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$50 Million to Crack the Egg: Real Egg Proteins without the Chickens

by Paul Shapiro | Feb 1, 2020 | Episode 34

By the time he was 22, Arturo Elizondo had already interned in the White House and for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. But as the recent college grad learned, making the world a better place via public policy is a long and arduous road, and he wanted to make a difference faster. With a zeal to create an alternative to the factory farming of animals, Arturo bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco with no job, no apartment, and no plan. He just wanted to get involved in the alt-protein world in some way.

His first thought was to explore working at VCs to fund the space, or maybe getting a job at one of the companies already founded. But as you’ll hear in this conversation, a chance meeting at a conference resulted in Arturo becoming the 22-year-old CEO of a new biotech startup, Clara Foods, that would soon work to make real egg proteins without using chickens. 

Well, today, Arturo is 27, Clara Foods has since raised $50 million in venture capital, and the company is about to commercialize its first products. It’s an inspirational tale, and one that proves you need not be a superhuman to do something truly super for the world. 

Discussed in this episode