, and it was incredible to, to hear people talk about, you know, finance in a way that really was holistic. It wasn't just numbers, but it was how does finance function in a biotech company with, and actually in a biotech industry?

[01:10:28] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: And I thought it was, um, well received by the audience because we had great conversations with all the attendees. I think we knew half the people in that room, and it was, it was great. Um, and it was, we had lots of different innovators from super early stage to later stage companies that were there, um, at Indie Bio that day.

[01:10:49] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: So.

[01:10:49] Speaker: Yeah, I'll just, uh, I think we should give Erica a

[01:10:51] Speaker 2: shout out and say congratulations. As to her on the birth of her son, who I think is a couple months old now. And, um, it was great to see her there. She showed us she was the proud mama showing pictures of her baby. Um, so congratulations, Erica. Hopefully you'll hear this.

[01:11:06] Speaker 2: Um, I think one other point just on that, that Michael made about collaborations, um, because Erica also made the point that. Sometimes you just don't know how the market's gonna react and like they had developed a product. And I'm gonna summarize, and this might not be totally true, Erica, correct me if I'm wrong.

[01:11:24] Speaker 2: Like they've had products that they developed like a year or two ago that have have taken a very long time to get market traction. But then they have other products where they have had collaborations. And the traction has come very quickly. And Michael of Juniper made the point that in many cases, these collaborations either become pilots or long sales cycle, particularly when an innovator is, is, uh, is collaborating with a big company.

[01:11:47] Speaker 2: But the ones, the collaborations that work, he said, are the ones that use the attention and leverage. All that attention into company marketing or co-marketing and co-branding. And what he had seen was seeing the use of a shared facility, um, that can turn into an investment. And uh, he said, if you can do a good pilot with a, um, and we know this, if you can do a good successful pilot with a big company that can turn into investment, maybe not only from the company but from other investors

[01:12:16] Speaker: who see that you're getting traction.

[01:12:20] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Yeah. Yep. That, that was a really great point. And, um, so shout out to Michael. He is a listener to the podcast. He did say that to me. I mean, I introduced myself. He's like, oh, I listened to the pod. I'm like, oh my gosh. Yay. There's a lot of that, that happened too. So we got a little bit of, um, a little bit of fan base.

[01:12:36] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: So hello to all of our listeners. That's so great to see people in person. Um, I also had gone to, I will say I went to this, um. Uh, I'm just gonna keep it vague because I went to this, um, management consulting firm, had like an event, um, at during climate week and I attended their sustainable chemicals workshop or No Sustainable Chemicals Futures.

[01:13:02] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: And it was this report that they wrote and it was really about, the sustainability part was about the manufacturing of existing. The top molecules maybe that are used in personal care and beauty and in food and packaging and like all the different sectors that we talk about here on the podcast, um, but really in the lens of the energy that's required to produce these molecules in the same chemical way.

[01:13:35] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: They did not mention by manufacturing at all. Whether it was, um, you know, using precision fermentation or using, um, you know, new types of energy production or new types of manufacturing cell-free. Hello. We talk about that all the time. So there's these different types of manufacturing, um, that biology enables and new molecules that can come online to repay, replace some of the existing molecules that could be higher performing.

[01:14:07] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: And like the conclusions of this report were like, oh, you need like, you know, 1 trillion in investment and then, and it's gonna take this much time and it's going to be this huge, huge, huge like, um, lift in order to, um, make, um, chemicals sustainably. And I'm like, WTF, you know, where's the biology here? You know, and I'm like.

[01:14:33] Speaker: Yeah, I.

[01:14:34] Speaker 3: Wanna see this report so we can take it

[01:14:35] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: let's take it down. We're gonna, we're gonna put that into, um, into another podcast. 'cause I could go on, 'cause I was just like, I, I didn't wanted to raise my hand, but I was like, look, you know, there's all these suits here, men and women, and this isn't my like, consulting company. I don't wanna like, you know, create this whole thing.

[01:14:51] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: And I didn't read the report at the time. So like, maybe there is a section, but they didn't talk about it in this open forum, in this dialogue during this event. So let's read it. Let's digest. See like, you know, maybe they're like, all right, we're just going to, you know, we acknowledge by manufacturing exists.

[01:15:07] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: We're just gonna leave it outta this report. But it's like, then why was that decision made? I don't know. So let's just table it. But I'm just like, okay, there needs to be more biology and biotech in climate week when in these high level conversations. Because at this event, they had CEOs of some of the biggest companies that were there, and I'm like.

[01:15:27] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: This conversation isn't happening with these big decision makers, but it's happening here on the Grab Think podcast.

[01:15:34] Speaker: All right, so we're gonna, we're

[01:15:35] Speaker 2: gonna, I mean, I've been, look, I've been going back and, and kind of looking at the reports that the big consulting firms have done on the bio economy, because I wanna see what is missing from those reports and just to understand the numbers that they are, you know. Uh, proposing or predicting this, the impact of biotech is gonna be on just the global economy.

[01:15:56] Speaker 2: But I'd love to read this report

[01:15:58] Speaker 3: because I think it's important for us to understand what other people are

[01:16:01] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Yeah. I just wanna comment though, because they might have written a report about the bioeconomy separate.

[01:16:07] Speaker: yeah, it's

[01:16:08] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Yeah. And I mean, it is like they have these different, everything's in silos. Like they're not taking their, they think of it, they think of biotech as something separate, when it should be pervasive throughout all of their analyses.

[01:16:20] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: So anyway.

[01:16:21] Speaker: Yeah, and we know that

[01:16:22] Speaker 2: other people, particularly banks, are looking at all of these technologies holistically. So we're not gonna go into that now, but that's something else that we can talk about. But. You probably have noticed that like the theme of this conversation so far has been climate weak, um, and sustainability and, um, I think this is a good transition into our ho, into our guests, don't you think?

[01:16:45] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Yes. Yeah. So just actually one really quick thing before we go and

[01:16:48] Speaker: Okay. One more thing. Go

[01:16:49] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: 1 thing and we can, you know, move this up and, um. Maybe even segue from it, but I just, I did mention earlier that I attended this luncheon, um, and then it was held by, um, Suzanne, uh, I say sra, Suzanne Larson, um, who runs a future of Fungi Awards and they are now accepting applications.

[01:17:12] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: I'm so excited for this because I met some of these entrepreneurs and. When people think of fungi in materials, they think of it as, you know, maybe food or like, um, uh, functional, like nutrients. But there is so much more that fungi can do. I recommend people follow the future of fungi. We're gonna be collaborating with them more.

[01:17:32] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Um, it's very exciting. So I wanted to give a shout out because this isn't, this isn't just about an award for people that are using fungi. This is about creating a whole. Ecosystem to bring fungi as a resource to make so many different materials. We talk about biotech in general. This is focused on fungi, so another, just wanted to point that out.

[01:17:52] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: And this can also be a segue into ecosystem building, hopefully.

[01:17:57] Speaker: Okay, so

[01:17:58] Speaker 2: we've been talking about ecosystem building in the context of climate week and even bio fabricate and. Few weeks ago, actually, a few months ago, I noticed that a company called Samsara had done a deal with Lululemon, and lo and behold, a friend of ours, friend of the pod, um, Phil Morrell of main sequence ventures wrote a piece about this deal.

[01:18:20] Speaker 2: And the deal was that Lululemon would be using Samsara technology in this 10 year plan to advance recycled materials. But the way that Phil wrote the piece was really about. One of the thesis that we've like evolved on Grow Everything, which is the importance of collaboration and orchestration. So I contacted Phil and I said, we have to have a conversation, and we ended up having a conversation without you.

[01:18:44] Speaker 2: Rum. I'm sorry you missed it. You'll be on the next one because as you listen to this conversation, you're gonna want, I, I feel like Phil and I could have gone for three hours and with you on the phone. We probably could have gone for eight because there was so much good stuff there and unfortunately we had to cut it short.

[01:18:59] Speaker 2: So I'll just, um, preface this by saying, you know, Phil is based in Australia. I've known him for several years, met him through Symbio Beta, and we talk to each other three or four or five times a year. Check in with each other to see how we're doing. Main sequence ventures is a well-known, uh, uh, deep tech fund in Australia.

[01:19:20] Speaker 2: And, um,

[01:19:21] Speaker: I think with that we should just let Phil take it away.

[01:19:24] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Nice. Okay.

[01:19:27] Speaker: Great.

[01:19:27] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: All right, and I'm going to, um, kick it off for you for the outro so you can,

[01:19:32] Speaker: Okay.

[01:19:32] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: and then I'll, or I mean, I'm happy to too, just, I dunno. I'll do too. I'll, I'll, I'll kick it off for you. All right.

[01:19:39] Speaker: Okay. Well why don't I kick it off? Because you did, you weren't there. '

[01:19:41] Speaker 2: cause I think that's fair.

[01:19:43] Speaker 3: Um, IAM, I'm super sorry you weren't there for

[01:19:46] Speaker 2: that interview, but

[01:19:47] Speaker: you listened to it. What did you think?

[01:19:49] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Yes, it was great. I mean, I just loved his background. We always talk about people from other industries coming into biotech and I don't know. A farther industry from biotech than theater.

[01:20:02] Speaker: Theater.

[01:20:03] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: think it's probably the farthest if, if there's a spectrum of careers. Um, but so, you know, this is, this goes to show that anyone can do it.

[01:20:12] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: You know, anyone can come into biotech and biotech investing. Wow. I mean, I just love to hear the trajectory of his career. Um, and it's also that, um. It goes. It's also that the similarity of when people talk about being better at sales, they should go to do improv. You know, improv's a great way to learn to do sales, but it looks like theater is a great way to get into, um, biotech venture capital and this idea of ecosystem orchestration.

[01:20:40] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: I mean, I'm so happy that you had someone with such great experience that's doing it on the podcast and sharing their perspective, but. Tell us like some of the highlights for, for you. I mean, you were there. You also probably, you know, you've had conversations with Phil beforehand and you've been thinking deeply about this.

[01:20:58] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Tell us.

[01:21:00] Speaker: I mean, so there was a, there's a couple things

[01:21:02] Speaker 2: that really stood out to me. Um, one was this idea of collaborating even before there's a market created for a product or technology, and I just thought Phil's point on that was just so. On, sorry, lemme say it again. I think Phil's view on that was so on point because he made, he said that, um, you know, why are you competing if the market doesn't exist?

[01:21:25] Speaker 2: And we see that over and over again, like 10 companies will start with a certain technology that's gonna address a certain problem, but no one has really thought about who's gonna buy it and what does a market look like. And they talk about, and Phil even makes a point that the moment you start.

[01:21:39] Speaker 2: Denigrating the competition, you're basically denigrating yourself. So I think there's a lot of room for collaboration at the beginning and trading notes with each other. And I think that people who are smart in, in, I shouldn't say it that way, people who will be suc, people who are successful faster, understand that and they tend to look for ways that they can collaborate with their

[01:22:00] Speaker: competitors from the beginning.

[01:22:03] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Yeah. Yeah, that's, it's so, um, it's such. A psychological shift when it comes to capital and business where, you know, or let's just say such a shift from capitalism to actually doing business in reality, right? You have to compete, you have to get all the resources, you have to scale up all on your own so you can take all the revenue and have full control.

[01:22:34] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: We, that's, I just love the fact that UNFI had this conversation because, you know, that's not the way to operate, that's not the way biology operates. I mean, maybe on the, you know, multicellular organisms scale, like, but even then, you know, successful, you know, societies or organizations of organisms share resources.

[01:22:58] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: They share resources and, you know, the, the, there's a value chain, correct. Was a valley chain created, uh, when it comes to energy on the cellular level. All right. I, I don't know if my, my analogy's breaking down, but, but you know what I'm saying, right? It's like, um, you know, the, this, this push and pull from collaboration and competition.

[01:23:21] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: It's, it's a dance that to be played, but it is a dance. There's nuance, you know, and to be able to know when to collaborate versus compete is where the magic happens. And you know, you know, before this podcast we were talking about things that are going on in United States and how things are changing and the perspectives changing.

[01:23:42] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Our role in, um, the world is changing here, um, just from the decisions that are made by our current leaders and. It's, it's decisions are made. I mean, I don't wanna get too political, Carl. I'm not, I know I'm starting, I'm pulling on a thread that's going to make us go down a rabbit hole. But, um, it, this, uh, when we did have this time where we were more collaborative, there was more of like a soft power leadership, you know, just being there.

[01:24:13] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Um, everyone had a role. China Manufacturers, United States purchased and like there were. Um, environmental challenges there, but then there were, you know, great prosperity that happened on both sides. So, you know, we, we just need to learn and optimize. Are we learning and optimizing right now? I don't think, I don't know.

[01:24:34] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: I don't know. Um, I don't wanna take a, I don't wanna isolate anyone. This is not a political conversation, but I'm gonna pause there and please reflect Carl.

[01:24:44] Speaker: Um, I mean,

[01:24:45] Speaker 2: look, I think that, uh, we can take a hugely macro view and just say, look, there's only one planet, uh, so far. And so, uh, you know, collaboration makes sense. Um, if anything, the post World War II order really set the world up for a lot of collaboration and that collaboration, um, did raise a lot of wealth.

[01:25:08] Speaker 2: Across the the planet. It lifted so many people out of poverty. It made so many people healthier, and it enabled this world that I think, in many cases, we take for granted. And this idea of isolating a country or isolating a technology and preventing other people from using it. You know what happens when you do that is people.

[01:25:28] Speaker 2: Uh, innovate around it. And I think the example I'll use is just the deep seek moment that happened earlier in 2025 where this company seemingly came out of nowhere with a LLM model that they developed very quickly and was, and which was very powerful. And they didn't do it on like the state of the art Nvidia chips.

[01:25:46] Speaker 2: And so it just demonstrated that people will always find a way to innovate. And, um, and people want to collaborate. Science is a very open field. Scientists like to collaborate with each other. They're always trying to advance knowledge. And I would argue even capitalists like collaboration because if you're collaborating, it allows you to look at a market, you know, from a more macro point of view.

[01:26:10] Speaker 2: And then that in turn allows you to understand where the places where you can make a difference. And. Turn a profit if we wanna go in that direction. But I thought that, you know, Phil didn't get into the politics of things that much, but I think we could have gone down in that direction. And Australia, you know, has a super interesting ecosystem for innovation and deep tech investment.

[01:26:32] Speaker 2: And we've had a number of people on the pod. We've had, uh, Michelle Stanfield of. Cauldron on here. And that's an example. And I mean, we've also had, you know, I'm going to pick on Biomanufacturing for a second because last year we had a lot of Biomanufacturing companies on the podcast. It's incredibly important.

[01:26:49] Speaker 2: It requires a lot of collaboration and that is gonna require a lot of capital being deployed around the world to build these facilities that in turn will turn a profit and will enable companies to build locally what maybe in the past used to be shipped around the world.

[01:27:05] Speaker: I find that to be very exciting.

[01:27:07] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Yeah. Yep. Yep. Um, well shipped around the world. It's kind of the antithesis of the distributed manufacturing, where it's manufacturing locally to your, um. To your customers that are local as well. Um, but I think that's, um, remains to be seen. That's like a, that's the end state, right? I mean, we need to probably ship around the world until we, for a while.

[01:27:32] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Um, and I did like, uh, Phil's comment, um, when, you know, he was talking about like, you know, if you, um, and the, he's talking about if you're wearing your investor hat and investors and where they're putting their money. And it's like, you know, invest in manufacturing that does manufacturing really well and then invest in product companies that do product well.

[01:27:52] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: 'cause if you invest in a company that wants to do product, but also manufacturing, it gets really crazy. And we had a conversation with our friend Seth about this. We talked to a company and um, we were like, all right, are they, you know, a buying manufacturing company? 'cause they're doing something completely new or are they taking an end product and.

[01:28:10] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: They, you know, this company was, you know, doing both, and it's like, and they were raising a little bit of money, so it's like, uh, you know, does the math, math, you know, like, is it, you know, does this make sense from an investment standpoint? Um, or do they require collaborators? You know, are they gonna decide to collaborate with a manufacturing company and then, you know, just focus on products so that the investors are actually investing in the product, not the manufacturing of the product?

[01:28:36] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Or are they going to. Um, invest in the manufacturing and then have that platform play, right? This is also like, you know, manufacturing is a, is a platform, right? If you want to go, come, bring the world of tech, like digital tech into the world of physical tech, you know, um, are you making a platform to, you know, make other products or you're going just, you know, just focus on the product and then.

[01:29:01] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Share, find the partners and find the ecosystem to help you because that comment you made about capitalism and like, what's the end state? Yeah. The end state of capitalism is money to your shareholders, right? So how do you optimize so you can reduce your op opex so that you can then bring, distribute more money up the value chain of owners, you know, of owners of the company.

[01:29:27] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Um, so it's. It is interesting this conversation because, you know, manufacturing, um, while it we see by manufacturing happening in different parts of the world, um, we do see China still leaps and bounds farther. But then, you know, in this political climate, what does that mean? You know, um. You know, when, you know, invest in manufacturing that does manufacturing really well, is that putting money in China?

[01:29:55] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: I don't, I don't. That's, I don't know. Like that's kind of not, maybe we don't, let's leave that part out. That's not what I wanna

[01:30:01] Speaker: Yeah, I think we leave that out. I mean, here's what I here is, here's what I,

[01:30:04] Speaker 2: I'll, I'll, uh. I'll just end with this. Um, I don't know how, how we make the transition. Um, uh, I'll just point out that one of the things that really stood out to me too in this interview with Phil is I asked him in the quick fire what his biggest, you know, what, what he teaches, uh, entrepreneurs besides narrative.

[01:30:26] Speaker 2: Given his theater background, you know, telling a story was very important. And he talked a lot about the importance of that narrative to get people excited about what a company is doing. And then I asked him, well, what's important besides narrative? And he said, synthesis and synthesis. Synthesis, really meaning taking this holistic view of collaborators, investors, the marketplace, um, you know, potential buyers and being much more ecosystem focused.

[01:30:53] Speaker 2: So I just love that. I just love that. You know, Phil, I, I think part of the reason why I wanted to have him on was I wanted other people to hear that collaboration story from Samsara and Lululemon to understand how that value chain was created. I will point out also that I think as soon like as we were recording the podcast, Samsara was opening their first facility, which is a humongous facility in Australia that's gonna be able to process tons of material and.

[01:31:22] Speaker 2: Deliver these mono fibers that will be recycled infinitely. So very, very exciting.

[01:31:28] Speaker: Um, you know, to see that.

[01:31:29] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Yes, and we'll be talking more about ecosystem orchestration with our guests because this is right. You're right, Carl. This is the way that we need to think. We just need to think bigger. And that's what you hear here. That's what you hear on the Everything podcast, where you look at the whole industry and how everything is connected to each other.

[01:31:48] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Um, everything from innovators to investors to consumer product goods companies to biopharma to the consumer. And we really wanna look at this whole ecosystem. Um, yes, we talk about venture capital sometimes, but capital needs to be talking to each other, whether it's from VCs, whether it's from the government, whether it's from the consumer, whether it's from.

[01:32:10] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Corporate ventures, how do we all talk to each other? Get the financing to flow into the development of these new, innovative, sustainable, and high performing products that biology enables.

[01:32:24] Speaker: I think that's the perfect way to end this episode of the Grow Everything Podcast.

[01:32:29] GE - Phil Morle Ep.149 Commentary - Erum: Yes. So like, subscribe, be our friends. I mean, right to us. We were so happy to see so many people at Climate Week at the Buy Fab Fair and more events to come, more episodes to be had. Thank you so much for tuning in to the pod. I.