Startup Series: Orbillion Bio
Today's guest is Patricia Bubner, Co-Founder & CEO of Orbillion Bio, Inc.
Patricia is a founder and the CEO of Orbillion Bio, Inc. The company is on a mission to accelerate the broad availability of a variety of healthy, nutritious, and flavorful cultivated meat products. Orbillion recently graduated from renowned Y Combinator's Winter 21 batch. Originally from Austria, Patricia is a scientist and engineer working to build a future of ethical and sustainable food. Before Orbillion, she co-founded an agriculture & food systems project, The Millet Project, that aimed at diversifying agriculture and our diet by cultivation and consumption of lesser-known grains such as millets. Patricia did her postdoc at the Energy Biosciences Institute at UC Berkeley, where she studied the expression of glycoproteins in filamentous fungi and plants.
In this episode, Patricia walks me through Orbillion Bio Inc, the company's origins, and how the ethics of traditional meat production motivated her to co-found the startup. We dive into the key phases of bringing the company to market and how to scale the cell-based meat industry. Patricia also explains the impact food systems have on the environment and why wide-scale adoption of alternative meats is essential for addressing climate change. Patricia is a fantastic guest!
Enjoy the show!
You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded August 6, 2021
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Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone. Jason here, I am the My Climate Journey show host. Before we get going, I wanted to take a minute and tell you about the, My Climate Journey or MCJ as we call it, membership option. Membership came to be because there were a bunch of people that were listening to the show that weren't just looking for education, but there were longing for a peer group as well. So we set up a Slack community for those people, that's now mushroomed into more than 1300 members. There is an application to become a member. It's not an exclusive thing. There's four criteria we screen for, determination to tackle the problem of climate change, ambition to work on the most impactful solution areas, optimism that we can make a dent and we're not wasting our time for trying and a collaborative spirit. Beyond that, the more diversity the better.
There's a bunch of great things that have come out of that community and a number of founding teams that have met in there. A number of non-profits that have been established, a bunch of hiring that's been done, a bunch of companies that have raised capital in there. A bunch of funds that have gotten limited partners or investors for their funds in there, as well as a bunch of events and programming by members and for members and some open source projects that are getting actively worked on that hatched in there as well. At any rate, if you wanna learn more, you can go to myclimatejourney.co, the website and click to become a member tab at the top. Enjoy the show.
Hello everyone. This is Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey. This show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests, to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and try to figure out how people like you and I can help.
Today's guest is Patricia Bubner, Co-Founder and CEO of Orbillion Bio. Orbillion Bio is the lab-grown meat company, cultivating heritage meats, like wagyu beef, elk, sheep, and American bison. They also recently announced a $5 million oversubscribed seed round, with some great investors. I was excited for this one because animal ag is a big problem, both from an emission standpoint and some ethical quandaries, especially as it relates to factory farming. So it's clear that alternatives are needed, but there's different choices. There's regenerative ag, there's plant-based solutions, and then there's lab-grown or cell-based. And as a consumer, it's hard to tell the difference.
We have a great discussion in this episode about the landscape generally, where cell-based or lab-grown fits in, Orbillions approach. We also talk about the origin story for the company and how this all came to be. We talk about why their approach is different and better. We talk about their decision to focus at the high end and how to navigate the capitalist desires of building a strong company, with also the desires for accessibility and democratizing healthy choices and social justice at any rate. Patricia is super knowledgeable, super mission driven, and Orbillions got a really interesting approach. So I enjoyed this one and I think you will too. Patricia, welcome to the show.
Patricia Bubner: Thank you, Jason. Where did you learn to pronounce my name, so perfect [laughs]?
Jason Jacobs: I, I mean, it's just, I don't know if it's genetics or just all the years-
Patricia Bubner: [laughs].
Jason Jacobs: ... of practice that I've had to achieve mastery, but uh, no, you actually. For listeners, Patricia had a show off again, and I can say it right, gave me some tutoring before we hit the record button. So, but anyways, welcome to the show. Uh, we met briefly when you were part of a Clubhouse discussion that we hosted several months ago and it was an awesome discussion and you've got a great story. So I'm so excited both to learn more myself and to introduce your story to any of our listeners out there that might not be familiar already.
Patricia Bubner: Thanks you, Jason. Likewise, I'm super excited to be here. I mean, you've put something amazing together and you had amazing guests. So I enjoyed listening to your episodes myself.
Jason Jacobs: We'll try to live up to the hype here, but jumping right in. Maybe just give us an overview of Orbillion and what it is, how it came to be, when it came to be, why it came to be?
Patricia Bubner: Ooh, do we have that much time?
Jason Jacobs: [laughing].
Patricia Bubner: Of course [laughs]. Yeah. So Orbillion will be the first company to bring premium lab-grown or cell-cultured meats to the market. And we really specialize in heritage breeds and in bringing beef that has an exceptional flavor to the market. We also have other species such as bison and lamb and also wild elk. And the reason why we're doing this is, because we see that currently about 95% of the population is eating meat and the demand for meat is ever increasing. Not only, because we are more and more people on this planet, but also because more and more people eat meat. You wouldn't want to believe that with the trend also off a lot of people talking about plant-based meats and veganism, but the fact is that a lot of people there rely on animal protein. So we need to find alternative sources because we know that the current process that we produce meat is not scalable.
Jason Jacobs: And how did the company come to be? What's the origin story?
Patricia Bubner: I was kind of a weird kid in a way that I was always interested in how things work on a molecular basis and especially food, because I grew up very close to food with my relatives being farmers. And I remember going foraging for mushrooms as a kid in, uh, Austrian forest. I grew up in Austria and being on farms and being very close to, to the food that we ate. And then I also had this really big interest in science and in chemistry and I had this thought, what if we could just design nutritious food from scratch? It really led me on this way. I studied chemical engineering and realized that chemistry and chemicals have a really bad name.
And I didn't understand why, because it's always what you do with it. And I was on this mission to explain it to everyone that wanted it to hear it or not that, you know, it really matters how you work with chemistry and what you do with these things. And it's the same with food. It's the same with, if we look at what happened with biofuels, right? With plastics and so on, it really matters how you use things. And so after a journey into biofuels, that brought me to UC Berkeley. I got in touch back with my passion with food, through the millet project, which was a project that I co-founded with another chemical engineer from India.
And we started growing millets with farmers here in California. We were in a historic drought and we knew that millets are very drought, tolerant grains, very healthy, very climate resilient grains that have been under utilized. And we started developing products and it was kind of, I, I see it as my first nearly startup, but I realized with how cell cultured meat came up also in that time in the Berkeley area, right? And in the, in the bay area, that there is something out there that has a huge potential to alleviate one of the biggest problems we have in food supply right now. And one of the biggest influencers on climate change and that's cell-cultured meat.
And I was immediately fascinated when I, when I learned about the potential that this industry can have. And alongside of that, of course, there's also a lot of other alternative proteins is Precision Fermentation, Perfect Day came up in, in these days, Clara Foods and so on. So, so many inspiring new ideas and potential for creating food with technologies that we knew, with safe technologies, using them in a way that we haven't thought of using them before. And that is just as a scientist and, uh, food is something that I find so, so interesting. And that really led me on that quest to see, so what do we have to do to make this future a reality where we can have, can have an independent food production, but independent food production. I mean, independent of land use.
And there's people that still think that the way we're doing animal agriculture right now is independently scalable, but it is not. And if you look at what we're doing right now and what has happened in the past decades, I think we really need to open our eyes and see that we are living in a very dystopian world. That a lot of people, I think don't realize what factory farming does to the environment, the true impact to the people that work there, to the animals and that is by the way, backed up by data. Recently, there was a paper that came out that showed that workers that work in meat processing plants, and in that business eat less meat than the general population that says something. So there's just a lot connected with the way we produce our food right now, that is not okay. And I think we need to face this and say, what are the alternatives?
What are the other solutions? And can we create something that is better than the system we have now? And I am convinced that we can do that. And I'm convinced that we have currently a lot of potential solutions at hand, and one of them is cell-cultured meat. So with that said, how did Orbillion come to be? As you can see [laughs], I'm very passionate about that. And, and knowing that you need the right people to build this, I started talking to who are now my co-founders Gabriel Levesque-Tremblay and Samet Yildirim. Both people that I've worked with in the past and had a lot of fun with working, not only because they're smart, but also because they're amazing driven people. And we share a lot of our passions.
And when we started talking about that and all three of us are technical, but we also have different backgrounds. We realized that we actually have some really good thoughts on how to solve the technology issues, but we also saw a huge gap in how cell-cultured meat is being communicated to the consumers and what companies that were in that space at that time, I'm talking 2019 are missing. And we talked about it, we identified technologies that we wanted to pull together, and that's how Orbillion was born, really out of that need that we saw to rapidly scale cell-cultured meat, and to bring a product to the consumer that the consumer will eat again and again, and again,
Jason Jacobs: It sounds like the unscalability, the ethical problems, the environmental problems, the problems for the people that worked in these factory farms that you had just a personal issue with and wanted a better way. One question I have is, I mean, I know this is a climate focus podcast, but I feel like some people get laser focused on carbon and other people get laser focused on justice and other people get laser focused on health or any number of other societal problems. When you look at factory farming, is there one specific driver that's motivating you and the team, or is it across? And if it's across, how do you balance those things and, and what do you optimize for?
Patricia Bubner: You know, it's not only factory farming. I think, when I did the millet project, I realized that the food system itself is super complex. It's just a very highly complex globally intertwined system and whatever knob you turn, you need to be very careful because there are so many people connected to it. There are so many lives connected to it. I want to be very, very careful with how we think about farming today and about farmers because factory farming is there because the consumer wants a cheap product. And I think the real problem is there that we got used to buy a lot of meat at a very cheap price, and that's not the real production price. And I think every farmer will agree with me there [laughs] that it is very difficult to make money in this business.
And factory farming are a product of exactly that problem that for farmers, it is for, has been for a long time go big or go home. And people that work in the industries are often in regions that, where it's very difficult to get any other jobs then in these facilities. And there was light shed on it during the, the heights of the pandemic, when we saw that there were a lot of outbreaks in these plans and what that can do to our supply chain. So I think that the system that we have built came out of this pressure to increase yields, to bring the price down at the same time. And if I may say, we hear the same thing in cell-cultured meat right now, but that is really how we see agriculture. And why is that? Because eating is such a basic need. And I really think that everyone on this planet should have access to nutritious food.
And this is not the case right now. And there are many reasons for why that is, but the system is definitely not working as we needed to work right now. And I see a huge opportunity in using technology and using biotechnology to alleviate these problems. Just imagine, in the future we have a world where a country that doesn't have the land to raise livestock can grow all the meats they need. They're independent of foods, external food supply, which means it makes them independent from the pressure of other countries and so on. So there's so much that cell-cultured meat and alternative proteins can do in democratizing access to food globally.
And this is really the vision that I have, that in the end if we do it right, and we have now the opportunity to do it right, we can have products that are accessible, that are nutritious, and that are affordable for a wide range of people.
Jason Jacobs: So once you identified this glaring problem, there were some decisions that were made along the way in terms of focusing on lab-grown, in terms of focusing on high-end, in terms of focusing on these flavorful categories that you mentioned, can you talk a little bit about the process of going from, I want to tackle this problem to the choices that you made and where you ultimately ended up?
Patricia Bubner: Part of it comes from my own experience growing up, uh, and the other part is really data-driven and comes from primary market research that we've done. So one thing is that people are pretty disconnected from food, but they crave this connection. And we saw in recent years that more and more people on the higher end that pay more for their meat are really looking towards food with a story. Meaning where does my food come from? Who was the farmer that raised it? What breed is that? Can I visit that farm? And even recently there was an article out that showed that this trend is increasing and accelerating. And for me, it was very clear if I want people to understand the product that we're eating, I need to tell its story. And the story of cell-cultured meat is really very heavily intertwined with the legacy of animal breeding, because the animals that we eat right now, they did not just come to be.
And some were, something that people found in the woods. We bred them to be the way they are right now. And a lot of these breeds got lost in our quest for higher yields because they were just not high yielding and they could not keep up with building muscle in a short time, and that's why we didn't continue these breeds. But these breeds are known to be, often known, to be very flavorful and they got forgotten. As a kid, I would go to a zoo in Austria, in Vienna. It's the oldest zoo in the world, I believe in shinbone. And they even back then had this part of the zoo dedicated to heritage breeds in Austrian and European heritage breeds.
I was always fascinated by, oh my gosh, look at these sheep with the huge black dots or these really tiny cows and so on and so forth. So there's a lot, I think that got lost or will get lost if we continue doing agriculture the way we're doing. And I see a way for us to preserve that and at the same time, build a story for the consumer and to create products that people understand that they can connect to our agricultural past with. That they can connect to the animals that these cells still come from with, and therefore have a product that they can relate to and that they can enjoy.
Jason Jacobs: And when you looked at the landscape of the, I guess, the state of the state, as it relates to lab-grown meat in the categories that you're focused on, what did the landscape look like when you first started evaluating it? What gaps did you see? And, and what approach are you bringing to market that is different than what you saw to address those issues or white space?
Patricia Bubner: We want to address a big market. We are addressing the beef market with our value beef product. So whether this is value beef or any other beef, it's still beef. And if we eat beef, the gap that we saw is why would you just eat any beef? Why would you cultivate the beef that we're using in, in factory farming when we know that's not the most flavorful one? Why don't we start with the most flavorful one? That, that was for me, very clear, if we don't have that issue of scalability, like classical agriculture has, then let's just go with the best thing we can find. And then the other part is that when we look at the products that at the time were being put out or even are being put out right now, they had a different focus. A lot of the companies that are, are putting their first products out, try to recreate things.
And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I always thought like, why would we try to recreate products that are out there when we can make better products? And I got a little bit inspired by Paul Shapiro and, and how he was talking about cheese. And he said, you know, before there was cheese, nobody was thinking about cheese. I'm like, duh [laughs]. So it was one of these epiphany moments where I was like, so what would be the most flavorful product that we can do with this new technology in cell-cultured meat? And one of the reasons is of course, that you want to go to market. You want to penetrate a big market. 80% of the beef market in the US is ground beef. So that's, uh, a perfect target for us in the beginning, but then you initially, you won't have the scale that, that you need.
And scalability is not only a problem in cell-cultured meat. It's a problem across industries that make a high-end product that is somewhat connected to a technology that needs to be scaled, that nobody has scaled before. Initially thinking, we want to bring a product to market as fast as possible, what product can that be? We landed of course, in the high-end market, in the premium market. And that of course is perfectly aligned with the high quality products we want to make. And the second thing is, and also I'm not telling any secrets here. The cost of cell culture is just really high and cost is one of the biggest problems in cell-cultured meat. So we need time to bring the cost down. We know it's possible, and all the forecasts that we have seen recently beat in the McKinsey reports, in RethinkX and so on, have shown that there is a clear path to bringing that cost down, but initially we won't be there.
So we need to have a product that we can sell at some premium margins for us to really enter in the market through the high end retail space, premium products with chefs and so on, then we can scale up and similar to what impossible foods did penetrate the mass market.
Jason Jacobs: What are the key phases to bring this kind of product to market, and where are you today?
Patricia Bubner: The key phases, I think first is a proof of concept that you can really show that you have the basics to make a product, meaning you have cell lines, we're using muscle cells, we're using fat cells, we're using connective tissue cells and so on, to recreate meat that contains all these things. By the way, side note, I always found it fascinating that we are in fact able to produce 100% lean meat if we want it to which animals can't do [laughs]. Right now, the next step after the proof of concept is really to go towards scalability of your product and of course, product development. So first you need to have your product that you want to bring to the market. We're talking about product market fit, and then you're ready to scale.
And the scaling part contains two parts. One of it is, of course, you need to make more of your product, but at the same time, you also need to make sure that you build your brand, that you built a strategy to really bring this product to market. And this is of course challenging, but I love a good challenge. And I also think that the highest margins really are in this space where you have a branded product. And we saw success in the plant-based space, also from impossible foods and beyond, for example, that did that. And then after that, when you have a scalable process, you need to go through regulatory, which is a little bit of a gray space right now, because there is no product on the US market, right now that has regulatory approval.
But after these hurdles are cleared, then you are free to sell your product. And we are right now exactly in this space between our POC that we had back in March, where we had our first tasting, that was super well received and just amazing to see people enjoying our products. And now we are in growing the team and going towards that scale up process. So putting all the pieces together, we recently hired our head of product and brand strategies, so you will see a couple of more things coming out there. So stay tuned.
Jason Jacobs: When you think about your core customer. Do you distinguish between people that are already eating these products that are not lab-grown and are you envisioning that they will be swapping out those products for the lab-grown alternative or that you're opening up the market to more kinds of people that maybe don't eat these products at all today?
Patricia Bubner: My thought about is, always you cannot make everyone happy. You cannot sell to 100% of the meat eating or, or non-meat eating consumers. Right now, we see that perception is shifting in general. When you look at the broader acceptance of products that are based on plant proteins that even have some sort of GMO connected with it, there was a really good article and about how we have to start accepting GMO for the future of food and how that can be beneficial to us. So I think we see this shift in part of the consumer that starts to understand the benefits of it and starts to be more interested in these new products that come out there and what their potential is to do a lot of jobs for them and consumers have different ideas of what food should do for them in a health aspect, in a nutritional aspect, in a flavor aspect in a, oh my gosh, I just want to feel good and, and have a full belly aspect, whatever that is.
For what I see happening there is really that shift in a perception and more and more people going towards these foods. And I think we can capture a large part of these people, but also a large part of people that are growing up now. And we'll just be exposed to it as something that is very normal and that are looking into this as a way to eat in a more climate conscious way. And we see that younger consumers are much more concerned about that than previous generations where, because they are living in a time where they can feel the consequences. So besides that shift, I think also honestly, I always say people that go to fast food joints regularly and eat burgers, they don't care where their meat comes from.
I think recently there was some big sandwich chain that had a tuna sandwich and they didn't even find tuna DNA in there, which means there was no tuna in there. So we can joke about that and say, a lot of these fast food joints probably are already vegan and that's a lot of meat in there [laughs], but also the meat that's in there, people don't care how it's made. I'm hungry. I want to eat something. I'm just eating it, right? We want to care. But sometimes we just don't because we're hungry. So we want to give people this option, and I think in the end it will be something that's very normal. Because there really is no other future than a future where we have a mixture of all the options that we see emerging right now, and that we've done, meaning you don't eat the same thing every day, right?
But on Monday, maybe you eat your plant-based burger. And then on Wednesday you eat fish from your local fishery. And on Friday you eat your salad, cultured burger, patty, or fish, or whatever you, you can get. And on Sunday, it's the steak from the regenerative farmer where, you know, oh my God, he's also doing carbon neutral farming. So perfect, perfect thing to supplement. And by that even I think we can not only capture a lot of consumers, but also we can really take a lot of pressure off that the current agricultural systems put on the planet under the climate.
Jason Jacobs: Are you envisioning that this will be available in grocery?
Patricia Bubner: Yes. In the long-term, yes. I think it will be a very normal product for people to buy and to handle, but we of course have to look at timelines there, right? And again, right now there is no process at scale so far, but we see companies like us ramping up quickly. So I would envision that within the next five years, we will see something in the grocery aisle.
Jason Jacobs: So, where would the initial channel be for us?
Patricia Bubner: For us, the initial channel will be premium retail. We want to collaborate also with chefs because they are the experts. And really also bringing out the flavors in the products the best and show what people can do with it and to familiarize consumers with it. I think that's a very good way to go. And also, if you think of all the different products that are out there, we have now fermented cheese and whey protein and milk protein, and cell-grown meat and cell-cultured fish, and all these options. I think a lot of young shifts that are climate conscious can even start building their profile with being alternative proteins cooks, similar to what happens in the molecular cuisine back in the 90s. I think that can be a very exciting space.
Jason Jacobs: If I am just a patron at one of these restaurants, with one of these chefs that you collaborate with and I'm reading the menu, how much have you thought through and how much can you share how you're thinking about positioning and what I would see on the menu for your products versus the non-lab grown alternatives, and how it would be positioned to me, the consumer?
Patricia Bubner: Yeah. We're just starting to really hone in on our strategy there. But again, the way we're thinking about that is really having a premium product that has a story to tell, that comes from a long line of breeding, that has a certain story associated with it, but not necessarily lab grown. That's a term that I think is just not accurate because as every brewery, yes, we also will have a lab, but all of the product will be actually made in bio-reactors similar to how beer is being made or how a lot of industrial food processes run. So there's no difference there. That's why we don't like that term. And I definitely don't want to see it on a menu, but cell-cultured heritage meats, I think that's a good way to position it ethical me, Tyler, we want to convey that to the consumer and how they think about it.
Jason Jacobs: What are your estimates on timelines, when consumers like me will be able to try it out in restaurants and what needs to happen between now and then?
Patricia Bubner: We already have regular tastings about two times a year. So we want to have another one this year and then two more next year, really also to get consumer feedback. And I invite everyone to go to our website and sign up for our tasting wait list there, for a chance to be invited to one of these tastings. And then we plan on bringing out our product in 2023, the major tool things that need to happen there is of course regulatory approval, which we already are working on. And the other thing is of course, scaling our technology, which we're already also working on. And the most important thing there is that we need the right people, and we are already building an amazing team that I'm just really blessed with that I can work with these people.
It's just really such professionally, such an amazing thing to do. And we're looking for more amazing people, so especially in the bioprocess engineering domain, people with experience, process development experience, especially and also into cell line development domain, as well as for people, persons in, in the near future and everything else that a growing startup needs of course, to bring a product to market.
Jason Jacobs: And we've talked a bit about what needs to happen from an Orbillion standpoint, but what about the market itself for heritage or lab grown or cell base, whatever you want to call this category in order for it to really take off and be a major staple of the portfolio of the diets of people around the globe. What needs to happen from a market standpoint and where do you think some of the biggest blockers are today?
Patricia Bubner: That's a great question. And, you know, I'm always happy to see that more companies are coming into the space, both with B2C and B2B models, providing inputs for companies in this space. So that's great to see. I think we see that market maturation already. It's a really accelerating, I'm very glad that investors are also putting more money towards the industry, which is just very important because it is a capital intensive industry, as we know. This is something that we will see accelerating. And I'm also happy because I know we started talking about heritage breeds and I was on conferences and really like, "Why are we not taking the best breeds?" And now I see more and more cell cultured meat companies over the planet, also starting to tell that narrative. And I'm really happy because I'm like, "Yes, please start, start with the best meats that you can get."
And this is of course awesome to see. The other part that needs to happen is I think, and we already saw bigger players in the food industry, getting very interested in cell-cultured meat. We saw [inaudible 00:32:39] recently, also putting a bet. So this is very important because these companies have, of course the infrastructure to help really bringing food products to the market. And we're talking about distribution there, we, we are talking about sales channels and so on. This will be very important to actually bring more of these products to the consumer. And the other part that is very important is of course, on the regulatory and policy side.
And I think there's a lot that we can do as scientists, as companies also to educate the consumer. But I think there needs to be more done on, uh, educational level where we see luckily more universities teaching classes in the future of food and bringing more students into this field, which is important. Having researchers doing fundamental research on that in every aspect, be it on the basic science, but also on market research of course, and how that will develop. And we need, as I said, really politicians also to inform themselves about that and make that future possible for the best of the people in the countries, but also for really the future and stability of the food supply in a very rapidly changing world.
Jason Jacobs: What are you seeing from the big traditional players? How much urgency do they feel in terms of having offerings that are down this path? And do you ultimately see categories like this one consolidating and becoming a part of the portfolios of these big incumbents or how will that landscape play out directionally?
Patricia Bubner: This is a really interesting question. We have been discussing that a lot, both internally and with other companies. It's a very dynamic market and I think we will see several mergers acquisitions in that area of smaller and midsize startups because of the complimentarily of some of the technologies may be and so on. But I think there will also, there will be, first of all, there will be a couple of let's call them winners companies that bring their products to the market because there is such a wide range of products that can be made globally. We're looking at very different markets and very different foods that people eat just saying it for the Americans, not everyone in the world eats burgers [laughs].
And so there is a huge potential for many different companies, especially with a different cultural understanding of food. And of course I need to tout the Orbillion hone here because we're three immigrant founders from three different cultures. So, that also puts us in different food experience spaces. And also in the end, when you look at mature cell-cultured meat industry, I think there will be a variety of players that have been, that are part off the portfolios of bigger companies in the end with the products that have been acquired, there will be standalone companies. I think we will see all of that. It's hard for me to really forecast on what the percentage will be, bBut the one thing I know is it's going to be huge.
Jason Jacobs: And is there a fork in the road where you, or, or companies like, Orbillion need to decide whether to really invest in building a big consumer brands themselves versus potentially licensed their tech far and wide to other, maybe larger strategics that need to have answers in this category, but might not have the technological or platform capabilities?
Patricia Bubner: I think there's a potential to do both because you build so much technology in a company like this, that you can have your consumer product and you can license other parts of your technology out or license things in. So that will be a very dynamic process, right? There can be joint products being made between smaller and bigger companies. And that's something that if you look at biopharma is something that is regularly being done. A very well-known example right now is BioEnTech and Pfizer, where BioEnTech developed all the technology and Pfizer did the manufacturing and distribution. Definitely, things like that can be happening in, in cell-cultured meat, and potentially really accelerate the availability of these products to the consumer.
Jason Jacobs: Bouncing around a bit, but you mentioned before that one of the issues with the factory farming and kind of our food system, as we know it, it's just that it's not gonna scale to keep up with the amount of mouth that need to get fed on this planet as the population continues to grow. So I wanna talk a little bit about your decision to focus on the high-end and how do you reconcile that with that problem, and is that problem just for someone else to address? Or do those dots connect clearly in your mind and if so, how?
Patricia Bubner: Honestly for me, it connects in my mind very clearly, because as I mentioned in the beginning, we will just not be able as much as I would love to, to produce these large amounts of affordable meat for everyone. But is that the future? Of course. I wanna produce value for everyone [laughs], not just cheap, fast food products, but really nutritious food that is accessible to everyone. How can we get there by initially bringing a product to market showing, that we're a viable company, bringing in revenue, growing, scaling up more, bringing the price down and in the end, having a product that we can sell at Costco, for example. So I think our motto should be value for everyone [laughs].
Jason Jacobs: And speaking of everyone, you talked about how you're just beginning the positioning exercise of how you talk about it and how much to mention the climate impact. And do we call it lab grown heritage or something else? So now me or anybody else that maybe doesn't work in this category for a living who just wants to make better choices for themselves and for their families and for the planet, they're walking down the supermarket aisles and they're seeing lab-grown this and plant-based that, and climate friendly this and healthy that. And what advice would you give to those people as they're just walking the aisles to navigate that landscape and make better choices as the landscape sits today?
Patricia Bubner: I'm also one of these people [laughing]. I'm truly trying to make better choices. And I think no matter what you do, but wanting to do someone and doing something is always better than not doing anything at all. So I think first of all, as companies we need to give consumers these options and luckily more of these options become available. And everybody should feel good about the choices they make and they should enjoy the food they're eating [laughs]. So I think there's a lot of things that we can do ourselves. And I love what the work that Dr. Jonathan Foley from project Drawdown, is doing in that space. And he's talking about immediate solutions that we can do and things that we can do on the long run and so on. And one of the immediate solutions we can do is reducing food waste. Don't buy more than you need, right? Try to reduce that even on a personal level, in your company, in the way you, when you eat out, right? Take home your doggy back, whatever it is. I think everything matters. The worst thing is if we feel like it doesn't matter what we do, but our individual choices matter and even better, if you or anyone, you know, wants to get involved in anything really that has to do with climate change, but preferably come work for Orbillion if you're really into that [laughs]. That's also something you can do. I want to get as many people involved in the space as possible.
Jason Jacobs: So if you could wave your magic wand and change one thing that's outside of the scope of your control or, Orbillions control that would most dramatically accelerate the progress of Orbillion and the category generally, what would you change and how would you change it?
Patricia Bubner: The thing I would change would be the, and that's a really difficult thing to do, where I realize that, would be the way we talk about food, meat especially, as if it would be something that only part of us wants to change. And the other, the other part is just plain wrong. I would like to have an integrated and honest discussion of all players in the field without the accusations, you know [laughs], and just to like, "Hey, you're doing plant-based, that's great. You're doing regenerative agriculture also great." How can we really build the future food together so that it makes sense that it is just because all of us, what we want is we want to feed people and we want to not harm the planet in that course [laughs]. It's the same thing, but really everyone ask the farmers that have been putting food on our table for the past centuries. That's what they want. They want to feed people and make a living off of it. And that's a fair thing to ask.
Jason Jacobs: So usually I don't ask follow ups to that magic wand question, but in this case, a follow-up just popped in my head. And that's just how big, uh, an issue are the trade groups and lobbyists, are you seeing the same kinds of trade groups and lobbyists here that one might see in oil and gas, for example?
Patricia Bubner: It may be similar. Right now, we haven't faced massive opposition, but it's also, we don't have regulatory approval. I think there's a lot of misinformation out there and there's also a lot of skepticism and skepticism is not bad. I think we really need to have a good conversation about it. We have to, again, as I said, make sure that we are transparent as an industry and that we also work together with these other groups. But do we anticipate problems? Yeah [laughs].
Jason Jacobs: My last question is just for anyone listening that is inspired about what you're doing, where do you need help and who do you wanna hear from?
Patricia Bubner: Yeah. So I would, of course, as I, as I mentioned, I would love to hear from people that want to work in cell-cultured meat, preferably half industry experience in process development, cell and engineering people operations, and so on, definitely reach out to us. And of course, any chefs, retailers that are interested in these products, we would love to hear from you and work with you. And then anyone that wants to support us, please go to our website, sign up for our tasting list, engage with us on socials. We love to hear your opinion and your feedback.
Jason Jacobs: Patricia, anything I missed, any parting words for listeners?
Patricia Bubner: I think we covered a lot. The one thing that I would like to give everyone on the way is really that the future of food is what we make it to be. And I really believe that we can build future food that is nutritious, that is sustainable, and that is good for the planet, but we need all to work together on this. And I invite you to do that together with Orbillion.
Jason Jacobs: What a great point to end on. Thank you so much for coming on the show and best of luck to you and the team.
Patricia Bubner: Thank you, Jason.
Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at myclimatejourney.co. Note that is .co, not that .com. Someday we'll get the .com, but right now .co. You can also find me on Twitter @jjacobs22, where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. And before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend or consider leaving a review on iTunes. The lawyers may be say that. Thank you.
