Paul Shapiro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the business for good podcast.

Patricia Bubner: Paul, thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here

Paul Shapiro: and looking forward

Patricia Bubner: to the conversation.

Paul Shapiro: I have known you, I have known you for a long time. I actually, it feels like a long time because I've known you since before you started this company, but you were not always so into animal cells.

You used to be more of a fun gal, right? You were not a fun guy. You were a fun gal, working in the world of filamentous fungi. And, you had a deep interest in plants and fungi, but we'll get into how you got out of those kingdoms and into the animal kingdom. But first, why plants and fungi? What were you doing in your life that led you to want to get into the world of plant biology and filamentous fungi and other cool things that I love?

Patricia Bubner: Well, actually, I mean, you kind of alluded to it. I've been all over the place in technology, but it all had. common thread and that thread for me was food [00:01:00] and, how can we use the technology that we have to make better food? That's why I initially studied chemical engineering, which doesn't make sense to a lot of people, but for me, it was always clear.

If we understand. The molecular basis of nutrition and a food, then we can make healthy food from scratch. So that was kind of the thread through all of that. And it started with, you know, kind of second generation biofuels because I loved the technology to make, environmentally friendly fuels in a way.

Now, you know where that ended, but it brought me to UC Berkeley and that's where I got besides fungi also into plants. And as you know, fungi played a big role in biofuels and it actually crafted the whole industry and the efforts in biofuels. A lot of good people came out that now work in a lot of food companies and that makes me very happy.

Paul Shapiro: E even at my own company, the Better Miko. We have people who worked in biofuels. we have, one our [00:02:00] head of engineering worked for six years at a company trying to make, fuel from cyanobacteria. their company went bow up as did so many other biofuels companies, unfortunately. but it did produce this, this cool generation of people who want to use bio.

What a great lesson. And micro what,

Patricia Bubner: isn't it a great lesson though? You think things are going south, but you know from. Everything that kind of gets destroyed, something new can grow. So I think it's a great life lesson.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, indeed. Well, you know, people tend to learn more from failure than success, but let me just offer a quick, side note here because I want to make sure for listeners that they hear you saying fungi and they hear me saying fun guy.

And I want you to know, I've talked to many mycologists who say both Now, I don't know why anybody would say fungi when they say fungus and fungal, why it switches to fungi, like, why would you switch from fungus to fungi? But they are both equally acceptable. And apparently there is even, it's like a British versus American English type thing because [00:03:00] they say fungi and, in Britain, they don't say fungi or fungi, they say fungi.

So anyway, yeah, both are apparently acceptable. Do you have thoughts on this, Patricia?

Patricia Bubner: Not many, other than that, I had the discussion early in my career and I asked for advice and settled on fungi.

Paul Shapiro: Wow. Okay. I think Hey, do we

Patricia Bubner: want to continue this discussion with how we call cultivated meat, because that could take up the entire time here and people might get bored.

Paul Shapiro: that, yeah, that, that is an interesting discussion about nomenclature. Maybe we'll get into that, but I will say in the world of mycology, I will say like, it does seem like the cool people that I know tend to say fungi. I don't know why I think it is not logical, but, anyway, I, I gave up on trying to be cool many decades ago, so I need not worry about this.

So, I want to go back to your pre or billion life real quickly. So you're working with fungi, you're working with plants, doing biofuels, but somehow you became obsessed with millet, the grain,

Patricia Bubner: right? Oh, you remember that part. So if

Paul Shapiro: you, yeah, if you look [00:04:00] at your life, a lot of it was devoted to millet. And you know, many people like, you know, Jane Goodall was devoted to chimpanzees.

And, you know, you got other people who are devoted to one thing. You were devoted for millet for a long time. So tell me why millet and what were you trying to do with it?

Patricia Bubner: You know, I think the fascination came from really how can we create food from scratch? It started, you know, with me trying to do a lot of things from scratch, made my own sourdough before it was cool.

And then you go further and you're like, Oh, but I make my own sourdough. I make my own malt. I want to grow my own grains. So I know what, you know, the soil, the microorganisms in the, and so on as a, as a scientist. The data behind it and the trial and error and, all of that that's involved was very fascinating to me.

And when I came to the U S I realized. Very quickly that the food system here is completely different. And as an avid reader, I read [00:05:00] John Steinbeck, which I'm sure many of you know and appreciate. The takeaway for me was an understanding of how the U. S. food system is different from the European food system and why we eat the way we eat and why we grow food.

The way we grow it, and that is really a consequence also of the industrial revolution. If we look at our food system right now, it's heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Fertilizers is, is one obvious one, the use of tractors, machinery, and so on. So this is like a compounded problem of fossil fuel use, land use, monocultures resulting in more fertilizer use, resulting in more land use, and then.

We end up using a lot of that food that we produce to feed animals or make biofuels. And that's full circle to where we started. I was in [00:06:00] biofuels and we started talking about the food versus fuel problem. So speaking about monocultures and corn, there is very little variety in the food we grow and eat.

And there's a reason for that. There are scalable systems that were developed in the mid 19th century. There the wheat belt started to emerge and so on. And we got better and better in growing one type of food. And that also of course led to us consuming certain types of foods and not others because there were more widely available or we found ways to make them stable and.

One thing that's missing is that diversity, and that has a lot of influence and, and of course, effects on the way we eat and our nutrition, especially in the U. S., but also globally really, because we, the U. S. is also, of course, an exporter, global exporter of important foods. So millets, [00:07:00] something that the rest of the world, or not the rest of the world, but the It's a grain that has been around for thousands and thousands of years.

They call it an ancient grain. It's really a loosely, related group of grasses with seeds. And you find them, in Asia, you find them in Africa, sub Saharan Africa, and they're super, super interesting because they're drought, naturally drought tolerant, they've never been. really bred for certain traits, which is both good and bad because it means also they're not high, the high yielding industrial crops that we need, but also they have still a lot of these intrinsic, really conditions or, or trades that we now can use to learn from.

And so in the U. S. Millets were only used or are only used or mostly used as. Bird food and I was like, wow, how, how is that? And we started still at UC Berkeley. We started the millet project, me and another chemical [00:08:00] engineer. And then, you know, I think I'm probably the only cultivated meat founder that can really claim that I, planted multiple fields of grain, both millet and corn.

And one of them, even with a very interesting method, there was a horse drawn plow there, which is actually still very useful for small plots. That, just, it doesn't work to have a tractor go there. So I think that experience was super, super important for me also to get deeper into the reasons of why we grow the foods we grow and how to sell them.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. So we will link in the show notes at this episodes, on business for good podcast. com to the millet project. But, the, the tagline is rediscovering the traditions of cultivating and consuming millet. So because I, because it's job tolerant, I presume you think, you know, this is a better crop to base our food system [00:09:00] on than something like corn.

Is that right?

Patricia Bubner: Look, the way I think about the food system. Is that it is not, one thing it's, it's a very complex system and we need to think of it as, you know, anything that we change, it's a dial, not a switch. It's not a switch from one thing to the other, it's a dial and, and the more things we bring in that might be suited for different geographies for different, maybe changing climates, the more resilient that food, food system will become.

And that's of course also where cultivated meat comes in, right? It's one of many things that I believe we need to make a future proof food system. That doesn't cause the planet to burn.

Paul Shapiro: So what led you into this? I'm glad you mentioned cultivated meats. That's, that's obviously the whole purpose of our conversation.

10 minutes in people are like, wait,

Patricia Bubner: what? She's doing fungi and plants and millets. But where are we? John Steinbeck. All

Paul Shapiro: [00:10:00] right. I do want to get into cultivated meat, obviously, but why did you decide That's how I got into

Patricia Bubner: cultivated meat, because I wanted to get into cultivated meat.

Paul Shapiro: Wow. Okay. So, you know, there's lots of ways to try to appeal this potato, so to speak.

If the concern is, you know, we need to find more efficient ways to produce protein. You've got companies doing plant based meats like beyond meat and impossible foods and guardian and so on. You got other companies like corn, Q. U. O. R. N. making mycelium from filamentous fungi or fungi or fungi. And yeah.

then you've got other companies that are growing animal cells, which is kind of the furthest off from being commercialized in any meaningful way. So why choose that route? Why did you think, Hey, I don't want to do plant based proteins. I don't want to do fungi based proteins. I want to do animal cell culture.

Patricia Bubner: Okay. I'll share a secret with you and everyone who listens to this.

Paul Shapiro: All right. I'm ready.

Patricia Bubner: I'm a nerd. I am a scientist. [00:11:00] I'm a nerd. I was always really interested in. Technology, and I also want to make a meaningful impact with that science. Otherwise I would have stayed in academia and done a lot of the research that is so important to do at the ground level, right?

The basic research. And I wanted to see how can we apply technology, how can we apply that very, very interesting science. And that is why, you know, the Millet project was great. And I think the bigger, more important transformation that I can do with the scientific background that my business partners and I have was cultivated meat.

And also I told you in the beginning that I was always really fascinated in nutrition and how we can make food that is perfect, both [00:12:00] in flavor, taste, texture and nutrition. And cultivated meat is so much more than we even, we barely scratched the surface on this, Amazing technology, I think there's so much to create and discover.

So that's why I'm really excited and passionate about this field and about bringing in particular my experience and my, my business partners, my team's experience in that comes from the deep science side, from the industry side. We have scaled things. to create this very new technology and going back to the dial and not switch thing.

I think it is critical to create that technology. I think it's critical that we have the technology in the future also available at scale. And I think that Orbilion, that we have a very specific way to get there and very special insights,[00:13:00] in how to bring that to scale and to market.

Paul Shapiro: It's actually the very next thing I wanted to ask you, Patricia, is what makes you different from any other cultivated meat company?

But before I ask you that, what does Herbillion mean? What, what is, what does the name come from?

Patricia Bubner: So that name comes from really our technology. And, of course that we wanted to scale that to really bring it to as many people as we, as we can.

Paul Shapiro: Ah, I see. The billion in, in the, your, the billion in terms of the number of people who you're planning to, to serve here.

Okay, cool. You can also

Patricia Bubner: say, you know, in the number of, you know, first, sales or whatever. There's a lot of uses. You can, you can make of it what you like.

Paul Shapiro: The number of people you'll serve, the number of animals you'll save, the amount of dollars you're going to make. Okay, great. All right. So how are you doing this?

You guys claim that you have this predictive process that cuts down on R and D time. So tell us about that. Like what makes [00:14:00] or billion different from any other cultivated meat company? Aside from the fact that you've been growing exotic animal meats as opposed to chicken or pork or beef, right? So but what's the techno?

What's like the technological difference in this predictive process that you have?

Patricia Bubner: So I think the, the first important clarification is there, we are a beef company. So we want to become one of the biggest, beef companies in the world. That's our goal. We start with what we believe is the best source of cells, which is Wagyu beef.

And, that is, that is really our goal. It's also the biggest impact that one can have in term really on the intersection of cultivated meat, food, technology, and climate, I would say. So I think we quickly realized that beef is the most important product in our opinion that you can make. And, and we make a ground beef product.

That's another important point, because we also want to go to market really [00:15:00] fast and we want to create something that is a hundred percent experience for the customer, which means we can make a beef product, a ground beef product that is just like the ground beef product they're used to. Personally, I don't believe that for hardcore meat eaters.

Other technologies for structured meats are there yet at this point. And so we were always focused on getting to market as fast as possible with the best product we can. And yes, you said it, we, we built this predictive model that helps us to really scale faster. And the proof point there is that we did a 200 liter scale up run, even at the funding level that was before a series A close, we were arguably the fastest company to get to such a scale with also the capital efficiency that we displayed.

And that's because our. Really model around bioware, focusing [00:16:00] on the process, the inputs, the cells, the data that, that we have around our process that enables us to really scale in pretty much any setting and adapt the process to any bioreactor, any scale up facility that we want to use. And that was the proof point.

We scaled in a very short time, 90 percent less time than anyone else using that exact model, verifying that model. And we're already working on our next step. To next step of scale.

Paul Shapiro: Great. So you mentioned that you have produced ground beef in a 200 liter cultivator, and I've read in interviews that you're saying that you believe that you can get to good economics, like actual good margins in a 20, 000 liter reactor.

Is that correct?

Patricia Bubner: That is correct. you know, so the background that we have, that the entire team has comes from bioprocessing partially, of course, biopharma industry, where also, the team's experiences, where my [00:17:00] experience is, where my co founder's experience is. And, This is important because what we're building is really something that has been done for decades, which is cell culture.

We're just using different cells than typically are used. That is the major difference there.

Paul Shapiro: And so if I read correctly in the news, your next step is you want to go from 200 liters to 2000 liters. Is that when you say you're, you're working to the next step, is that the next level for you?

Patricia Bubner: Yeah, we're, we're definitely want to go to pre commercial scale and then the next step up to commercial scale.

So if you think about, we did our first scale up step that was hundred X. I mean, that's a huge step up the next step. It's only five or 10 X, you know, and then there's another five or 10 X to go up to the next step. So

Paul Shapiro: what is commercial scale for you? Not in terms of reactor volume, but in terms of pounds of product.

And I'll give you an example when Josh Tetrick was on [00:18:00] this podcast a few episodes ago in this cultivated meat series, he said that for good meat, his aspiration was to build a factory that could produce about 30 million finished pounds of cultivated chicken. Now, that would not be entirely animal cells, but presumably it's a majority animal cells.

But still, it's 30 million pounds of product produced annually. Is that what you think of when you think of commercial scale for Orbeleon, or do you think of something greater than that? Less than that? Like, how many pounds do you need to be at before you can figure you're gonna get to a break even point where you can actually be making profit?

Patricia Bubner: Oh, I love this point, Paul, because it tells me one other thing. there's no standardization, right? In this industry currently, there's no standardization. We really need that on a lot of levels and you're right. So thanks for asking for clarification there. For us, and, and we talked about that before, the first commercial scale will be roughly 4 million pounds of finished product.

Paul Shapiro: And is that please

Patricia Bubner: don't hold me to that by the, by the, [00:19:00] can you promise me? Got it.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. So, you know, look, you know, business plans really survive first contact with reality, but you can always plan right. And what you aspire to. So nobody's going to, or at least I'm not going to say, Hey, back in 2024, Patricia said 4 million, and it turns out it was 3 million, you know, what, you know, she really pulled the wool over their eyes.

So. but if 4 million pounds of finished product, is that entirely animal cells? Is it a hybrid product? And if so, is it majority animal cells? Like what is 4 million pounds of, of what type of beef?

Patricia Bubner: So that brings me back to what I said earlier, right? The potential of cultivated meat, we barely scratched the surface.

I think the way we understand the field right now, we talk about cultivated meat. What does that mean? Again, no standardization, right? And then there, there are various people trying to describe what they're doing. What we manufacture, what we produce are beef muscle cells, beef fat cells, and we're, we've gotten very, very good at scaling them with [00:20:00] our really unique algorithm for cultivated meat that is in the future expandable to other mammalian cells.

What the finished product is, we're a B2B company, right? So we, that's what we are selling. Whatever will be done with that product is really the customers in, in the customers kind of realm, right? So of course we could also deliver a ground beef product that is finished, but we all know that the way we produce cultivated meat right now, and, and that comes to what the industry does is the first thing we really need to do is we need to make.

Enough cells, and in the end, the product that we have and that we had in tastings has less than seven ingredients total.

Paul Shapiro: Okay, so if you are selling cow cells, like cow muscle cells as a B to B ingredient. What do you anticipate is the selling price for that? Like if I am a food [00:21:00] company and I want to buy the Orbeleon cow cells, is it something like 10 a pound, a hundred dollars a pound, a thousand dollars a pound?

I don't mean today. I mean, when you're making 4 million pounds a year.

Patricia Bubner: So the way we think about the industry is. The, the reason why people buy certain products besides of marketing is a lot of availability and price point. And of course, taste hugely important, right? So if we can make a tasty product at the price point that the customer will buy, then, you know, that is pretty much the goal.

And for the comparison that we have right now, ground beef, right? We know that the pure Cox calculation is pretty straightforward. We can get down if, you know, everything goes well, meaning supply chain is built up, we are at scale, we can run consecutive reactor runs in our model. We can get down to a price.

That's [00:22:00] absolutely at price parity with mass produced beef will take a while, of course, because we need. a fully fledged, facility with, you know, 10, 000 liter, 20, 000 liter reactors, and it is possible. The other thing is we can start, of course. At a premium price with the initial products that we have to have these margins and also looking at what else can our sales provide besides, you know, being a fantastic ground beef product.

And that's what I'm talking about. We barely scratched the surface. There's so much that we can do in terms of, I mean, we just learned about this huge beef recall because of. Contamination with fecal bacteria, right? We, we won't have that. And that is really a huge problem is there is this factor of automation in food production where we have a product that's every time the same, our customers can rely on the flavor, taste, composition.

It's always the same, which we don't have in animal products. [00:23:00]

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I was thinking about what you were saying, Patricia, with the fecal contamination. And, you know, this is one reason why the Good Food Institute was popularizing the term queen meat for so long. Because, you know, conventional meat has fecal contamination.

Salmonella, Campylobacter, E. coli, these are all intestinal pathogens that can sicken us if we don't literally cook the crap out of the meat. You gotta cook the crap out of the meat. Whereas with meat that you grow in cultivators, You don't have to worry as much about fecal contamination from intestinal pathogens because you're not growing intestines at all, right?

Like you're growing muscle and fat and so you're more likely to infect us. Yeah, it's actually we don't

Patricia Bubner: have to worry about it at all the contamination often happens in the slaughterhouses and in in that process or in the packaging process and And in cell culture, all of that is strictly monitored.

Paul Shapiro: Got it.

Okay. I want to first congratulate you [00:24:00] because you raised capital in a time when it's very difficult to do so. So it appears from that you had previously raised about 5 million, but recently you raised what looks like another 10 million. Am I accurate in that?

Patricia Bubner: So, yeah, we have raised a total of a 15, about 15 million right now.

And, with that, we've really shown our capital efficiency where we are at. Also at this point, I'm really proud of the team, especially the scale up that we've accomplished. at this stage and our next step is really to get to that next step of scale.

Paul Shapiro: And we've

Patricia Bubner: done that extremely asset light, which I'm also very proud of.

Paul Shapiro: So how do you do it? is it because your asset light that you can stretch dollars further? Like, you know, there, there are a ton of companies in the space right now that are struggling to raise capital venture capital funding is down, it's down for biotech, it's especially down for cultivated meat for reasons that we can talk about.

but you defied the odds. you know, other companies, have failed to raise capital and have either gone out of business altogether, [00:25:00] like New Age Eats, or they've essentially gone into hibernation like Finless Foods, Porter Booyan was able to raise eight figures in a very difficult environment, so what advice do you have for others who are listening to think, I really would like to do what Patricia is doing and raise some capital for my startup, what advice would you give them, what do you do right?

Patricia Bubner: You know, I wouldn't say that, anyone has done something wrong, which, which that feels like it kind of implies to me. I think it is difficult times to raise capital. And then I never had the expectation that it would be easy to raise capital. I was actually a little bit surprised about the conditions that I found when, when we started Orbilion and then went through Y Combinator.

And I have to say that. I have amazing investors on board, which is just, great to have in these times that also see the value that we bring and that see, the, the technology also that we've built and the, the [00:26:00] team behind that, that has been tirelessly working on that. Right. So our approach that worked for us was always to put technology first and to build the technology and that takes time, right?

And then also to make sure that that has a product focus and a go to market focus and what, what is the best and quickest way to market for us with the best product that we can bring to market. So that worked for us. Going to scale worked for us. and that is really largely dependent. Do you have the right people on your team?

Do you set the right milestones and then can you meet these milestones and do you have the right investors that can also value that approach and yeah, asset light. I think. Investing in CapEx for equity dollars just didn't seem [00:27:00] right to me. And the way I see the industry, if you compare it to animal agriculture, right, there is a lot, I mean, industrial animal farming is CapEx intensive.

There's buildings like slaughterhouses, there's machinery, there's, farms, livestock, all of that is very, very expensive, right? And who puts that capital in? Usually not the farmers, it's, it's big companies and strategics behind it. It's also the government. We know that this is a highly subsidized, business way to do business, right?

So I think for us, the goal is to prove out the technology and find ways to work with the important partners that can help us to get the infrastructure in place.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. So you don't ever plan on building your own biomanufacturing facility in the way that Never

Patricia Bubner: say never.

Paul Shapiro: Never [00:28:00] say never. Okay. I mean, maybe somebody comes

Patricia Bubner: up and says, Patricia, here you go, here's, you know, the money you need to build your facility and they'll be.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Okay. Because, you know, you, you look at, you know, you look, you look at upside foods. We just had on last week, they're a founder of a wedding. And, you know, he's talking about, you know, they spent 50 million to build their, their pilot plant in Emeryville and Josh Tetrick said right now the cost to build the factory that they want is hundreds of millions of dollars.

And he needs to figure out how to get it under 200 million. Presumably, if they thought they could take an asset light approach, and if somebody else put in that capital expenditure, I presume they'd be doing it. I don't know how they plan on doing this or not, but it seems like a tough row to hoe to figure out how do you go from 200 liters to 20, 000 liters or as Josh Chetric was putting it, you know, 200, 000 liters is like a hard thing to do.

I don't know if you have thoughts about other ways of financing this if you want to take an asset light approach. Josh.

Patricia Bubner: Look, I mean, I can own, first of all, I comment [00:29:00] everyone that, that is building in this space, it needs really, a lot of companies. It needs a lot of knowledge to bring these products to market.

And there's different ways to, to do certain things. We are a B2B company. Again, we're focused on a different type of customer also and different paths to market. And I think there's many creative ways to finance bigger facilities, right? But what you need, of course, is, is a proof of concept, a proof that you can scale and that makes sense, right?

So we have that proof and we're of course working on building these relationships. We've published our collaboration and partnership with Leuchten Foods, part of the Thomas Foods group that we're very, very proud of. We always. We're close, are close to the traditional meat industry. Our advisor from the first days, Guy Crims, the master butcher from the Niku Steakhouse here in San Francisco.

This knowledge is important. I mean, we're [00:30:00] all on the same team here. We want to bring good food, meat. To customers,

Paul Shapiro: why do you think it is that this industry, which a few years ago was attracting these mega rounds, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment for some of these companies in individual rounds, is now the subject of, frankly, what are obituaries from journalists?

And there seemed to be like a core group of journalists who continually write and rewrite the obituary for the cultivated meat industry. Why do you think that is like, what is happening that has caused some journalists to start saying this industry has died in the cradle?

Patricia Bubner: The first thing, when I, when I read articles or comments like that is I would ask myself, who does it serve? So I leave that open because I don't know. And so I think what I'm, what we're focusing on is really building [00:31:00] something real, building technology that is critical in a world that, suffers from, climate change that is caused by two major drivers of, or two major drivers of that are fossil fuels and land use.

And so. I spent my time on really solving that problem. Why or why not investors were or are interested in it? It's hard for me to tell. I'm not an investor, so I might not be the right person to answer that. What I know is that we have built a technology that can do so much more than Again, cultivated meat, I think we really just are scratching the surface because if we solve the problem that we are solving right now, which is can we grow primary cells that we take from a source to scale, there's a lot we can do.

And we're building [00:32:00] that platform, right? So I'm, I'm very excited about that. I think the best way to prove that out is getting to scale and getting to market, which is what we're working on doing.

Paul Shapiro: How close are you to that? So companies like eat just or upside foods or olive farms have received regulatory approval, either in the United States or in Israel or in Singapore.

How close is or billion to receiving regulatory approval from the FDA and USDA? And I, excuse me, I know you cannot, I know you cannot predict the behavior of these agencies, but presumably you've already filed your, your notices with them, right? Is that right? I

Patricia Bubner: think that's the thing that you need to ask the regulatory authorities.

When do we get regulatory approval? Our goal, again, I, I think of course you need to have regulatory approval to sell, right? But then if you don't have anything to sell, that's also bad. So again, I think scale for us is the major focus right now. [00:33:00] I think when you have scale and you have regulatory approval, then you can sell.

Paul Shapiro: I got it. One

Patricia Bubner: of those by themselves will not sell. Be the solution.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Well, I mean, you look at these companies, bet on getting regulatory approval when they did get it, but now they're not selling. so of course it's great that they have regulatory approval, but you still don't really have any meaningful sales.

Patricia Bubner: Everyone has a different set of, you know, certain goals and timelines and where they started and what they're building. So that is, that is fine. I think we're all. The more, and you know that the more, the longer you are in this industry, the more you learn. And that's what I, I tell the investors I talk to right now is like, there is no one that knows more about the cultivated industry than the people that are building it.

So whatever journalists write, it will always be from the outside. And it cannot be the, the inside account. And that is, I think the difficulty also, because [00:34:00] it is such a new industry. And I'm delighted to see that there's now more academic research going on. And we finally get this built out to be, to get the real good growth acceptance and research that we need, frankly, to build this huge industry and serve.

Billions of people.

Paul Shapiro: How long before then do you predict? Of course, you don't have a crystal ball, but you want to serve billions of people. So how long do you think Patricia sitting here in May of 2024 before you think, let's say a billion people will have consumed? Maybe not your product, but a cultivated meat product.

Patricia Bubner: You know, I, I thought about that a lot and, especially in hindsight, right? It's easier to say, Oh, this is what I thought would happen at this time. And this is what actually happened. Now, I don't know about you. But everything that, all the big things that happened in the last four years, I didn't predict a single one of them.

[00:35:00] So I'm really concerned about making some, saying something right now. And then the next thing happens and I'm like, Oh God.

Paul Shapiro: Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you, my powers of prediction are extremely poor. I remember in 2016, I told my friend that I thought that I had a better chance of being president than Donald Trump did when he, when he was running.

And I thought, like, he has a 0 percent chance, like, zero. Like, I think, literally, I thought I had a better chance, and I, of course, did not think that I had any chance, needless to say. But

Patricia Bubner: did you even run?

Paul Shapiro: I thought I had a better chance, even without running. That's the true way. Like, I thought my chances were about as close to zero as you could get, but I thought his were actually zero.

And I was, of course, entirely wrong, needless to say. so, you know, look, I'm not asking you to make predictions that you're going to bet tons of money on. But if you had to look, you know, you look back, let's say 20 years ago and people were predicting where will electric vehicles be in 2024. I don't know if people would have predicted that you would have entire States saying they're going to phase out gas powered cars.

you have whole companies like [00:36:00] GM saying they're going to phase out gas powered cars. do you think that's possible that you're going to see meat companies saying they're going to in, in 20 years from now, that they're going to phase out, animal based meat? Or do you think that 20 years is too aggressive of a timeline on that?

Patricia Bubner: So the way I see it is, again, I'm going back to the, to the dial, right? I think a resilient food system needs to have and needs to stand on many different pillars. Thanks. I do not think that animal meat, meats will be phased out. I don't think this will happen. What I think, what I hope is that we replace a lot of it with other products.

And again, coming back to what I said earlier, if we, why are we eating what we're eating, because it is available, because we're using it, because it's broadly available, we like it, it's delicious and we can afford it. So the challenge that we have is, can we bring products to market that people love, [00:37:00] that are nutritious, that they can afford, and that they will choose eating over animal based products?

I think that's the, that's a really good challenge to have. And I believe that. A lot of products that we're working on now, including cultivated meat, is a fantastic solution for that. And then also, again, this world is complex. People are complex. The way we decide what we eat is complex. And there are a lot of places that do not have the land for animal agriculture, that do not have the resources for that.

For whatever reason, we're cultivating meat where other ways to produce food would be such a benefit because they would reduce the need to import things, a lot of transportation of live animals. Which is also a huge problem, especially if you look into even Europe, Middle East, and so [00:38:00] on. So, so many things that can happen, and I don't believe that there's one single solution that will solve it all.

That would be too easy.

Paul Shapiro: All right. You mentioned, Patricia, that You learn more the longer that you are in the space. You've now been running this company for years. So if you could go back and talk to the Patricia who had just started this company and say, okay, here are things that I've learned. Here are mistakes you shouldn't make.

Here's some wisdom that I have gained during this time. What would be the lessons that you'd be offering to the first time founder of a for profit cultivated meat company, Patricia?

Patricia Bubner: So one important lesson for me, for us as a team is that it is really good to stick to the fundamental beliefs that brought you into this business.

For us, it was really the belief that [00:39:00] we can use technology to To build a nutritious, delicious product and also that we can do so based on, the knowledge that we have from bioprocessing, from biopharma, from industry, from the science side. And also to not look left and right, and get detracted or distracted by what others are doing or what others are saying and focus on the building part.

And bringing a product to market. I think that is really important and stick to the principles. What I mean by that is we always believe that going for a product that's scalable is the most important thing. To bring a product to market that is equivalent in the experience for the customer and not anything less than.

It. It's also really important.

Paul Shapiro: Were there any [00:40:00] resources that were useful for you? Like you mentioned John Stein back at the beginning of our conversation, but are there any other books or speeches or anything else that you have found useful that you'd recommend for others?

Patricia Bubner: So I think in general, there were a lot of people that were excellent resources along the way.

You were one, Paul. I mean, you remember when you met Starry Eyed Patricia a couple of years ago and, I had a copy of your book. So thank you.

Paul Shapiro: Well, I'm, I'm honored and I'm very pleased in the new updated paperback edition of Queen Meat that came out in April of 2024, that Orbeleon has a presence in the book.

So, who would have guessed? for that full circle. Yes. Who would have guessed? but yeah, so what, I'm glad, I'm glad if I've played even a modest role in, in your journey, but, what other resources, would you recommend?

Patricia Bubner: Yeah. So one thing as a scientist, I'm always. Driven by, I'm trying to be a data driven person, right?

And one thing that I try to wrap my head around is again, [00:41:00] how can we make. a dent with the technology that we're building and give a positive spin to the food system, to the environmental movement, and so on. And make a true impact. What is the best way to do that? And a book that I recently came across is by Hannah Ritchie from Our World in Data.

And, she wrote a book called Not the End of the World. And I'm really fascinated by the way that she presents the data, the way that she goes back to the data. And one thing that stuck with me was when she said that we actually have a smaller carbon footprint right now than our grandparents have. And she leads you to why that is.

And one thing that I also find very encouraging is that we have built technologies. That have helped us to reduce that. [00:42:00] impact, like the environmental impact to make new materials, make new products, make things more efficient. And that is exactly my experience as a scientist and engineer. As I went through my career, I'm like, Oh, we can improve so many things if you just put the time and effort and knowledge to it.

And here's the thing. There's so many people out there, especially young people right now that are so passionate about climate change, about making a difference. Everyone can really contribute, learn something that matters to you and look for ways you can contribute. You do not have to found a company.

There's so many ways you can contribute. And there's so many things that haven't been looked at. If you were the one to look at it, you might solve a really important problem.

Paul Shapiro: Indeed. And, first let me say, I really enjoyed Hannah Richie's book, not the end of the world also, and I actually posted a review of it on Facebook that I will link to in the show notes for this episode at business for good podcast.

com. but you mentioned that, you don't have to start a company, but you could, if [00:43:00] somebody is thinking about starting a company, what do you think they should do? Are there any things that you think need more attention that haven't been figured out yet that you hope someone listening will start,

Patricia Bubner: you know, I hope somebody listening will listen to themselves and be like, that one idea that I have, that's the thing that I want to follow.

And it's something that I find completely surprising because if there was something else that I found that fantastic that I needed to work on, I would do it. But I think that's cultivated me, to be honest, right now. and I think the important thing is if you really have the drive that you have that thing that you want to build on, just go and do it, give it a try.

Thanks.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I, I always say, you know, people are like, well, what if I don't have the experience? It's like, well, how do you get experience? You do it. You know, if you want to learn how to play soccer, you don't read a book about how to play soccer. You get on the field and you start learning how to play and you practice.

That's how you get good at it. So I think the same as soap,

Patricia Bubner: just be ready to get kicked in the face.

Paul Shapiro: there, you know, [00:44:00] I could not come up with a better way to end it than what you just said, Patricio. So on that note, if you want to start your own company, get ready to be kicked in the face, just like Patricia Bubner.

And I will look forward to following your progress. Congratulations on raising capital and a very challenging environment, Patricia. And I hope to get a chance to try some of your delicious cultivated beef sometime. And I hope I get to be there when you start selling your product by the kilo. It'll be a wonderful time.

So congratulations. Congratulations on your progress so far and hope you get to commercialization soon.

Patricia Bubner: Thanks Paul. And of course you'll be invited.

Paul Shapiro: Okay.