← James Reed: all about business
James Reed: all about business
73. No cows here: Could your pint become your next leather wallet? | TJ Mitchell
00:46:59
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business management and leadership. Every episode I sit down with different guests who bootstrapped companies, masterminded investment models or built a business empire. They're leaders in their field and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture. Today on All About Business, I'm joined by Dr. Edward Mitchell, co founder and chief technology officer of Arda Biomaterials, a startup developing animal and plastic free leather alternatives made from waste grain produced by brewers and distillers. In this episode, we discuss the journey from scientist to entrepreneur, the challenges of building a deep taste X startup, and the potential for new materials to transform the way products are made. Today on All About Business, I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Edward Mitchell, otherwise known as TJ Mitchell. He's the founder, or I should say co founder and chief technology officer of Arda Biomaterials. This is a London based biomaterials startup that creates animal free and plastic free leather alternatives, some of which are in front of you here on our table. Tj, you've done this. I think this is a wonderful story. I don't want to say too much in the introduction because I'd like you to explain why you've gone along the road you have, and why you make the products in the way you do. But let's begin with why tj?
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B
Yeah, it's a good question. Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me here. Yeah. TJ is a weird one. It's my dad's side of the family, still call me Edward, but pretty much everyone else calls me tj. And it's when I was born, my parents separated and I grew up with my mum and my mum's side of the family are all Scottish and my Scottish granddad refused to have a grandchild by the name of Edward because it's so English.
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A
So I. Edward Hammer of the Scots.
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B
Exactly.
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A
The King.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So no one's called Edward in Scotland?
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B
No. Well, there must be. There must be.
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A
But I didn't know that. So TJ was the preference.
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B
Yeah. So short for Edward is Teddy. So I had to grow up as Teddy Joe, Joseph being my middle name. And Teddy Joe, not a name you want to be called at school. You get picked on for being called Teddy so quickly became tj.
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A
So TJ was a survival strategy in Scotland at the time.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Well, unfortunately it paid off.
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B
Yeah.
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A
It brings you here today.
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B
I didn't grow up in Scotland. I'm actually from Cheshire, Warrington. So there's different levels to it. Yeah.
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A
If you visited your grandparents at least.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So. Well, I'd like to start by exploring the beginnings of Arda. You know, you have a background in chemistry research. What led you to explore the idea of turning waste grain from brewing, which is, I believe, what you do, and, and distilling waste grain into new materials. How did you end up doing that?
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B
Yeah, it's. There's so much serendipity across the whole journey to get here. I think the first thing is my PhD research was nothing to do with this. I was actually developing sensors for long term radioactive waste storage and it went fairly well. We patented the technology. We were looking at potentially startup space, but it wasn't for me really. Four years of intense lab based research on that. I just wanted to get away from it. And the question was, what would I do after I finished my PhD? And I'd seen so many of my peers struggle to really find themselves with a stable position in academia. I also didn't really want to be in a lab too much longer. I looked at some friends who'd gone into consulting and their careers on paper were great, but they were looking for their next move in their career. They were actually quite fed up of consulting. So I looked around and looked for different opportunities and I saw this program called Entrepreneurs First. So I'm not sure whether you're familiar with the program.
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A
I'm aware of it, but tell us what it is.
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B
Yeah, so there's, there's quite a few of these programs. There's Zynk, there's antler, there's carbon 13, there's entrepreneurs first. And essentially it's kind of like Love island meets Dragon's Den. They bring in maybe 80 people. Half the people are commercial types, half the people are technical types. And you have to meet and match up to find a business partner. And if you don't find someone, you get kicked off the program. And if you do, you have an opportunity to pitch for investment. And so it's for those who don't necessarily have an idea already, but you go in potentially wanting to start your entrepreneurship journey and find a co founder. And it was during this program that essentially we invented the technology behind what we're doing.
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A
So hang on, so you went to an event organized by Entrepreneurs First.
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B
So it's.
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A
So you met your business partner or co founder at that event?
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B
Yeah. So it's a six.
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A
How did that happen?
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B
Six month program. So you apply to it. And everyone has to quit their jobs. So you've got your sort of your CEO types joining. So they're the more commercial side, the 40 commercial people, bankers, private equity consultants, people from various industries quit their jobs. They have to quit their job. That's part of the deal. You get paid to be part of the program. Right. It's not much, but coming from a PhD, it was more than a PhD. Right.
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A
But it's probably not more than being a consultant.
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B
Oh, it's definitely not. It's. It's barely anything really.
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A
Okay. So show some commitment that people do this.
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B
Yeah, you've really got to commit to it because they wouldn't want to back anyone who wasn't fully committed to their journey and to really being a co founder. The other half of the people are mostly tech types, so you mostly get your software developers, but a few PhD students don't go through. So you get into this program, they have this sort of kickoff weekend which is like a freshers week at university where everyone's trying to sell themselves. You sit around and you have these speed dating sessions where you chat to everyone. And the people in the program, some of them are incredibly impressive. There was one chap in our program who was shortlisted to be part of One Direction but turned it down. And he had had a whole sort of artistic career after that. There was people who'd sold their own startups already and who were looking for a new co founder and a whole new opportunity. And going into this world, it was incredibly intimidating. And I'd been essentially in a lab for four years and everyone kind of had their angles and who they wanted to be and I was trying to sell myself.
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A
But what were you trying to sell yourself as?
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B
Well, I'd finished a PhD on sensing for long term radioactive waste, so I was kind of pitching that as my angle. Really. I should have just been pitching kind of chemistry and industrial and sustainability, the things I really care about. But it was when I met my co founder as part of the program that we kind of really. The gears started to kick into action.
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A
So who's your co founder?
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B
So his name's Brett Cotton, he's from New Jersey in the States and he has a really interesting story. So he always wanted to be in like biotech industry and he did his undergraduate in biochemistry, but he had a mentor who said, look, you could go straight into a master's, you could go straight into the career. Into a career. Or you could take a year out whilst you're young and do something you're really interested in. So he took a year out and he interviewed biotech founders from across the world and collated those interviews into a book and published a book. And by doing so he built an incredible network, learned so much and then learned about new opportunities. And from that he went to do a master's in Cambridge in the UK in Biotech Enterprise, a course he likens to an MBA for biotech people who don't really want to go full into business, but want to keep their foot still in the scientific side. And after that he got involved with several startups, doing business development, working with VCs and due diligence. But his passion was to start his own company and he actually applied to entrepreneur first a few times before he got in and then he got in and it's when I met him he was so familiar with all these different startups, all these crazy ideas that were happening more in the synthetic biology side. So the kind of science where you get cells to create things, lab grown meats, fermentation type processes, that realm. And when I first met him, he would tell me about all these different startups and I'd say to him, look, I'm not a biologist, I'm a chemist. And chemistry is the science of industry. And it's often chemistry is quite in the background even though it powers so much for this world. People think physics and big questions and big problems, people think biology and medicine, but the chemistry is, there's still so much innovation there.
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A
This Earth Day, your gift can make double the difference. From the 22nd to the 29th of April, through biggive.org donations to environmental charities will be doubled. Earth Rays gives you the power to turn your generosity into real lasting impact. Together we can protect wildlife, restore habitats and help nature thrive. Visit biggive.org between the 22nd and 29th April. Choose a cause close to your heart and make double the difference. Thank you for supporting Earth Race. So you started this conversation, this dance with your co founder and you, you obviously came to a view that this was a good opportunity to try.
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B
Yeah.
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A
How did that happen? I mean, what. Yeah, so he was a biochemist or.
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B
Yeah, so not really a scientist, understood that world and focused on. So he's the CEO, I'm cto. He was, he was proposing all these different ideas and I had to say, I'm chemist. So what could we work on? And valorization, the transformation of waste was something at the forefront that we think, oh, we could work on that.
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A
That's what valorization means. Yeah, that's A new word for me. Transformation of waste. Valorization.
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B
Yeah, it's increasing the value of something, I guess that's kind of the fundamental.
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A
Okay, that's interesting.
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B
And we were looking at lots of different ideas and part of the Entrepreneur first program is you have two months to find a business partner to settle down with and say, that's who I'm working with. And if you don't have someone, you get kicked off. So there is this kind of. There's a lot of courting going on. People are making up, people are breaking up. You have to announce every makeup and breakup on the Slack Channel. So at the start, everyone's like, oh, yeah, they were so great to work with. By the end of it, no one is talking about, like, people are just like scrambling and getting.
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A
Very entertaining.
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B
It is. It would be good for tv. Stressful. I did have some people after me.
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A
Lots of bus stops.
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B
Yeah, Brett. Brett.
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A
But eventually you found a good match.
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B
Yeah. So we partnered together and initially we actually. So this kind of irony to Entrepreneur first they say, like, oh, we're bringing in people who are outside the box and yet you get there and they try and put you in their box. So we actually sneakily didn't announce all of our pair ups at the start. We saw this pitch competition and we scrambled together a startup idea and we pitched for the competition wasn't so good or we didn't win. But what we discovered is we were very good at working together and we decided at that point we would stick together. And Entrepreneur first is constantly monitoring you because a lot of it is investing in the founders rather than the idea. And we were kind of trying to show how hustly we were as well, because if they don't think you're moving quick enough, they force you to break up. And that causes a lot of tension. And we actually broke into this conference to just try and network and speak to people and learn as much. And so we chatted to this guy who said, oh, you're in Bermondsey in South London, which is where I coincidentally lived. I just moved down to London and it's where Brett lived. And it just so happened to be where Entrepreneur first was. But more important than that, it just so happened to be where the famous Bermondsey Beer Mile is. There's some something like, for those who
- [11:53]
A
don't know, describe it.
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B
Yeah, like 10 to 20 microbreweries tap rooms under the arches, under the railway for about a mile in Bermondsey Stag dos. Love it. Groups of pals Love it.
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A
It's Bermondsey Beer Mile, everyone.
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B
And this guy said, go chat to the brewers, see what they're up to. So this was in May 2022, and we went along, it was a sunny day, chat to the brewers, good lads. They gave us some free beer and they told us one of the biggest issues they face is actually getting rid of their waste. These inner city brewers pay to get rid of their waste stream. So I've got some here.
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A
And so what is that you just shook? Shake it near your microphone so people can hear it. So that's a little. You've got a jar of something. What is that?
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B
So breweries and whiskey distillers, they take malted barley extract, the sugar, and brewers ferment that into beer and distillers ferment and then distill into whiskey or other spirit alcohols. And by doing this, they're essentially taking maltepali, extracting the sugar, but leaving behind fibers and the protein. And so when we first looked into this, we thought, oh, my gosh, this is a remarkable resource that people are paying to get rid of what is in there, about 25% protein. So we were like, oh, this is brilliant. We found a waste stream that is really undervalued. And protein four years ago was top of the market. Plant based meats, plant based milkshake. This is easy. They need a new protein source for kind of these, for vegan based products.
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A
So that was where you first thought
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B
you would go, yeah. So we spent about a month on this easy extraction chemistry, then we just found a way to retail it. And we got to meetings with fuel being like, oh, we have this new product on the market. But we spoke to AB and Bev. So the likes who own Budweiser, Stella Artois, big brewer, huge world's biggest breweries, and they said, look, you could do this. We've seen other entrepreneurs try this. They'd actually backed 110 million to doing just this in a North American facility. And they said, look, unless you're at huge scale, economics don't really work out. Waste into food is a regulation minefield and it doesn't taste that good. There's kind of variability in the feedstock as well that can knock on, have knock on implications. These plant based milks are so highly engineered that they want a very consistent protein feedstock. So at this point we were back to the drawing board and entrepreneur first was putting the pressure on us being like, if you haven't got ideas, break up and find someone else. But we were thinking like food, protein based food. It's just a material that we eat. What protein based materials are there? And there's fur, there's silk, there's wool, there's feathers and there's leather.
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A
Say that again. That's interesting. They're all protein based materials.
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B
Yeah. Fur, silk, wool, feathers and leather. All protein based materials, all animal derived. And in the modern day we have lots of different alternatives, but everything's pretty much plastic derived as an alternative. And it just so happened to be that in my field of chemistry, there's about 15 years of work coming out of Cambridge where they're taking plant based proteins like pea proteins and manipulating them to mimic collagen. Right. Collagen being the protein that makes up leather. So having looked at this research, it's like, oh my gosh, like we have a huge protein source that's high quality, so low value. Could we not just take that and create a material out of it? And the materials that are shown up in the research, they're actually using these collagen like structures to, to replace plastics. And when we looked into the leather space, there were sort of two main streams of products that were being presented. You have leather and you have plastic leather. And the alternatives were either these synthetic biology approaches, lab grown leather, we're still not looking at lab grown meat just yet. It's too expensive. Regulatory hurdles. And then the other, there's things like mycelium leather, mushroom grown, interleaver, inherently a batch based process, not very suitable for a commodity product like leather that needs to be everywhere. And then there's things like, well, there's a couple waves of the last two decades, we've seen some products come to the market that are a step towards sustainability. Things like apple leather, cactus leather, variety of different organic substances just ground up into a paste or into a powder and mixed with plastic. So these products are neither biodegradable or recyclable and sometimes quite, very much deemed as greenwashing. So Brett was like, Brett, at first he thought it was all solved because of these lab grown approaches. But the more we looked into it, leather was this huge market that hasn't really been disrupted. And we started to speak to fashion people and it was clear some of them still love leather. It's fine, it's a premium product. There is a sort of a very much an attachment to leather, but no one really wants to defend plastic leather. So if we could first knock out plastic leather, then we can start to move in on leather. So that's kind of how we came to the idea, right, and it started with prototypes in my kitchen.
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A
So how hard is it to make? I mean, you say you started with prototypes in the kitchen.
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B
Oh, they were. They were terrible. They were so crude. They looked like flapjacks.
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A
I mean, what you're displaying today looks from here like leather.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So you've gone on quite a journey, it would seem.
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B
It has.
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A
Looks absolutely like leather. And you say that this is used for upholstery or.
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B
Yeah, small leather goods is the main use case at the moment.
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A
So wallets and things like that.
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B
Yeah, handbags especially. We've done a couple of things like tennis racket holders. We did a nice whiskey holder as well when we were courting. A whiskey brand. That's kind of the market side of it, speaking to these companies. Like, leather is everywhere and the sustainability angle that we're proposing here is pretty huge. The no plastic side is very much wanted from the industry.
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A
So a lot of leather has plastic.
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B
Yeah. So if you imagine most fashion companies, they'll have their leather based product, but then they'll also have a plastic leather alternative. So whether that's a jacket or handbag.
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A
So they call it plastic leather.
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B
Yeah. Pleasure.
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A
But is that what it's called? Pleather.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But it's not real leather.
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B
No. Everyone hates it.
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A
Yeah, everyone hates it.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Yeah. I wouldn't want one of them.
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B
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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A
A pleather jacket.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So these, these are alternatives potentially. But is that. You're pretty early in your journey, aren't you? So.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You haven't made new jackets yet?
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B
Not new jackets yet. Card holders and bags so far? Yeah. We've got a long way to go. We're a team of 15. We have a site, a 5,000 square foot site in Bermondsey. So we're adjacent to the brewery suppliers.
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A
That's really good. So you developed this new business in Bermondsey by Beer Mile?
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B
Yes.
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A
Totally synergistic. Right. Next to your entrepreneur first.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Organization as well.
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B
Well, they've moved out now to Hoxton, so we are. We're left behind at Bermondsey. But it's a good site. It's. It's. There's a lot going on there.
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A
Yeah. So that's. That. That places you well. And do you deal with most of those breweries now?
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B
Yeah, so we mostly work with our main grain suppliers, a very cool brewery called Colonel Brewery. They're. They're kind of like the. The brewery that held out as Camden Town and Beavertown expanded more. They're the North London breweries and sold to some of the multinationals like AB and Bev and Heineken. Colonel dug their feet in and said, we're going to stay independent, so they're our main supplier. But we do have a really good relationship with the likes of Heineken and AB and Bev and we've been able to make materials out of their beer.
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A
So where are their breweries?
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B
Breweries. So AB and Bev, who brew Stella Artois and Budweiser and Corona, they have a massive brewery in south of Wales and in Lancashire. And so we actually went and collected some of their waste grains. So this card holder here, this is made out of Budweiser.
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A
So we've done the Budweiser card holder.
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B
Yeah. Wow.
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A
You'd have no idea, would you?
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B
So it's.
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A
Yeah, there's no real. You'd have no idea. It wasn't leather. Yeah, no, before this conversation. And it's not pleather either. Well, I can recommend your card holder to our listeners.
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B
Thank you.
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A
I mean, it's very nice.
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B
Yeah.
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A
What do you think? Team here like it? So, yes. Okay, that's above lines of card holder.
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B
And I think one of the key things is none of this would have ever really been a good idea had there not been the scalability. So the feedstock is so abundant. Humanity's appetite for beer and whiskey is just kind of.
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A
That's going to continue, isn't it?
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B
It's going to continue even if they're still.
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A
They've got a good source of supply.
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B
Yeah. Even if Gen Z are drinking less, they're still drinking. So there's going to be a huge supply of it, which means it's really low value. And the process to make our material is using off the shelf equipment. It's just using some smart chemistry. And actually the research for this was started in the 1920s. So prior to plastics and petrochemical inputs, a lot of research was going into sort of natural or semi natural products. Petrochemicals come along, plastics are discovered and we see humanity just replace everything with some sort of plastic.
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A
What a shame those other developments didn't get ahead. Yeah, we wouldn't have plastic everywhere.
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B
We wouldn't. But now we're waking up to the fact that we have these natural feedstocks. Essentially the nature is Lego building blocks and we're using modern understanding of chemistry to piece things together. Right.
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A
So TJ, you've said you have a PhD in chemistry, but you're now running a startup, you know, the cto, Chief Technology Officer that requires a Very different set of skills. Doesn't.
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B
Does.
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A
What's been the biggest shift in mindset, you know, from scientific research into entrepreneurship
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B
for you, T.J. i think it's just the amount I'm speaking to people. So during my PhD, of course, I'm speaking to all my peers and my supervisor. But now being on my feet and really trying to sell something, I think that's probably. And also being able to tell a story, I think is probably the most exciting.
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A
So the amount of speaking to me, that's interesting. So you talk a lot as an entrepreneur.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so you need to be a good communicator.
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B
Yeah, I think so.
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A
That's one of your key takeaways?
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B
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I would always say the key takeaway is just try and chat to everyone, really try and make friends with everyone because you just never know where any opportunity will be. So actually I was connected to you because I met a mutual friend, a friend's friend at a wedding. Right. And that's how it connected to him.
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A
You meet lots of interesting people at weddings. I find that too. That's very good advice. Be friendly to everyone. Yeah, I think the world would be better if everyone did that. So. So you, you've taken that approach. I mean, do you think talented scientists sometimes struggle in building companies or finding their way in building companies?
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B
Yeah, I think it's one of the biggest challenges. There are a lot of scientists with great ideas out there. And the academic environment, though, it is very good training for some parts of being an entrepreneur. I do think academia with grant writing, developing your own group, a personal endeavor that you have to really stick by and you have to believe in yourself their qualities that track from academia to entrepreneurship. I think one of the big issues is there is so many PhD students or postdocs who have ideas, but they just don't know where to start. There are tech offices opening up in universities, but often they're run by people who haven't actually been entrepreneurs themselves. Don't really know where to start. Sometimes a big issue in academia is the equity take from universities. Universities are getting better at this. Imperial at the moment is killing it right now.
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A
So what are they doing?
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B
They have reduced the equity take from Imperial for new spin outs and they've created several different hubs to get startups up and running.
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A
They're doing so spin outs from their community. So what do they take as equity for that?
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B
Oh, I don't know exactly, but I know so I did my PhD at Oxford and at the time they were taking somewhere between 30 and 50%. And that just hamstrings many startups.
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A
So if you wanted to start a business out of Oxford at that time as a scientist.
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B
Yeah.
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A
The university will require a big stake.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And that, that makes it harder to raise money.
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B
Yeah. It spooks investors immediately. Yeah.
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A
What would be reasonable, do you think?
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B
I think a 10%. I. Someone was explaining how Imperial has an option where either they take tencent or flat or they take a lower percentage that doesn't get diluted, but they still open their resources to the spin out. And I think that model is working really well for them.
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A
I mean, I think encouraging universities, scientists, you know, others of academic disciplines to start businesses and to have an incentive to do that makes total sense.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Because you, you. Right. Rather like you did with your partner at Entrepreneur first, you're combining really valuable skills that wouldn't otherwise be combined.
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B
Yeah.
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A
I mean, your business wouldn't exist if that hadn't happened.
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B
Yeah. So Entrepreneur first take an equity cut. So you, you, after the two months, you then pitch to them. But yeah, I would like. I'm not too fussed about the equity cut. Some people would argue it wasn't as good a deal as it could have been. I think it's more generous now. But having never found Brett, none of this would have happened. I don't know where I would be right now. No.
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A
So. So those PhDs that you'll talk about or scientists that are thinking, I'd like to do something entrepreneurial, where would you direct them? What advice would you give them from your own experience?
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B
I would look into these programs.
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A
So you mentioned Entrepreneur First. Who else does it?
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B
There's a group called Zinc, they're based in London. There's one called Antler who are also in London. And then there's one that's more sustainability focused called Carbon 13 and they're based in Cambridge. And I think for a lot of scientists who have the ambition and potentially have ideas, it's just the where to start. And trying to do it on your own is incredibly difficult. But if you have a partner who's more commercially focused, you can divvy up responsibilities and you can cover a lot more ground.
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A
So to change tack a bit here, tj, I'm looking at you and in front of you there are some items that look like leather samples, but they're not and that they're your products. And there's a jar of spent grain. Can you so do your best to explain to me how the jar of spent grain is turned into what looks like a nice piece of leather.
- [26:40]
B
Yeah, definitely. So the first step is the brewers. They take the malted barley, strip away the sugar and then you're left with the fibre and the protein. So what we're able to do is we collect the grain, we wash it and then we extract the protein. So the extraction of the protein is sort of a standardized industrial process, the same way they extract pea protein or soy protein. High ph, alkali conditions where we can pull the protein into a liquid, at which point we get rid of the husks. So we have our own waste stream that we're looking at valorising as well.
- [27:14]
A
So you want to turn the husks into something else?
- [27:16]
B
Yeah, there's huge opportunities there. We call it fractional valorization. If you imagine a oil refinery goes through fractional distillation, where they separate all the oil into different components, whether it's for jet fuel or bitumen for roads. We can take this natural input and carve it up and take out the different pieces needed.
- [27:36]
A
Fractional valorization, everyone. I think that's a process of the future.
- [27:40]
B
Oh, I hope so.
- [27:41]
A
I hope so too. It sounds like a really good idea. So go on. So you take your protein, you leave your husks, then what happens?
- [27:47]
B
So we have the protein essentially in a soup, and it's in this soup we can start modifying the ph and the temperature. So if you imagine a protein is almost like a wire that's been raveled up, we can change the conditions so it starts to unravel and become a single fiber, a molecular fiber, and we can start to modify the conditions. So these fibers start to interact with one another and in a process called self assembly, they start to form these connections and it's those connections that form the basis of our material. And once that soup is ready.
- [28:22]
A
So how do you do that, though? How do you get the soup?
- [28:25]
B
So that's the extracting the protein and we just add in different reagents, difference.
- [28:28]
A
Oh, I see. Increase the temperature, other chemicals and heat.
- [28:31]
B
No, no other chemicals at this point.
- [28:33]
A
Salt is a chemical, isn't it?
- [28:35]
B
Salt is a chemical. You are right.
- [28:37]
A
Yeah. I'm not a chemist, but.
- [28:38]
B
Yeah, I know, you're right.
- [28:40]
A
Yeah.
- [28:41]
B
All right. But apart from that, Apart from that, all non toxic.
- [28:45]
A
Yeah.
- [28:45]
B
And then once that's ready, we add in sort of different reagents. So we add in vegetable oils to keep the material flexible. We add in different natural cross linkers to help with the strength. We add in any pigments needed and actually the color.
- [28:59]
A
So this is of your invention.
- [29:00]
B
Yeah.
- [29:01]
A
You, you came out with this.
- [29:02]
B
Yeah. So we recipe. Yeah. We have four patents. I wouldn't say I came up with the recipe now. So we're four patterns. Four patterns for a team of 15. Right. Most of the team are focused on the research and developing the material.
- [29:15]
A
And so when did you file your patents?
- [29:19]
B
The first One was in October 2022. That was one of the first things we ever did. We just started to engage with investors and it became clear that for the investors to take you seriously, just making sure you got your foot into the IP space was really important.
- [29:33]
A
How long do they last? Patents?
- [29:36]
B
Oh. So none of ours have actually been completely filed. So depending on the journey you're taking, you have about. You file, you kind of, you file for a patent application which is about a year. Within that time frame you can make some edits, then it becomes published and it sits there for about a year. And then you can either go to international or you can focus on local drug fee. So we've gone international, so we're looking at the regions of North America, Europe and Japan as our main markets. And then within those jurisdictions, I think it's about 18 months from then before they ever, if there's any complaints before it files. So it's years and years and then once it's filed you have a set amount of years.
- [30:23]
A
Yeah. How many is that typically?
- [30:24]
B
I don't know actually.
- [30:25]
A
As long as possible, I suppose. If you can. After all that work. Forget it. Yeah, yeah. Well, congratulations. Four patents in four years is pretty good, isn't it?
- [30:34]
B
Yeah, I think so.
- [30:35]
A
I think so too. All right, so. So what interests, what, what interest are you getting from other industries in this material? Which industries are most interested at the moment in terms of potential future sales?
- [30:47]
B
Yeah, so the most interested industry is the luxury fashion space or the sort of the premium fashion. They want to replace plastic in their supply chain. Some of them also want to just replace leather outright. The problem with modern day leather is the chrome tanning industry incredibly polluting and directly impacts millions of people in the global south. And most modern day leather is coated in plastic anyway. So it's far removed from that natural material we once knew.
- [31:13]
A
So we're working more people are becoming vegan too, aren't they? And won't want to wear leather or choose leather.
- [31:18]
B
Exactly. And so there's that kind of consumer pressure. Then we have large policy pressure as well. The EU were implementing two policies, one focused on removing materials from deforestation so that it's going to impact leather and the other focuses on end of life and that's probably going to affect plastic leather. And so both those materials are going to have going to go up in price. And so an alternative that can be made at price, current price parity with plastic leather that is completely plastic and enamel free is a huge opportunity.
- [31:53]
A
So you can do that for the same price?
- [31:55]
B
Yeah, in theory, once we're at factory
- [31:57]
A
scale, you need to go, you need to scale up. But in theory, yeah, you might be able to do it cheaper even.
- [32:02]
B
Yeah, we might be able to actually.
- [32:04]
A
So is that your next challenge to scale up?
- [32:06]
B
Yeah, that's the big focus at the moment, is scaling up.
- [32:10]
A
So what are you looking to do?
- [32:11]
B
So there's. We really have given ourselves a challenge because we've got the two sides. We've got the extraction of the protein and purification and then we've got the actual production of the material. So we produce it by taking that soup and pouring it. At the moment, we pour into a tray in the water, evaporates, material sets and we peel it and cure it. We need to do that onto a conveyor belt. You pour the liquid onto a conveyor belt, liquid evaporates, material sets and it cures and forms.
- [32:37]
A
How long does it take?
- [32:38]
B
So at the Moment it's about 24 hours.
- [32:42]
A
Right.
- [32:43]
B
But you want to get this down to about a half hour production. So maybe the protein extraction can take several hours, but the actual trying to
- [32:50]
A
get it from 24 hours to half an hour is your challenge.
- [32:54]
B
Yeah. And at scale, there's a lot of
- [32:55]
A
science involved in that, isn't there?
- [32:57]
B
There is so much science and actually now it's taking me far from my expertise. It's taken into the realm of like heavy engineering. Right, yeah.
- [33:06]
A
So you having to recruit people with that expertise or are you learning as you go?
- [33:10]
B
We are recruiting people and finding industry engineers in London is challenging. Brilliant scientists, brilliant commercial people, brilliant designers, but heavy industry engineers.
- [33:24]
A
So does that make you think you have to do your production somewhere else?
- [33:30]
B
I think for our pilot facility will likely be co located with a brewery partner in the uk. So that could be the likes of kind of Heineken or Ab and Bev brewery, or it could even be a single malt whiskey distiller up in Scotland, which would be very exciting to make.
- [33:45]
A
Sounds quite an attractive option. It would be single malt. It has to be single malt.
- [33:50]
B
Single malt leather.
- [33:52]
A
Right. That sounds like good marketing.
- [33:54]
B
I think it will help sell itself. Yeah. We're kind of at this crossroads. Where do we make our Own production facility. We're definitely going to make our own extraction to get the protein, but it's whether we ship it to an external facility and do we do that in the UK or do we do it elsewhere? A lot of the calculations we've done have been on UK based manufacturing and it still makes economic sense. So if we were to focus on other geographies, we could reduce the cost even more. But one of our big visions is the fact that breweries are everywhere. We could transform waste.
- [34:29]
A
Well, some parts of the world don't have many breweries.
- [34:31]
B
Oh yeah, you're right. Okay. Except for the few dry countries out there, there are almost breweries everywhere. So our plan would have this sort of global industry where we're taking waste and transforming into materials for local industries. Imagine in Germany for the automotive.
- [34:47]
A
So do you imagine yourself becoming more of a wholesaler then of this material or. So you won't be making finished items, you'll just be providing large quantities of what, what do you call it, your material?
- [34:59]
B
The material is called new grain. New grain, yeah, because it's made out of grain and it's new. It's. Finding a name is so hard to do. But we settled on new grain really early.
- [35:10]
A
So your business strategy would become the premier producer of new grain material.
- [35:17]
B
Exactly.
- [35:18]
A
In lots of locations. Ideally.
- [35:20]
B
Yeah.
- [35:20]
A
So you need to get one set up first. Yeah, that's exciting.
- [35:24]
B
Yeah.
- [35:25]
A
So you're going to do that somewhere in the uk, I hope, but I
- [35:27]
B
mean, I hope it's in the uk. Yeah, yeah.
- [35:30]
A
But you haven't decided yet?
- [35:31]
B
Haven't decided. So our site in Bermondsey, we, we have sort of, it's like a small pilot setup. So 500 liter extraction vessels, we're producing quite a lot of protein and producing around. We can, if we push the team about 10 square meters a week and that's almost flat out on production. So we can produce quite a bit at the moment which will satisfy small capsule collections with brands.
- [35:55]
A
So, you know, new grain, new idea. How do you persuade industries that traditionally use leather or pleather or synthetic leather to switch? I mean, how do you, what are the key sort of advantages of your product? What's your, what's your sort of selling point here? What, what would you say to them?
- [36:18]
B
I think the, the key part is the plastic free. So for the last 15 years a lot of brands have been looking for an alternative to plastic based materials. And especially in the last five years, just plastics don't feel good. It doesn't sell well. The idea that you're buying essentially a premium handbag, for example, and you discover it's made out of plastic. And there are so many consumers who don't want any animals at base materials. That's kind of the key point, the fact that we can say, look, we have an animal and plastic free material and we can actually show it to them because there have been so many promises in the past of lab grown leather, but it just hasn't come to fruition yet.
- [36:59]
A
So it's very simple in that sense. Animal and plastic free.
- [37:02]
B
Yeah, that's where the market and then.
- [37:04]
A
And they're buying that, are they saying, well it doesn't, hey, let's have some of that.
- [37:08]
B
It doesn't exist on the market yet. There was one company that did hit the market and they were making a rubber based material. They developed a huge production facility in North America but the production costs were too much and they've had to close the facility. I think they found a use case for the ip. They're focusing on shoe soles now. But it's left a huge vacuum in the industry where people, the demand is only increasing for these materials.
- [37:35]
A
So you see that as an opportunity.
- [37:36]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [37:38]
A
Well, that's very good. So changing, changing sort of direction a little bit. You are a young entrepreneur. You launched Arda when you were 26 years old. What do you think the advantages are of building a company? At this stage in life you don't
- [37:56]
B
really have any responsibilities so you can dedicate yourself fully to the company. I guess you don't really require much. You can be really scrappy without having to support, whether it's a family or a mortgage. And I think you can be forgiven for making mistakes because you're young and you can always turn around and say, look, we're learning here, can you please help us? And often you ask for help. And one of the sort of phrases people use is if you go to investors and you ask for money, you'll get advice. If you go for advice, you'll get money. And being young, that's what you've experienced. Yeah, you just have to.
- [38:34]
A
That's good advice.
- [38:36]
B
Please can you help us and you build a relationship and eventually they'll come around and be like, oh, we really like really believe in what you guys are doing.
- [38:43]
A
So that's very good advice. And so have there been moments where you found being a young founder has made things more difficult, whether raising money or building partnerships, that sort of thing?
- [38:54]
B
I think it was quite difficult. I guess there's a lot of learnings all the time, especially in a company structure. So now we're a larger team. We're kind of having to put structures together. I'd come through academia so I'd never even seen a HR department before. I was unfamiliar with working with lawyers, so there's all the learnings you have to go through. But I.
- [39:15]
A
So. So do you have an HR department?
- [39:17]
B
No.
- [39:18]
A
No. I didn't think you would have 15 people.
- [39:20]
B
No.
- [39:20]
A
But what's your experience been like of working with lawyers? Would you recommend it or not?
- [39:25]
B
Well, they're really expensive,
- [39:28]
A
so it sounds like you're finding your way quite effectively.
- [39:31]
B
I am happy that like AI is there can really help.
- [39:35]
A
You can use AI?
- [39:36]
B
Yeah, only for like legal things, kind
- [39:38]
A
of quick checks, ask questions of it. It's pretty helpful. Saves a lot of time and money.
- [39:43]
B
It does.
- [39:43]
A
But what's interesting me about your entrepreneurial journey, it's sort of AI free. Apart from that.
- [39:48]
B
Yeah. Other than just speaking to AI as a lawyer capacity. Yeah. This is kind of traditional trial and error. Well informed scientific trial and error. Yeah.
- [39:58]
A
Which has a. A long and successful track history.
- [40:02]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [40:05]
A
So dj, sort of coming towards the end of our conversation, what does success look like for your company over the next decade or so?
- [40:13]
B
Yeah. So in the next five years we'll have fundraised again and we'll be developing our own production facility extracting protein at a huge scale and producing material in a roll troll capacity. So you can imagine several big fashion brands taking our material into handbags and it's in the market developing the material more and more. In a decade's time, we'd hope to have several of these facilities supporting local geographies and different industries, whether that's automotive or upholst. But one thing we're very much focused on is we're not actually a leather company. We're not making an alternative leather. We are, but we're more than that. We see ourselves as this waste transformation, a chemical firm for the 21st century. So it's back to that fractional valorization. Hopefully we can take this waste grain. The protein can go to make leather like materials. It could go into other materials. We've been able to spin fibers, you could make adhesives, you can make sort of any plastic or petrochemical based material we could hopefully make an alternative to. But then the fibers themselves, we go into making different packaging. We could even spin fibers from the actual husks. So there's a whole different suite of materials. And that's where we see ourselves as sort of this Material innovator. Material and chemical innovator.
- [41:34]
A
That sounds, sounds very exciting. It makes me wish I'd studied chemistry. Listening.
- [41:38]
B
Oh, it's a great topic.
- [41:39]
A
So, yeah, young people listening. It seems like at least lots of possible options. You talked about raising money to do this because obviously if you're going to be building big industrial units to process.
- [41:51]
B
Yeah.
- [41:52]
A
Your, your waste. How much money are you going to be looking for in the next round?
- [41:58]
B
It's probably in the ballpark of about 10 to 15 million. So we've raised so far over 5 million. So we did a pre seed of 1.1 million, a seed of 4 million, which was last year, and then about the ballpark of 10 million. And that'll allow us to get this pilot facility online.
- [42:15]
A
Right, so that's your next step.
- [42:18]
B
That's next goal. So at the moment, prove role to roll, line up the customers, take both those points to the investors and say, look, we need to build a facility because we've got customers asking for our material and we now know how to mass produce it.
- [42:33]
A
Well, that's two things that have got to happen. Which of those do you think is going to be the hardest to achieve?
- [42:39]
B
The customers are already very much there. We signed some.
- [42:42]
A
So it's getting the science right.
- [42:43]
B
Yeah. Now it's getting this. It's back to the science.
- [42:45]
A
That's a bit of pressure on you.
- [42:46]
B
Oh, my gosh. It is, yeah.
- [42:48]
A
I can feel it. I can feel it. But that's, I mean, I feel that you're going to solve that.
- [42:53]
B
Yeah, I think it's solvable. We'll get there.
- [42:56]
A
But, but to, to make it work as a business, you have to be able to scale it up, you know, scientifically, to produce more and more quickly is what I'm hearing. Yeah, that's the goal. Yeah. And then you'll be able to fulfill those customer demands.
- [43:09]
B
Yeah.
- [43:10]
A
Well, tj, wish you every success with that. I think this is a really exciting new business. No, I think that is going to improve the world. I think it's really good that you're not, you know, people won't be making so much plastic.
- [43:22]
B
Yeah, I hope so.
- [43:23]
A
Tj, do you have any other advice for people who are thinking of starting a business or getting, getting up and running from your own experience that you would share to our listeners?
- [43:31]
B
Yeah. So one of the best things about London, and probably in different cities as well, but I'm not as familiar is just the amount of networking events. So for us, sustainability was our focus. So we went to all these different Sustainability groups. And there are these communities across the world and just going to these and speaking to people, you learn about new opportunities, you meet new people who might come and join your team and just building that Network. Get on LinkedIn. For someone coming from academia, where LinkedIn is not really a thing, it's so important for building networks. There's also a Y Combinator app, which I know people have found business partners through.
- [44:10]
A
How does that work?
- [44:12]
B
I don't really know. I think it's almost like a dating app, but finding a business partner called Y Combinator. Yeah. So Y Combinator is North America's biggest startup incubator. It's. It's very. It's quite prestigious. You go into it and you get funding and to help your startup. But they've developed this app on the side, a YC app, which allows you to find business partners to kind of support starting a company.
- [44:34]
A
So that'd be good for people anywhere, so they don't have to go to the U.S. yeah. To. To benefit from that. Thank you for coming to talk to me. I asked two questions at the end that I ask of everybody. Read. We love Mondays. So my first question to you, tj, is what gets you up on a Monday morning?
- [44:56]
B
Ooh. What gets me up on a Monday morning? I'm a sucker for breakfast breakfast cereals. So normally it's like, oh, let's go have breakfast. But getting to work. I think one of the best things about founding a company is I've got to choose my team and which has meant that I've chosen a team that I really like to work with and I look forward to kind of spending time and working with them.
- [45:19]
A
So you're really looking forward to being with your team. Well, that sounds like a good reason for getting up anywhere cereal, do you like?
- [45:26]
B
At the moment, I'm on a Weetabix fix, which is really basic, but I took the seeds in there, I took the nuts, I took the berries.
- [45:35]
A
I always have porridge, which is very dull, but I like it. So then the last question is, and it's from my interview book, why you 101 interview questions you'll never fear again is where do you see yourself in five years time?
- [45:48]
B
Myself.
- [45:49]
A
Yeah.
- [45:50]
B
Ooh. So apart from the company, I guess the company be a lot larger. I'll be chief technology officer of this material that I can point out to people in the shops and that would make me quite proud, I think. Yeah. Just carrying on where we are, but just more success for the company and building and growing.
- [46:13]
A
What you're doing?
- [46:14]
B
Building and growing. Yeah.
- [46:15]
A
Fantastic. Thanks very much. I wish you every success with that. And I look forward to following you in the in the future. Maybe you'll come back and talk to me in five years time.
- [46:22]
B
I hope so.
- [46:23]
A
That'd be good. Thank you. Thank you, TJ for joining me on All About Business. I'm your host, James Reed, chairman and CEO of Reed, a family run recruitment and philanthropy company. If you'd like to find out more about Arda, Biomaterials or Reed, you'll find all the links in the show notes. Thanks for listening and see you next time.