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Investment Climate Podcast
On spinning Plant Cell IP out of the university and the B2C trap - Mick Riley, Forever Harvest
00:29:55
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- [00:00]
A
The amount of work that goes into getting these pieces of IP ready in research institutes before it even reaches commercialization stage. There's huge amounts of blue skies research going on all the time. There's so much good IP here and there's so many researchers who are keen to spin out with it. A lot of them aren't really keen to take on that CEO role. They're happy to take on CSO role. So there is, I think there is a big gap here for CEOs in waiting. Hello, my name is Mick Riley. I'm the co founder and CEO of Forever Harvest. So we're creating a bio orchard of fruits and nuts which we're looking to grow without the tree. We have recently in February raised our $1.2 million pre seed round and we're a spin out out of the Bioeconomy Science Institute, which is a New Zealand public research organization.
- [00:46]
B
Okay, amazing. Well, I'm really excited to have this conversation. For those who should just know that Mick and I are both in the plant cell culture space. So this is going to be a very nerdy discussion. If you're into plants, if you're into cel you to raising money, you're going to love this discussion. Nick. Now it sounds like you guys are a spin out. So how did you guys find your lead investor in this round?
- [01:07]
A
Yeah, so as I mentioned, I'm from the Bioeconomy Science Institute previously and they have a really good relationship with the deep tech incubators in New Zealand, specifically Sprout. There's a program called Germinate where Sprout come and they kind of assess really, really early stage science. So just like when it's just an idea almost even. So from that get go we begin the conversations of commercialization. This one, Luckily I came in once the research was reasonably far along. I also previously knew Sprout. So it was. Yeah, once they came on board, it was really a match from there.
- [01:40]
B
So just to clarify, this is actually Research has already been developing in the university for a period of time and it was a pretty mature trl. Like, you know, was there quite a lot of confidence in the tech once Sprout and the institute decided to make the investment?
- [01:55]
A
Yeah, there was. So when it was research, it was this program essentially called Food by Design. They were trying to build a entire piece of fruit. So can we grow a piece of fruit without the tree? I came in, Jan Grant, the co founder, came into the office one day and said, you know, I've grown these cells. I'd like to make, you know, what do I do with them essentially? And that was a part, that was one aspect of the research program which was it was going really well, like all being ticks all round. So the technology was we had the cells, but no commercial lens had really been put on it. So there was no focus on tasting it, no focus on actually what does the industry want. It was just, we have cells, we've done it successfully, we've done it for a huge number of fruit. What's next?
- [02:35]
B
Okay, that's. So that's super fascinating. One of the things that kind of comes up when you talk about technology that comes to university. Can you talk through the way of how you got the IP out of the university? Anything you can share with us in terms of the information, if something comes out of university that you, sometimes you could have some challenges around, you know, who owns ip? Does a company own it? Is there a royalty play? And a lot of deals make it kind of uninvestable. Talk us through about the IP and how you were able to get ownership of it.
- [03:03]
A
Yep. So in terms of IPs, no. First of all, there's currently there was no patent, so there was no kind of tangible thing we could just transfer over. What there was, was things like trade secrets and protocols. So how we actually ended up doing the license deal was we put all relevant information in a kind of a file, for lack of a better word, and then that was what was transferred over. So it's currently being licensed to us and on the next round it's going to be assigned to us permanently from the research institute.
- [03:33]
B
Okay, so is there a fee that you have to pay right away or is it just, hey, if you guys can raise this milestone, then, you know, this is how much it's going to cost us for you guys to buy that file.
- [03:42]
A
So yeah, so they took equity. So in terms for the ip, they have an equity stake in the company.
- [03:49]
B
Okay, so one of the things I'd love to ask is if you were going to quantify the amount of money that was spent to develop that, that IP or that trade secret. Right. Over X amount of years, all, you know, the laboratory, the people, the, you know, all of that, like, can you give a number to that? Again, it doesn't have to be perfect, but I think there's a point that I want our, our listeners to understand here. What would you say is that number approximately?
- [04:15]
A
So for context, I do not know the exact number, but I know you're getting at and it's high, high millions, like you know, probably 7, 8 million by the time there's all the researchers and all the overheads and all the research equipment. It's incredibly high the amount of work that goes into getting these pieces of IP ready and research institutes before it even reaches commercialization stage. There's huge amounts of blue skies research going on all the time.
- [04:39]
B
Yeah. So I think this is probably one of the big gems I want to give to, to our, to our listeners, which is I was actually this little story time for a second. I was an advisor to IndieBio and I met the CEO of NotCo, which is a really incredible company at this stage, quite a significant powerhouse. And the founder was a totally commercial founder. Right. And what he did is he just went from university to university in Chile and like, hey, just let me know what you have. And he just went from meeting to meeting with university labs and he says, okay, I like this one, so I'm going to just commercialize this one. So if you're an entrepreneur like myself or something, hey, you have no scientific knowledge or so, but you think you can actually build businesses and sometimes you just go to like knock on your local university's door and say, hey, you know what, I think you might have some like Dusty IP sitting around that you've put in like $10 million of public funding. How about I just borrow that from you and I commercialize it?
- [05:30]
A
Yes, I absolutely agree. There's so many, there's so much good IP here and there's so many researchers who are keen to spin out with it. A lot of them aren't really keen to take on that CEO role. They're happy to take on CSO role. So there is, I think there is a big gap here for CEOs in waiting. Maybe it's working with VCs in New Zealand to kind of bridge that gap.
- [05:50]
B
Yeah, I love that. And again, in an environment like this, when money is extremely tight, anything that helps you get $10 million potentially for free of R and D, it's probably a valuable thing for somebody to mention. Awesome. So now we're going to nerd out a little bit here, which is product selection is really key, right. To plan cell, I think any company. But when I hear, by the way, would you use these bioharvest, is that what they. Bio orchard.
- [06:15]
A
Bio orchard. Bio orchard.
- [06:17]
B
I love that, I love that. That's awesome. So. So when I think bio origin, I think a nut. I can't imagine anything cheaper than a nut, right? So like, why the hell do I need plant cell culture to make nuts? Why is that something that's necessary? That can't be the thing. There's no way that you're using biology to grow academia nuts in New Zealand. That cannot be the business case for this technology. Right? Or am I missing something? So when I'm thinking about what your technology is building, there's no way you guys are growing a nut through this plant cell culture. Right? Nature is pretty good at growing nuts. So why do we need a plant cell culture solution to grow a nut?
- [06:59]
A
Yes. Yeah. So the kind of two angles I guess to it, there's the non commercial side of it all. So you know, like environmental factors. So it takes 4 liters of water to grow on almond, for example. So there's all these reasons why you would want to do it for non commercial factors to size, et cetera. If you're though looking at purity from a commercial point of view, you're right. Like we're competing with the bulkest of commodities, you know, like almonds essentially. And nature already does them perfectly. Like piece of fruit is just perfect. So what we're looking to do is kind of we can build new products essentially so we can design, we can tailor the piece of the nut, we can edit kind of what the characteristics of the nuts are so we can make high value things which you can't really create with nature. So like I was talking to a company today, for example, who was talking about supplementing products with vitamin K2. Perhaps, supposedly it's illegal and you can't do it. So we were talking about, can we design a, you know, a nut which is naturally high in vitamin K2 so then they can have, you know, this finished product. They don't need to fortify their ingredients of high protein. So yeah, we're really targeting those high value nature can't readily create.
- [08:13]
B
Okay, yeah, that, that makes perfect sense. So you know, it's almost, you know, I tell individuals when they ask like, well, what's plant cell culture? It's basically accelerating breeding. Right? That's what you're doing. You're, you're accelerating breeding for a certain type of variety. Right. I think it's a good way of understanding plant cell culture. So assuming that the nut has some small expression of that, say K12 or, or some protein. Okay, well let's see if we can actually increase it and grow it for that specific var or use, you know, trans genetics like crispr, to actually, you know, bring in something foreign to the nut and then grow it inside another, just becomes like the factory. That's the womb for that, for that valuable ingredient. So, but to our listeners, your, your, your business model is not to grow nuts. Your, your business model is to grow high value nut variety. Let's just say that that would be included into say, milk or into a different variation.
- [09:08]
A
Yes, yes, totally with no way trying to just replace a nut. That would be feasibly and kind of. Maybe, maybe not morally, but technically. But no, we're creating brand new products, as you say.
- [09:22]
B
All right, so then take us through the fundraising process itself. Was there already like an understanding who your investors are going to be or. You actually had to have a lot of conversations with investor base in New Zealand and beyond and you know, how long was the process taking? Did you already know who they're going to be? The investor is in the beginning? Or is there something really surprising to you who was actually going to write that check for you?
- [09:42]
A
Yeah, so as mentioned, in New Zealand we have the, what's known as the deep tech incubators. So there's four of them in New Zealand and those are the companies that really invest in the incredibly early life ideas, the high risk kind of big ideas. I spoke to almost every mess in New Zealand, almost, you know, figure misses in New Zealand. They all kind of have similar feedback that it's very early. Like what is, you know, what, what is this essentially where the deep tech incubators really are great is they come in and they're, they're happy to invest in that stage, but also to develop and understand what the business is with you. Because a lot of the times these are just like stray pieces of IP that have come out of a, of a project. But yeah, so from there we engaged with, yeah, the deep tech incubators and we had to make the decision ultimately what was one of the big, what was one of the big motivating factors was Sandhya. Sandhya Sriyam is the CEO of Spray Agritech. She has done a huge amount of work in the space. She's done startups in the cultivated meat space and kind of scaled them internationally. And I think just having her on board, she was a huge proponent of it and she could see what it could become in having her on board, I think really to get out and kind of become a real thing.
- [10:56]
B
Yeah, well, yeah, Sandy is awesome. We had a recent, you know, a recent podcast that we, we did with her, highly recommend it. She's really, really brilliant. You know, when you're talking about this investment being really, really early, are there milestones you have to sell for the next 12 months? Because yeah, 1.2. Even New Zealand, where I'm sure like all the sheep and the cow and milk is free. Right. But you know, 1.2 is going to last you, gosh, you know, 14 months probably. Right. So were there really, you have to commit to over the next say 14 months for you to know. Okay, now we think we're going to be able to reach the next round of funding. And in addition to that, is your expectation that the next round of funding is going to come from New Zealand or is it going to be international?
- [11:40]
A
Yeah, so there's definitely clear milestones. We currently see ourselves at that kind of lab scale and we need to get to the kind of low pilot level essentially. That's largely. So a lot of the work is around scale. A lot of the milestones are around reaching certain scales and developing certain cell lines. Technical milestones we continue to develop like our commercial milestones in terms of the partnerships we need to make and how we engage with those people in terms of future rounds. We do I guess ultimately need to go internationally potentially because this is a global. It only works on a global scale, this type of business. So we are looking really for those international investors, not huge amounts of money in New Zealand for like heavy capex, high risk entities. So yeah, I think we do need to go to these other countries that already have some of this infrastructure and some of these VCs that have connections into that infrastructure to really scale. Of course, if there are people in New Zealand who see this as brilliant, we would never say no.
- [12:50]
B
And is there a pathway towards non dilutive path as well in New Zealand? Meaning are there some things that you think you can unlock from a grant standpoint as well? That's like a very simple pathway there that you know, I can lock a million, two million just through the non dilutive parts.
- [13:03]
A
Yeah, there definitely is funding there. 100% is funding we can unlock. But I guess for non dilutive funding at this stage we're really aiming for strategic partnerships with corporations rather than government grants.
- [13:15]
B
Yeah. So okay, so basically getting a corporate on board. So what does a commercial relationship look like at this stage when it's so early? Like can you take us through what you're actually. Because you know, you're the CEO, you're the good looking guy who knows how to paint the vision and build the relationships. You know, you're not in the lab working. Right. That's not what's happening. I'm guessing you're not basically doing cell suspension right now. That's not what's going on at the moment. Mix life on nine o' clock in the morning on a Monday. What does your day look like right now? From a. What's success on your side as a CEO of a as deep tech precede, what does strategic partnership look like? What kind of conversations are you having?
- [13:52]
A
Yeah, I guess from more conversations we're really wanting to have is conversations with people who want to take this to market. We speak, I speak to pretty much companies that are fully throughout the supply chain. So from people who are like pack houses or not pack houses, but like, you know, they're milling or they're doing very, very preliminary processing or sorting right through to kind of people who are making finished products. One of the big things we're trying to understand now is where we fit in the value chain. And one of the ways we're trying to do that is by gauging from all these conversations how enthusiastic they are and their motivations for adopting it. So ultimately what we want is a partnership where we can kind of iteratively develop products and understand what a product is and then take that to market with that company. So it's very, as I'm sure you know, it's so wide, what we're currently dealing with. We can produce fruit is an impossible question to ask. So understanding what fruit and why is the main thing really we're trying to and how we take this market are the main things we're trying to do with these kind of mini industry calls.
- [15:02]
B
What I find though, when you're doing a really early stage play, like, you know, or you're in a pre seed, when you're talking to some of the big boys, they're like, gosh, get back to me when it's real. Like, come back to me when you have samples. Right? Like, you know, right now this is not reality. I have to hit a quarterly goal, right? Like I, I have a KPI that I'm working on, right? So for them to spend time in the precede stage of plan. So like where, where's the motivations? How are you dealing with that? Objection from people of like, come back to me later. Like, why am I talking to you right now? What kind of value can you guys offer me today? Because you guys are way so early.
- [15:37]
A
Yeah, so we, while we are on pre seed, we're actually in terms of technical and kind of samples and science right at the front. So we have, we have samples available so we can have, we can produce samples on demand. Really. It takes a few months to build up stocks, but we can supply those to the corporates. They really like it because it, well obviously it makes it real for them. We're not just talking about ideas. And then so we've had people who have done nutrient assessments who have tried incorporating it into foods, into various drinks. So I think that makes it real for them. And it's also all food safe currently anyway so we're, you know, we're eating it, it's which I think in their mind takes it from an idea to a well.
- [16:18]
B
Oh that's exciting. Actually this is really great for our listeners to understand. So let's dig, dig it a little deeper there. Cause that's fascinating. What is the sample? Right. So when that was a California culture, right. We would send a sample of like a cocoa powder right now here you go, there's a cocoa powder. All right, great. So you can put it, you know, you can mix it with cocoa butter and then you can taste chocolate and see how it lines up to your current stack of products. Right. So what is a sample that, that Mick is sending. Quick word from our sponsor FTW. Current fundraisers are taking 12 to 18 months. Runways are getting shorter and founders are raising during one of the most difficult fundraising environments in history. They need more than a database, they need a boot camp. FTW plus is the digital boot camp for agrifort founders who are actively raising the most in accurate investor database in the space pitchbook at 1% of the price tiered warm introductions already built in and complimentary one on one office hours. Experts in deck design said the due diligence regulatory and here's what FTW plus is not a broker taking a retainer and a cut of your raise. No percentage, no hidden fees. This is a membership community of venture backed founders who are in the exact same trenches as you are. They back it with a guarantee. They work with you until you book three meetings with tier one investors. Because in this market you don't have time to waste on something that doesn't deliver. Go to foodtechweekly.com and join DW.
- [17:50]
A
Yes, so there's two kind of ways where the simulink samples. One is just a frozen or chilled version of the product. So the product for. For reference those might not. It's kind of almost like a maybe like a. I dare use the expression but some sort of like whitish sand almost. So yes, that's one of the ways we're sending in. We're just freezing and sending it to them. But some of the further away partners are wanting it freeze dried. So we're Milling it, freeze drying it and sending that off so they can do just nutrient assistance from there.
- [18:20]
B
You know, I think feel like for nuts, people can relate to it really well because it's almost like a flower, right? I mean, that's kind of what I would. You know, that slurry that you, you dry, it's basically a powder, so it's a flower. Right? You're almost creating that, you know. And are there other things about that product that were they being tested for? Because, you know, because it sounds like you're still in development phase of what the product will be. Are they just, is it comparable to like an animal almond flower or is it something else that, you know, that the samples are looking like?
- [18:49]
A
So we, so one of the partners we sent off to that they did two things, as I mentioned, there's a nutrient analysis and they, they gave us great results. So like it's high in, I guess I can say it's high in protein and low in, you know, certain other things. And then what they wanted to do was see how incorporated into different kinds of nut milks. So they actually did pilot runs for us of using our product because essentially one almond milk, for example, is actually fractionally very low almond. It's mostly water. So we could make quite a large batch of it which they could do further tastings and assessments on.
- [19:29]
B
Wow. Oh, that's awesome. So first of all, I think this is really a huge milestone. I mean, if you can actually give an active sample to a corporate and then they put into drinks and they see, well, how does it taste? Right? Because I'm guessing, would it be true that your product also has no taste either? Would that be accurate?
- [19:48]
A
No, it does have taste. So we tasted them. That was one of the first kind of commercial pushes. Everyone was saying was, you taste this thing. So we tried to focus really early on. We did taste it. They all, we tasted five different fruits in that first tasting. They all tasted, they all had the flavor of the fruit. They weren't, it wasn't like eating full flavored peach, but you could definitely smell the peach and you could taste, wow, this is a peach. Some of them were not great. Like I think blueberry was super mild. But largely it was like almond was actually quite nice. I was like, oh, that's actually kind of.
- [20:22]
B
Yeah. So essentially we're going to nerd off for a second. It's actually knocking out the taste profile is actually one of the, I see advantages of plant cell. Like when we think about it, like, hey, let's put broccoli in like, I don't want to taste broccoli. I just wanted the benefits of broccoli. So it's funny, it's actually great that you have the, the flavor profiles in some of these as well. So that's really quite interesting.
- [20:43]
A
Yeah. And as you say, so the Bloomberry not having any flow profile, as you've just said, people were quite interested in that. I realized we can incorporate this and it doesn't attain to anything interesting all around.
- [20:55]
B
Anything that surprised you about the fundraising process, anything that you say, like you would say, hey, that was a mistake that I did. You know that looking back at it, I think I would have done this maybe a little differently.
- [21:05]
A
Well, the biggest mistake we made was trying to go B2C off the bat, which was just no way that ever would have worked. And we spent a lot of time like kind of getting really stuck in the weeds. Like, do we need cold chain logistics? What does the consumer want to see without really realizing that we haven't actually. Well, we did realize, but that we haven't actually made a product. Consumers aren't going to be accepting of this product just on a shelf. There needs to be a lead in kind of throne industry, essentially. So that was. We were doing that quite a long time, like probably six months. Looking at a B2C model before. Once again, yes. Spratt came in and went, Samvia says, way to go.
- [21:49]
B
Let's. Let's just give a space to that. I understand why you probably thought of that. Right. It's because you need to do customer education. Right. You want to make sure that, you know, you own your own fate in terms of the sales process. Right. You know, there is an attraction to go B2C because you can directly, you know, you can educate the customer rather than the corpor corporate. Right. So it just from where you are from a. From a technological standpoint, it just didn't make any sense. Also, probably the investment it would take to bring the product to market, Right?
- [22:16]
A
Yes. Yeah. Well, huge investment and regulations kind of through the roof. You're going back deals if you have the corporates on board, kind of a lot of those regulations can be somewhat worked on together rather than just you as a startup of affordable.
- [22:33]
B
Yeah. So talk us. Actually that leads us straight into the kind of next question was regulatory. Right. So how do you see regulatory? This is going to be a novel food. What's your. What's your thought process around how long this might take? Right. Obviously you have to do production runs and you know, you guys still wait but you know, are you concerned about regulatory for your technology or not really?
- [22:51]
A
Yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah, I'm concerned with it from a amount of paperwork point of view. I, I'm not concerned with it from a. Is it going to ever be approved point of view. I think it's. So we've had conversations with regulators, with the Singapore based ones and Australia, New Zealand regulators. They give us feedback that pretty much when you send them a sample before they can make special decisions. Send them a finished product. Sorry. Before they make special decisions. But the feedback is that it can just be considered natural. So watches I'm the surprising. But I guess it makes sense if you think about it because it is just fruit cells. It's just fruit cells and it's just the nutrients the fruit cells get. It's just done in a different way
- [23:36]
B
and just to add to again to go a little nerdy. There's no transgenetics happening here. Right. You're not introducing something foreign to the. You're just using external factors to either hormones or different pressure on the cells to create desired choice of products. Okay.
- [23:53]
A
Yeah, yeah. Which is upregulating existing pathways essentially. So we're adding more precursor so it pumps out more of the finished product.
- [24:01]
B
Yeah. So from a regulatory standpoint, it's more about, you know, the cost of going through the process rather than. And also getting to the size of the samples you need to get to.
- [24:08]
A
Yeah, it's, it's definitely a consideration. My immediate concern is kind of mastering the regulatory pathway as we go. I mean there's just in conversations we've started and we have, we understand we do have to go through it, but that's kind of when we're still at one later stage. This has been a immediate focus of mine. Yeah.
- [24:30]
B
It says so is the vision in five years that's essentially going to be a product on the shelf. That's going to be an enriched almond milk with high, higher degree of protein than you currently find. Now would that be a good application of if your technology succeeded commercially? That's what it would look like.
- [24:47]
A
Yeah. If it succeeds, when it succeeds commercially, it'll be, it will be kind of incorporated into products on shelves. We'll have a huge range of different fruits and nuts that we're using with. Yeah. As I, as I mentioned with the people, whether it's advertised on the package, it's a different question. I guess there's moral arguments both ways or necessity arguments.
- [25:08]
B
Amazing. And lastly, you know, is there something you guys did right. About your fundraise like you say, yeah, that was the right move. Obviously sounds like partnering with the Deep Tech accelerator was the right decision for you guys. But you know, if you lay down, this is, you know, not B2C just didn't make sense. Deep Tech and accelerator like Sprout was a good position. Anything you say, like, hey, that was a turning point for us as a business that really, you know, unlocked this
- [25:33]
A
cash, I think taking advantage of what we had. So we had a huge breadth of fruit which we'd successfully done and I think positioning ourselves not as a, like some of the competitors do, as a coffee company or a cocoa company, but rather as a kind of a platform technology where we're building up the systems and we've shown we have the expertise and the know how to be able to develop different fruits and develop, you know, different UP regulations and different products. I think positioning ourselves as that platform technology makes it much more palatable to all the VCs really we talking to. And I kind of fundamentally also just agree with the approach that we don't actually science. A lot of the science which is happening so around scale up and biopreservation is agnostic to the actual type of fruit we choose. So why would we. I know focus is always meant to be on the startup lingo, but yeah, I feel like offering ourselves as a platform just makes more sense and people seem to agree.
- [26:34]
B
Yeah, that makes sense. But with that being said, you know, you see you have these 20 product types in end. Your cash can only allow you to focus on one or two, let's say. So how did you just choose the one or two? Because if you have 20, which, let's say that's a, that's a value. But how did you make the decision? And what can our founders, founders or VCs learn from how you actually go about making decision? Which one is the hero product?
- [26:57]
A
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So currently we are, we're keeping all these cell culture light and we, we need to get them down and we need to get them to cryopreservation. In terms of how we are selecting them, kind of there's two different stories of how this happened. So the first is, so we have two products we're focusing on focusing on almond and citrus. For our initial two, almond was very much kind of for lack of vegetarian science push. So we had almond and we talked to companies and they were excited by almond and they wanted to, they were really keen for us to send them samples and to progress that relationship. So we had that existing land that's the one we focus a lot of scale on. The other thing we did though was more citrus which came purely from market pulp. So we talked to so many companies and resoundingly everyone was just talking about citrus flavor and maybe it was kind of the hot thing at the time was around citrus greening and the prices have just skyrocketed. So that one we really settled on through our market pool and that's how we got to our plan too.
- [27:56]
B
Okay, Amazing Mike, this has been an awesome conversation for our listeners. How can they give back to what you shared with us, you know, what you're focused on, how can we support you?
- [28:06]
A
Yeah, well I guess the main kind of things we're after threefold strategic investors have kind of always what we need. So not just money but people that are connected. And as I mentioned earlier into the scale up or the food networks and the food producer networks, we are also looking for partnerships from those like customers and partnerships who are interested in the technology and can see a definite use case in their business. We'd love to come develop products with you. And then I guess jars networks as well. If you're in the food manufacturing space again, you see maybe this isn't directly your user but someone in your network. You can see advantages from this. We'd love to just talk to really anyone in the supply chain of food, which is a big ask.
- [28:50]
B
Amazing Mike. Well, thank you so much. I learned personal a lot from this conversation and congratulations again. It's a big milestone to reach. We're excited to have you back in the podcast in the year. That's the nice things of podcast. You expect everybody to come back a year later. So it's easy. Thanks Mike.
- [29:06]
A
Thank you.
- [29:06]
B
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