Reimagining seafood production with Aryé Elfenbein and Justin Kolbeck of Wildtype (2022)

Hey everyone, so the How I Built This Lab team is taking a little time off for the summer, but don't worry, we'll be back in your feed with fresh How I Built This Lab episodes in just a few weeks. Meantime, I hope you enjoy one of our favorite episodes from last year with the founders of WildType. It's a company working on lab grown salmon, just like the real thing. Without the actual fish. So hope you enjoy it. Here it is. Hello and welcome to how I built this lab.

I'm Guy Raz. Alright, so a lot of us have made the decision to either cut back or completely cut out meat from our lives. For some people, it's a moral issue around harming animals. For other people, it's health, and for me. It's because of the environmental impact of meat consumption, but

I still eat meat and I still eat seafood and admittedly I have occasional pangs of guilt knowing that I'm contributing to a bigger problem. Livestock production is a huge contributor to global carbon emissions. Our oceans are being overfished, and the huge amount of microplastics floating deep in the sea. are making their way into our fish, and consequently...

Into our bodies. So a good question to ask is Do we need to kill animals to create meat? Well, until recently, the answer was of course, don't be ridiculous. But with advances in stem cell technology,

we are coming much closer to a different answer. And that's the starting point for a company called Wild Type Foods, based in San Francisco. Wildtype was started by two friends, Justin Kolbeck and Arya Elfenbein. Justin was a foreign service officer who spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Aryep is a biologist and a trained cardiologist.

But together. They ditch their careers to pursue the idea of growing real salmon. without killing a single fish. Wild type is not a plant based substitute. the company grows real salmon from real salmon cells to form real cuts of sushi grade fish.

And while you can't find their products in grocery stores or restaurants just yet, WildType is part of a growing number of companies hoping that within a few years, cell-cultivated meats will become just as common as those plant-based substitutes. Aria Elfenbein and Justin Kolbeck are with me. Guys, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Um let me start with you. Are yet. Um You were You are. A cardiologist. Yeah. Right. Justin, you you were

Uh a State Department employee. You were you've lived in Countries all over the world. F first of all, how do the two of you meet? Yeah, it's uh it's a funny story about how we met. Um We met in my first year of internship. So this was after I'd finished medical school

And uh was just starting to to train as a doctor and There there was a dinner that both Justin and I were invited to and The idea of this dinner is that Nobody knows anybody else at this dinner except the person who is hosting it. And I I had never been

You were at Yale, right? Yeah, exactly. Doing an MBA at Yale at the same time. Right. It was around two thousand eleven, is that right? Exactly. Okay. And it was um

For me at that time, uh somewhere between eighty and a hundred hours a week in the hospital, but um But something about this invitation and something about the possibilities of just what could happen at a dinner where you don't know anybody else at this dinner. Right. Um really intrigued me and and I went. Um and and that's when I met Justin, I I ended up sitting next to him, uh at this dinner. And Justin, you were doing an MBA.

Tell me what you were thinking about doing. I mean you you would been at the State Department and and been a foreign service officer Clearly you were thinking maybe I'm gonna Make a change. What were you thinking about?

About maybe doing. I had just finished an assignment in Paktika Province, Afghanistan, which is on the on the Pakistani border. I was on something called a provincial reconstruction team, which is essentially what it sounds like in terms of the the goal. And

I had always had it as a life goal to get a graduate degree. Um kind of the first person in my family to go on to college and then Being able to to get a graduate degree seemed like something that w I was very passionate about and so

I decided to take some time off from the State Department and and do an MBA at Yale'cause it was this mission driven school. And that really appealed to me, um, that it wasn't just about, you know, going on and working in an investment bank, but maybe having a big impact in the in on the world, which is what drove me into the foreign service to begin with. And so to be honest with you, I showed up at school and I met these people that were that had started companies that were making uh it was basically like a a netting that went over a bassinet.

And it would help. reduce the incidence of um child malaria. Mm-hmm. So Somebody who's started a company, employed all these people, is having this Huge impact on the planet. Just had a you know, a really big

effect on me and and that was sort of the the mindset I was in when I Sat down next to Arya. Arya, you were Um a cardiologist. I mean you were doing a b I mean you already had your your your medical degree in

You're doing residency at Yale. I mean you were clearly on the fast track to becoming a prestigious cardiologist, maybe having an appointment at university When when you had met Justin in two thousand eleven at that dinner. Was that where you thought you were headed?

Absolutely. Um So I had Yeah. Finished medical school. I had uh done a PhD mostly in Japan, uh around the same time and in the same place where.

The discovery was made that we could create stem cells um from ordinary skin cells that completely revolutionized the world of science. And I absolutely Um that would stay within academia. the research you mentioned changed the entire conversation'cause it used to be that

You had to cultivate stem cells from like fetuses, and there was a lot of ethical debate around it, right? Um Exactly. And and this research showed that you could cultivate stem cells through skin. Right. And you know, prior to that there was a moratorium on research in the United States on stem cells and the future of of understanding how these incredible cells uh grow, develop, and communicate with each other was really in question because of this. And so this this incredible discovery really changed everything. It took all of those moral issues off the table. Yeah. And all of a sudden now we could understand how a cell becomes a neuron or a liver cell or any other part of the body essentially adopt different careers for themselves. So you were really on on this path to becoming a heart doctor and really also r doing research around

therapy for um you know for those with with heart ailments. Right. Me mean time, Justin, um you know maybe taking some time off. from the State Department where you had worked in the developing world. getting an MBA and then maybe going back into that world. The two of you meet at this dinner and and what, you instantly connect that night? Yeah, you know, it's it's rare when you're an adult.

To to make New deep friendships I I have found. Yes, it is. Yeah. And you know, to to me this this felt Like one of those. rare opportunities where you can really

No, connect with someone who would be a l a lifelong friend and I don't think Ari and I were Initially. thinking about, hey, let's go start a business together. It was more, you know, a great deal of mutual respect. really different backgrounds. I had a great deal of curiosity about

The work that he was doing. Um And you know, we'd get together on the weekends and talk about things that we were interested in and This idea. started percolating a little bit, this sort of entrepreneurial spark, I guess. Um I I remember very clearly we were having coffee in New York City one morning. Um

We had this we had this friend who came to us and said, like let's come up with a hundred ideas for businesses. And maybe most of them would be really bad. Um and you know, we sat down already and I and sort of started penciling out some ideas, not because we were serious about Starting a company because it Sounded like a fun thing to do on a Saturday morning. And

Through that process. hearing each other Think about what really matters to us, you know, the silly ideas that we came up with on that list started to fall away and I think pair back into something

That would later become wild type, something that the two of us are v extraordinarily passionate about. Justin, what were the kinds of business ideas that the the two of you were talking about? I mean, were you l were you l sort of listening to what Arya was working on? And uh and and saying to yourself, Hey, this is Interesting the stem cell stuff is really revolutionary. Maybe there's something there, or was it was were you talking about business ideas that were completely unrelated to that? Oh this is so embarrassing, but why not? I mean it's this is makes for interesting radio, right?

Um we had we had a few ideas on there just to give you a sense of the range. Like one of them was of an idea to create a a new kind of neti pot. Uh that we would call the Schnauzel. And the idea was you know

Doing a a neti pot is actually very good, uh if you're feeling congested and Um But but it's kinda gross, right? You're like the water goes in one nostril and out the other, yep. I've been there. Yeah, you're like ha hanging your face over over the sink and you know, flushing your nasal cavity. And also what innovations have been brought to the netipot in, you know, the last thousand years? Yeah. And and what could we do to to make it extra special? I love that. So so we would sometimes on the weekends get uh modeling clay and come up with all kinds of different designs and and ways that this might work and um all all the things that we could do to make the nutty pot so much better than it already is.

The the thing that was missing, I think, for both of us was a real hook. That tugged at our heart strings, right? That's something that we could you know, that that we cared a lot about and Yeah, I I think that that conversation really started back in you know in earnest in twenty fifteen when when we first started talking about this particular idea. Alright, so twenty fifteen.

Arya, where did the idea for you know, for cultivating Meat. Where it come from? I um I uh had uh one of these

rare vacations that they would um give us in residency and went back to my uh childhood home of Australia and was in the the The far north parts and Um where there where there used to be a lot of rainforest, a lot more than there is right now. And um today a lot of it is agricultural land. And It was just

Kind of looking around and thinking about everything I had. learned about uh not just stem cells but What modern agriculture means, uh, particularly when it comes to beef. And

And I just No. You know, kind of ask this question of Can we still Eat meat and not eat animals.

And um Thought about like Yeah. We must be able to do this. And and and I started to think about, well, what would it mean to create the fat? And what would it mean to create certain cuts of meat? And didn't really know that that other people We're already working on this. And one in particular, Dr. Mark Post in the Netherlands, um, was somebody who actually

You know about Fifteen years before that. I had worked in the same lab with, um, also doing cardiac research. And he had gone on to create the world's first hamburger in this way, and he uh organized The first

conference about this. And I was just riveted. I I you know I'd never been to the Netherlands. I didn't know why I was so interested in in this whole field. Um but I just went. Mm. It was incredible because nobody knew how many people were gonna show up, what it was gonna be like, and there was there was a very special energy in in the room there. And it it was truly uh an event that You know, changed everything for me. Hm.

But by the way, are are you vegetarian? Are there of you vegetarians? Uh When I moved to San Francisco, I slowly reduced my consumption of meat. I think that it's something that even since I was a child I never really

felt comfortable with the fact that You know, when when my parents would feed me chicken that Like that that was a chicken. J and Justin, are you a uh a vegetarian by any chance? I would say I'm a Conscientious.

Meat and seafood eater. And I say this with with no judgment. I I I eat meat. I'm I'm a meat eater. But I I understand this idea of feeling conflicted about it because we know that There are huge environmental consequences to it, and also there's this moral conundrum, you're actually killing an animal. So it sounds to me that You already both of you had some of those

Issues in in in in your mind. Yeah, definitely. I I I think, you know, for for me I s I started learning about our our food system and really in in a great deal of depth going back to some of the time I spent in Afghanistan, which is one of the most food insecure places in the world, and you know, got back to the US and dug pretty deep and it was clear that At some point. Eating meat and seafood at the rate we are.

is not going to work anymore. Right. Yeah. For all the reasons you mentioned, there's environmental reasons, there's sort of huh humane reasons. There's economic reasons. Um, but yeah, I I think, you know, for me I've a couple of small kids and you know, it really How do you have that conversation, right? Yeah. That this isn't for free and it isn't limitless, right? That's that's how we do it at our house. Um but at the same time

I really like to have a hamburger on the fourth of July and on the barbecue once in a while, and a steak once in a while, and you know, fish on a fairly regular basis. And so I I think there's just a lot of people out there that are in this really difficult place where you're trying to juggle your your values and your instincts. Yeah. All right, Justin, Aria, stick around for just a moment. We're gonna take a quick break, we come back more. about the founding of WildType Stay With Us, you're listening to How I Built This Lab. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and I'm speaking with the founders of Wild Type.

A company that grows real Salmon. But Without the salmon. Um Arya, when you

When you started to the gears in your head started to to turn around. Cell cultivated. Meat. at the time there were then it's not that long ago it's twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, there there weren't that many companies out there Growing cells.

How did you land on Maybe trying this with seafood. Yeah, it wasn't actually seafood at first. We Huh. made uh we went through a whole exercise, much like uh the exercise for which companies we'd start. Um

About all the different kinds of meats and seafoods that that we could make and and you know a couple of the axes on which we plotted this. were cost and controversy. And if you imagine the kinds of meats that would be in the extreme upward right quadrant for that. Things like foie gras would be pr pretty much at at the top of the list. Yeah. And um foagra is is a really interesting uh meat as well, and and and the reason is because it's relatively homogeneous in terms of its texture and it's actually also

Predominantly one cell type. Um, so it's not sort of fat cells and liver cells. It's mostly liver cells that have just been exposed to to a lot of fat. And and this was the first thing that that we wanted to work on. So so I mean that sounds like a great idea because It's so cruel, right? We know to produce foie gras you're force feeding Ducks and geese. So it sounds like a great idea. You could if you could build cultivate it through cells.

Um so so What happened? Why w why didn't you pursue that? So we we were able to make some fog ra you know, a fairly small amount and People people tried it. Um, I remember the the first person that we invited to try it was uh Was a friend of ours in San Francisco and you know, it's tiny amount.

Like so small that it was Almost difficult to really taste. But we but we did it. And we did it on relatively short order, probably From start to finish. In just a handful of months, really.

But but even then I think We started having these conversations about Okay. Well, this is really interesting, but

Are are we gonna really have an impact on the planet by working on something like Fagra, which most Americans Have probably never had. Yeah. uh how many people actually consume these products and I I think at that point

you know, we s we started looking a little bit more broadly and a little bit more globally and thinking about, well, what Does our species eat? And so you know it was it was a very quick transition, I think, for us after we made that initial proof of concept.

Alright, so You guys realize that to have an impact, you really have to tackle something that lots of people Eat. So you you essentially decide

to kind of pivot from foie gras to Is that the conversation you started to have, Arya? Yeah, um that's exactly how it happened. Uh we started to realize that what we didn't want to be creating was a company that just made Find food for fancy people.

uh and instead we wanted to stay true to what the mission was, which was to use this method of uh growing seafood and growing meats. um to actually have a positive environmental impact. And and it was around this time that that our focus did shift in terms of thinking about what could we do with this th this method. And and it very quickly turned to seafood, as Justin described.

Alright. Help me understand how You technically you did this. Like I I mean, Arya, were you you had access to a lab, so were you kind of just Was it like a little corner there that you were just kinda playing around? With with

Cells and and You know, when I don't salmon cells, like tell me how you how you start to do it. Yeah, you know, San Francisco was one of the few places um Where you could actually rent lab space. By the hour.

Hm. And We Applied. to to be able to to be part of one of these um areas. And it was, you know, Zin San Francisco is actually very close to the university.

And for the first time ever we had our own lab. And and I should say that at this time we still had our day jobs. And in my case I I had two. Um so I was still working as a researcher. And um I would also work overnights uh in the hospital, uh in the intensive care unit. Wow. And and and this was this was something that that Justin and I would do on on nights and weekends. We would Get these eggs and to these dissections and

Learn. in just the the the most incredible way what these cells loved in terms of uh nutrition, how we could get them to thrive, what conditions would be optimal to grow them in. And you know, when we think about food it's it's for the most part, muscle and fat. And so we we started by

Just growing cells. Wow. J I mean Justin, you I mean you guys were The challenge you were you were you were trying to solve for was this idea of sustainability. We know that we're running out of of seafood. We know that we're overfishing. And not just that

We know that the fish we're consuming today is Is full of microplastics that every time we ingest. Fish. And I think even land animals were consuming plastic. Yeah, that's right. There there are a couple of

real challenges with seafood, as as you pointed out. It's almost impossible to find uncontaminated Seafood anywhere in the world. You know, and you mentioned microplastics, the number that I can't get out of my head is

five grams or the equivalent of a credit card worth of microplastics that go into our bodies every week. And not just that. Um there's Mercury and antibiotics and Parasites and the list goes on and on.

And with seafood. Unlike a lot of the other types of meats that we eat, it's not about eliminating these things, it's about minimizing them, right? Which is why yeah FDA has these guidelines for young kids. I remember at my kids uh first six month appointment, the doctor asked, Hey, are you giving your kids seafood? I said, Yeah, yeah, why? And she said, Well, it's very nutritious for them, omega three is for their brain, yada, yada, yada. But By the way, don't give them more than two fistfuls of it. So you have this paradox where you've got

This delicious, nutritious, Protein. That's contaminated by all the stuff that we've And at the same time. We have wild fish populations.

flat or plummeting with Just a just basically across the board for almost every type of seafood that we eat. And then we have Fish farms. You know, there have been issues like in the Puget Sound, for example, where Atlantic salmon was being farmed. You've had some nets break and

These invasive species are out competing with the native species, right? So Shinook and Sakai and Koho and so on. Um, so there's been a big movement to kind of get away from this open open net farming. And so the the confluence of those things means strongly rising demand with Pinched.

supply means some of our healthiest, most nutritious seafoods are only gonna become Further and further out of reach. Of many people. Yeah. All right.

Y you know that there is a challenge. There's still a challenge to be solved here, but you you guys are in the lab. And you are trying to grow A piece of salmon. Right, initially. And and Aria, what do you what about that first piece of salmon? How long did it take before you had something that

You can actually Eat? I think it was the better part of a year before we could actually try it. And and I'll say that once we had grown enough that we could try it for the first time It was probably one of the most disappointing things I've ever experienced. I mean

It really tasted Like nothing. I mean truly. I I couldn't even Describe it. And

And and it's because we realize that that cells on their own Um, they don't know how to spontaneously kind of organize into you know, a a piece of sashimi, for example. Right. Um they they need structures and they they need to to follow cues from their environment to organize in in this way to create all the complexities of you know texture and flavor. And and that you know, that moment we we realized that we were still

Very, very far from having anything uh a viable product. Alright, so you you you guys finally after a year you have your first sample and it sucks. I mean it just doesn't taste good. I mean, d w was that disheartening? I mean, or did you feel like okay Because that feels like a long time.

Basically wait and then it sucks. Yeah, I mean it it it's I mean along the way we were learning a lot. And I and I think what gave us hope in that fairly dark moment was that, you know, at the end of a year

we felt like we really had our arms around how this would scale. And I and I think that was the biggest thing that the two of us were grappling with, right? Is the there were these sort of two fundamental questions. In the early days. One Can we do this and can we eventually make a product? That is really good. And we hadn't answered that question at that point, as Ari said.

Um and two Could this Could this ever scale and turn into A big business that can even begin be a drop in the ocean of the

colossal amount of seafood that is consumed globally. And I I think through that process of that first year, both of us became a lot more convicted that we could do this, that this could actually work. And it was for some pretty obvious reasons in retrospect. So for example half of roughly half of a fish's weight gets thrown away or discarded.

between the time it's caught and the time it shows up on your plate, right? It's things like fins and bones and so on that we that we don't consume. Um so out out of the gate we had a Sort of a A fifty percent advantage over over conventional seafood. If you were growing exactly what would be consumed. That's right. Yeah, no waste.

Wow. So you you're you're trying to get a a sort of working prototype going. What change did you make that enabled you to actually Grow something that tasted bad

Pretty good. Raw salmon. Yeah, I I wish I could say it was one particular thing.

So there there are many ways to to approach something like this. There there could be a way to Think through how can we create the highest density of cells, for example? How can we work through um the scaling challenges first and then deal with the flavor and textural complexity um afterwards? And a lot of our debate in the early days

Well, yeah. How do we do this? Um How do we do this to Create a product. quickly enough in the beginning so that people can see what the promise is.

But still give us the the space to iterate upon that and actually perfect what is Um such a difficult product to to you know, to create in the end. Yeah and salmon is a great e example of a very versatile fish that can be created in many preparations that we're very used to seeing as you know, for example, minced salmon in a salmon roll, or loch on a bagel, or salmon filet, or sashimi. And and so um you know, having that um that vision for what this could become as as the product got better. I think was was a big part of of uh slowly improving um all of the different um uh characteristics that that that made the product uh better.

All right, so Twenty nineteen, June of twenty nineteen. You have Finally. Really

Gotten to a place where where it's ready to To debut. And and uh You You guys.

grew salmon sashimi, so raw salmon and and um you were ready to serve it to a The cost I read the cost. for one salmon roll was two hundred dollars. So this is not

sustainable. But it was a start. And um what did people think at that dinner? when you served it, what what was the response from people? You know, at at the time

People were V we're we're first of all just very impressed that we had managed to do this, that we showed up with a couple of pounds of Cultivated salmon. And the chefs that were working with the product did Really a fantastic job across a number of dishes. I think we had

Bisque. We had it in sushi rolls of course. Um, we had it Uh in a tartar. Uh and at the very end we we brought out just a tin, sort of like Like a tin of sardines of just the product so people can try it, you know, undressed up. And so the in in the hands of such capable chefs any product would be really good.

Um, but looking back on those pictures today, I I I mean, I can't help but cringing'cause it just didn't have the same visual appeal and structure that that people would expect from s from salmon. So I think you know We had a a reporter from Bloomberg there that we'd never but met before and

I I think I think it was a very accurate description of where we were at the time. And this was after he tried just the unendorned piece of fish. Yeah, he said it was certainly reminiscent of fish in the ocean, but faint. And and I and I think that

That was exactly right for for that moment because the the structure and the texture of the product wasn't really there yet. And so it was really just the taste really at that point that that we could offer. Alright, we're gonna take another quick break, but in a moment more from Justin Colbeck and Aria Elfenbein, co-founders of Wild Type Foods. You're listening to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz.

back in a moment. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. My guests are Justin Kolbeck and Aria Elfenbein, the co-founders of WildType. So all right, you've got this product. Um it's not quite where you want it to be yet in 2019 and it's gonna take a lot of money. to really

Um Right now, let's say, how long like how long does it take from selling Like what is the It's about four to six weeks.

Wow. That's fast. It's a lot faster than a real salmon. Definitely. And and it I guess you can compare it to like a brewery, right? Like you basically have like a what would look like a brewery. This is something that that people always comment on when when they come visit our space in in San Francisco. Um it is grown in a similar way with similar principles when when people kind of see how it's made, it it just kinda clicks. It sort of makes sense. It's like, oh okay, this is you know, you're growing cells in in these steel tanks, just like the way that we grow beer. Um or brew beer.

And so how what does it look like when it comes out of these these steel drums or what is it does it look like a a a hunk of sashimi? Like it you can go to your fish counter at the grocery store and some of'em have like this is these big hunks of Salmon. No, it it doesn't look like that at all. Okay. Um that's really just the first step. And that and that first step is is only just a couple of weeks. It's um it's afterwards when um we actually have it grow on the structures, which we call the scaffold. I see that. Um and there there's a whole process there uh where the cells will, you know, assume different forms.

forms and you know mature and and kind of uh grow together um in some cases to to create these um more complex structures and, you know, textures and and flavors. So Does it now when you I've seen pictures of it, it's amazing. I mean it it's it's texture and the the the fat distribution, it looks like A piece of raw salmon.

Does it smell like salmon? Does it I mean how close to the to to You know, a fish that you're How close to it is it at this point? Uh you know you know what I'd say is um there there there is a wide range of uh s uh of salmon flavors and and aromas and and textures that that we're used to.

And I think some of the freshest salmon um that maybe is just pulled out of the river in that moment, um, can have a very mild flavor profile. Uh, doesn't it smell like fish at all. Yeah, exactly. It's a it's a very subtle um uh you know uh flavor and and a very similar thing h you know happened when we started to think about the appearance. where there is also a wide variety of um of color hues uh when we think about uh salmon. And so um so so these are the kinds of conversations that that all of a sudden were were really interesting from a from a culinary perspective. And and it was uh it was these questions that we we started to elicit the help of chefs to um to to help us answer what feels, you know, most familiar. Is it more of what's called the saku, or you know, or the sort of blocks that are used in sushi uh counters, or should we be creating more of a um salmon filet that should be cooked? And as you can imagine, it is it can often be a very subjective um assessment.

Yeah. How did you I mean, You're you're trying to do a very complex thing, right? I mean the the the sort of the science behind it and um the research behind it is highly complex. I mean this is not a lemonade stand. I mean we're talking about

Growing salmon. Yeah. How how were you able to move from the lab to running a business because it is a business. This is not just being going to the lab and doing science experiments. Yeah, we're I mean, we're fortunate that we have, I think, a very complimentary skill set. So I I do have at least a little bit of background in financial modeling and

Consulting and things like that. Yeah. Um so I guess the best way to think about how we divided it. to use a music analogy, uh to a to a large extent, I was and to a large extent still in today. kind of the the backup singer and the percussionist. And Arya and her scientists are the lead singers, the vocalists, right? Um And th there's a really interesting lesson here about you know, that entrepreneurship alone. It it's it's nice when there are two people

uh not just to to sort of divide things up as we have, but to really work through and Cope. with things when they go badly. And you know, we we haven't talked much about that today, but there have been way more moments when things went sideways and off the rails than when things worked. Tell me about that because you've raised. a hundred million dollars in the last

F four or five years, it sounds like You know it's been pretty well, but what Well, You weren't sure whether it was gonna go well. Okay.

I'll give you a recent one. Um, so one of the things that we had to do was design a vessel, a cultivator that can uh grow cells at a at a pretty large scale. And one of the things that we wanted to do was to not order an off the shelf one that was made for a completely different purpose in the Bipe's world, but actually design one more with people who

Make brewery tanks, for example. And so we did it. We actually prototyped it at a very small scale and then made a medium sized one and just recently received a a pretty large one. Um unfortunately the the person who assembled it made a mistake and we had some sterility issues. And uh if you know anything about cell culture, contamination is your your enemy. Um, and so you know, that's just one example, but that you know, that was a three month setback. And I'd say for every success we have

at you know, as not just as a business, but in the lab too, there are at least ten failures. And and I and I think One of the big things that that Ari and I have had to to do is just deal ourselves to that. Um and then help our team kind of cope with overcoming these routine failures that are just a big part of doing science generally. What about the pressure of financing and funding? I mean you you're you're you're far, far away from being

Uh a profitable company'cause you can't You can't sell your products yet. We're gonna talk about that. That's just the the the reality. When you're doing something so massive, so radical. It's gonna take time, and

Do you feel any of that pressure? I mean, you know, right now you got a bunch of cash that you raised. But still it's like, you know, you wanna bring a return to those investors. Do you feel that pressure or do you feel kind of, you know, removed from it. Oh yeah. Every day. I th I don't think there's a day that goes by when we're not thinking about uh moving from a an R D company into a food production one. And it and it's been a a longer journey than many other companies have to take. You know, and and part of it is feeling, you know, a a deep sense of gratitude and appreciation to our investors and wanting

to return that money to them with a nice return. But part of it is driven by the perils that our oceans are facing, right? If you are a sucker for every David Attenborough documentary as I am. Um, you know that, you know, if we don't seriously turn things around by the middle part of this century, we can just say goodbye.

to the biodiversity that exists in our oceans today, and we don't even understand what impact that's gonna have. And so on one hand you know, the the pressure of returning money in in a in a venture funded business Um might lead to some unintended consequences. But on the other hand, for a mission as profoundly urgent as ours.

It it might actually be a a fairly positive one. Yeah. Because time is running out. Yeah, literally. You know, I was at a

An event. hosted by some First Nations folks up in just outside of Vancouver a couple of weeks ago and Somebody there who grew up in the in the countryside, uh, would talk about the salmon runs when he was a boy, and you know, he's probably about my age, so maybe mid forties. You know, he and he would describe it as a writhing snake.

And he said it was like almost so dense you could walk on them. Wow. And and today Hearing him talk about this, it's a trickle. I mean literally a trickle. And and that's over the span of Someone like relatively young's lifespan and

If you play that tape forward, it it doesn't take us to a good place. And and and I think That's why we are So urgently working to build this third source of seafood that can supplement Wildcatch and and farm fish.

Yeah. Alright, the marketplace for plant based meat substitutes is Pretty robust. But um this market, the salt cultivated market, is is

still really new and there's you have no FDA approval yet to sell your products, right? I mean you can't there's no Nowhere you can actually sell what you're making. At the moment.

That's right. But you do have you can sample this, right? If you're in San Francisco, you guys um you can go and try this. Absolutely. The public can, right? Yeah, I mean we we can have tastings. Um and and that's that's been one way in which we've been able to get Just invaluable feedback um about how people

uh perceive this product, what it tastes like, what it, you know, means to them, um, and and just how we can improve generally. Um, but it it it's not something we're able to sell at this point. And and I mean in theory or maybe in practice, you could do this with any other seafood, right? Like could you make toro, like could you make really you know, bluefin tuna, like really prized Rare fish. Theoretically or maybe more than theoretically possible? Absolutely. And we've actually already started on some of the things that are

That are hopefully will be announced soon. And you know, we've been taking a lot of cues from some of our early commercial partners who have expressed you know a lot of interest in launching with us uh as soon as we get that green light from FDA. Yeah. And you're right, a a lot of the energy and interest is is on things like Bluefin Tuna, for example, that are really difficult to farm and are r actually on the brink of extinction. And

uh you know, I think we're we're really excited to listen to more of this feedback and and help meet The market where where the demand is. So In in theory, if if you got FTA approval sometime then that within the next Two to five years.

What do you do next? Ha I mean, are you already talking to the whole foods of the world? Are you already talking to the Costco's? Or is that is that the next step? We are. And you know, we'll we'll start just because we'll be volume constrained, not unlike impossible in the early days when they were first launching in Sure. Um so we'll be you know. probably a small handful of restaurants around the country when once we get that green light.

But we we actually have started conversations with some of these big grocery chains and What's been interesting is that There there there was a lot of interest in actually having new things that would show up that people aren't used to seeing at their local grocery stores. And I I think that creates a lot of space for innovation and and partnership with These big conventional uh food producers who who have surprised us, I would say, with just how innovative and

forward leaning they are on on new forms of food production and technologies like ours. Ultimately. If if this Scales and succeeds as As you hope it will.

And I think you know, for the plant's sake, I think we all do. Um Do you want this to be the only way we consume seafood in the future, seafood that is essentially cultivated, rather than Fished or farmed.

Not at all. Um Yeah, I think that People who are stewards of the ocean, who care about the numbers of fish that we pull out of the water every year. should be rewarded for the sustainable ways in which they're fishing.

I think that You know, just as we have more humans on the planet. If we can have not just increasing choice meaning if people want wild fish it's there. If people want farmed fish, it's there. And if they want uh cultivated f fish like like wild type salmon, um that's an option as well. Not just in terms of that increasing choice, but that there's just more

traceability and transparency in the entire uh seafood uh system. I think that is a uh a a future that that is is You know, the the brightest we can imagine. Arya Alfenbein, Justin Colbeck. Are the co founders of Wild Type Foods.

Guys, thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Hey, thanks so much for listening to How I Built This Lab. please do follow us on your podcast app so you always have the latest episode downloaded.

If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at HowI Built This, and mine is at GuyRoz. And on Instagram, I'm at guy.Roz. If you want to contact the team, our email address is H I B T. at id.wondery.com. This episode was produced by Chris Massini with editing by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Maggie Luthar. Our music was composed by Raptine Arabli.

Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex Chung, Carla Esteves, Casey Herman, JC Howard, Liz Metzger, Sam Paulson, Carrie Thompson, Catherine Cypher, Josh Lash, and Elaine Coates. Neva Grant is our supervising editor, Beth Donovan is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening. How I built this.

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