Silk and Leather from Fermentation, Not Animals — David Breslauer and the Bolt Threads Story

David Breslauer: [00:00:00] Rather than taking, so. That nature has grown. Leather, it's a hide, and then putting all sorts of plastics and chromium and all the nasty chemicals that are associated with the leather industry on top of it, removing the hair we get sort of to make it in a more pure form directly towards the product that's desired.

Welcome to

Paul Shapiro: the Business for Good podcast to show where we s. Companies making money by making the world a better place. I'm your host, Paul Shapiro, and if you share a passion for using commerce to solve many of the world's most pressing problems, then this is the show for you. Hello friends, and welcome to the 59th episode of The Business for Good Podcast.

Before we get onto this one, wow. Did a lot of folks have a lot to say about the last episode with Maple Leaf Foods Reactions from listeners were plentiful from being impressed by what the meat company is doing with its investments in plant-based meat to disliking their answer about the ad they place critical of other plant-based companies to even some industry press covering the [00:01:00] interview.

Yes, that. MeetingPlace Magazine published an entire column about our interview, which was actually quite a thoughtful column. I felt. It was basically welcoming Maple Leaf's innovation in plant-based protein. So pretty good sign, I thought. So. If you didn't yet, listen to episode 58. Know that it's the one that everyone's apparently talking about, so you may wanna go back and check it out.

But whether you loved it or not, I'm glad so many of you found the interview worthwhile, but what is certainly also worthwhile is the work that this episode's. David Breslauer of Bolt Threads is doing. I wrote a little bit about bolt's work, growing real spider silk without spiders in my book clean meat, and I was even more intrigued when I saw recently that his company has now moved into mimicking leather too.

Now, most leather alternatives are made from plastic, which is why it's called pleather, and it's not. Really the eco friendliest, but it can also lack and function too. Now, bolt threads, on the other hand, is making its alt weather by fermenting mycelium or the root-like structures of fungi, and [00:02:00] they even inked a deal with Adidas to start selling their mycelium leather shoes in 2021.

That's right. This very year, what was started as a project in 2009 by some students who applied for government grants is now a VC backed startup that's raised more than 200 million, 200 million. They've gotten celebrity endorsements and they're now on the verge of entering their first major commercialization 11 years after they got started.

It is a wild ride that they've been on, and David has some important insights for anyone seeking to use. To solve social problems. I hope you enjoy hearing Bolt story as much as I did. I now give you David Breslauer of Bolt Thread. David, welcome to the Business for Good podcast. Thank you.

David Breslauer: Thank you for having me.

I'm glad to be here.

Paul Shapiro: It's awesome to have you. I have been following your work for a long time. I've been a fan of your work. I've even written about your work, but I am embarrassed to say that we have never, uh, met or crossed paths or connected online. So, [00:03:00] uh, I have been like this, uh, stalker in the, in the, uh, shadows, uh, touting your work, but great to actually get a chance to talk.

Yeah,

David Breslauer: absolutely. Our paths were bound to cross eventually .

Paul Shapiro: Yes. So let me just get right down to it. Oh, I want to ask you a, a question that I know you've addressed before, but you know, a lot of the times, like if, if you were to talk with a company, uh, that's just getting started because, you know, bolt threads got started in 2009, we're now more than a decade later, would you have thought?

You'd be doing what you're doing today, or do you think it's taken longer than you've expected? Do you think that it is like more pivots than you would've expected? Because what you're doing now is kind of different from what you were doing then. So tell me, if you had talked to David in 2009 and said in 2021, here's what it's gonna look like, how shocked would he have been?

David Breslauer: Oh wow. Um, David in 2009 would, would probably not even recognize. Bolt as it is today based on what he thought the [00:04:00] outcome would be. Um, I think he would be very pleased. Mm-hmm. , uh, with, with where we've come, but absolutely there's the only, the only thread that is consistent that he would recognize is the fact that we were always fascinated by natural materials.

Um, particularly ones that, uh, perform well or otherwise hard to make, um, and. , we always wanted to make them in, in whatever context, natural materials, that sort of, that that nature has evolved over all these years, these billions of years that grow renewably obviously and reintegrate back into the environment.

And so there was always that focus and fascination. Um, I don't think I, he, he, he, me. I don't think back then I would've known just how hard we would've gone into consumer apparel. Um, we, we knew there was an angle there, but really when we sort [00:05:00] of started looking behind, uh, the curtains saw. All the challenges and opportunities, all the sustainability issues, and realized that's where we felt we could have a big impact.

Mm-hmm. . And that's what we got to know. Um, that became our, our primary focus. Um, and where we really started iterating with customers. , um, in order to develop new materials, well let,

Paul Shapiro: let's just start from the beginning then. So, you know, presume that people don't know your story, of course. And first I'll say, I think it's okay to refer to your old self in the third person, since all the cells in the body have been replenished, uh, since 2009.

You're, you know, completely different person. Uh, so I, I give you the license to thank you to refer to that 2009 David and third person. But, um, you know, you started out with this. To make spider silk. Right. So I know that you were in school. What happened? Why were you thinking about spider silk at all? Why, why is spider silk something that's worth replicating?

David Breslauer: Uh, yeah. So when I was, uh, in graduate school, and this was, uh, around 2006 [00:06:00] that I started on spider silk, you know, the concept of matics. What can we learn from nature? What has nature built, how can we mimic it? , how has it optimized for solutions in ways that might be counterintuitive to us as scientists and engineers?

That was, you know, really a popular concept at the time. And I had been learning on about building micro machines and sort of flu microfluidic, fluidic systems that were the size of your thumbnail, but could do all sorts of laboratory, uh, chemical mixing and, and uh, all sorts of biological manipul. and inspired by the, the biofield of eds or that attitude.

Um, you know, I, I was working around an area where there are a ton of spiders on the uc, Berkeley campus and ta and talking to my advisor, the question came up, you know, how [00:07:00] do spiders make this silk that is, uh, well known for being incredibly strong. You can't buy it commercially. We barely understand how spiders do that.

It takes so much energy and has taken so much innovation for us to make synthetic fibers that are that strong. What do spiders do? Um, . That is so almost magical. Yeah. So for people,

Paul Shapiro: David, who don't know how strong spider silk is, cuz I'd imagine most people think, Hey, I've walked through a spider web before.

It didn't feel that strong to me. Explain how strong is spider silk.

David Breslauer: You know, spider silk is. The thing about it is it's strong and very light. So relative to something, say kevlars, that we're used to thinking of extremely strong materials, they are on par and strength, but then also incredibly light.

They're also much stretchier, which makes them good for some things and bad for others. But those extremely fine threads of spider silk are 3, 4, 5 x [00:08:00] stronger than Ben silkworm silk that you find in in Gar.

Paul Shapiro: Why, why did this spider evolve to make something five times stronger than a worm?

David Breslauer: Well, that's exactly what we were trying to figure out.

Um, we believe we, being the spider silk community, a lot of it has to do with you need a very strong net to catch these darts of flies that are flying around and, uh, landing or hitting a web in order to need something strong so it doesn't break through. Um,

Paul Shapiro: That, uh, that, yeah, that would make a lot of sense.

So, you know, how, how strong is it, like if you could produce, let's say spider silk in the, you know, the enough of it so that it's like as dense as a pencil, let's say. So instead of a tiny little thread, you had like a pencils thickness of it. How strong would that be?

David Breslauer: That's, that's such a, that's a question that's so in the depth, the lore of spider silk.

Everybody says if you could stop a Boeing, uh, 7 47 with spider silk as thick as a pencil, doesn't quite work that [00:09:00] way. Um, but let's just say, you know, in as many years ago, A group of of gentlemen went to Madagascar and made a tapestry outta spiders silk that they reeled out of spiders. Now this is touring the world.

It's under lock and key under glass, but from the people who felt it, they say it feels softest silk, but strong as a bike

Paul Shapiro: lock. Wow. How, how did, did they farm the spiders? Were they, they just collecting webs from the forest? Like what, what was the method of collection here? They actually took

David Breslauer: spiders, golden orb, weaver, spiders, all nearly the size with legs and all size of your hand.

Um, took golden orb, weavers sort of held them down, constrained them down, and slowly reeled the silk out of them and made the arms, put 'em back into the, back, into the, uh, forest. Allowed them to regenerate silk. They went, spent five years, 1,000,050 3000 spiders, I believe, same

Paul Shapiro: multiple times. So they, they [00:10:00] physically restrained over a million spiders to do this.

David Breslauer: Mm-hmm. , it took five years, $500,000 to make this tap. If you google spider silk tapestry, you will find it. Yeah. Wow. It's, it's quite a stunning piece, but it also shows you. Just how inaccessible some of these just outstanding material properties that nature has evolved are.

Paul Shapiro: Right. So o okay. So o obviously if there's gonna be an industry of spiders, um, you know, nobody is gonna be, uh, pinning down millions of spiders and you can't farm them because they will, you know, attack each other since they're solitary animals who aren't, uh, didn't wanna live together.

Mm-hmm. . So your idea then back in, in the. In the late two thousands was essentially to program microbes to make the, the proteins that are in spider silk. Is that correct? Well, yes.

David Breslauer: So to, to go back to the point that I was working on those micro machines, my part of the puzzle was vi was very interested in these spiders, make this protein [00:11:00] that somehow magically turns into a fiber.

So I was very focused. How does that work? How does this goo It's a liquid Inside the spiders turn into this incredibly strong, incredibly fine fiber and serendipitously I was introduced, uh, to my co-founder across the bay who was at U C S F studying, how do we engineer microbes to produce that protein?

And so when we got together, it was like, oh hey. You're working on how to produce that protein without spiders. I'm working on how to turn that protein into fibers without spiders. Wow.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah. You know, the universe of people fascinated by spider silk, it must have been like love at first sight. I mean,

David Breslauer: there is not many of us on the West Coast, and the fact that we found each other and we're only 25 minutes away from each other is the unlikeliest of circumstances.

much of the early days of bolt threads. Feels like a fairytale and, uh, ver just seren complete [00:12:00] serendipity.

Paul Shapiro: So how did you get started then? Uh, were you getting grants, were you getting investments? Like you guys decided you wanna start this company to actually try to engineer spider silk without the spiders?

Like what do you think? Obviously you need money. Where'd you get it?

David Breslauer: Yeah. Um, government grants, uh, it was now there are more. Gr more angel investors and, uh, more tools like even Y Combinator now has, uh, supports a lot of biological development. There were just fewer ways to get money back then. The only way was through government grants and it was a very great, uh, Great mechanism.

Um, you get an S B I R Small Business Innovation grant from you, n S NSF or N I H depending on on what area your technology was going into. And it's non-dilutive funding, a hundred thousand dollars, a hundred, 150. And so we were still in graduate school, we wrote some grants saying we think we have new technology that no one's ever [00:13:00] tried before to make spider silk without spiders.

And we wrote a whole grant. our proposal and we got all our grants. I mean, we, I think we applied for four and we're counting on maybe getting one and we got 'em all. So we quickly finished up our, our PhD theses and got to work. Um, after that we spent a year working and actually got investment for the broader vision of the company, um, from a v.

Wow.

Paul Shapiro: Who was the first VC who believed in, uh, spider silk without the spiders?

David Breslauer: Uh, it was foundation capital. We, um, and Steve Vasala over there who had actually been very intrigued by spider silk and was looking for, uh, to see if anybody and who, who was working on trying to figure out how to make it and commercialize it.

Paul Shapiro: So what was your thought? I mean, you obviously weren't thinking about, um, customer applications as you said earlier. What was it that you were thinking you would do with this if you were able [00:14:00] to produce it in, in industrial scale?

David Breslauer: So quite, I mean, the journey has been quite long and the learnings have been, um, numerous and compounded.

We were so sort of innocent and filled with youthful hubris. Back then it was, it was, we are going to figure out how to make spider. and we're gonna figure out what to do with it. Underlying that was a general belief that we can acc if we can holistically access, access materials in nature with our technology platform.

We are just gonna keep finding out what to do with these things cuz they're quite incredible. Mm-hmm. , we learned over time, uh, how important customer feedback, uh, is in that process. , but in the beginning when we were just writing grants, it was, you know, we think natural materials are cool. We know how to do this spider silk.

We're gonna fig, we'll figure it out from there. Hmm.

Paul Shapiro: But so did you have [00:15:00] any ideas in your mind? I mean, you mentioned Kevlar, so were you thinking, oh yeah, we can sell this to the military to have lightweight, bulletproof vests as an example, or to police officers like shortly you must have fantasized about some application.

David Breslauer: Yeah, of course. Um, so it's, uh, we talked about everything from lightweight, uh, bulletproof vests to. High strength garments for the military that don't melt because, uh, most the synthetic polymers melt, uh, when exposed to high heat, like hot shrapnel, um, to surfboard composites, uh, to sail. We talked about, uh, sales that for, cuz at that time everyone was talking in the Bay Area about, you know, Larry Ellison's racing.

Uh, sales meaning s a i s os, s a i l. Thank you. Um, and a lot about biodegradable sales that could then, you know, you could dispose of easily once they're done after a race. So all of these real [00:16:00] performance applications, and it wasn't till about, not long, six months in that we started seeing not just where performance was necessary, but just performance from the aspect of su sustainability.

Needed a lot of new solutions within apparel generally, let alone performance. .

Paul Shapiro: Mm, I see. Interesting. So, I, I don't wanna fast forward, uh, too quickly, but, so if you're getting these government grants like, uh, from N NSF or N nih, you all of a sudden start going to VC money and you fast forward, let's just say to today, David, like, how much has the company raised today?

How, like, what's the growth? And then we wanna talk about how you got there, but like, how much has Vote Fred's raised to date?

David Breslauer: Oh wow. You know, not including grants. I, it's a little over $200 million. Wow. Cumulatively raised. Um, it's also been 10, 10 some odd years of operating, um, . It's, it's been quite a, it's been quite a journey.

Um, yeah. [00:17:00]

Paul Shapiro: And so in, in term, did correct me if I'm wrong, there was some commercialization of the spider silk, right? Like you guys were selling. Was it, were there some ties that were sold as my recollection?

David Breslauer: Yeah. Uh, as we were scaling up our, our spider silk production and we were, um, We, we can, we're trying to continuously improve our process as well as demonstrate the commercial potential.

Uh, we launched these 50, uh, a couple different product here. Let me just start over. , you can cut that. Um, yeah, as we were scaling up our spider silk production and we were on a l under a lot of pressure to enter, enter the commercial marketplace, um, because we had been so far just doing so much r and d but needed to really demonstrate that we can deliver product, um, not just to our investors but to the public.

We launched a series of [00:18:00] ties that we made, um, with our. Just to demonstrate that we could launch, we could make spider's silk and could launch it in multiple unit qualities. The history of the field ha was littered with one-off, demos with somebody made bruteforce a single unit, and that was it. We were like, no, we are going to sell and consumers and selling ever increasing quantities.

So we made ties, then we launched, uh, beanies. And the ties were 50 units that all sold out. The beanies were several hundred units that all sold out. Uh, we even made some products that used spiders, silk in a solid form, not fibers form, as we continued to iterate on product and, um, Form factor performance properties.

Uh, it was then that we caught the eye of Stella McCartney, who helped really push us into the more high fashion area and, and inspire the [00:19:00] mines Therein with, uh, the dress, she made the gold, uh, spider silk dress, as well as some of the subsequent gar.

Paul Shapiro: Wow. So Stella McCartney, uh, of course the daughter of, uh, Paul McCartney and a fashion designer, how, how did she even hear about what you're doing?

Was it just through Buzz, uh, you know, word of mouth regarding these new ties or what?

David Breslauer: You know, Stella had, um, again, I gotta give her a lot of credit, uh, for how proactive and ahead of the curve she was. She had hired someone to lead her sustainability efforts, and I don't know how they found us, but they just cold reached out.

And so we invited them in and we brought, so you just, you

Paul Shapiro: just got an email from Stella McCartney,

David Breslauer: from ST from someone who worked for Stella McCartney, but@stellamccartney.com saying, you know, we wanna know more. When we showed Stella what we were up to, she came by with her team. She loved everything about the idea of inspired by nature meant to [00:20:00] reintegrate back in the environment, grown from the environment.

How do we leverage. Evolution and what nature has built to make better materials and products. And so she became our, you know, our number one fan and helped us build out consistently better, more, um, luxurious demonstrations of the material, which I believe really helped show the promise to others in high fashion because our history was really, , we were able to get a lot of attention from the outdoor industry to give them credit.

The outdoor industry who was very far ahead of everyone else. And, you know, companies like Patagonia, who we spent a lot of time working with, were looking for new materials that were better for the environment before, um, many others. Mm-hmm. and Stella helped popularize it as well within, within the fashion.

Yeah,

Paul Shapiro: it does seem like if you're gonna have this like really amazing, um, [00:21:00] material, like why wasted on a beanie when you could be doing something that's far higher value? Right. Oh, I, I, I, I, I actually was one of the people who, uh, bid on, or I don't know, I put my hat in the ring to get one of those 50 ties.

This, sadly, I, I did not get one. My Apologi . But I mean, even that, I mean it's, you know, it's just a tie. You know, how much is a tie gonna go for compared to some like high end fashion or even military use as a, as an example. So it, it seems like it would make a lot more sense to, to go into that. But, so then, you know, if you're thinking about this silk that you're using for fashion and eventually something happens where, You say, well actually rather than silk, we're going to, you know, pivot away, or not really pivot away from, but add to our portfolio.

Not just the idea of making spider silk, but actually using, uh, you know, fungi to make leather and replace leather. So what led you to make that, and when did you start getting into the mycelium game as opposed to just thinking that, you know, we're a spider, a spider silk startup? [00:22:00] Yeah,

David Breslauer: that, it's a great question.

That's its own interesting story in. . We had the substantial number of partners who were playing with our silk, looking at our silk value. Everybody was excited, everybody was curious, what can we do with this? At the same time, we always thought leather was this problematic material. Particularly, um, from just an animal cruelty, vegan perspective, but a growing awareness about the greenhouse gas contributions.

And we had, we just kept throwing around ideas of how we would one day try to make a leather material. And our expertise was making proteins. You know, spider silk is a protein we. I've gotten very good at growing up silk, which is a protein. Maybe we could just then make collagen leather is substantially composed of collagen and skin.

[00:23:00] Maybe one day we'll do that. Um, and, but we had seen some other people around, um, working on that approach, which is, how do I grow collagen and then try to form it into leather

Paul Shapiro: and Right. And that's, that's basically the premise of what Modern Meadow is

David Breslauer: doing. Right. Um, and we just, as very much a material scientist myself, I wasn't quite sure, I hadn't seen enough progress on that front to feel like that was the most viable solution for making l a high quality leather, a luxurious leather.

Um, now at the same time, And we had been, and this sort of goes to your earlier question about what were your applications with all the people who were working on fibers with us, we started getting a lot of people asking us, do you have a leather offering? And the convers of the conversation kept picking up our co.

Um, as we found that particularly within luxury brands, there was [00:24:00] an incredibly fast growing concern that.

Leather was coming from livestock and that was a huge contributor to greenhouse gases on top of the animal welfare. But I think the big concern there was greenhouse gases for them. And the only alternative was pleather or what was being dubbed vegan leather. And that is made from petroleum. So you can, you can get away from.

Greenhouse gas emissions through livestock, but then you end up with a plastic based product that buzz a tie of degrade. Now there are other aspects of plea that doesn't, don't quite have the luxury feel of leather, but ultimately that was your trade off

Paul Shapiro: and Right. And, and you know, it's interesting cuz I think a lot of people, when they hear the term pleather, they think it's a play on the word pleasure, when actually it just means pla plastic leather.

Yeah. You know that it

David Breslauer: occurred to me. .

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah. I mean that it, it [00:25:00] is intended to, you know, in, uh, connote that this is a pleasurable product, right? Pleather, I mean, uh, but yeah, I mean, really it's just plastic leather. So, uh, you know, maybe, uh, you know, from an animal welfare perspective, it's better than killing cows.

But at the same time, uh, you know, there are still some en environmental trade-offs that you have there. Yeah,

David Breslauer: absolutely. Um, and yeah, so. At that point, we knew that there was gonna be demand, or there was demand for leather, and it seemed a leather replacement that had traumatic sustainability attributes, like the de the, the concern was very high, and that de that request was sort of outpacing people's interest in iterating with fibers, fibers.

Fibers made us, uh, the concern about microfibers had been growing, but suddenly the concern about cows and animal agriculture was growing faster. And at that time, um, [00:26:00] we learned about mycelium. and when we saw the structure of mycelium and how you could grow it into a sheet, mycelium being the roots of mushrooms.

Not the mushrooms you eat, but the roots under the ground. And if you can grow them in a controlled way, they make these sheets, um, that really give you a much more. Uh, leather like feel. Um, because of the way these roots create little tiny fibers that all entangle with each other and touch and connect and rub against one each other.

Kind of like how all the collagen networks form in hide animal skin, but you don't have to try to reproduce it. It grows that. and we, you know, my co-founder and I looked at each other and said, we think this is, this is the viable way to make a replacement to leather. Mm-hmm . And from there we said, okay, now we're gonna try to, uh, [00:27:00] Figure out how, how to grow mycelium as well, and

Paul Shapiro: So what, what was your first step though, David? Because, you know, you guys were bio-engineering spider silk, right? Which is, you know, something very different from growing mycelium. Presumably you don't have a background in mycology where you're like, yo, we need to hire some mycologist here. Like, what, what was your first step to thinking, okay, how are we gonna figure out to do this entirely novel process that we don't have any idea about?

David Breslauer: So that's, that's, I always find that question very fascinating. And again, maybe this comes back to some sort of youthful hubris. We looked at it as these processes are surprisingly similar, whereas a lot of the seasoned, uh, scientists we talked to who we sought help from was like, we're like, oh no, those are different fields.

You shouldn't try to, um, pursue what would say liquid fermentation, growing microbes and that, and solid state fermentation, which is growing fungus. On say, saw dust, [00:28:00] those, those are two different things. And we looked at and we said, it's all fermentation. It's all getting your feed stock, sterilizing your feed stock, growing your microbe, purifying your output, whether it's silk or mycelium, and then forming it into your material.

And what we had become so good at as a company through all these years of trials with silk and different iterations thereof, was prototyping. Biomaterials and integrating with product developers and designers from the textile world where there's many qualitative attributes that are extremely difficult to quantify.

So this isn't just what is strengths, what is abrasion resistance? This is, does it drape well? Does it ha does it age well? How does it feel against the skin? We had become so skilled at that because you, if you look at. Stella McCartney, silk dress, you know, it has to hang just [00:29:00] right. And as much as, as much as that's in the, the knitting and the weaving, if your fiber's too stiff, it's not gonna do that.

You might have the strongest fiber in the world, but if it's too stiff, it's not gonna drape well. So those are the attributes we had. We had integrated really well how to scale up biological processes and prototype with them hand in hand with textile design. . And so when we looked at that, we said, you know, we just need to gain, grow our knowledge around mycelium growth, but we think we can connect that just as we did with silk, um, on the leather side.

And so for us, and I'm not saying that to be um, to come off as arrogant and many people thought we were foolish , it just mm-hmm. , it seemed doable and it turned out to. When, when was

Paul Shapiro: this? Like, so you know for years you're working on spider silk, then you decide we need to get into the mycelium game. What year was that?

That

David Breslauer: was maybe three years ago. [00:30:00] So think about it this way, it took us maybe seven years to build and scale up spider silk production and then turn that, almost that same crank three years on myc.

Paul Shapiro: W was it difficult to persuade investors on this? Like they're like, Hey listen, we've been giving you guys money for seven years and you don't have any product on the market yet.

Now you want to go switch to this other product. Like was that a difficult sell or were they just so hot on the idea of mycelium that they were like, yo, we trust these guys.

David Breslauer: Um,

our investors have been very enthusiastic from the beginning. And you know, we've talked to them about this being our vision of us having multiple different product lines. We never pitch them on the idea of we are going to be one specialty material and we are gonna grow from there. So the notion that we were gonna continue to iterate around a [00:31:00] suite of different product.

To old grounded in sustainability of whether it be for apparel to all the way to personal care. That was a very, that was a very comfortable idea and people are very excited about the broad vision of us being able to deliver multiple things. Now, there was the pressure of, okay, if you're gonna, if you're gonna do.

You have much less time to prove it's viable than you have had so far. , at some point you have to deliver product. But when we did our first iterations and got extremely quick feedback from partners, and this is where the consortium that we've announced comes into play, um, and our partners green lit this at, you know, the highest levels of their organization.

this is something we're interested in. We trust both threads. They have been delivering to us and are extremely sophisticated in their analyses and development. And we wanna work hard on this, so we're gonna [00:32:00] commit capital, put money behind this, uh, this mycelium leather work. And, uh, we were able to show that th that this is, this is really worth pursuing hard and leaning into.

Paul Shapiro: That's cool. That's really cool. Well, good for you guys. So let me ask you then, David, so you're growing this mycelium and I presume you have to do something to it, right? Like if, if you think about, you know, you take the, the hide off of a cow. You don't just turn that into a car seat or into a watch strap.

You have to, you know, for them they have to remove the hair and the, and they have to tan it. What do you have to do to your mycelium? To make it so that if I'm wearing, you know, a wristwatch with Milo, your, my sodium leather on there, that it's not gonna degrade and, and rot on my wrist .

David Breslauer: Um, it's funny you say not until it doesn't have to degrade and rot on your wrist, um, because it's made of fungus, um,

So we have to make sure the fungus is inactivated and doesn't just keep growing. [00:33:00]

Paul Shapiro: Um, . Yes. I don't, I don't want it to degrade or to continue growing. Like how am I gonna, what, what guarantee do I have? What are you doing that this is going to remain looking the way it does? If I were to, let's say, buy a, a leather or

David Breslauer: a plea watch, right?

Yeah. It's. We have to do far fewer things than you have to do for leather. Now, this was, this is sort of the beauty of being able to look at what a customer wants, say leather, and then rev reverse engineering and, and then building back up into it is to say, rather than taking something. That nature has grown.

Leather, it's a hide. And then putting all sorts of plastics and chromium and all the nasty chemicals that are associated with the leather industry on top of it, removing the hair we get sort of to make it in a more pure form directly towards the product that's desired. So it's actually at the end much less manipulated.

Um, you know, we do some softening and things like that depending on. [00:34:00] Exactly what the product attributes need to be. Because if you think about it, a watch strap feels very different from a leather jacket, which feels different from a leather shoe. We use leather as a catchall term, but it actually means a number of different product grades.

Product qualities f all from cow hide. And we have to do, we have to do very little in order to. Get it to meet the base criteria, then it's more a matter of customization, embossing patterns. People still want leather to look like leather, um mm-hmm. . So we emboss it, ironically with a cellular texture. Um hmm.

Uh, even though it doesn't naturally have a cellular texture, um, because it is, it is mycelium not skin. Mm.

Paul Shapiro: Are you growing it just in, let's say, like, uh, thick mats, or are you growing it into a specific shape? So for example, if you wanted to, you know, could you grow it in the, in the shape of a wristwatch, let's say, and, and so you don't have to cut it into wristwatch shapes.[00:35:00]

David Breslauer: Um, it turns out, you know, I love the story. of, oh, we can grow it into any shape. We can grow it into your product. But right now, at large scale, and when you look at the ELO economies of scale, that just, it's not feasible to make anything, um, of any reasonable cost structure. Yeah. Just to be real. I mean, it's business for good.

The business part's important to say we're, we're gonna, we're gonna grow up, watch straps in the shape of WAPs, watch straps. So we grow sheets, we. . We work very tightly with, um, existing, uh, leather processing facilities. Now we maintain a fairly rigorous, uh, sustainability criteria, uh, and corporate responsibility criteria that involve, that includes not just chemistries, but includes, you know, human rights, um, with our partners.

So, Um, we work with, but we do work with some great facilities in the [00:36:00] industry and we have, we have to match some of that large scale equipment that's already there in the right sizes. Um, where

Paul Shapiro: are you, where are you doing this? Like you're working with these facilities, like where is this mycelium growing?

Where is it being tanned? Is this happening in

David Breslauer: Northern California? No, a lot. We do have a grow facility. Um, but that's more for prototyping and experimentation. A lot of the large scale work happens in Europe. Uh, that's. Most of the mushroom expertise happens to be, and all the high-end facilities that, uh, uh, are consortium partners, um, like caring and such, uh, do their, their leather processing work.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. So you're really growing this in Europe, and that's where the whole process, uh, not only starts, but is finished. It's it's not going somewhere else to be tanned or

David Breslauer: anything. Yeah, it's, it's mostly in Europe and again, that's, that's by design of our customers and expertise. You know, when we.

Have a global supply chain, it's going to [00:37:00] matter more. Where, where are we gonna ship it? What makes the most sense? And in terms of cost and carbon emissions, you know, we don't want to be, um, flying stuff around if we don't have to. Um, but, you know, those are sort of good problems to have, to be able to be in a position to optimize the supply chain for infinitely more sustainable material than, than hide leather.

Mm-hmm. .

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. Yeah, I, I would've presumed that the greatest mushroom expertise was in China. I think that they produced like a, a huge portion of the global mushroom trade. But, um, I, I don't know enough about that market to know, but, um, but I know that they eat a lot of mushrooms over there.

David Breslauer: Yeah, I, I was surprised as well when I learned, um, you know, I think the majority of canned mushrooms, I think, I'm not exactly positive on this, never something.

The majority of canned mushrooms in the United States comes out of the Netherlands. .

Paul Shapiro: Huh. Interesting. So, alright David, so you know it's been a few years now and you're growing mycelium. You're trying to make [00:38:00] a a leather type product with it. You had this big announcement recently that you are now partnering with Adidas and a number of other folks.

What does that mean, partnering? Are they investing in the company? Are they partnering with you as a customer? Like that's pretty impressive to get a deal with Adidas. Cuz first and for. You know, just so you know, I wear a size 10 and a half. So when you get those Adidas, Milo shoes, you know where to send a, a pair, but second , um, you know, how did that happen?

How did you get partnered for a product that doesn't even yet exist in the market? You have one of the most recognizable shoe companies in the world saying they wanna release a product with you. How did that happen? ?

David Breslauer: Um, you know, it's are the consortium is the, the first of its kind and. Between carrying Adidas, uh Lululemon, Stella McCartney.

Um,

Paul Shapiro: does, does Lululemon make, I mean, I don't know if I'm enough about it. Do they, they

David Breslauer: make weather products? Um, no, [00:39:00] uh, not, not currently that I'm aware of. Um, okay. So, but

Paul Shapiro: they would u they would be using Milo for something? Yes. Not, not the spider silk. Absolutely. They're not making like yoga pants with spider silk and then they're using a leather, a leather

David Breslauer: type product.

The consortium is specifically around Milo. Um, there is. Uh, such demand for, uh, an alternative to leather. And when we were able to demonstrate not just the aesthetic quality of the material, meaning we can make something that feels like genuine leather, which again, is a very important distinction, as well as the ability to scale, get, um, economics that are reasonable and.

Iterate with those brand partners and be able to consistently deliver new and improved samples over and over again. And that's where we were working with. That's the sort of the engine we developed with Silk and our other materials is just show novelty, [00:40:00] then continue to work and iterate and become a trusted partner in innovation for these brands.

We needed a mechanism ultimately to. Sort of stop the, what, what was historically kind of the battle of who you were gonna commit to being exclusive with, which then meant you couldn't supply to someone else. It was how do we get everybody who works within, who makes, uh, makes products with leather to work together with us, to help us make a replacement for leather that is more sustainable?

And so the consortium. Did you reach

Paul Shapiro: out to Adidas? Did they reach out to you? Like, how, how did you have some, you know, head of business development this, like, what, what was the actual mechanics of this, you know, startup that's essentially pre-revenue partnering with one of the biggest, uh, athletic companies on the planet?

David Breslauer: Yeah, they, they, Adidas, to their credit, um, is very good about [00:41:00] innovation and paying attention to innovation. And we had been working with them substantially, um, on. Thinking about, uh, materials alongside fibers and spider silk, uh, and stuff like that. And when we showed them Milo, they were extremely excited, um, to, to see an innovation there.

And so again, it's throughout this whole sort of storied history of both threads, a lot of what we built out was this engagement with these brands beyond just their innovation arms, beyond just their sustainability arms, but all the way through, through the. throughout, uh, the brand and our ability to have touchpoints in all the areas.

We need to, to understand how to build up not just the products, but the product quality, how to integrate into supply chains, what is the effective price point? What does this need to have, be able to do by when and by how much, um, to be an actual product in, in, uh, a material in, in a consumer [00:42:00] apparel product.

And the consortium was a bunch of d. Companies who are in often, in many ways, competitors holding hands and saying, we want to help foster Su sustainable future materials and we're gonna work with this company and really, you know, engage in that cycle of, that's product development.

Paul Shapiro: That's really awesome David.

So let me ask you then, you know when you put out the ties, there were 50 of 'em, you know, you sold 'em for $314 per tie, which is a reference to Pie three point 14. Uh, but is that what it's gonna be like with Adidas? Like you have said that in 2021 you intend to commercialize. Milo, is that gonna be the same type of commercialization where it's just a very limited time offering for a very high price?

Or is this gonna be something that's gonna be a regular offering that people will be able to buy if they want it? We,

David Breslauer: we know what we need to build to be building towards a [00:43:00] regular offering. This is, we, we are past the point of, of simply demonstration. Um, there will always be demos and there will always be, you know, exciting.

Small launches, uh, in order to show the potential of the material, but we, we are going to be delivering thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of units scaling into multiple millions. Great.

Paul Shapiro: When you say we'll be doing tens of thousands in 2021, or do you think that'll be like in the next decade?

No,

David Breslauer: no, no. We're talking about real scale starting in 2020.

Paul Shapiro: Great. Oh, that's really exciting. I'm, I'm really thrilled to hear that. . Yes. As am I, , I'm sure. I'm sure. Um, as though your investors, no doubt. Okay. So speaking of then a decade out, like what do you envision, um, I, I imagine that if somebody had said to you in 2011, what do you envision for 2021 [00:44:00] for both threads, that there would be very little fidelity to what actually happened?

So I realize there is, uh, as you say, perhaps some, even some hubris and trying to predict a decade out. But if you're gonna think about a decade out, like where do you see the company? . And where do you see, let's just say the weather industry for example, since that's what you're currently working on. Uh, in the year, uh, 2031,

David Breslauer: you know, uh, when we first were pitching, um, we pitched to one VC and we said we can make green materials cuz that was the term of the time.

So this was 10 years ago and we were told never pitch a green. No one wants to pay for green.

Has, you know, flipped on its head a little. Some people do, some people are willing, or at least they understand they'll pay for a time being. Um, at the same time, I think we've, we've learned how to develop the technology with its enough sophistication that we can make a lot of things cost [00:45:00] competitive or, um, a lot of materials at better costs that are sustainable or green than their, um, less sustainable counterpart.

Um, I once gave a presentation at a conference where I predicted the future and said all these natural materials that we otherwise have to manipulate with plastics and toxic chemistries in order to get them to do the functions we want. We are going to replace them with sort of engineered naturals materials that we are able to build up to serve that function in a much more holistic way with sustainable chemistries.

And, you know, it's going to be the rare and exotic, um, uh, fashions that use, that use, uh, materials that, um, were not, were not engineered. Um, I really. See a future where [00:46:00] there are so many polymers and material structures out there that are all you can be grown on, forms of sugar and all can biodegrade over different time spans.

Um, silk is fantastic at, at that, um, being able to control the time span at Biodegrades and I see an opportunity where we. Sub out a lot of the synthetic materials and maybe even some of the naturals that don't necessarily biodegrade in the way we want. And when used at large scale is are actually problematic.

Global scaler actually problematic for the environment, um, and create a pallet of offerings that are all can be chosen based on their, uh, end of life, uh, require. based on, on their usage. So is it gonna go down the drain? Are we gonna be able to recycle it? How long is reasonable for this to, for this to [00:47:00] exist as a whole in the environment?

Um mm-hmm. before it should be able to decompose.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, well that would be the ultimate, you know, rather than just talking about, um, you know, reduce, reuse, recycle, you know, you actually have something just decomposed at the end of its useful life. That would seem to be the optimal. In fact, I, I've wondered like whether, you know, you think about all these fishing boats that are the number one reason why, you know, whales and others are, are.

Uh, caught up in, in dying in these fishing nets. Um, you know, like the biggest threat to whales isn't railing boats, it's fishing boats. And I've wondered like, you know, I, I don't want people out there fishing, needless to say, but, uh, you know, it would be nice if those nets could be programmed to at some point decompose.

And I don't know if that's possible or not, but it seems like it would be worth investigating. Are you aware of anybody working on anything like that? You know,

David Breslauer: it's, it's, uh, I forgot to say, when you asked what were the markets for spider silk, that was one of the things we initially looked. Decomposing.

Oh really? Decom de uh, BioD [00:48:00] marine biodegradable fishing net.

Paul Shapiro: So, so h how would that work? Like, you know, cuz the, the fishermen doesn't want it to biodegrade while they're using it, but so how would it would've just after a certain number of years, it's no longer functional?

David Breslauer: Yeah. You would, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's a challenging problem balancing biodegradability and strength because in many cases they tend to, Uh, go in opposite directions.

Um, but yeah, you would probably think of something that lasted just long enough for, with high strength for you to be able to, um, catch your fish, but that if bits or parts or a whole net got got, um, lost in the ocean, it would, um, eventually biodegrade from microbes or fish could eat. over a long period of time.

Now, if it's sufficiently strong to catch a whale, you know, I don't know how long [00:49:00] is reasonable, like how you create mechanisms such that it can break out even if it's before it biodegrades, you know, that's, that's a more difference time scales over, which you need to think about. Um, you know, my expertise is more on the bio de degradation than the mechanics of.

Uh, the mechanics of, you know, how do you, how do you create a structure that a big fish could break through without it being. On them. You say if for say, 50 days, if you say 50 days as a criteria over which of Biodegrades, um, right.

Paul Shapiro: Cause you know, presumably, you know, dolphins get caught in this or presumably struggling pretty violently.

So if that's not enough to break that down, you know, that, that would be, you would need something pretty unique. Um, but you know, on this note, David, let me ask. You as we, uh, start to wrap up here. So you've thought about fishing, uh, and materials that would be better for fishing. That's, are there any other ideas, like, you know, you guys are working on spider silk, you're working on mycelium, you're even doing, uh, b silk, which we didn't get to talk about sadly, but are there [00:50:00] other, um, things that you wish somebody else would take up that you think would be good for the world?

Some idea for a company that maybe some listener will be inspired by? Your words to start themselves?

David Breslauer: Yeah. Um, anything. Climate change related. I'm, I encourage, I know that's just, that's general. It's such a general, uh, topic, but it just feels like we are in such a race against time to slow down the effects of change.

So I strongly encourage anyone to, to get into those. , anything climate related related, whether it's energy storage, um, electrification of all vehicles, you know, fighting greenhouse gases in, in any which way like that. That's where I strongly encourage people to, people to go into some of the things I'm interested in.

Unfortunately, I, it's hard to see. Where the business opportunity is. So I, I encourage people to think deeply about it, but a lot of it is cleanup. [00:51:00] When we are able to get all of these sort of biodegradable, biocompatible polymers out there, what are we gonna do about all the microfibers and microplastics in the air and water, you know?

and Bolt. We're doing some things with bil, as you mentioned, to uh, eliminate synthetic polymers and personal care as well as microplastics. But you know, there's gonna be a load to clean up, and I don't, I don't know, I don't have an answer as to how to do, uh, the collection or the sorting or the cleanup, but really I don't, I'm not sure how you even make.

Economical for a business. Maybe it's, maybe it's a nonprofit, nonprofit work. Um, or maybe someone more clever than me out there has an idea. But, um, mm-hmm. , I, I find myself fairly concerned, even looking at the dust around my house in San Francisco. I'm like, these are all little fibers and it's. all [00:52:00] accumulating somewhere, and then they're all gonna last 500 to a thousand years and they're probably in my lungs and in your lungs,

And they're, you know, they're saying now we're gonna have a, you know, in the geologists are gonna say we have a Plato sphere where it's, you know, an entire, entire, uh, time period of our sort of geology where things are covered in plastic.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. You know, it's interesting, there are some fungi that aren't even, uh, engineered.

They're just natural fungi that appear to be able to consume the, uh, many types of, of human created plastics. And so it, it would be an interesting, uh, business idea to partner with, let's say some municipality to, for example, Apply those fungi, or maybe even just the enzymes you create, the enzymes that they're making to break that

David Breslauer: down.

Yeah. I love, I just as a pure sort of fascination, I love the idea of bioremediation and I want someone to figure out how to make. More full fledged businesses out of it to clean up [00:53:00] a whole number of things. Whether it be ocean, plastics, microfibers in the air, in the ocean, you know, everything. Yeah. Well, I mean there,

Paul Shapiro: there's so much in the microbial world that we barely understand.

For example, if you think about like radio trophic fungi, which are thriving, and the Chernobyl reactors, they're just consuming all that radiation like that, and that's not an engineered microbe. That is a natural microbe that just consumes radi. Yeah. So, you know, and there's others, there's other fungi that will consume plastic.

So, you know, that would be quite a fascinating business for somebody to take up. So, uh, David, I hope that, uh, there is some time where there is somebody else on this show who was listening to this episode and they're like, ah, I was listening to David from Vault Threads and I decided to start my own, uh, plastic, uh, remediation, uh, uh, company because of you.

So hopefully that will happen. We'll see. I hope so. So finally, David, you know, you've been at this for over a decade. You are a scientist at heart, but you're also an entrepreneur, uh, by trade. Is there [00:54:00] anything that you would recommend to anybody else who is inspired by your story and what you're doing at both threads that you think would be useful for them, that has been particularly helpful for you in your own scientific and entrepreneurial journey?

David Breslauer: Yeah. You know,

it's, it sounds, it sounds, um, Sort of cliched to say, listen to your customer. Um, but at some point, I think as a technologist, you even if you're presenting a new technology and get, uh, potential customers excited about something they did not know existed, you at some point you do have to start iterating with them.

And I think so many of us, myself included, ha, get caught in a trap and enthusiasm of over technology, over the pragmatics of what. Needed by who? The person who would be paying for it. Um, there's a great video I like that's I think if you Google, you have Steve Jobs insult response [00:55:00] where he talks about leading customer first and how engineers can make tons of great things, but what is going to sell at scale?

And that scale, particularly when we're talking about sustainability and climate, is so important. , I'm not gonna dent, make a dent at scale. Um, if someone just wants to launch, you know, 50 pairs of shoes, I need to, I need to really make my impact through selling millions so that I can, I can actively affect the greenhouse, uh, impact and the climate impact and the environmental impact of, uh, livestock or any of the other materials that we.

Paul Shapiro: Well, I couldn't possibly agree with you more. Um, science experiments are very cool, but they don't necessarily on their own save the world. And the way that that happens almost always is through some invention that actually gets commercialized [00:56:00] and utilized by huge numbers of people. So, uh, I'll be rooting for bolt threads to break out onto the commercial scene and I'll be looking forward to sending you a photo of the, uh, the Adidas that I get when you ship them.

Uh, my way, David. So , absolutely. Uh, thanks so much for everything you're doing. You've had a wild ride and it is a really inspirational story. So I am grateful for what you're doing and I can't wait to see Milo come out on the market, and I can't wait to be one of your own customers.

David Breslauer: Actually, I can't wait.

Thank you.

Paul Shapiro: Thanks for listening. We hope you found use in this episode. If so, don't keep it to yourself. Please leave us a five star rating

David Breslauer: on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. And as always, we hope you

Paul Shapiro: will be in the business of doing good.