Episode 169: Thomas Jonas, Nature's Fynd
Today's guest is Thomas Jonas, Co-Founder & CEO of Nature's Fynd.
Nature’s Fynd is a Chicago-based food company creating versatile alternative proteins to nourish the world’s growing population while nurturing the planet. Born out of research conducted for NASA on microbes in Yellowstone National Park, the company’s breakthrough technology produces Fy™.
Before Nature's Fynd, Thomas was President of Beauty & Personal Care and Home & Garden at MeadWestvaco, a packaging corporation based in Virginia, and General Manager of Alcan Beauty Solutions, a French packaging company. Thomas has an MBA from HEC Paris. While taking a sabbatical in Hawai'i, Thomas met his co-founder, Mark Kozubal. Mark was working for NASA, researching ways to find life on other planets which led him to explore Yellowstone, where he discovered the Fy™ protein. Since founding the company, Thomas has served as CEO of Nature's Fynd.
In this episode, Thomas and I explore the unique solution that Nature's Fynd is providing, the problem the company is working to solve, and the startup's market strategy. He also gives advice to entrepreneurs looking to raise capital, an overview of their most recent $350M raise, and how to influence customers at the shelves. Thomas is a great guest and it was fascinating to learn more about Nature's Fynd.
Enjoy the show!
You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@mcjcollective.com, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded July 16th, 2021
In Today's episode we cover:
An overview of Nature's Fynd and how the company is inventing a new type of protein
Thomas's path to co-founding Nature's Fynd from growing up in France to working in Hong Kong
Thomas' previous biodiesel experience and what motivated him to pursue protein
What the R&D environment was like and how Thomas navigated that process without a background in deep science
A discussion on whether technology should be in search of solutions or not
The uniqueness of Nature's Fynd's solutions
Nature Fynd's goals and why their method is economically and environmentally ahead of its competitors
The trade-offs and advantages of consuming Fy rather than the alternative and meat-based proteins
How Nature's Fynd will come into the market and what the partnership landscape looks like for the company
How consumers can make environmental and healthy choices at the grocery store
Thomas's advice for entrepreneurs looking to raise sources of capital
Nature Fynd's $350M raise
How to supply the fungus and why its regenerative properties are a massive value for Nature's Fynd
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
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Today's guest is Thomas Jonas CEO, and co-founder of nature's Fynd. Nature's Fynd Previously known as sustainable Bioproducts, makes products from Fy, a fungi, derived protein from a microbe that was discovered in a geothermal spring in Yellowstone national park. The company has said the protein product is suitable for meat and dairy analogs, and it recently received approval from the FDA to use five protein in food products.
We've a great discussion in this episode about the origin story for the company. Why Thomas has chosen to focus in this area. The company's approach progress to date some of the key milestones that they're driving towards over the next 12 months, we talk about their long vision. And then we have a great discussion about the alternative protein landscape and the different approaches there. The trade-offs of these approaches and where Fy and Nature's Fynd fit in. Thomas, welcome to the show.
Thomas Jonas: Hey, Jason. Good to be here.
Jason Jacobs: Thanks for coming. Just past the recent announcement that you just had. uh... I'd imagine that you're a busy guy.
Thomas Jonas: We're pretty excited. We just announced our third round of fundings, our C round. So we raised uh, $350 million led by SoftBank, and now it's gonna be the mad rush to scaling up, and, uh, it's it's exciting time.
Jason Jacobs: Well, congratulations on that. And yeah, I guess my first question is scaling up. What is Nature's Fynd?
Thomas Jonas: Nature's Fynd is a food tech company and we’re based in Chicago, I'm actually talking to you from the old Stockyard, For those of you who are familiar with Chicago. It's literally what used to be center the meat industry and what we do here is a new type of protein. It's a fungi-based protein. And uh, the company was based on research that came out of work that we did for NASA, that my- my co-founder mark Kozubal did for NASA at the time, the objective of that research was to try to figure out. If NASA was gonna send a probe to moon of Saturn or to Mars, how do you look for life in that very different environment?
And that's really put us on a path on exploring life in a very different environment, which are the acidic volcanic Springs at Yellowstone. So we discovered a bunch of microorganism there and one in particular, which we used to develop the technology, which is an- an, an amazing microorganism, which is not a plant, which is not an animal. It's part of that third branch of life that is all around us and that we never think about. And that's the fungi. You can say fun guys, if you want. You know, I like, I like that terminology, Fungi are amazing. and they are. literally, uh... I don't know where you are when you're listening to to us right now, but you are going to be breathing some spores and it's okay.
Don't panic. You've been breathing these spores your entire life and you've been fine and you're okay. They're literally all around us and they have that big role in nature. They're actually many big roles in nature. They have a lot of functions and one thing that's very interesting, about fungi is that they're actually closer to you and me than they are to plant. Our branch of fungi and animals kind of separated from plants. And then we separated from fungi. but you know, next time you walk on your, where you go shopping for groceries and you pass the carrots, then you pass the mushroom. You just get a nut to the mushrooms 'cause they are your cousin and the carrots are a more distant cousin.
Jason Jacobs: I wanna get in to all about what these fungi does and what Nature's Fynd does with this fungi, But before we do, maybe just talk a little bit about your journey and how you and mark came together, how you and fungi came together and how this all came to be. So you talked about Mark, you know, doing the research at Yellowstone, but what about Thomas?
Thomas Jonas: If anybody thought this was a Chicago accent, I really did amazingly well. And I'm very proud. I'm French people probably figure that out, born and raised. I went to business school in France. Then I did a stunt in the in the French air force. Then I went to Hong Kong and I had my first job in Hong Kong. Then went back to France, did some strategy consulting that happens to some, of, you know, some people get into that stuff. And then I ended up and that's where I- I think things start to get Interesting. When I look at the arch of the past few years, I ended up being, working in plastic Packaging talking to you. I mean, like, come on. I'm the guy who is doing things are good for the planet. Now that's- that used to do plastic packaging that was ended up in the ocean.
That's kind of what I've been trying to do over the past few years. So I was, I'm came to the us 17 years ago, I think to head a plastic packaging company, which workshop doing plastic packaging for beauty and personal care.
Jason Jacobs: A big one. Right. Don't be humble.
Thomas Jonas: At the time, it was the biggest French company in- in this sort of plastic packaging and the you know, the biggest customers were Estée Lauder, L'Oréal, Maybelline, all these brands that are number one, CPG brands in- in the space.
And then I went on to work for another American packaging company, and we were one of the biggest in world in pumps and sprayers. So everything from the fragrance pump on Chanel, No. 5 To Windex, literally. So all this sort of things and all of these, yes. It's plastic, to be honest at the time, I [inaudible 00:07:21] that over probably around 10 years but I, I didn't think about it the way I think about it today and the way I looked at it today, It's sounds weird to say this now that we know what we know, and I can't really say that we didn't know, and we didn't have a clue because that that would be wrong and that wouldn't be right, but we didn't fully, I think, understand and grasp what exactly the consequences where of doing all this plastic packaging. I did turn around on the activity and I had made a little bit of money and I had a chance to start to think about things a little bit differently. And I went on a two-week vacation with my then pregnant wife at the time. And my little daughter who was two-year-old And after two weeks I asked my wife, do you mind if we stay another two weeks?" And she's like, no. And then after another two weeks I said, how about another two weeks? And she said, no, Then another two weeks. said, should we stay another two weeks? [inaudible 00:08:16], come on. Ah!" A- And then I say, okay, well, look, you're pregnant. How about we have the baby here? And we ended up staying a year in Hawaii.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah. You hadn't disclosed a spot when you're telling that story, but now it makes more sense why you wanted to stay.
Thomas Jonas: It was not too difficult to convince my wife. that it- it was Better to be pregnant on the north shore of Kauai versus winter in New York. You don't wanna be a pregnant lady in winter, in New York. It's, it's a challenge. It's true. But the reality is I just didn't know what to do exactly. I had been president of this pretty large you know, $700 million packaging company. I had been a successful executive or whatever that means. and I had a sense that I just didn't want that to be what I was gonna... There's nothing wrong with that. Don't get me wrong, but it's just, I thought I could do something else. And I really wasn't sure what it was. And if you go to Kauai and you go to some of the beaches in Kauai the one that are not clean on regular basis, you see all that plastic, that accumulates, and that was kind of really, it would have been hypocritical not to realize that there was any connection between what I had been doing before. And these plastic bottles that were landing up on the beach. And I say plastic bottles. I mean, there was like, and there's way more than plastic bottle, There is all these things.
Jason Jacobs: That's like a movie script, you run one of the big companies doing that, and then you make some money and then you go to Hawaii and then you're on beautiful beaches on Hawaii. And then you see the waste that comes from the business that you built like that that's almost poetic.
Thomas Jonas: It's almost poetic unless it happens to you personally, because it's, you kind of have to really examine what you've been doing. It's hard to explain because it sounds hypocritical but you didn't have a sense that you were doing. I didn't have a sense I was doing anything wrong. I was trying to run the business. to the best, By the business, to the best for the employees, for the, you know, the- the investor. Like I was just trying to do my job and I know it's a horrible thing to say ‘cause you have to think about the consequences of your job and we all have a responsibility, you know, with what we're doing, that's fundamentally what it is. You are responsible, you're free and therefore you're responsible. And I guess I didn't quite think about that part. It's not uncommon that you start thinking about this sort of things when you have kids. Candidly before I was just living my life and then I had a daughter and then my son was born and then I got into thinking a little bit, it's boringly common, but about the word that you're leaving behind. So I think it's very common when you start having things, kids to think about that, then really put me on a journey, starting to think about what else I could do and how I could do something that would be a little better. I'm French so we tend to be a little more subdued about sentimental things and big words. So we don't talk about, we're very bad with work like, with words. Like I wanna leave an impact and like... Cause it's not exactly the way these things actually happen. Only in a movie is You just wake up in morning. saying, You figure it all and you know exactly what you wanna do. That's not what happened for most people. I'm sure that- that come on your show, It- it- it's a journey. It happens. You start thinking about these things. You start realizing you start wondering what you could do. and You wanna try to align a little bit more, what you believe in and what you can do. And that's kind of what happen to me and that- and that took me that year in Kauai, that year during which the number of email on my phone just dropped. Nobody care about you know, then I was just this guy that had gone away to Kauai and nobody really, I lost touch with a lot of people. I was just alone. I was just there doing my thing and thinking, but I remember very vividly. I was sitting on this beach called Anini beach for those of you go on Kauai, north shore, it's a gorgeous beach. And then. And my son was there and he was just a few months old and I was just looking at the ocean and a coconut fell behind me. And then suddenly it hit me that if I had been on the beach a million years ago or so I would have seen exactly the same thing, the same ocean, the same sea, and probably coconut would have fell behind just the same way.
And realized that I had, if I didn't wanna just spend the rest of my life there, I'd better figure out what. to do Soon and get back to the world. Instead of living on that sort of island over there, I needed to get back in the world. And I met this gentleman on the same beach shortly after that actually Danny and his kids came and tried to get the [inaudible 00:12:43] and he- he walked over saying, "Oh, sorry, my kids, their bunch of these, but that's because of their mother True story. He said that, which was really something you typically wouldn't say. That was fun. I remember very well. Our first conversation, He said to me, you know, people think the brain is the most fantastic object in the universe, but actually think the liver is more interesting because it makes all sorts of chemicals all the time in real time.
And I thought, huh, that's an interesting guy. We decided to start staring to work together and looking at what we could do. And we started looking at technologies that could have an impact. And the model that we had, were like a mini seed form with our own money. And we try to identify technologies that could have a positive impact across a wide range of things, whether it was biotech, whether it was material whether it was energy.
And we looked, and we did, and we started a bunch of company in these categories and the idea was always that one would pick up and we will focus our resources on that, which is exactly what happened. So I met mark. We met mark and at the time. When we met Mark, he had started the company, which is called sustainable Bioproduct at the time. And he workshop trying to do biodiesel. It was supported by a grant money and it was kind of running out grant money. And so we shook hands and I took over the CEO of the company. Mark became CSO. And at the time the company was really. two and a half Guys in a garage. And we are about 130 people. It's been quite a journey and we moved from doing biodiesel to making protein. And then that has been the, all the journey and the development of this, uh, uh, breakthrough fermentation technology that we've done at Nature's Fynd.
Jason Jacobs: And maybe talk a bit about that initial approach in biodiesel what, and then what didn't work about it. And what led you down the path of pursuing protein next?
Thomas Jonas: When I met mark, it was pretty obvious for a bunch of pretty simple macroeconomic reasons that biodiesel was not the best. Place to go with this organism. Let me back down a little bit and explain, and- and maybe I can give a little bit more of a picture around what these organisms does, and what's very interesting about it. So this organism is a fungi and it evolved in the acidic volcanic Springs of Yellowstone, which means it's coming from an environment, which is just above the lava chamber in Yellowstone. So Yellowstone, for those of you who are not familiar with it, it's about half the size of Switzerland altogether.
And it's sitting on a gigantic volcanic chamber lava chamber, And it's the biggest super volcano of the planet. And what happens there is you have this it's in the Northwest of the US, it's in the mountains, So you have snow in the winter. The snow melts, it gets into the ground. And then it's heated by the lava chamber And you have, this geyser sometimes this comes out, you have a lot of water that's comes out. And when the water comes back up to the surface it goes across the very unique geology that you find in volcanic areas, and it- it gets loaded with all sorts of compounds. The spring that we surveyed has one of the highest naturally occurring concentration of anything from arsenic to copper to sulfur.
I mean, it's, it's really, it looks like. a Super [inaudible 00:15:51] rather than a natural spring, but it is a completely natural spring. It has also a pH and acidity level. That's equivalent to your car battery. So it's literally a stream of acid that's coming out of the ground and that's going there. And Everything that gets in. It dyes well, almost everything, and but across very long period of time. And you're really talking about evolutionary scale of time, around many, many, many thousands of years microorganism managed to colonized this incredible environment because life finds a way and life found a way adapt it, and this microorganism have developed an ability to be very efficient with the very limited resources that they can.
find In this environment. which is fascinating for us as a species today, 'cause there's nothing more important for us to learn, to do more with less. And that organism is nature. Exhibit one, at doing more with less. So it had to survive with almost nothing and in a completely barren environment. So it developed extraordinary efficiency at using whatever was there, whatever resources it could use there. The whole development of our technology was to harness that, leverage that, and developed a fermentation process that really enables us to do that. But there is no book that tells you how to cultivate acidophile microorganism that you discover in the volcanic spring. So you have to figure out these things.
And we had to do a lot of really deep. biotech research, which fortunately was supported across the years by NASA by the national science foundation, we got a lot of support from the national foundation by the USDA, by the EPA. And that really enable us to get the technology, the fermentation technology to the next level.
So biodiesel was a really interesting option initially because the organism can make a lot of oils using a bunch of waste, products, waste, material, [inaudible 00:17:41] mate- material using its superior enzymatic capability. And that's really interesting thing your, You have superior enzymatic capability Enzymatic capabilities mean that the organism can take a bunch of simple material from plants and break that down. And at the time it could easily turn it into oil. We modify the growth environment. to Switch the function and it's completely natural. And those are ability that the organism had, but to switch the organism from making a lot of oils to making a lot of proteins, that's really big part of the breaking the technology. We had the ability to use this organism to make a lot of high quality protein a complete protein with all the essential amino acid that you and I need to build and maintain a healthy body.
Jason Jacobs: Had you ever been in this type of R&D intensive environment before? I would imagine running a big many hundreds of millions of dollar plastics company that you probably spend a lot more time and Excel then then in the lab or PowerPoint or in WebEx back in the day when that was still a thing. So, when was this a foreign language to you or how did you come about finding your way into that and why was it a fit?
Thomas Jonas: What company building, it's a sport team. What matters is that everyone plays their position. So you need to know what you can do well, and you need to make sure you're the right people who can do well, what you cannot do. I solely do not have any pretension to be a biotech scientist. And we have a whole team of phenomenal people. I think the way I was thinking about my job is that I have to be the guy who ask the question that makes sense in terms of guiding the science toward Solving questions that are relevant to build business.
That thing that's really tricky when you are into deep science is that the real currency is new knowledge. And that currency in itself may or may not have economic value. You might be able to just build another mouse trap in a different way, and that may or may not be better than an existing mouse trap. And that's really a big part of the scientific discovery process. And you don't really know until you've discovered the new mouse trap, a big part of what I was trying to bring to the party here in this constant conversation that I was having with the R&D team is how do we make sure we work on what is going to put us on a path to have something. that Could be a business that could have, that could solve big problems that would have some level of value.
And that's really what we focus on. So I have always read a lot of science. It's kind of thing I love to do. So whether it's physics, whether it's biology, so those things. are Things that I read that I've always read kind of for fun in my, I just enjoy it. I just find it fascinating. So I very curious about this thing. I managed to get enough knowledge, to be able to ask the questions, not necessarily to fully understand the answer but asking the right question. as always pretty always, I think in whatever business is 90% of what you need to do. What is the right question? What is it that really makes sense? What is it that you should be working on? That's kind of my job.
Jason Jacobs: One thing that VC's like to say, and and maybe they drill into your head in business school for better, or for worse is that “you don't wanna be a technology in search of solutions”. It strikes me that these fungi were essentially that. So how do you feel about that idiom? And is this an exception or- or do you think that this is actually a way to start a business that can be repeatable and should be?
Thomas Jonas: I absolutely do not think that it should be a way of start, of setting up a business. Usually I'm the one who say "A technology looking for a solution is really a bad place to start.” But here is the thing though. I think it's all about degradation of that. And it's all about again, defining the question. At the very early stage before you start pumping money be- behind an idea, you need to ask yourself in a very honest fashion. if I have this technology and if you're looking for a solution, then is it going to deliver on problem a problem B and problem C a better option than the existing option?
If the answer gets to be yes, then it's worth continuing and developing the technology to the next level. If the answer is no. Then you have to stop here. You're gonna spend your wealth forever, or you risk the risk of spending your wealth forever. Trying to find that thing. So we set up very early, a few questions on this line, and we were able to demonstrate that there was a real advantage from making protein. So that enable us to continue on that path. It was very important to make sure we were not going freely trying every possible problem under the sun, as you would try a pair of shoe and see if it fits, we zoomed very early on, on a very limited amount of business application. We design experiments so we can validate quickly. Or if yes or no there was a fit and a way forward. And then we executed from there. We took a little bit of risk, but I think you kind of have, right. You kind of have to take a little bit of risk. There different level of risk, You have to make sure you understand the level of you're taking that that's that key and you can never fall in love with an idea and a technology just because you're the one who discovered it. That's a very dangerous thing to do.
Jason Jacobs: And so when you discovered it, had fungi ever been used to produce proteins in this way?
Thomas Jonas: Absolutely actually the interesting thing here is if you think about us humans, we've been doing agriculture for about 11,000 years, but before that, we were [inaudible 00:23:22] together and it's actually much easier to pick up a mushroom than it is to catch rabbit.
We've actually evolved to eat mushrooms over eons. They were much bigger part of our food diet than they've been over the past 11,00 years, because you actually cannot grow mushrooms the same way. You can grow a lot of the plant crops that we used to. It's more... Yeah, and there's other constraints. It's a little more complicated to scale it up in that way, but we are perfectly well suited and we have historically consumed fungi organism quite a bit.
There have been company that have developed fungal systems for food using microscopic fungal organism as well. The technology was very different than what we do. What we developed is a new type of fermentation, which we call air liquid interface fermentation. And what we really do is looking how the organism was evolving in the water, we developed this system where we push the organism to set itself above the surface of a liquid. And that's a very unique way. We don't do classic big submerged fermentation in large tanks. And typically people who do fermentation do very large tanks. It kind of looks like a petrol chemical plant, that type of fermentation. And that's not what we do. What we do is a tray based system. So we robots that move trays around then we grow things in tray.
So it looks much like vertical agriculture. Kind of what you in, the, some of the greenhouses where you grow lettuces or things like that, except that we grow protein and we don't really need light to do that. So what we grow in this tray? Looks like a slice of raw chicken breast. If that makes any sense. And the reason why it looks like that is because we're using an organism that has natively a filamentous texture. So that texture kind of mimic muscle filaments. It's not the same, but it kinds of mimic muscle filaments. So this has texture. It has a bounce. It's not like a piece of tofu. And what it is. So we call Fy, F-Y, Fy and Fy is really a new protein platform. And we, we are able to use protein platform to make things that range from yogurts to meat alternative to cheese and many more, just as you can use animal protein to do a wide range of things
Jason Jacobs: is the goal here from an impact standpoint, to get off of animal agriculture.
Thomas Jonas: So the goal is to offer a solution that provide you the ability you need to do that. We use a fraction of the land, a fraction of the water. We emit a fraction of the greenhouse gas, of course, than regular agriculture. So we are here in Chicago. We are 10, 15 minutes from downtown Chicago in the Stockyard, And this factory where I'm sitting today is in the process of being commissioned. So when in the really final days of the commissioning we've run a few early commissioned runs and when it's fully operational. it will Be able in my very scientific, non-US gap, you need of chicken nugget equivalent. It would able to make as many chi- chicken nugget as you would out of half a million chicken, but using again, a fraction in there of the resources.
We literally took a warehouse here in Chicago and repurpose it into this protein production unit. The reason why we can do that in the neighbors that don't even have a clue because there's no waste. Everything is calibrated in a way. When I said there's no waste it's not- it's not true, there's a little bit of waste and it's very minimal. It's a little bit water. We use water, we use air, we use some energy, but it's again, it's a fraction of what you would use. otherwise.
Jason Jacobs: I mean, what you're saying about waste and costs and those things, I can see why as a species, that's a good thing. And I can also see why as a business person, it would be a good thing. What about from a consumer standpoint, if I'm eating products made from Fy versus say either kinds of alternative proteins or meat-based protein or dairy or things like that, what are the trade offs and the advantages that Fy brings That the others do not.
Thomas Jonas: One the thing that is very interesting about Fy, to get back to one of the, point I was mentioning earlier, that the Fy that it's separated from animals you know, later they separated from plants, the cellular machinery inside the cells is much more like an animal with- with fungi organisms. And one of the consequences of that is that you have a lot of protein, And you have a protein profile. That actually is very, very good. It's one of the reason why this is a complete protein and you have very, very, very few plants that are actually complete protein. That really gives you the complete suite of uh, essential amino acid, And you do need, you do need all these Essential amino acid, if you wanna have a balanced diet. So of course you can supplement through a bunch of different plants that compensate in terms of profile. There are amino acid, so that you get these balances, but it's great to have one source that has it all.
It makes it easier. It makes it safer for your own health to have that. And that's something that we have nat- natively. The digestibility here is also very high. As I mentioned earlier, it's actually higher than beef people think about beef has the big protein and this is more digestible than beef. So if you look at lot of the plant-based, there are really not a lot that have that sort of profile. Pea is not a complete protein. There is some concern about the digestibility of, soy for some people there's some conti- continue nutritional aspects as soy. There are some real advantages there that I think is interesting is that from a consumer point of view, there has been a little bit of a pushback around some of the plant-based product in the sense that consumer perceived them little bit as the new, you know, you might have seen some people saying, well, this is the new vegan junk food. Because it's very processed the way you do a soy-based burger or or pea-based burger is you need to extract the protein fraction from the pea or from the soybean.
Then once you have this nice fluffy, white protein powder, you need to extrude it, process the texture in it, and then you need to process the water back in it. We don't have to do any of these things. So we have a very minimal processing. We pick up a sheet of protein that has moisture, that has texture, and that's what we use for the formulation.
So we have minimal processing. Another aspect that's very interesting is we developed an original neutral taste profile that really enables us to be very clean in the formulation of the text and get very clean taste. So we don't have to mask strong flavor profile from plants. We can really use very simple. If we do a strawberry yogurt, we can use a very simple strawberry base to flavor. It just like you would flavor a yogurt. So that gives us versatility that really enables us to go from meat to dairy. And it's something that we understand from the discussion we have with consumer that they really like, because a lot of consumer want to have the product. They want to consume product that are better for them and better for the planet, but they don't want a hamburger every single day. And when they find a source of protein that they like, one of the question that they have is how can I have this. more often In my diet and we are able to offer a range of product to versatility that will enable people to have that if even with format or another every day, every single day they want to, because the new protein platform It's not just one particular application.
Jason Jacobs: And how do you take this to market? Are you building a brand to yourselves or do you license this to the big food brands?
Thomas Jonas: So we're going to launch it in the coming months. So we're gonna do a pre-launch in bay area, and then we'll be launching it in retailers, in Chicago and then national wide. And for us at this particular moment in time, actual selling it, and getting traction with retailer is really not the problem, not a challenge. is a lot of interest, but we really wanna make sure that we can scale out the capacity so that we don't disappoint the retailers and we are able to supply. So we're trying to go a little slow there just to make sure we don't Over promise and under deliver. We wanna make sure we have that supply chain. That's ready to go. That is one of the challenge for these entire industry, 'cause you're really competing with and existing protein supply that has been around for hundreds of years in the US and thousands of year on the planet, which is the animal protein supply chain.
And these completely new supply chain needs to be invented. It needs to be build. There is nobody that I can turn to, to provide protein for me. And for my team who's working the formulation on the finished product, except ourselves. We are the one making it. So we will be launching that under our brand Nature's Fynd brand in the coming months and we will be launching both a dairy format and a meat format, dairy alternative and meat alternative format. So we'll be launching a couple of reference of cream cheese as well as some breakfast sausages. We're starting with. breakfast.
Jason Jacobs: And as you think about staging and phasing, I mean, there's many ways you could go, you could want additional products, you could start licensing this to other food manufacturers and just kind of use your own as a driving range, if you will how do you think about expansion paths and also how quickly would that come? I mean, you're clearly very well capitalized, but yet focus is so paramount in the early stage? So maybe just speak to any or all of that.
Thomas Jonas: For us, it is important that we can communicate and explain what this thing called Fy is. And I feel pretty strongly that the one that are the best qualified to do that and have this discussion with the general public is us. So you need to have these be to see dialogue. You need to explain what is this new technology? What is this new Fy, What is this new protein. And I think it is very important for us That that dialogue. We have it directly. We have it with the consumer and I thought, candidly it was uh, it would have been a little dangerous to let a bunch of product manager at big food companies do that for us and hope they were gonna do a good work. And the problem with that is if they were not, it would have been potentially catastrophic for us. So having the direct relationship with consumer, I think is essential and it really. Gives a lot of credibility. We are the one who found it. We are the one who take the technology. If you have any question, ask us, we'll explain whatever you need to know. will be there. will be transparent. will tell you everything you need, you need to know and why it's good for you and why it's good for the planet.
So I think that was and important thing to do. Our goal is to create that brand, have this discussion because we are protein platform. And there are protein in so many things. We don't necessarily need to make every single product under the sun that contains protein. So I think there's some vertical that we will keep under our brands and they are certain other verticals, which is another products where we might not, and where we would appear more of it as an ingredient, what is important for me and for the company as we do that is to do that in a way that's co-branded. So I'm not interested in being just a random ingredient. I think it's important it's recognized as Fy. so we wanna have a little bit of this Fy inside kind of an intel inside, and the reason why we think it's valuable and the discussion we've had with some very large companies actually validated that is that if anything, they wanna be vocal about this new ingredient that they're bringing into the product. If they are formulating, they wanna reformulating to bring this protein. They want to be able to say, Hey, it's good for you. And it's good for the planet. And they wanna piggyback and benefit from the educational work that we do on, on Fy. We've had a lot of interests from several very large companies to co-branded products with the And well, that something we're very interested in. doing.
Jason Jacobs: When you think about it from a consumer standpoint, what advice you have as consumers navigate the shelves and they see Plant-based this and lab growing that and this type of protein and that type of protein, like most consumer don't have their heads around any of this stuff. So how can they tell so that they are making good decisions for themselves, for their families and for the planet?
Thomas Jonas: That again. That's why I think it's important to have this education work, this be to see conversation. It's why having people taste the product in store is important. And those, that's part of the work were gonna be doing in the coming months and years. There's a lot education. There's no question. It's very interesting to look the words that are. being used. I'm sure. What we're going to be? Seeing, with we already seen and What we'll see in the years to come is a war of words, which is kind of by the way, the sign of any dying industry, right? Any dying industry that's trying to fight back.
They start polish the language and they want you start to use certain words. They're trying to have the opponent use ce- certain words rather than other A lab grown by the way is a good example of that lab grown is really kind of. Something that's planted by the meat industry. It really is.
Jason Jacobs: Maybe I'm a plant from the meat industry. No, I'm just joking. [laughs]
Thomas Jonas: I think you are. It's interesting. I don't think it really matters that much to be honest, but I- I think it's interesting to notice that it's happening because nobody talks about we should have labels that said that you have plant-based meat on one side and on the other one, you have meat out of dead carcasses of murdered animal. I'm just noticing the language, but there is no way that there is going to be some education to be done. Now, These being said, I also think that we completely underestimate consumer's flexibility and adaptation around food. We had one consumer when we're doing some consumer work that- that say that better than anybody else.
She said, you know, five years ago, I probably would not have taken your, tried your product, but now I get it. It's like vegan burger meets kombucha, which is fascinating. And if you look at the way and the speed at which plant-based food has developed or the way. kombucha has developed and you cannot stop in a highway.
Stop and you- you know, gas station anywhere in the country without having five different type of kombucha these days, especially in the Western part of the country. But that's not just true for this type of food you have. This is what has always happened. Pizza was not invented in the US. the Irish potato famine was potato.
That was imported from a place that was really the other side of the world before, it was Peru. Chocolate was considered a very, very weird products by the Spaniards when they got to Mexico and they were offered chocolate. I remember people telling me I'm not gonna have sushi. This is cat food, and I don't, I'm not gonna eat raw fish, but every time again and again, and again.
this new food Made it, and if you like it, then you're gonna eat it. I think the key is to be able to demonstrate that you can make healthy product that are taste good. and that If you can do that, if it's healthy, if it tastes good. And if it's good for the environment, then people will buy it. What is interesting? I think it's something had been said many times in your show as you can see the new generation, the gen Z voting with their wallet on things like that.
So today, if look at plant-based milk, they were presented about 15% of. milk Consumption in the US. which is phenomenal if you think about what it was 10, 15 years ago, but what's even more phenomenal is when you look at the more specific demographics that below the age 21. And it's actually difficult to get clear understanding of this demography because it's easier.
It's more complicated to study younger consumer, but the reality is that number is probably twice. What it is for the general population in that range group. So you're really seeing a sea change in terms of consumer behaviors around these types of application. And that is not something that's true. Just in the US, this is something that's true in Europe.
There is similar pattern that actually, you can see places that go from Thailand to even Argentina, where meat consumption is drastically falling in the younger generation. So these things are moving very rapidly.
Jason Jacobs: For anyone listening that let's say there's someone out there who's building another kind of alternative protein in adjacent categories that are non-competitive, you've raised several rounds of financing and just raised 350 million. What advice would you have for that entrepreneur? If they came to talk to you in terms of staging, phasing and sources of capital along the way?
Thomas Jonas: First of all, I think you know, I would recognize everybody as different situation, difficult technology position, different objective. I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all strategy there.
I think if you come up with a new technology, you wanna make sure you understand the level at which it works before you raise money. You need to be very clear on what you can do, what you cannot do yet. And I think it's important to have that understanding with your investors. You don't wanna have them invest on a misunderstanding.
And I think that that's really critical. I would really recommend very strongly to choose investors that you like, but when you are in the business of building a company, If you have to fight your board, if you have to fight your investor in the process, it's gonna be exhausting. So having people that you have a good alignment with that, you feel that there is an alignment not only, in the overall goal.
I mean, that's, of course is essential, but also at a more philosophical level on how, what you think matters. I think it's essential 'cause otherwise you're gonna have all sorts of hands trying to steer the wheel towards different direction. And that can. be deadly. there are symmetries full of companies with dysfunctional boards because people were not really align on what they were thinking The mission was, or the status of the company was that is very important. And I think sometimes people look at very prestigious firm, big names and- and they say would be great if I have them. And that's true. And it helps. There's no question, but that cannot be done at the expense of really having this alignment on what you're trying to build.
Jason Jacobs: Did you set out to raise 350 million in this latest round?
Thomas Jonas: We never really set up for this round to be that big, but there was a lot of interest and we thought it made sense to fitting the cover and really give us the ability to accelerate. Especially considering that what we wanna do is to build that supply chain.
So we're gonna be building factories. Ont of the thing that is important, within the protein world is to understand that we're not gonna be short of protein at the whole food on Palo Alto. Everybody in Palo Alto can relax. They're gonna be fine, There's gonna be protein. The real challenge. Is to build this protein supply chain in India, in China, in Asia, in Africa, after that, which is gonna add a billion people in the next few decades, the way we have a climate impact. And I'm sure everybody's listening is well aware of that is by providing to these geographies that are gonna get the double impact of the demography explosion combined with climate change. It's to provide solution that can address the desire of this population, the need that this population have in an environment that's more and more challenge by climate change.
And of course, the way we grow our food is dramatically impacted by climate change. And when you have all this population that are center pre them close to the equator for a lot of them or closer to the equator growing food is going to be an increasing problem. So for us, what does that mean? It means that we need to be prepare in the years to come to really roll out our technology in these geographies. And that's gonna take capital when you wanna build this 10, 20, 30,000 ton facilities. So that's really why we will continue to put capital to work. We're not a software company. It's not just two guys creating something like that out of the blue. As I said, it's a team sport, we cut metal, we build things. We build this factory and we will be building more of them. Yes. So more money along, along the way will be required. Absolutely.
Jason Jacobs: You talk about some constraints around supply chain in that it doesn't really exist in some of these new areas. What about supply? these fungi that was discovered in Yellowstone and Yellowstone is The only place where it exists.
Thomas Jonas: I had people asking me if we were going to put a factory in Yellowstone national park, and the answer is absolutely not. We have a few fridges in the world where we keep the original sample and we never have to go back to Yellowstone. So think about it like yeast or like sourdough during the COVID year, people have been working on sourdough a lot sourdough culture, and there's been a lot about how some people got this sourdough culture from their grandmother.
It's kind of like that what's really interesting with microorganism is the speed of the application. And the key to better economics is coming from this speed of the application. A simple way to think about it as from one cow to get two calves, It takes two years from once cell of our microorganism to make two sons or daughter cells, It's a matter of hours. And that's the beauty of the power of two, two times two times, two times, two times, two times, two times, two times, two times two gets very quickly to very big numbers because of that. We can make a lot of biomass Very rapidly, a lot of protein very rapidly. And we can, we never have to go back. We just go back to the fridge, take, uh, one cell from time to time and restart from that no supply issue in that perspective.
Jason Jacobs: So I'm gonna be presumptuous for a moment. I'll probably presume wrong, but I was going to ask you what your. Biggest worry is in terms of risk? And what I think you'll tell me is the supply chain. We've got to get this little Fy chain, right. To keep up with demand. Demand is off the chart. And I guess in my mind, there's a different risk, which is that, you know, let's say demand from the retailers is off the chart to carry it. And let's say you get to supply chain and produce a whole ton of it. What happens if it gets on the shelves and consumers just don't like it. And is that the risk that keeps you out the most at night?
Thomas Jonas: The assumption you're making is that it taste bad. That is really the assumption you're making when you're saying that
Jason Jacobs: or the consumers are fickle and that. And that why I think doesn't matter, be- because who knows, and especially consumers in different parts of the world And like, "I can't predict."
Thomas Jonas: there's basically two assumptions you're making one is that it taste bad and the other one is that the food is weird. Those are the two things that would make you not wanna buy it. And so we've done that again and again, and again, and again, first of all, that thing that really surprises people is that it, it actually taste really good, Bill Gates was one of the investors who breakthrough, and wasn't 60 minute. try the product in 60 minute and it was the first time. You know, we were showcasing the product in a public environment and it was actually bill was having the product.
Jason Jacobs: And that was post investment?
Thomas Jonas: and that was post investment. Yes, yes. Yes.
Jason Jacobs: Oh man. He should have tried it before he wrote the check, but it sounds like he would have liked it Anyways.
Thomas Jonas: The thing is let me be very clear. I'm not slipping a $20 bill to Bill Gates for him to say good thing about our products. Bill Gates Doesn't care about making money on our, I mean, I'm sure he- he's not doing breakthrough energy venture to make an extra buck. He's really genuinely trying to do something that's gonna help and have a positive impact.
So the reason why I'm mentioning that is if you go back online, you can find the sequence of Bill Gates trying the product. And he's reaction is the typical consumer reaction that we have. And we've done that again and again, and again, people say, wow, it's good. And very often they say why it's actually good." 'Cause there is this, wait a minute. This is new food giving this breakfast sausage. ah! I don't know, but when people start eating. it, They actually find that it tastes good. Look, I'm French. but French ambassador will come to my doorstep, take my passport and tear it in half. If I start making bad food, it's just not an option for our company like, you know, we get, I got national pride here and I cannot do that. It's not acceptable. So the food is really good. And the other thing that's important is it's hard to make the point until you've seen the food, But the food is just very common in its aspect in its format. When we make it cream cheese is just looks like cream cheese.
When we make a yogurt, it's just like a yogurt. Like there is no weirdness factor with our food. There is really none. There's nothing. There is no weird after taste, There's nothing that is strange. It's not anymore strange that when you're drinking a beer. Beer are made using microbes and you're not thinking about it. Ooh, I'm eating and drinking a bunch of microbes. When you're eating cheese, it's made by microbes. You're not thinking, oh, I'm eating a bunch of microbes here. It's very similar to that in the sense that it's, the formats are very, very common in our brand, We actually have an evolutionary mechanism that makes us pause before eating stuff that are not common, that we don't typically eat. When people eat our product, There is no activation of that essential reflex, If we put a chicken nugget format in front of you. You're gonna eat it and say, yeah, it's like a chicken nuggets.
Jason Jacobs: So as it relates to the business, when you put your head on the pillow and computer keeps running and you're worried, which if you tell you're not, I don't believe you 'cause you're an entrepreneur, what is it that keeps you up at night?
Thomas Jonas: To me, the number one thing is being able to scale up rapidly enough. It's the key thing. When you are the technology that require industrial investment, you're gonna have to put CapEx out there and you need to that at a scale where you get the efficiency of scale. Fast enough, the death valley is when you cannot do that fast enough. And then you get into trouble and you run out of money and you don't have enough money to do the next big increment of capacity. And that's where you start getting into trouble. So we, for us, we're very discipline around that. We wanna move fast.
We wanna make sure. We continue to increase the capabilities of the technology. And this is what we need to do really, really, really, really fast. I'm very excited about the business opportunities. The reality is that the fundamental macroeconomics are very simple. It is not possible to do great protein for everyone using the animal supply chain. So people would say, well, you know, you can, you don't need to do industrial farming. You can do different type of agriculture. Sure you can. Of course you can, but it's gonna be very difficult to feed 10 billion. It's much easier to feed three billion people with that sort of less intense agriculture model.
If you want to feed everybody in an environment where you don get more land, some of these things have to change. And one of the things that's interesting to keep in minute is where do protein come from? There is a little bit of a misunderstanding around that. You me, the cow, the chicken. And the pig, we do not make protein.
It is that simple. We do not make new new protein. We used a cow as a battery. We feed it Protein are coming from the animal feed, the corn, the soy or whatever. And the protein is concentrated in the body of the cow and then we eat The cow cow is like the a protein battery of us. They do not make new protein, and we cannot make new protein either. The only creature on the planet who can make new protein from non-protein are plants. And that's the beauty of traditional agriculture. And that's what we've been doing for 11,000 years or microorganism. So we've been farming plants for 11,00 years. We're really now at the beginning of this new, more efficient farming, which is the farming of microbes.
They are the only, other source of This microorganism are really the other, the only other scalable source of protein. And that's why I think there is a tremendous opportunity there.
Jason Jacobs: Two final questions. One is just, if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing that is outside of the scope of your control or nature's Fynd control, or your investors control that would most accelerate your progress, what would it be and how would you change it?
Thomas Jonas: There is one that I'd- I'd love where I'd love the conversation to be a little bit different, bu it's not surprising because people care a lot about what they eat is that the hamburger has became such a, a place for the culture war. People are putting feelings and emotions around these things that are above and beyond what these things really are.
We've seen similar things with vaccination, where you have people that are Anti-vaccination for reason that have more to do with some of their other beliefs in other things that purely scientific or when they explain to you why they are against that, it's not necessarily for a reason that are coming from other roots than this really strong culture.
The fact that this protein, new protein find themselves on a fault line on cultures, it's really. Too bad. It's not a question. There are facts and the fact is they're gonna be more of us and they're limited ability to produce food for everyone. So what are the option? What are the solution?
Jason Jacobs: I'm gonna Try to simply summarize what I think you're saying you would change, which is that you would make feeding the planets sustainably non-partisan
Thomas Jonas: that's very well said. I think it should be completely nonpartisan. it's for the betterment of all of us and for the betterment of the planet and the ecosystems.
Jason Jacobs: And my last question is for anyone listening, that's inspired about what you're doing, where do you need help? Who do you wanna hear from?
Thomas Jonas: I'm very interesting in getting some of the brightest engineers in biotech, in AI, in robotics, we have a fantastic team, but there's a lot more that we want to do technology and- and really looking for, if you, if those are things that you're excited about, reach out, and if you wanna build a new world with us, jump on board.
Jason Jacobs: And If you wanna attach some links to job descriptions in the turnouts, we're happy to do that as well.
Thomas Jonas: Sounds great. We'll make sure it's there.
Jason Jacobs: Sorry. We went over Thomas, but this is an awesome discussion. Congrats on the big milestone. Best of luck on the next phase of the journey. And I can't wait to try Nature's Fynd products.
when they're on the shelves.
Thomas Jonas: Thanks. Jason. Hope you enjoy then.
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 com someday. We'll get the .com, but right now .co. you can also find me on Twitter @jayjacobs22 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 made me say that, thank you. .
