Business for Good Podcast

When two college students were concerned about the plastic packaging choking our waterways, they wondered if they could invent a better way to contain companies' liquids. Rodrigo Garcia Gonzales and Pierre Paslier began ordering ingredients off Amazon and Alibaba and tinkered away in their kitchen. With a rough prototype in hand, they decided they'd launch a Kickstarter to see if there was interest in a new company that would make alternative packaging from seaweed. The result: A million dollars poured in and Notpla became a reality. Blown away by the response, the two kept pressing forward, and seven years later, they've now raised over $6 million, have dozens of employees, and are working with food giants like Unilever and more to make plastic packaging disappear. Hear Rodrigo and Pierre's inspirational tale in this episode! Discussed in this show Mashable video on Notpla's "edible water" (19 million views) New York Times on Rupert Murdoch's son's investment in Notpla Fast Company on Notpla's products CNBC on Notpla's work with Just Eat Episode 27 with Tom Szaky of TerraCycle on recycling the "un-recyclable" Paul's article in Scientific American about factory farming of animals and pandemic risk

You already know about plant-based meat. You're also familiar with meat grown from animal cells, often called cultivated meat or clean meat. But have you ever heard of making protein—and therefore the building blocks of meat—straight out of thin air? Dr. Lisa Dyson was reading 1960s-era NASA research about how to feed astronauts on long-distance cosmic trips, when something truly out of this world caught her attention. Of course, on long-distance cosmic tourist trips, we'll need ways for astronauts not only to conserve food they've brought from our home planet, but also to produce food on-board. As a result, NASA at the time was exploring growing protein not from animals or plants, but right out of thin air. Sound like science fiction? Well, half a century later, Lisa and her team at Air Protein are already doing it, and they've recently even made what she called "air-based chicken." The photos of the air-based meat look truly delectable. Lisa asserts that her air protein takes a tiny fraction of the resources needed to produce even plant protein, which is a driving force motivating her to commercialize her air-based meat in the near-term. Her goal: help save the planet and the animals who call it home, including us Homo sapiens. Discussed in this episode 1967 NASA research that kicked off Lisa's interest in the topic Food Dive profile on Air Protein Episode 22 with Graciela Chichilnisky on carbon capture The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni Who by Geoff Smart and Randy Street

The challenge of climate change can seem daunting, but trying to solve daunting challenges is exactly what Google X does. One former employee of Google's moonshot factory, Kathy Hannun, is on a mission to help wean your home off of greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels. Her strategy: make it so easy for you to convert your home to geothermal energy that you just have to hire her startup, Dandelion Energy, to do it.

In many ways, Ryan Bethencourt is an OG of the biotech alt-protein scene. As a cofounder of biotech accelerator Indiebio, he was part of the team that wrote the first-ever investor checks to now well-known names in the field, including Memphis Meats, Clara Foods, and Geltor. In addition to Ryan's pioneering work to incubate and fund companies seeking to create more sustainable protein sources, he's now the cofounder of his own startup, Wild Earth. The company makes clean protein dog food that's attracted big-name investors like Peter Thiel and Mark Cuban, earning a total of $16M in investment so far. In this episode we talk about what it was like for Ryan to go on Shark Tank, including what techniques he used to keep calm to win an unlikely investment on the show. We also discuss how Ryan's childhood love of both sci-fi and animals forged into one path as an adult, leading him to make early bets on crazy ideas like growing meat and eggs outside of animals—long before it was cool, and of course to eventually starting his own company. So enjoy this wide-ranging and fascinating conversation with a real pioneer in the alternative protein world. And if you listen to the very end, you may even get to hear my reaction to eating some of Ryan's new dog food. Discussed in this episode: Ryan welcomes hearing from you! He's at ryan@wildearth.com Bloomberg profile on Ryan Bethencourt Ryan Bethencourt on Shark Tank The new Berkeley incubator Cell Valley Labs Zero to One by Peter Thiel Arturo Elizondo's Business for Good episode HappyFeed app and Calm app The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Guin The Slaughterer by Isaac Bashevis Singer Grant by Ron Chernow

By the time he was 22, Arturo Elizondo had already interned in the White House and for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. But as the recent college grad learned, making the world a better place via public policy is a long and arduous road, and he wanted to make a difference faster. With a zeal to create an alternative to the factory farming of animals, Arturo bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco with no job, no apartment, and no plan. He just wanted to get involved in the alt-protein world in some way. His first thought was to explore working at VCs to fund the space, or maybe getting a job at one of the companies already founded. But as you'll hear in this conversation, a chance meeting at a conference resulted in Arturo becoming the 22-year-old CEO of a new biotech startup, Clara Foods, that would soon work to make real egg proteins without using chickens. Well, today, Arturo is 27, Clara Foods has since raised $50 million in venture capital, and the company is about to commercialize its first products. It's an inspirational tale, and one that proves you need not be a superhuman to do something truly super for the world. Discussed in this episode Venture Deals by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz Lighter, New Harvest, and JUST

How do people with ideas for businesses to save the world find cofounders? If you're fashion designer Michalyn Andrews, you read journal articles by scientists doing awesome things in biotech, cold-email them to ask them to meet up, and make the proposal at a Starbucks. Her dream: to make real leather from cows to lighten the burden we're placing on animals and the planet. She and her new cofounder spent the next two years in stealth mode, researching, developing, patenting, and quietly raising a million dollars. They've been quiet...until now. Provenance Bio is now coming out of the shadows and is ready to start talking about its big plans to keep people wearing leather, but instead of it coming off the backs of cows, they're leaving those cows out to pasture and making real leather, animal-free. So enjoy the story in this episode of how this early-stage company got founded, raised seven figures of cash, and is now working to scale up and get into the business of doing good. Discussed in this episode Books Michalyn recommends: Blue Ocean Strategy and Blue Ocean Shift The world's first clean leather-bound book.

You've likely heard the story about the Jew who was said to have taken a small amount of fish and multiplied it to feed thousands. Well, in 2020, there's another innovative Jew, Lou Cooperhouse, who is literally multiplying the fish—or at least their cells—in the hopes of again feeding the masses, and saving our planet at the same time. Lou's company, BlueNalu, has raised millions of dollars to culture fish cells into real fish meat that looks and performs just like conventional fish, but without the mercury, microplastics, nor oceanic exploitation. Perhaps most interesting about Lou is that unlike many other cultivated meat startup founders, Lou doesn't come from a background of animal or environmental advocacy. Indeed, as you'll hear in this interview, Lou worked for decades in the conventional food industry, including making chicken nuggets for ConAgra, before deciding to change course and start making meat without animals. We taped this show at BlueNalu's HQ in San Diego just a short distance away from the Pacific ocean, right before the company revealed its latest offerings: whole muscle meat yellowtail that it grew without the fish—and how impressive it was. Will BlueNalu's work help make an ocean trawler seem as archaic to future generations as whaling ships seem to us today? Find out in this 32nd episode of Business for Good!

Plastic is amazing at doing so many things—except going away. As the planet increasingly swims in humanity's plastic garbage (nearly none of which gets recycled and virtually all of which will last for centuries), Lori Goff is betting that biotech will be part of the solution to creating functional plastic alternatives that are so biodegradable you can eat them. As you'll hear, Lori is using the waste water from beer brewery waste, subjecting it to a specific type of fermentation, and then creating an alternative to plastic wrappers. Her company has been personally bootstrapped until recently, when she started winning governmental grants in the EU. Lori is already making her wrappers, made of a material she calls Unplastic, and her goal is to start selling them to companies as an alternative to their plastic wrappers in 2020. While wrappers are the low-hanging fruit, her company Outlander Materials has its eyes on other applications as well. This is just one more way that when science, technology, and commerce merge to solve a serious social problem, in this case plastic waste, business innovators like Lori Goff can be an enormous force for good. Mentioned in this episode The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking The World in a Grain of Sand News coverage about Outlander Materials Ideas for new companies Lori says she hopes you'll start: Alt-cheese made from field beans Using purpurin as a cobalt replacement in batteries Turning desert sand in concrete

In the 29 previous episodes of this show you've heard about pork without pigs, milk without cows, diamonds without mining, and even wood without trees. Well, on this 30th episode, we're exploring the brave new world of coffee without the bean. Turns out that there's a lot of deforestation for coffee growing, and climate change is making the situation worse. In fact, experts predict that the amount of land suitable for growing coffee is expected to shrink by an estimated 50% by 2050. But, what if you could make coffee out of agricultural byproducts, like watermelon seeds and sunflower seed husks? Think it wouldn't taste as good? Well, according to a Seattle-based startup called Atomo, they've not only recreated the exact taste of coffee, but they go on to claim that in blind taste tests of their brew vs. Starbucks, 7 out of 10 people preferred the taste of their so-called molecular coffee. Company cofounders Andy Kleitsch and Jarret Stopforth began with a successful Kickstarter, giving them enough funds to do the food science necessary to crack the coffee code. After putting out a press release about their prototype, investors came calling, and literally within days they'd signed a terms sheet for $2.6M. Now, Atomo is brewing, making coffee in which they can precisely control the amount of caffeine, and much, much more. It's a fascinating tale of one more way in which food tech innovation may help alleviate pressure we're placing on the planet. So sit back and maybe enjoy a cup of coffee while listening, and know that that cup in the future may be even tastier for you and better for the planet. Books discussed in this episode Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why Taste: Surprising Stories and Science About Why Food Tastes Good Man's Search for Meaning

What do you get when you combine a Google leader, a dairy industry executive, and an engineer? Apparently, if you're in Singapore, you get a new startup producing real cow's milk-- without the cow: TurtleTree Labs. Rather than trying to turn plants into milky beverages like many alt-dairy companies are, and rather than using yeast to make certain components of cow's milk, like Perfect Day is doing, TurtleTree Labs is using bovine stem cells, expressing them as mammary glands, and producing whole cows' milk that they claim is a 1:1 match for milk that was squeezed from an actual udder. The company got its start with three business-minded folks, including the former CFO of a well-known California dairy company called Clover Sonoma, thinking they were on to something. In fact, they're so convinced that their idea and execution will be a winner that they've already filed for several patents and have even put half a million of their own dollars into their startup. So sit back and be inspired by their story as told by CEO Fengru Lin. Discussed in this episode Past Business for Good interviews: Perfect Day episode and Shiok Meats episode How scientists helped give diabetics real human insulin without using human donors. How cheese cheese consumption drives milk production, even when fluid milk consumption is down. The documentary series "Genius." (It's called American Genius for US viewers.)