Paul Shapiro: [00:00:00] Beni, welcome to the business for good podcast. Hey, Paul, thanks for having me. It's so great to be here with you. It's my pleasure. First, let me say Mazel Tov. It was your son's Bar Mitzvah just this weekend. We're recording this in September of 2024 and or no, how was this Bar Mitzvah?

Beni Nofech: That's correct.

Thank you so much, Paul. It was great. You know, it's good to have in Hebrew, we call it a Simcha. It's good to have a reason to celebrate, especially now with everything going on around us. So it was a good opportunity to, you know, spend some time with family and friends and celebrate you know, this event of this little man marching into manhood, you know, the Jewish tradition.

And and we're very happy to have celebrated this.

Paul Shapiro: Hey, very nice. So a lot of the times the bar mitzvahs in the United States are these very big affairs, right? They cost a lot of money. There's a lot of people is that I've heard it's not always the same in Israel However, tell me what was your son's arm?

It's like was this one of this big blowout affairs?

Beni Nofech: Oh, no No, that's first of all, it's not really how we were home But yeah, I also think that [00:01:00] in this special year with everything going on in Israel You know You know, we didn't feel that it was you know, the right moment to make a big celebration. So we had something very modest with family and friends and you know, we had the ceremony and, and, and then a dinner and that's it.

Pretty much. Okay, very, very warm and and yeah, I'm touching

Paul Shapiro: well, congratulations to you and to your family. That's fantastic. That's really nice. So I remember you telling me once Beni that you got interested in plant based eating and actually stopped eating animals around the time that your son here was born like 13 years ago.

Isn't that right?

Beni Nofech: Yes, that's correct. Is

Paul Shapiro: there a causal correlation between your son's birth or is it just coincidental?

Beni Nofech: That's a great question. Actually, I turned vegan I think something around like a couple of months after my son was born. That was in 2011. And yeah, it was probably related. What happened and I know that you're familiar with with the subject is that I got exposed to [00:02:00] Gary Rotsky's talk online.

And yeah. And, and 40 minutes after I was vegan for life and an activist. So. In part it was Gabriel Yurovsky, in part it was me looking at at this baby next to me you know, while I'm in this process of, of, of realizing and learning about the harmful, the harmful effects of industrial animal farming and asking myself what kind of world he's going to grow into.

So yes, it probably had a lot of of influence on me happening around that time. But to be honest, when I watched Gary Yourofsky's speech, it already struck a personal chord with me. Because I did have a bit of history with animals and specifically farmed animals. So growing up in Jerusalem and Israel I always had pets at home.

We're an animal loving family. I had cats, dogs fish, turtles hamsters. I had it all. I also volunteered as a kid in the veterinarian clinic around the corner from us, you know, cleaning the tables, cleaning [00:03:00] up to the animals, feeding the animals and and, and I also worked as an assistant to the vet actually after my military service but before my military service, I was in the program called Gavim Nachal here in Israel, where you basically go and volunteer in the kibbutz.

I don't know if you're familiar with this concept, but it's like a community that the kind of shares their Their ventures together and it kind of socialist kind of community and a lot of them are agricultural communities. And when we live there out of my love to animals, I remember the day when they asked who wants to work in the dairy farm and I volunteered gladly to do so because I loved animals, right?

And I worked there for four months. And now in retrospect, I know that this period had a lot of influence on me. But I didn't make the cognitive connection between what we were doing there in the dairy farm and what I thought I felt and thought about animals. And and I think that when I saw Gary's speech I think it was what was it?

It [00:04:00] was 13 years later. Yeah. Again, 13 that kind of struck that chord again. And, and, and then I, I was like, I was listening to the speech. And I thought, Hey, that's interesting. That's, that's a new perspective that I never thought about. And that's when I started really digging into what's going on in the wider animal agriculture, at least industry.

And you know, just tumbling down that rabbit hole, the more I, I learned about it. The more I realized that there's a very, very serious problem with how we raise animals for food on this planet. And that was a pivotal moment for me.

Paul Shapiro: You know, it's amazing how many times I talk with people from Israel and ask them what their catalyst was for getting involved in the plant based or animal protection movements and that talk just.

Comes up over and over again, and we'll link to it in the show notes for this episode at business for good. com. But it's interesting because Gary did not give that talk in Israel. It's not directed at an Israeli audience. I think it was actually in the state of Georgia in the United States. Oh, [00:05:00] okay.

Caltech. Well, anyway, it was, it's not. particularly aimed at Israel, but for some reason this talk had a very big afterlife in Israel and influenced a lot of people. And yeah, it went

Beni Nofech: viral. And, and we call this generation of of plant based vegan activist Gary baby generation. So there are a lot of Gary babies walking around as well.

Paul Shapiro: Okay, that's really funny. Well, now that now that Gary baby has been bar mitzvahed and and he's and he's now a man. Okay, listen, I want to just get to a very provocative question right off the bat here. So my recollection is that you and I first met in 2017 at Technion University in Haifa, right at that conference.

It was like a culture meet symposium. Is that right? No, we actually

Beni Nofech: met before, I think it was 2016 at the first New Harvest conference in .

Paul Shapiro: Ah, good memory. Good memory. I now, I, I actually, now that you're saying this, I, I now remember this. Okay, great. So, all right, so that's, [00:06:00] first of all, thank you for correcting my error.

I remember meeting you there, and I was, I was so excited. I was so excited to meet you actually. But I, I have a photo of us together in 2017, and that's what must have made me think it was 2017. But either way, let's

Beni Nofech: actually appear on the. Big photo of of the first new harvest conference, you know, with the big crowd over there on the lawn.

Oh yes. I remember. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm in the first row actually. Look me up.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. All right. All right. Cool. I will for sure. Okay. So listen, go back to 2017. You and I meet in San Francisco. There's a lot of enthusiasm for what would soon be called cultivated meat or that back then was being called cultured meat and, you know, you came all the way From Israel to California to go to this conference and so many people including you and I were very excited about this.

If somebody had told you 8 years later in 2024, there will be essentially no cultivated meat being sold just a couple symbolic things. But really, there's no [00:07:00] meaningful market penetration. Would you have been surprised or would you have thought? Yeah, I don't think that there'll be anything really on the market within 8 years.

Thanks.

Beni Nofech: That's, that's a great question. To be honest, when I think back on the way I, I, I perceived the evolution of this industry back then I had to answer this question quite a lot and, you know people said, how long do you think before we're gonna be able to show returns in this industry or exits or actually proof of concept with products on the market as well?

Yeah. How about, how about just revenue? How about just revenue? And, and, and. You know, my, my answer was, and still is that. You know, first of all, I'm trying to look at it as a long term player. I think that this industry is inevitable. And, and, and this was also part of the reason why I went all in when I did on this industry, because I understood that essentially we're talking about an engineering problem that will be solved if you throw enough time and money on [00:08:00] it.

What I mean is that. It just makes so much sense you know, to feed the cells directly than to feed it to another system. And, and, and when you understand that and you understand that it's, it's just a time, a matter of, of when and not a matter of how, then, you know, if it's five years before, five years later you know, I'm, I'm less concerned about that.

To be honest with, when I'm looking at the industry today, I'm actually positively surprised because I know intimately about some of the amazing technologies that have been developed over the last years in this industry. And and I think that's we are just now in a very interesting moment in this industry where we.

You know, get out of the lab and start building production capacity and and, and, and. I'm very excited actually about this shift and seeing products hitting the market very soon in terms of, you know, years probably. But I was never a part of the industry who said that it's coming and it's right around the corner [00:09:00] in a big way, you know, I, I like to under promise and over deliver.

Paul Shapiro: Right. Okay. That's interesting. I, I, I think I would have been surprised. I never said, Oh, this is right around the corner. This is going to be some major impact, but I would have, I would have been surprised if there was so little on the market by now, to be honest with you. I write about this in the updated edition of clean meat that came out in 2020 for the paperback.

But, you know, in short, I think that some people, perhaps myself included underestimated the time that it would take in order to bring these products to market in a meaningful way. I would have thought that it would be I would have thought that it would be More similar to where plant based meat is today, meaning, you know, it still hasn't captured a huge amount of market share, but it's at least available in supermarkets and grocery stores and so on.

But let's go back to 2016 when we first met there in San Francisco, Beni and ask, what were you doing there? Like, why, why did you decide to travel across the globe to go to this conference for a pre [00:10:00] revenue, basically non existent industry? What, what was the catalyst for you to do that?

Beni Nofech: Well, so to be honest the new harvest conference was something that was added to my trip the main goal of my trip was to go to the animal rights conference in los angeles That was like a week before that or a few days just before that conference in san francisco And I went there in order to help fundraise for a crowd com crowdfunding campaign that was initiated by Super Meat, which is the first cultivated meat company to incorporate in Israel and actually outside of the United States, if I'm not mistaken, right after upside Foods were Memphis Meats back then, as you know.

Paul Shapiro: What were you doing for a living then, Beni? I know that you invested in supermeat. My understanding is you were just like an angel investor for them. You weren't doing venture capital full time at that time, right? True.

Beni Nofech: No, I wasn't a venture capitalist before I was actually working in the medical device industry in an Israeli company in a business development role.

And I kept that job [00:11:00] for a few years while I was very, very interested in accelerating the cultivated meat and plant based space. And I remember actually told my workplace that I'm on vacation and that's that's how I went to the U S to help promote super meats campaign.

Paul Shapiro: Wow, I was officially on

Beni Nofech: vacation,

Paul Shapiro: and so you knew about supermeat just because they had generated some buzz in Israel.

Like, I remember when their video came out, like, in 2016, if my that they had this, like, really viral video that came out and they raised on either. Yeah. And it would think they raised like hundreds of thousands. I was one of their donors or, or I, I guess I should say, was I a donor or an investor? I remember I, I contributed online after seeing the video, a donor, a

Beni Nofech: donor.

So, so yeah, I'll, I'll tell you about this campaign. It was actually the first proof of concept in our industry that there's actually demand for cultivated meat. So about 5, 000 people bought a voucher for a piece of cultivated meat

Paul Shapiro: in the future. I'm, I'm, I'm waiting for my voucher. I'm going to have [00:12:00] to tell Ido, the CEO, I hope I'm not getting in trouble.

No, I, I, I very proud, I very proudly donated and I was so excited. And I shared that it was, it was, it was absolutely a stellar video. So you,

Beni Nofech: To answer your question, yeah, I, I will, I'll tell you what, when I was in 2000, when in 2011, I turned vegan, I, you know, I, I didn't understand immediately that the solution would be on the supply side for a couple of years.

I tried to convince people to stop eating animals. I guess a couple of years is a, is a pretty quick time to understand that it's probably futile to try and convince 8 billion people to do so. And when I understood that, and I understood that there are technologies being developed in the world, not in Israel still you know, that are trying to address this problem from the supply side, I understood that this, this was the solution.

I actually got connected to super meat through a common friend of ours him who was who was developing I think it was some kind [00:13:00] of workshop for, for vegan activists. It was called the next step where we just sat and tried to think about what else can we do. And that's where I met somebody from the modern agriculture foundation which is an Israeli iteration.

Let's call it the, yeah, it's ration of the good food Institute. Essentially they accelerate, you know, entrepreneurship and research in our field in Israel. And that's when I joined the modern agricultural foundation. And through there, I met the super meat founders and and, you know, back then we weren't the food tech nation yet.

There was actually not a lot going on in this field in Israel. They were trying to raise funds. They were, they were telling me that they're working on making real meat outside of the animal's body. And I was just convinced immediately that this is the solution and we need to do anything in our power to to get that on the road.

And that was essentially my first investment in this field. My own family money, a small, small check. And that's how I got involved.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, it's funny you mentioned it's funny that you mentioned hen cohen because he actually has [00:14:00] been staying at my and my wife's house for like the last 10 days and just left.

So, so, yeah, yes, indeed. It's a wonderful Israeli animal advocate who is spending a couple of weeks in the United States right now. But in. In short, you mentioned, Beni, that Israel was not yet the food tech nation, but it really was the startup nation, right? There was this, there was this very popular book, the startup nation about the, you know, essentially looking at why Israel has become such a progenitor of Of of startups, right?

Like if you look around where startups generally are based in the world, it's going to be places like the Bay area in California, maybe Singapore. But you know, the middle East is, is not produced historically a lot. And then all of a sudden you've got this one little dot of Israel where it's actually producing tons of startups.

And now it's producing tons of food tech startups, especially those who are seeking. To displace animals in the food system. And you have invested in a lot of them as, as and in fact, we've had many of the, [00:15:00] your portfolio companies on this show before, but let me just ask you, why do you think it is, like, why do you think it is that in a region that has not historically produced a lot of startups and a lot of interest in plant based eating or helping animals move out of the food economy.

Why Israel? Why do you think they've done that has caused this environment to flourish there? Yeah. So first of all, Paul, I have to

Beni Nofech: say that you kind of stole my book recommendation. It was startup nation. Okay. Yeah, by Dan Sennor and Saul Singer. It's an amazing book and I really recommend it because I want people from outside of Israel to really understand you know, the behind the scenes of the Israeli startup and high tech economy.

And you know, be encouraged to come and, and, and be involved. So so, so that's my book recommendation. I I have a couple of others actually that we can pick up later. But to answer your question specifically on food tech and Israel I think it's a mix of of, of, of reasons. So, first of all, as mentioned Israel [00:16:00] is, is, is a powerhouse in, in, in the high tech industry globally.

And specifically in the food tech industry, we are only second to the U S in number of startups in our field and funds invested in our field. If you look at it per capita, I think we are by very, very far the first. And, and and I think the main reasons for that are. First of all we had a very strong agri tech ecosystem here in Israel, a very strong academia that deals with subjects that are adjacent to this industry.

There's a lot of government support active government support through the Israeli innovation authority that creates, spawns a lot of startups with competitive advantages from day one. We have a very strong med tech and biotech industries that are also very connected to our industry. And and I think that all of these factors together kind of created the perfect breeding ground for startups within the field of cultivated meats you know, fermentation and.

Plant based foods. We're also a very small country, so, you [00:17:00] know, the hope is always to have the opportunity to commercialize our products here in Israel as the first iteration or as a better site to test them before launching outside of Israel. So this is also something that's pretty attractive for startups in our field.

It doesn't happen much because of new food regulation, but it's starting and I hope that it's gonna, you know, accelerate over the years. And yeah, and I, this is why I'm also very optimistic about the future of this industry in Israel. I think we're just getting started. There's a lot of potential specifically in Israeli academia with research being done in adjacent fields that can pivot into our field.

And so I'm very much looking forward for the years ahead and seeing this. You know in this, in this three floor sharing as well.

Paul Shapiro: You mentioned earlier, Beni, that you are more enthusiastic now than ever about the space in general. And, you know, if I talk with. Let's say an investor in clean energy, right? They, they probably have some, some favorites, right?

They'll say, Oh, I'm really into solar or I'm really into wind or I'm really into [00:18:00] geothermal or nuclear and so on. Right. Are there, you've invested in a broad array of technologies from fungi, fermentation, animal cell culture, precision fermentation and more. Right. Yeah. Molecular farming. We add on Palopo on here who I know you're associated with as well.

So. Let me ask you, is there a technology that you view as the most likely to in the near term start actually displacing the use of animals?

Beni Nofech: That's a great question. Well, listen, We already seeing technologies that in the near and immediate term are replacing quite a bit of animals for food production systems.

And that's plant based because that was the most easy technology to develop and commercialize. I think that the next big one will probably be fungi fermentation, which you are obviously also involved in. I think that There is so much potential in the five guy world and specifically in, in, in in [00:19:00] creating large scale, continuous liquid state fermentation process.

I very much support that. And I think I also heard, I also heard your announcement a few weeks ago about the continuous process. So congrats on that. Yeah, I think that being able to produce large amounts of biomass with high quality and low cost is is the key that will bring a lot of of impact to our industry in the, in the short term.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. So, you know, I, I agree with you as evidenced by what I choose to do for a living but I'll tell you, it's interesting. We, in this field oftentimes think about the future is. Producing all of this food in bioreactors and it needs to scale up and when people think about cultivated meat, they think about, well, you know, right now, the largest reactors growing animal cells for this industry are, you know, a few thousand liters and they want to get to 20, 000.

That's what some of these companies are saying. But when we think about fungi fermentation, corn, Q. U. O. R. N. In the UK is already running [00:20:00] nearly a million liters of bioreactors continuously. Now you reference this, but most people listening may not be familiar with what that means. Most of the time when you're running a fermentation, you run what's called a batch fermentation, which is you fill the reactor up, you let the reaction run, and then you harvest it.

And then you clean it and you start all over. But a continuous fermentation means you have a constant feed of nutrients into the reactor and a constant bleed of products coming out of the reactor. This is extraordinarily difficult to achieve and at scale where, you know, with hundreds of thousands of liters of capacity, corn is the only company doing this to my knowledge.

And so I have visited there. They have five, 150, 000 liter bioreactors. They're each about 40 meters tall. I mean, it's insane to look at these things and to climb them by a reactor is 40 meters tall that are being run continuously. And I went to KFC in London. And I saw corn on the menu for nearly, not identically, but nearly price parity with the chicken [00:21:00] sandwich.

And that was absolutely stunning to me because we think about price parity as this elusive future place that we will one day get to. And yet corn is already doing it in the UK. It's truly a, an incredible phenomenon. And it's amazing. Yeah. And it's evidence that this works. It's not that we are have to invent some new technology.

Obviously, we want to innovate and continue to create better technology, but it works and it works today and corn has been doing it for decades. Now, admittedly, fungi fermentation is a lot more different. It's a lot, excuse me, a lot less difficult than animal cell culture. But this is why I underscore what you said, Beni, which is that I think fungi fermentation when run in a continuous liquid culture really does offer the ability to Displace very large amounts of animal based meat.

So I'm, I'm hoping that more and more goes into this. And obviously my own company, the better me co is involved in this, but there's, we're not the only ones that I'm rooting for the success of the others as well. So with that said, now that I have given my own sermon on behalf of [00:22:00] fungi fermentation, of which I am definitely an evangelical are there other things I'm

Beni Nofech: saying?

And Lovely.

Paul Shapiro: All right. Good. Thank you. Thank you. Are there others? So continuous fungi fermentation inside of bioreactors? That's one. Are there other things that you're particularly enthusiastic about now? You and I agree like cultivated meat is going to be big one day, but maybe not for many years into the future.

But are there other things that you think, you know, within the 2020s could really make a big dent in the demand for animal products? Well, Paul, if we're already

Beni Nofech: mentioning continuous and cultivated meat, I'm very much looking forward to seeing a continuous process at large scales of cultivated meat. And actually, very recently, there was an article published in Nature by Professor Yaacov Nachmias from Believer Meats.

About his continuous process. And I can tell you also that super meat has developed a continuous process. Very, very interesting one. And I'm looking forward to seeing this category you know bring proof of product. Concept of a scalable [00:23:00] cost efficient process. I think that would be a watershed moment for industry.

Paul Shapiro: Indeed. Well, I'm a huge fan of super meat. And I love believer too. I just don't know them as well personally, but I'm a huge fan of super meat and the folks there. And. I'm very eager to to get to try their products. Sometime I was supposed to be at food tech IL last year, sadly for tragic reasons that obviously had to be postponed.

And I was hopeful that it would be this year. Obviously that is not to be, but maybe next year at food tech IL we'll get some super meat do it for tasting and you just,

Beni Nofech: you don't just need to come to visit for food tech IL. You can come visit us regardless.

Paul Shapiro: It's very generous. You're always

Beni Nofech: welcome.

Paul Shapiro: Thank you. That's very nice of you. Okay. So when you started milk and honey ventures, which if I'm correct is like 2021, right? Yeah, that was okay. Yeah. Okay. So when you started it, it was in the height of the fervor for food tech and plant based and cultivated. You had lots of money going into [00:24:00] the space, very high valuations for companies.

And now, three years later, the opposite is true. You don't have a lot of money going in. The valuations are very low compared to where they were three years ago. And there's just a general malaise about the space, not just cultivated meat, but even plant based meat too. One, why do you think that is? And two, do you think this is permanent or do you think it's cyclical and this is going to reverse course and this is just a minor speed bump in the overall trajectory of the alternative protein industry?

I'll start with two.

Beni Nofech: I always call it a speed bump, actually. I think it's just a bump in the road. I think it's cyclical. I don't have a lot of experience. As I told you, I'm not a VC that comes from that industry and knows other industries. I only know my industry, but definitely, you know, I've seen the hype in the beginning of this of this wave.

For me, the watershed moment was the beyond meat IPO. I [00:25:00] clearly remember how I talked about this industry before. And I clearly remember how a week after my phone didn't stop ringing with people asking me, Hey, is this thing, was this what you were talking about? Is that interesting? Should I buy?

So, so I remember the gold rush and, you know, the investors that came in a lot of them, not all of them, but that came in. You know, when, when, with the first sign of oil they are also the, the, the investors that got out first with the first sign of trouble. Now for me, as I said, I don't think it's trouble.

I think we're on course developing the, the, the, these technologies and And again, it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when and I think that once we're going to see a proof of concept, either of production at scale or very large commercialization or another big IPO, that's when the height will start again.

Because people will understand that there's something real going on here or to quote a friend of mine that's sitting in front of me. It's not science fiction. It's science fact. And once they. They understand that I think they'll be coming and, and again, voting with their checkbook. [00:26:00] So I'm not worried about that.

You're right. That's there's a malaise today. Valuations are going down. I think it's also a healthy process, you know Obviously, some good companies with good technologies will also get hurt from the public sentiment, but ultimately I think that the good companies that have runway and and have developed a meaningful technology that the industry really needs I think they will.

You know, they will prevail. What we're trying to do in this industry now is kind of thinking how we pass this wave. I always call it you know, ducking under the wave. Let's take a deep breath and, and, and come out of it stronger. So I think that this is kind of the, the way at least we're looking at it in the, in the industry.

And I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm looking forward for better days soon.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I am too. And, you know, I think when you look at the two companies that IPO to, to great applause or beyond meat and Oatly, right. And they both were trading at really high multiples over their revenue, like [00:27:00] 30 X revenue, right. Yeah.

And I mean, I remember beyond meat had a few hundred million dollars in revenue and at a market cap of 14 billion. Right. And today the market cap is like closer to 400 million or less with the same, with about the same amount of revenue. And so, you know, they've lost over 95 percent share value. So has Oatly.

These are the only two publicly traded companies in the space right now that anybody can look at in the private investment market and say, Hey, what are the public comparables? And that's a very difficult place to be. And so I think you're right. We do need some other. IPO or IPOs. I don't know from where they would come.

Like it's hard for me to see a company that looks like it might be poised to do that. I was hoping that maybe impossible or eat just or some of these other more mature companies might IPO and have some success on that. But do you have thoughts as to where it might come from? Like if you were guessing where the next IPO in the alternative protein space might be, So I

Beni Nofech: wouldn't bet on any specific company or technology, but as we discussed before, I think [00:28:00] that the most important thing to show now is that is that it works.

We need to have trucks. Filled coming out of factories and gonna supermarkets. And I think that once we're gonna see that and people are gonna be able to taste, and this is by the way, also what happened with Beyond Meat ipo. People were able to go and test, taste the product and then buy the stock in the evening.

So once that's gonna happen, I think that investor and obviously consumer, confidence will come back.

Paul Shapiro: All right. Well, my fingers are crossed that that happens. And there are a number of, of companies who I think have really fantastic products and I would love to see trucks coming out of factories, going to supermarkets for them.

What, what, what a pleasure that would be for sure. Yeah. So, you know, you're, you're invested in so many different ones of these technologies including Oshi. And we had their CEO Ofec Ron on this show a few episodes ago. And one of the things that he and I discussed, which generated a lot of comment and a lot of feedback from listeners.

I [00:29:00] want to ask you for your opinion on this too, as an expert in the field, you know, Ofec made the point that he doesn't think that we need to mimic the meat experience. He thinks we just need something that is really. Good that people would rather eat instead of meat, but it doesn't have to be identical to meat.

And we got a lot of feedback. Some people were saying, no, people really want meat. Other people were saying, yeah, I totally agree. It doesn't need to mimic meat. It's not like, you know, other, you know, if you look at other. Times that animals have been displaced in the economy. It usually wasn't through mimicry, right?

Like Henry Ford didn't invent a mechanical horse that just ran faster. He came up with something that was way better than a horse. Or if you think about you know, when quill pens were displaced by fountain pens, it's not like somebody came up with a synthetic quill that was cheaper. It was just a metal fountain pen was way better, right?

You didn't have to stop and dip your ink into your quill into an inkwell and so on. And so what do you think? Do you think that mimicry? Is the holy grail, or do you think it's an unnecessarily high bar?

Beni Nofech: Well, first of all, I don't think it's a very high bar, [00:30:00] to be honest, a large part of the industry is processed meats where you don't need to create the entire experience of the animal counterparts product in, in terms of creating a whole muscle cut or anything like that.

So I think that that there's a lot of opportunity to create exactly the same. Gastronomic nutritional experience of a lot of meat products that are out there today. And I think that it's it's also key because if I learned anything and I learned quite a bit, but if I learned something important in this industry, in the food industry specifically is that people are very much connected to their culture when they make their food choices.

And a lot of people want to keep. Eating what they're used to using it in the same way in the same recipes that they're used to and I think that this is something that's very important for our industry to deliver at least in the first iteration of our industry or the first generations of our industry over the years.

I've obviously also been very excited about [00:31:00] the prospect of being able to create. New products that are not out there. You know we've been eating certain types of animals throughout history almost randomly, you know we've chosen cows and chickens and pigs and sheep because of historical cultural reasons.

And also because I don't know, there were more adapt to, to a large scale industry. But once we divorce the animals physiologically. physiology and, and we start, you know, engineering the products by ourselves from the ground up, then yeah, sure. Why not create better products that compete on, on the gastronomic nutritional side?

You know, why not create new meat experiences, you know, maybe mix types of animals together in one meat cut. I'm very much looking forward to that. But I think that we also need to deliver what people are used to.

Paul Shapiro: One thing that I have fantasized about would be the ultimate hybrid, which is where you would take fungi proteins, animal cell culture cells, and plant based proteins and [00:32:00] combine them all into one product.

So you can be eating from the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the fungi kingdom all in each bite.

Beni Nofech: That's like the sustainable protein assemble cry, right?

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I, I, I call it like the turin of alternative protein. Right. And, you know, for people not familiar with Turin is when it's a, it's a particularly revolting dish, I think, where you stuff in chicken inside of a duck, inside of a Turkey, and then you eat all three birds at once.

I know, I know the things that humans do are, are sometimes questionable. But but anyway, that sounds like a, a pretty amazing one that I, I would really like to try Mm-Hmm. . And I, I, I, I will tell you, I, I, I, I agree with nearly everything you said, although I do think. My only place I think I would diverge from you is that I do think it is still a high bar to mimic in that even for ground meat in that, you know, when I, I, we at the Better Miko run a lot of focus groups with the public and when we feed them blind taste tests between a regular hamburger and a Beyond Burger, it's very easy for them to distinguish it and beyond, you know, has agreed huge, [00:33:00] huge amounts of money.

So like it hasn't been so easy to mimic even a ground beef now. Impossible seems to have done a pretty good job at this. Our focus groups show that impossible really does. Like quote unquote fool a lot of people. And there is one test that I do which I call the Eddie test, which is my dog. And Eddie does not like plant based meat and he won't eat a Beyond Burger.

If I put it in front of him, he won't eat it. And he would gladly eat a hamburger though. However. He's very happy to eat impossible beef. He loves it. And so I thought, yeah. And so, and so this is like a great focus group because he's not biased by thinking one of these is plant based, right? He just thinks these are different foods in front of him and he actually really likes impossible.

And so I thought it must be the heme, right? Like it's got to be the heme, but then I gave him impossible chicken nuggets, which have no heme and he loves them, but he won't eat any other chicken nuggets, no other brand. And so a

Beni Nofech: brand. Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. So yeah, maybe he has brand loyalty, but I, I think that impossible just me do must be doing something really, really well.

He also really likes the beyond, or excuse me, the [00:34:00] better meat coast steak. He loves that product, but overall, you know, he's pretty finicky. And so anyway, I usually think if we can get Eddie to eat it. Then I know we have a great product at at hand. We don't have to do an expensive focus group, we'll just, just test him out.

Beni Nofech: I have

Paul Shapiro: an even more discerning,

Beni Nofech: Focus group at home. I have a cat funnily, funnily, called Tofu. It's his name . I didn't give him the name. I adopted him as tofu. Okay. And yeah, and I also try some products with him. But cats are more difficult, I guess, than adding. Yeah. Were there any that tofu liked. Yes, but I'm, I'm not, I'm not going to tell you.

Paul Shapiro: Oh, wow. This is a state, this is a state secret. Okay.

Beni Nofech: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm happy to talk about it soon.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. Well, I can't wait. I'm looking forward to hearing more about that, but so I presume this is some portfolio company of yours. So let me ask you, Beni, a direct question.

You've invested in a lot of companies. And obviously your mandate is solely Israeli companies, but surely you've given a lot of thought as to companies that you wish existed. So what has nobody done yet [00:35:00] that you would encourage somebody listening to start on their own and try to, and try to achieve so

Beni Nofech: Again, from a macro perspective, knowing that it's a marathon and not a sprint, I'm always trying to think about how can we make the largest amount of entrepreneurs start and, and, and, and upstart companies that have influence in our industry.

And there's just so many. So much to do. So thinking about this question before the interview what I would like to recommend to people is to go to GFI website, gfi. org slash ASAP. That's advanced advancing solutions and alternative proteins. There are a whole list there. There's just. So much to do.

So that's my answer. Just go there on that website and, and, and make sure you read and understand GFI has made such an amazing job in, in, you know, really pointing out the white spaces of our industry. And, and, and whoever works in these solutions will be able to, to, to build companies that have a significant competitive advantage from day one.

And [00:36:00] that really advanced our industry. So. So that would be my answer. There's a lot and, and again, we also mentioned the continuous process and cultivated meat. I want to see that happen really fast.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. Got it. So if you are an aspiring entrepreneur and you want to send Beni a pitch deck for your new technology to grow animal cells in a, in a continuous process where should they send their pitch deck to Beni?

How do they get in touch with you? So hello at M N H ventures. com. All right. We'll include that in the show notes for this episode, along with the GFI link that you suggested to finally, finally, Beni, you mentioned that you think people should read the startup nation. Other people, that's a very good book.

I also endorse it. You said there were a couple of other books that you would recommend for people. Tell us, what should they be reading?

Beni Nofech: I think I was very influenced probably as as a lot of people by Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and then another book that Yuval Noah Harari was involved in and that's Clean Meat by Paul Shapiro, which is a canonic book in our industry.

And you know, it has a special place [00:37:00] in my heart. I also have a signed copy that you made for me. So These, these, I think are the most important books for me. I also know that you are fond of Calvin and Hobbes. So I don't know if it helps entrepreneurs, but I think it can give you a pretty good perspective on life and financial questions.

So I also encourage people to look that up.

Paul Shapiro: Very nice. Well, you're obviously a very erudite, very learned, very wise reader. If you're recommending both clean meat. And Calvin and Hobbs, yes. . And, and surely surely it's very common for people to recommend both of those in the same breath. So I am, I'm honored, and you're right.

I, I am a big Calvin and Hobbs fan. I, I still remember in 1998 when he stopped, when Bill Waterson stopped publishing how, what a blow I felt for that. And my girlfriend at the time got me a framed. Panel of the very last one and yeah, it's definitely one of, you know, the, the great, if not the, the greatest comic that has ever been published.

So I I'm very eager to endorse all of the books that you've recommended here. Startup Nation, Sapiens, Queen Meat, and every Calvin and [00:38:00] Hobbes book ever written. So on that note, there's a, there's a lot to do. But Go out, read these books, start your own continuous animal cell culture, fermentation company, and get in touch with Beni.

And he's looking forward to baking a bet on you. So Beni, thanks so much for all you're doing to help advance the animal free protein space. I'm rooting for your success. Thank you so much, Paul.