Paul Shapiro: [00:00:00] Lisa, welcome to the business for good podcast.

Lisa Nunez Safarian: Thanks for having me paul. I

Paul Shapiro: appreciate it. Hey, it's really great to be chatting with you first let me ask you as I just finished reading the alchemy of air. Have you read

Lisa Nunez Safarian: that book? I have actually in fact, I was just recommending it to some of our sales reps the other

Paul Shapiro: day.

Oh, very cool Okay. Well before I endorse it, which I certainly will why do you recommend it to sales reps?

Lisa Nunez Safarian: well, it really is fascinating when you think about the history of nitrogen or synthetic fertilizer, however you want to term it. and what I find most interesting is we're talking about something that was invented 100 years ago, literally, and we haven't had any new technology in this space for that period of time.

And yet, if you think about synthetic nitrogen, you think about fertilizer, 50% of our food, the world's food for people and animals. Is made possible because of synthetic nitrogen. And so it's something we absolutely have to have to feed the world. but it really just emphasizes not just how it transformed, but the fact [00:01:00] that there's been really nothing new for a hundred years in this

Paul Shapiro: space.

Yeah, it's such an interesting story. I think what you're saying certainly resonates with me as well, but just reading about the history of how. Nitrogen was synthesized and what we did before synthetic nitrogen, which is essentially using guano and the fact that they were actual wars between nations over getting access to guano to export it to America and Europe, because that's what they needed to fertilize their fields.

And, you know, you think about what we go to war today over oil or maybe even in the future water. But back in the, you know, in the 18th or even part of the 19th century, people were literally going to war over. Control of bird and bat feces. I mean it was an incredible story. I highly recommend the book Yeah,

Lisa Nunez Safarian: it really is and and they were predicting even back then if we couldn't figure out something As the guano supply actually started to diminish.

there were some dire predictions about how many people in the world would die. And, and you were [00:02:00] talking about 4 billion people at the time. You weren't talking 8 billion plus. And so, they even realized back then that, while they were fighting over guano, that still wasn't the way to go and that they needed something different to come along to help, feed the world.

Paul Shapiro: Riveting. Okay. Well, we will link to that book, the alchemy of air in the show notes of this episode at business for good podcast. com. But rather than talking about how synthetic fertilizer was first invented, let's just talk about why this is important. So for people who don't know much about agriculture, I mean, maybe they know that the air that we breathe is virtually all nitrogen.

You know, we think it's oxygen, but it's only like one fifth oxygen. It's really like four fifths nitrogen that goes into your lungs every single time. So if nitrogen is all around us, it's in every breath. Why is it so hard to put it into the plant?

Lisa Nunez Safarian: Yeah. So when you think about, I'll call it row crops, think of corn, think of wheat, small grains, those types of crops, they're unable to take the nitrogen the way it is in the air and to actually utilize it, to grow.

so what has come out of it then is after [00:03:00] we've gotten past guano, we've gotten to synthetic nitrogen. We have to apply synthetic nitrogen and there's lots of different forms that you can use to get it into your field. But that's one of the nutrients, one of the key nutrients that the crops need in order to be able to grow.

And so we've shifted over time to synthetic nitrogen that gets applied often when planting and sometimes actually during the crop's growth, depending on what the need is for nitrogen at that time.

Paul Shapiro: So what's the problem? We're able to get nitrogen from the air and put it into the soil for the plants.

Why do we need any innovation? Well,

Lisa Nunez Safarian: the first piece is we don't really, pivot bio is transforming it by taking it from the air to the plant. But if you think about synthetic nitrogen, it actually goes through a very intensive production process. That occurs that uses high amounts of natural gas. and it is incredibly inefficient to create it's big.

It's bulky. It has a lot of transportation costs. It has a lot of resources that are [00:04:00] required in order to even be able to produce it and get it to the places where it needs to be. In fact, synthetic nitrogen is the, It's, it's agriculture's biggest, biggest problem as we think about pollution, whether we're talking about air, whether we're talking

Paul Shapiro: about water.

Yeah. So, you know, you, you have enormous amounts of energy going into just fixing the nitrogen from the air so we can turn it into something that gets sold to all these farmers. but as you just pointed out, Lisa, there is a real problem that it doesn't all get uptaken by the plants, right? There's huge problems with nitrogen runoff going into waterways, which end up, you know, you think the nitrogen is important for the plants, but like with anything, too much is a real problem.

And so you end up causing major dead zones in waterways, like in the Gulf of Mexico and other places because of so much synthetic nitrogen use on farms in America and around the world. Right.

Lisa Nunez Safarian: That's correct. in some cases, only 40 to 60% of what actually gets applied by farmers actually hits the crop, reaches a crop to grow it.[00:05:00]

And to your point, a lot of it goes off into waters as nitrates, and that's what's causing the dead zones. But a lot of it also goes into the air, and when it goes in the air, it goes into the air as nitrous oxide. And we often think about, you know, carbon dioxide and carbon going to the air. Nitrous oxide is much more deadly and it actually stays in the atmosphere for a hundred years.

So you really have two problems with synthetic nitrogen. One is the air and one is the water. And then of course you've got the waste where a lot of it's just sitting in the soil doing nothing because it has not reached the crop it was intended to grow.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. So this is an elementary question from, for, you know, somebody who doesn't really know much about agriculture, but it's only half or so of it is getting taken up by the plants.

Why don't farmers just apply half as much

Lisa Nunez Safarian: because half of that will go away as well. You can't control it, right? It's it's you can't control the weather. You can't control the heat. You can't control the water. And so you can't control how much is actually going to go to the crop, which is why more is applied.

That's really [00:06:00] actually used. Yeah. Because you don't know which part is going to get there

Paul Shapiro: by when, okay. So how'd you get into this Lisa? What's, you know, you, you have had a very illustrious career, both at Monsanto and then Bayer once, Bayer acquired Monsanto. but what was it that led you to think that you wanted to be involved in agriculture in the first place?

Did you grow up on a farm? Like, what was the motivation for you?

Lisa Nunez Safarian: no, I did not grow up on a farm. I, I live in a rural type area, but not on a farm. I, was putting myself through college and I was going to, Southern Illinois University and I was in IT actually, and Monsanto had a co op program where you could leave school, work for them for six months, go back to school, and they might invite you back.

And, it was a significant amount of my time. much more money than waiting tables was which what I was doing to get through college and they would also pay for school if you wanted to go at night. So Monsanto was very generous with their co op program. So I started there and actually just took a full time job after I graduated in their I.

[00:07:00] T. area, which I discovered pretty quickly was not. where I wanted to be. And so I moved over into the operations area and about that time, Monsanto was spun off as an agriculture only company. And so I just sort of fell into, ag, in those roles. And, and once I met the farmers and learned what we did and spent time out in the field and walking, through corn fields and soybean fields, I just fell in love with it.

And, what, what I really loved about it was, It's so important, right? I mean, if, if farmers feed the world, you know, they feed and clothe the world and there's just really no denying that. And so I fell in love with it and did that for 34 years until I retired from Bayer in 2020.

Paul Shapiro: And why'd you retire?

Lisa Nunez Safarian: Well, you know, I'd worked for Monsanto for 32 years and then Bayer bought Monsanto. And, I've been doing the same job for. Many, many years. And, I didn't want to move to Germany and take other types of positions. So I thought, well, this is a good time to retire. My husband was retired.

He [00:08:00] thought this would be a great idea. we'd be retired together. And that lasted for about three months. And then, I became bored and I think he was thinking I needed a job as well. So, I decided I'd go on to boards. I thought that would be a good thing to do. And, and I was fortunate enough to be chosen to go on a pivot bio board.

And once I learned about the pivot by our product and met the people just fell in love with it. And so about a year later, they asked if I wanted to join the company full time as the chief operating officer. And I had three rules for taking a job. One was it had to be meaningful. One was I had to learn something.

It wasn't going to just be the same things I'd done for so many years. And the third one was that I would have to have fun. And from what I can tell, joining PivotBio was going to meet all three of those. And, and it has. It's, it's been all of that. And so I've been there full time now as president and chief operating officer for about a year.

Paul Shapiro: Very nice. Very nice. So it's certainly a very cool company, and I'm eager to dive right in to talk about what it is, because you're [00:09:00] saying that you wanted something meaningful. Why is it meaningful? What is the meaning and pivot bio that you were seeking? Sure.

Lisa Nunez Safarian: So there's really two pieces. One, the product itself is.

Very valuable to farmers and that it's a consistent, dependable form of nitrogen and they can depend that when they put our product down, they're going to get the full use of nitrogen. It's not going to go somewhere else. So, just from a farmer perspective, it's a great product for farmers, but when you take the, Impact or the not the impact on the earth, the sustainability aspect of the product. It's phenomenal what it replaces and what it does for the earth is like nothing I've ever seen. and so when you want to talk about meaningful, it's meaningful for the farmer and it's meaningful for all of us because it's incredibly meaningful for the earth.

I look at this, and I look at this very much as I look at biotechnology. I was at Monsanto when biotechnology was launched, and it transformed agriculture. And I am positive that [00:10:00] PivotBio is also transforming agriculture as we're replacing synthetic nitrogen.

Paul Shapiro: Cool. So you're saying it is good for farmers and it is good for the environment.

Tell us what it is. What are you actually making and selling at PivotBio? Sure.

Lisa Nunez Safarian: So we're actually making microbes and well, we're taking microbes. We're not making them, but we're taking microbes that already existed in the soil naturally. And those microbes naturally were taking, nitrogen out of the air and creating ammonia to feed a plant.

But the problem is over time, there's so much extra nitrogen. In the soil, the microbes essentially were just turning off. They sensed the nitrogen, they said, I don't need to do my job, or they did it very, with very little luster.

Paul Shapiro: And, and sorry to interrupt you, but you mean there's so much nitrogen because we applied it there?

Lisa Nunez Safarian: Correct. It's extra nitrogen that got applied that never reached the crop to grow it. So we've taken those microbes and we've edited them and basically told them. [00:11:00] Even if you see some nitrogen hanging out in the soil, still do your job. Pull it from the air, make ammonia, feed the plant that you've colonized on.

So essentially, we have these microbes, and we, apply them. There's a couple of different ways to get on the farmer's seed. And, and we're specifically, our main product is corn. We also have one for wheat and sorghum and small grains. And essentially, once those microbes colonize on the roots, they spend the entire life of that plant pulling nitrogen from the air.

Creating ammonia, feeding the plant, and living off the sugars that the plant gives off. What is really great about these is they're weatherproof, essentially. Let's say it gets really hot, it doesn't go into the air, it still stays on the roots, it still feeds the plant. Let's say you get a lot of water. It doesn't wash away.

It still stays on the roots. It still stays on the plant. And it can detect when the plant needs the most nitrogen during its growth stage. And it provides that additional nitrogen during the time when [00:12:00] the plant needs it the most. When the plant dies, the microbes die, they go away. It's a symbiotic relationship.

And once the host, the corn plant is dead or the wheat plant is dead, the microbes are dead as well, and they go away. So it feeds that. Plant very consistently the entire time and it's very very dependable from a farmer perspective

Paul Shapiro: That sounds exciting. you use some words that I want to make sure people understand So you're saying you're editing these microbes.

These are natural microbes and you're editing editing them so that normally they would not produce ammonia because there's already fertilizer in the soil, but now they are still going to be doing exactly what they would even if there weren't, synthetic nitrogen. So basically the farmer can apply a lot less nitrogen is the point of that.

I want to just look into the word edit here. So you're saying your gene editing them, are you genetically engineering them? Like Gene editing them.

Lisa Nunez Safarian: We are gene editing them. and we're not inserting. We're not inserting anything new. So as you think about typical biotechnology, a lot of times that [00:13:00] means you're inserting something new into the genome.

We're not. We're simply turning the switch back on that was there in the first place. So nothing new has been entered into the into the

Paul Shapiro: gene. So it is not considered a GMO by U. S.

Lisa Nunez Safarian: Standards. Correct. And that really determin, that's depended, country by country. So as we look at the US it's not G m O for us.

it's been declared not g m O in Brazil. it's, got a little bit of different definition in Canada, but it will be not, you know, it'll go through Canada. We believe we'll have approval soon. it's not G M O in Kenya. So as we continue to go through and try to gain regulatory approvals in different countries, so far, there have been quite a few that have aligned as the U S has to say that it's not GMO.

Paul Shapiro: And who determines that? I'm not, not whether it's GMO or not, but just regulatory approval in the United States. Did you have to go through some approval process with the FDA or the USDA to use this on

Lisa Nunez Safarian: crops? Yes, absolutely. So we just go through the normal regulatory agencies as you would with crops [00:14:00] USDA, and, and they're the ones that determine.

You know, what the approvals are, and of course, after we've proved efficacy and, you know, everything on the label and safety and that sort of thing. And that's true. It's a different body, depending on which country you're talking to, you have to get regulatory

Paul Shapiro: approval. Okay, cool. So basically by editing it, you're, you're using like CRISPR in order to change or your, your facial expression indicates maybe not so.

But

Lisa Nunez Safarian: a technology similar to CRISPR.

Paul Shapiro: Yes. Okay. Got it. Cool. So it's proven safe. It's approved by regulatory authorities. How much nitrogen can you actually prevent? So you're saying that this does the job of the nitrogen, but my understanding is you're not able to displace all the synthetic nitrogen, at least not yet.

Lisa Nunez Safarian: Correct. Not yet. So today, our product is called proven 40 and you can replace up to 40 pounds of nitrogen per acre. And then depending on where you farm, that could be 20, 25% of the nitrogen that you typically would use.

Paul Shapiro: So you, you can subtract up to a quarter [00:15:00] of the nitrogen that is needed here, and, that's a pretty significant amount and a pretty significant, economic savings, presuming that this is cheaper than the synthetic nitrogen they're buying.

So when the farmer puts proven 40 on their land, does it cost them more or less to do?

Lisa Nunez Safarian: Well, so it depends. So what we do is we look at our pricing. we don't move our pricing based upon fertilizer prices. So historically, as you think about fertilizer, fertilizer prices rise dramatically when the price of energy goes up because it takes so much energy to create it.

We have chosen not to increase our pricing based upon fertilizer pricing. And just like as fertilizer pricing comes down, we've chosen not to bring our Our product down. We're just a very stable price that we, we put out there for the marketplace. So the farmer knows what he's paying each time. So for example, when we launched, we were slightly more expensive than some of the nitrogen possibilities.

The last few years, we've been significantly cheaper than nitrogen possibilities. [00:16:00] And now we'll have to wait and see how nitrogen prices price out. Because as you know, depending on what form of nitrogen you want to use and where you live and how far away you are from it, We'll determine your actual price for nitrogen you would use.

Paul Shapiro: So right now you're saying essentially it's cheaper. it may not always be depending on where you are or how

Lisa Nunez Safarian: it's close to being cheaper. It might be slightly higher than let's say urea or, depending on where you're at, maybe some anhydrous. but in some cases it's still definitely cheaper. In some cases you may be more at parity.

Paul Shapiro: Does the Russian invasion of Ukraine alter nitrogen prices?

Lisa Nunez Safarian: Oh, it, yes, it, it altered prices very much and so as you look at what's happened to farmers over the last couple of years, nitrogen just went really, really high and a lot of it actually had to do with the fact that, energy prices went so high and so it really follows energy pricing.

As energy prices have come down then, the, the cost of fertilizer has come down, it follows that pattern.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. Okay. I want to ask how the nitrogen [00:17:00] purveyors view pivot bio, because, to my knowledge, like Monsanto doesn't sell nitrogen or am I wrong about that? No, you're correct. The,

Lisa Nunez Safarian: if you call him the big ad, call him, call him, you know, bear or call him Syngenta or Corteva.

they don't, they don't sell nitrogen.

Paul Shapiro: It's so who's big nitrogen then? Like who are the big

Lisa Nunez Safarian: purveyors? Yeah. One you would know for sure would be nutrient. They're also nutrient as a, as a very big purveyor of nitrogen. And they are also the largest retail system in North America. Of course you can hear of Koch brothers and there there's a Yara.

There's, you know, some large, fertilizer companies that, that either sell retail or sell it through distributors to get to retail to get to farmers.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. So if I look at, let's say the meat industry, which is something I'm far more familiar with, you have this nascent industry of startups trying to recreate the meat experience without animals, either through plant based or maybe through fermentation or even through growing [00:18:00] animal cells directly.

And most of the big meat companies. Have a stake in these companies. They've invested in them. They've started their own branches of them They've launched their own plant based meat lines like you don't see a war between Tyson and those who are trying to take away market share from animal based meat What is it like in the nitrogen world is nutrient consider pivot bio a threat to them?

Do they consider it a potential partner? Is it an acquisition target? Like what is the relationship between pivot and the rest of the new breed of nitrogen? startups Compared to the incumbents in the space today. Yeah.

Lisa Nunez Safarian: So compared to the incumbents, there hasn't really been a lot of conversation or communication at this point.

and I think part of it is because we're so new. and as we continue to grow and get on more and more acres, my assumption is that we'll have more information about what that could look like in the future. right now, to my understanding, as I look at just publicly released reports, there, the new.

the nitrogen companies are more [00:19:00] interested in how they can make the product that they produce better, more sustainable and along those lines. So that seems to be primarily, but again, that's just from what I read. That's not been from any direct conversation,

Paul Shapiro: but to your knowledge, nutrient and none of the other big nitrogen.

Fertilizer purveyors have their own bioreactors trying to compete with pivot, trying to create their own microbes. They're going to do, let's say, better than 40 pounds.

Lisa Nunez Safarian: Not to my knowledge.

Paul Shapiro: Right. Interesting. Okay. well, it would be riveting to see how, how this transpires, because if we do move to microbial sources of nitrogen, Obviously, we have a major disruption to a multibillion dollar industry that presumably is not eager to be displaced.

So, I, I can't wait to see more what happens, whether there's a cooperation or a confrontational stances taken between these, these 2 sectors here. in terms of multibillion, you know, I read. Lisa, that the latest evaluation, at least that I saw for pivot bio was nearly 2 billion. Companies [00:20:00] raised over 600 million was founded in 2010.

So you're 13 years in now a gargantuan amount of investor interest in this company against over 600 million of venture capital put into this company. So how is it doing now? I know that you are on fields. This is obviously not a pre revenue company. are you getting close to a point of profitability?

Will you have to continue raising investor cash? Or is there an IPO in the near future looking for PivotBio?

Lisa Nunez Safarian: So, last year we were on a little over 3 million acres of corn, which is a sizable, sizable acreage. We grew again this year. We haven't announced yet. What our numbers were this, this past year, but we do continue to grow and strong farmer demand continues to be there.

So, you know, our goal at some point is to do an IPO. Now, part of that's going to depend on what the financial markets look like. when is it more appealing to do an IPO or when it's not, but that is definitely what we aspire to do, whether that's, you know, an 18 months or [00:21:00] something a little longer.

You know, it's, it's kind of hard to say, but we are putting everything in place within our company, you know, growing sales, growing the company to the right size to be able to IPO at the right time. So that's exactly what we're working on.

Paul Shapiro: Nice. So I know that you talk about the number of acres that you are on.

Do you also talk about the amount of revenue that has been generated? I see in public statements, the company has talked about tripling revenue and increasing revenue, but are there actual dollars that are attributed to

Lisa Nunez Safarian: that? yeah, we talked about that in our release from last year, and I believe we were about over 50 million in revenue.

so again, you know, we're, we've got the products, the farmers demand it, we're meeting farmer demand, and really, right now, it's all about scaling and being able to continue to grow to meet the demand that's out there.

Paul Shapiro: So is that the limiting factor? Is it that you can't sell more of it or you can't make enough of it to satisfy the demand?

Like if you had double the I presume you're creating these microbes via fermenters, right? Correct. So if you had, you know, if you had double the [00:22:00] fermenter size, would you have double the revenue?

Lisa Nunez Safarian: I don't know if it would be 1 to 1, but definitely as we can continue to provide more product, our revenue will absolutely increase because the demand is there.

Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Where are these fermenters? Are these in the Midwest? We

Lisa Nunez Safarian: have multiple. We use contract manufacturers. We have them, we have four or five different ones and they're spread out somewhere in the Midwest. Some are, I think we've got one in Wisconsin. but they're, they're spreading different places.

One, we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket and two, we need to make sure that we've got enough capacity and continue to grow that capacity to make sure that we can meet

Paul Shapiro: demand. You don't want to put all of your microbes in one fermenter. That's exactly right. Yeah. very cool. So you guys have decided basically to put all your money into the R and D phase, not to the production.

Like you don't want to earn the manufacturing capacity for this is what I'm hearing you say. Not right

Lisa Nunez Safarian: now. We're very capital light right now. You know, obviously as the years go by, you know, we'll be making different decisions potentially and looking at different alternatives, but right now, we've been very successful using contract [00:23:00] manufacturers.

Paul Shapiro: Right. Cool. speaking of fermentation, there are a ton of fermentation companies that need nitrogen as well, and, you know, they buy synthetic nitrogen to use to feed their own microbial fermentations. Is there a pathway toward PivotBio to selling into that market as well, or is this only for on crop application?

Lisa Nunez Safarian: Right now we're concentrating on on crop application. Having said that, as we continue to move You know, through this journey it's clear that there are other needs, even for other crops and the ones that we're focusing on. and there may be other needs, as you've mentioned, for being able to provide nitrogen, but right now we're really focusing on the crops.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. Okay. Well this is really exciting. I can't wait to see what happens as Pivot Bio continues to try to take away some of the market share from the big nitrogen companies. I mean, if it really is the case that, you know, you can. Replace a quarter of the nitrogen needs. That's a pretty big threat to them.

If you're doing 50 million of revenue, that's a lot of [00:24:00] revenue for a startup. But in the grand world of obviously, nitrogen sales, which is tens of billions of dollars a year, there's still some time to go to scale up and Build on it. Get more of it out there, but I imagine that as the company continues being more and more successful that there will be, some type of dialogue that's going to be had, with the nitrogen purveyors.

And so let me ask you, Lisa, like, obviously you've done a lot in your life. You've had a very illustrious career in agriculture and are now the president of a really important startup. That's doing really cool work to try to mitigate the climate crisis, or at least slow it down and help farmers in the process.

So are there other companies that you wish existed? Like obviously, you know, you were going to retire. Now you are president of this very important company. But are there other companies that maybe you wish that somebody else who has more time in their hands would do the other in this space or others that would also have some positive impact on the world?

Lisa Nunez Safarian: Yeah, you know, it's interesting when I think about that, there are so many different, ag startups out there that have really, really [00:25:00] cool ideas. I think that can be very effective, not only for the farmer, but for the climate. what I would wish is maybe not as. For a particular new company to come up, but that we could figure out how to do better collaboration across these new companies with the big companies.

because I think there's plenty of space for everybody and as opposed to having to do it all yourself, or kind of it has to be invented here kind of mentality. But I think, if we could figure out how to get people collaborating faster, sooner and getting the resources out there, I think there are a lot of, Of new companies out there that could bring value to the farmer as well as to the earth. And so to me, it's about how we work together as much as what would the new company be.

Paul Shapiro: Cool. Speaking of working together, it raises the question for me about what the reaction is, Lisa, from people who oppose, biotechnology and food and agriculture, people who oppose genetic modification.

They also oppose even gene editing, oftentimes. So has there been a negative reaction from [00:26:00] those folks who want a, like, you know, I would suggest they're, you know, seeking more of a return to like what they would perceive as natural or like 19th century agricultural practices. Like, how did they interact with companies like pivot bio?

Lisa Nunez Safarian: Yes, we really haven't heard a lot about that. You know, I would say the one piece would be as we've gone to the EU to see about getting approval, they're still thinking about edited microbes as a GMO or biotechnology. Now, having said that, there's also been a lot of conversation in the EU about maybe they need to rethink their, their thinking around this, because especially with the focus on climate.

I, I think the benefits that you can bring or we can bring and others can bring to, to sustainability and to the climate crisis, I think are outweighing maybe some of the concerns about the edited piece. I mean, if I, if I give you an example in just the few million acres that we were on this past year, with the amount of nitrogen that was avoided, we avoided 226, 400 [00:27:00] metric tons of carbon emissions.

That's enough to power 44, 000 U. S. homes in a year. And we replaced over 32, 000 tons of synthetic fertilizer. And we're talking about a very small portion of the existing corn acres in the U. S. These numbers will grow dramatically as we continue to get on more acres replacing 40 pounds, or we actually increase the 40 pounds to replace more than 40 pounds.

So I think people are, to me, if you look at that benefit, it gets really difficult. To maybe think about, Oh, no, let's just bypass this new technology because I don't like the editing piece because the value that comes from it, from a sustainability and a climate perspective is just

Paul Shapiro: overwhelming. Yeah. So I agree with you and I think that you're making a very logical argument, Lisa.

That's why I. view pivot as a business for good, right? Not, not a business for bad. my experience oftentimes is with the anti gmo activists. That logic is not necessarily [00:28:00] the, the, the motivating factor, right? There's just a feeling that it's so called unnatural. And so, some of them, not all, but some of them seem to have a knee jerk reaction to the application of biotechnology to agriculture.

And part of it, I think, may be just that a lot of the times, In the past, some applications of biotechnology have not been beneficial for the environment. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. But in this case, it seems very obvious that it is for all the reasons that you were just noting. Have you ever read a book called Resetting the Table by Robert Paulberg?

I have not. I definitely recommend it. We actually had him. He's a Harvard professor. We had him on this show as a guest several episodes ago. We'll link to that in the show notes over this episode at business for good podcast dot com. But it's a really excellent look at what it takes to feed. As you said, 8 billion people without destroying the planet and his basic argument is we need a lot [00:29:00] more biotechnology, not less, and we need to eat less meat.

Those are his main arguments. Like, we're gonna have to basically raise fewer animals and apply a lot more technology in order to feed the world. And that's 1 of the reasons why I am. So enthusiastic about what pivot bio is doing. And so my hat is off to you, for the work that you're doing and your colleagues as well, Lisa, let me ask you one final question here.

obviously again, you've had a lengthy career that's done, a lot of important things. Have there been resources for you that you thought were useful that you would recommend to others? Anything you've read or seen or heard that you think somebody listening to the show will benefit by doing the same.

Yeah,

Lisa Nunez Safarian: I think so. I'll tell you one, a resource that really, impacted a big part of my career and how I led teams and how I did business. And that is a Patrick Lencioni's work. you know, the, the, the book that sort of started me on that was five dysfunctions of a team, but his most recent work is called the [00:30:00] advantage.

And when you read the book, Yeah. It sounds very simplistic, you know, there's, there's not like a lot of, you know, magic in the book, but, but it's so true that when you bring people together, they can be the smartest people. They can be the most innovative people. They can be the most passionate people, but if they don't work together as a team, you're not going to be successful.

You can have the very best product and you'll get beat by somebody who has a lesser product. Who's got a better team running the business. And so that piece of work I think is, is really helpful. It's, it's a soft skills. A lot of people don't like to think about soft skills, right? You like to think about data.

You like moving fast and don't really have to stop and have this meeting and talk to people this way. And the answer is, yeah, you do. And so for me, that was a big one. The other one, the other book that I read that really impacted me was a Simon Sinek's book, the infinite game. Because what it really talks about is there's really not about winners and losers.

It's about how do you continue to advance and, and do good and perpetuate and make [00:31:00] the right decisions for a company, for a product so that you're, you can have a, a generational company, which is what we'd like to have here at pivot versus just trying to hit every quarter with your numbers and sort of, you kind of win at each quarter or you win at the end of the year, which really, I think, helps people think differently about their work.

And differently about their choices. And I think it brings a much bigger richness to the company and to the products and to the

Paul Shapiro: people. that's great. That's really cool. And I definitely agree with you when you talk about generational companies, like, you know, we think in the startup world, PivotBio has been around for 13 years.

And that kind of feels like an old, like an old guard company, 13 years. But of course the most successful companies are around not. 13 years, but over a century, and especially if you do business in Asia and you find out there are some of these companies that have been around for centuries, plural, it's like truly incredible to think about what a sustainable business actually looks like.

So, I wish pivot bio all the success. I hope it'll be around for centuries and continue, dramatically [00:32:00] reducing the amount that is needed. So we, so thanks so much for your work. It's great to be talking with you and, I can't wait for that IPO. I'll be looking forward to it. Thanks, Paul.

Lisa Nunez Safarian: Thank you.