How I Learned to Love Shrimp

Simon Newstead on developing alternatives to animal protein

• Amy Odene & James Ozden

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Simon Newstead, entrepreneur turned impact investor, is a founding co-partner of Better Bite Ventures who back food-tech founders in Asia.

In this episode, we deep dive into the world of alt protein and the different technologies available in the alternative protein space. We look at Asia specifically where Simon’s work is focussed as well as the challenges this industry is facing as a whole. We also quiz Simon on his view on the timelines we should work towards to see this global shift in consumption towards animal-free alternatives. 

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00:10
Amy
Hi, my name is Amy. 


00:12
James
And my name is James. 


00:13
Amy
And this is how I learn to love Shrimp, a podcast about promising ways to help animals and build the animal advocacy movement. Happy New Year, everyone. We hope you've all had a really restful holiday season. Since March last year, James and I released 20 episodes and have nearly 10,000 downloads from this amazing community. And we just wanted to pop on to say we've really appreciated everyone's continued feedback and guest recommendations, and we're really looking forward to interviewing some more great guests this year. So thanks so much for your support so far. 

A long overdue episode this week on alternative proteins and how food products that are free from animals are a key piece in the journey towards our collective goal of animal freedom. We were particularly interested in the for profit space for this episode and how providing capital to startup companies is driving this market forward. Our guest, Simon Newstead, entrepreneur turned impact investor, does exactly that through his company, Better Bite Ventures, who back food tech founders in Asia. We deep dive into the world of alt protein and the different technologies available. We look at Asia specifically, where Simon's work is focused and the challenges this industry is facing as a whole. We also quiz Simon on his view on the timelines we should work towards to see this global shift in consumption. 


01:35

Amy

Today, we're joined by Simon Newstead, entrepreneur turned impact investor and one of the two partners of Better Bite Ventures. Welcome, Simon. 


01:41
Simon
Thanks very much, Amy and hi James. 


01:43
James
Thanks for joining. 


01:44
Amy
We get stuck in with our opening question, which is: ‘What's an animal related view that you've changed your mind on recently, and why?’ 


01:52
Simon
Maybe break it down into short term and super long term. So in the short term, I think it's kind of, I've read some recent analyses which really kind of emphasize about just how much kind of short term suffering kind of opportunities are dominated by animal agriculture and in particular shrimp, which is kind of timely given the title of the podcast. So I think in terms of - shrimp paste is probably the worst product on the planet in terms of animal suffering, in terms of per kilogram. 


02:22
Amy
Right. 


02:22
Simon
So that's something that's kind of, I guess, reinforced or even more weighted my perspective around animals and why it's important we do what we do. And then something in kind of like the longer term would be around about animal suffering within kind of a simulated environment. So I think that is potentially a really important cause area for the long term. And something that, outside of my day job, is something that I'm kind of interested to learn more about and see how we can contribute - so kind of sentient suffering within the context of simulations in the future. Whether it's animal, wild animal, or humans, I think that's a particularly interesting one and hard to know the time frames, but yeah, that's something for the longer term. 


03:09
Amy
Can you clarify maybe what you mean by that simulated environment? 


03:12
Simon
So the idea that in the future it's conceivable - maybe in our lifetimes it's conceivable - that there could be very powerful computer simulations of environments for various purposes, like entertainment, ecosystem planning, just for randomness. And if that's the case, then it's possible that animal suffering on an absolute scale will be dominated by simulations rather than like sentient suffering within simulations, rather than the real world or the base world. So that sounds a bit Sci-Fi and a bit out there, but I'm seeing some very smart people who are projecting that some things may be possible within a 50 year time frame. So it's important to start thinking about them and maybe setting the kind of the ethical norms - or hopeful norms - to prevent that sort of thing happening. Maybe analogous to scientific experiments on lab animals, which has kind of been accepted as ethically fine, and you could still argue it is in certain cases, but egregious uses of it for unnecessary purposes was just accepted because it was kind of allowed. And so, yeah, much further on, I think we need to start preparing for that in the future. So that's kind of very much outside of my day job, kind of alt protein investigator, but it's something that I'm kind of learning more about and exploring. 


04:45
Amy
Yeah, great. Definitely one of the most interesting answers to that question! 


04:49
James
Yeah, it sounds like you're taking time - ell, when you're not in your day job - you're thinking about even more intense suffering than what's currently happening. So that sounds like not an easy day by any means. But also, it's interesting you mentioned shrimp paste, because we asked some people about questions for this podcast and someone actually sent them something about shrimp paste. So we'll definitely come back to that later on. 


05:07
Simon
Awesome. 


05:08
James
So that's exciting to hear. Cool. I guess, in a nutshell, obviously, you're one of the partners at Better Bite Ventures. Just in a nutshell, what is Better Bite Ventures and what do you guys do? 


05:18
Simon
We are an Early Stage VC, so venture capital fund, so we basically invest partners’ money into private companies at early stages, and we focus on climate friendly food tech, which is kind of a major focus on alternative protein. So we're early stages, and we invest anywhere from founding. So like one scientist with an idea, or one entrepreneur who wants to leave a company and start their own, right through to ‘pre-seed’ and ‘seed stage’. So we're typically investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into companies at this early stage. So within that, I'm one of the two partners. So we're based here in Asia Pacific and we focus on Asia. My partner Michal and I are the kind of two partners, and we have another teammate, Saksham. So we're a team of three, so very lean and mean team, and we're kind of investing. So far I've made 20 plus investments in different startups around the region. So a lot of engaging with founders, learning about what they're doing, seeing how we can support them both financially as well as in other ways. 


06:28
James
And how come you guys focus exclusively on Asia rather than a broader geographic focus? 


06:35
Simon
Asia, if you think about it, is over 40% of the world's meat consumption. So just total protein. If you think about pork, if you pick a random pig anywhere on the planet, chances are that pig is living in China, right? If you do the same for other species, chicken, et cetera, there's just a lot of meat being consumed and it's also the fastest growing. So, for example, in the last kind of 40-50 years, the population has close to tripled, and yet the amount of meat consumed has gone up well over 15 times in that amount. So it's rising population and rising per capita consumption of meat and seafood is even more. So 70% of the world's seafood is consumed in Asia. And from a climate change perspective, over 40% of all emissions are coming from Asia. So, yeah, the amount of investments or capital going into alt protein in Asia Pacific is well under that. So on an aggregate basis, it would be probably around about the 10% mark. So there's a discrepancy there and for us that means a chance to have an impact and also the return perspective for our investors as well. So the kind of financial upside, but also the impact piece of something that's very neglected and very high kind of impact size. 


08:06
Amy
Yeah, the numbers are just completely unfathomable, I think. I remember learning about the sort of offshore, multi-story pig confinements. It's like beyond, isn't it, the length that we'll go to just farm on such a huge scale, particularly in Asia. So, yeah, it definitely seems like a really worthy investment, putting a lot of time and energy into funding that space in alt protein. When you're talking about alt protein, what is your kind of definition of that? What are you talking about when you refer to alternative proteins? 


08:49
Simon
We look at it fairly broadly, like alternatives to meat, dairy, eggs, and seafood. Kind of across that scope. We are kind of focused on food. So we don't look at, for example, materials like alternatives to silk or something like that. So we stay within food, and within that, there's different buckets of technologies, and we invest across pretty much all of them. So you've got your traditional plant-based, which is kind of mimicking products using plant ingredients, and that's very much here and now. And then you have fermentation, including biomass fermentation, precision fermentation, where you're kind of engineering microorganisms to produce animal compounds. And then you've got, like, cultivated. So, for example, cultivated meat, where you're kind of growing cells in a bioreactor and kind of multiplying them and then eventually harvesting them for consumption. And then also molecular farming, which is about taking a plant and engineering it to produce other animal compounds or functionally equivalent animal compounds. So that's kind of the broad buckets. There's probably some others as well in there, like traditional fermentation, et cetera. But we kind of have invested across all of those major technology buckets to make alternatives to animal products. 


10:14
James
I'll just pause to say to people who want to know more about the technologies, probably won't dive into them because time is short and other people have done so. But I would recommend there's some podcasts with 80,000 hours and Bruce Friedrich and also Seren Kell from the Good Food Institute that does kind of dive into the technologies in terms of the nuances between plant-based versus cultivated and fermentation. So I'd recommend people listen to those, if they want slightly more context on the conversation or for listening. If someone wants to do good for animals or reduce animal suffering, what's the case that they should work on alternative proteins in an investing or for profit context versus, let's say, working at a nonprofit doing campaigning? 


10:51
Simon
I think that's a really important one. And maybe some people listening to this podcast are thinking, how can they contribute their careers to this kind of important cause? I would say that it's not one or the other. I think that, for example, working in a nonprofit on corporate campaigns is an extremely high impact thing, or, for example, working on policy changes or regulations. And so I think that's really important. But if we step back, big picture, the decades of work from early activists trying to kind of convince people to go vegan has had pretty modest impacts. We'd seen a little bit of an increase lately, which is encouraging, but it's still a tiny percent of the population. So I was just at an event a couple of weeks ago in Sydney in Australia, and it was a climate event and there was probably 200 people in the room. And the speaker said, hands up if you're vegan. And I think there was only five of us who put our hands up


[surprise and astonishment by interviewers]


11:57
Simon

And this is a climate event, right, where you'd think there'd be lots of people. So it kind of goes to show that it's not enough to kind of just work on the kind of the moral case for going vegan. There has to be something that the products need to be attractive and tasty and cost effective and appealing, in all different dimensions. And that will make it easier. And to be frank, just from a simple numbers point of view, if we get a bunch of people who enjoy eating plant-based on a regular basis, that's probably a lot more impact than 1% more people becoming hardcore vegans. So I think we need both of those. And look, we know from the numbers as well, people who try to go vegan, most people bounce back out. And part of the reason is just, it's too hard, right? It's too hard, like in a social situation or they're with their parents or with their girlfriend or boyfriend or partner and out with a group of friends and there's no vegan options: “Ah, okay”... It's really hard. So we want to make it easy for people, attractive for people. So we think that we need to work on this in parallel to all the really important work that folks in nonprofits are working on. And that's kind of the big picture case for it. 


13:15
Amy
There's something in there about cost as well, right? I think price parity is something else that's really important. Something I hear from vegans a lot is that it's so cheap because we're just eating the chickpeas and everything, which yes, can be cheap, but also fruits and vegetables are really expensive comparatively to cheaper foods that contain animal products. And I think we kind of do a bit of a disservice by suggesting that it is cheap to be vegan because for quite a lot of households that's actually not the case. And making everything from scratch is just not feasible for a lot of families. So I think the price element is also something that we have to pay attention to. 


13:57
Amy
And I think, like you say, if these replacements taste good, look great, are nutritious, have actually nutritional value and a cost comparative, then yeah, it seems like that's going to be the obvious solution, long term. 


14:15
Simon
Yeah, totally. I agree. I mean, of course if you look at the cheapest proteins on the planet, they're all vegan. So you get your dried legumes and pulses, et cetera. Millions and millions of people in India are getting their protein intake from those very nutritious sources. But if you're talking about like an equivalent experience to having a chicken or a burger or a steak or a stir fry dish with meat in there, then you're getting to expensive, currently expensive products. And yeah, I think that has to be a fair comparison. And look, it's not just the meats products. Like for example, my biggest daily cost is actually like DHA and EPA supplementation. It's probably one of the heavier costs and that's something that doesn't get talked about. But it's part of the bit about going vegan. If you're going to get your 1 gram, 2 grams of EPA, DHA, that's expensive from algal sources today. So I think, yeah, it's an important kind of aspect. B-12 is absolutely important and it's relatively cheap to kind of do. But if we want to talk about the healthy omega fats which are important for brain health and child development and ageing, healthy ageing, there's a lot of good evidence that it's good to consume more of those. But those are expensive coming from algal sources today. So that's just one example of many where there's specific things which are much more expensive in a vegan context today. And that's one of the reasons we need to work on this. 


15:52
James
And just to linger on that cost point for a second longer, I think, yeah, it's interesting because I normally live in the UK where plant-based products are fairly cheap and there isn't a huge cost differential between the vegan cheeses and the non-vegan cheeses and the milks - the dairy milks and the plant-based milks. But actually I was travelling through Central America recently and I was in Mexico and actually there's a huge markup, a huge difference between the plant-based products in Mexico. I would say like five times what it was in the UK, which is crazy given obviously it's a lower income country overall. And so the differential between the plant-based and the meat product alternatives, like the milks and cheese, is like five or ten times, which is actually crazy. And so I think that really solidified to me both just because we have really good innovation and products, maybe in western Europe and the US, it's not the same globally. So I think that makes kind of what you're doing, Simon, even more important because to have local products to compete, rather than imports that are often much more expensive. So I think, yeah, that was a real eye-opener for me - how large a difference was in other countries relative to the hub of some of the plant-based products. 


16:55
Simon
Agreed. And even in those kind of developed, kind of competitive, mature or more advanced western countries, I think the price differentials - there's some good analysis done recently, I think, by GFI - it's like anywhere from like a plus 30% to plus multiple hundred percent for the major categories in proteins. And so yes, whilst there may be price parity in certain kind of aspects overall, when you kind of average out across your typical intake, there's a big price premium. And you're right, if you're adding export onto the mix or import onto the mix, the range is even more kind of disparate. So I think it's an important one. 


17:39
James
And in terms of the impact, you're kind of talking how alternative proteins, even if quite a small percentage of the population adopted these wholesale, that could have quite a huge impact on animals, maybe more than a very small number of people going vegan. I'd be curious to get your thought on what does success look like for you? Is it that maybe 10% of the population or of a given country or region eat these products all the time? Is it 50%? Or is it just like you're kind of saying, especially in Asia, both population is growing and meat consumption per capita is growing. And is that idea to kind of capture that new growth with alternative proteins? So I guess basically, how do you see impact or the ultimate goal of some of the work you do?


18:20
Simon
In the industry from a numbers consumption point of view, there's not enough surface area on the planet to produce meat in the way that we're currently producing it for the demands in the future. And so population is still rising, at some point in the future we'll plateau, but at a much higher level than now. But with economic development, we see that trend. That's a pretty linear relationship between GDP per capita and meat consumption in per capita basis. And so if that trend holds out, there literally is not enough surface area to produce that meat in the current way. And I think it's fair to say, like, you can't fundamentally radically disrupt the economics of, for example, producing dairy. You still need a certain amount of space and feed and the cows are not changing that rapidly, although they have been genetically selected and certainly chickens have been over the last 50 years, but they're kind of like - the low hanging fruit is already done. And so there's not opportunities to do that. So from that point of view, for sure, we will have to have alternatives or the amount of these protein products needs to be reduced. So yes, we want alternatives to…Success looks like the majority of all protein consumption in the next 50 years, let's say, is from alternative sources. I personally would like to see the vast majority in that sort of time frame. And if you think about it, it's also about social norms. At some point it gets to a point where, yes, it just becomes, I think - look at cars. We're in that early stage of the transition to EVs. And you bet you that in 20 years time, internal combustion engine cars are going to be this weird little niche that certain people buy, but most people are just buying their EVs and doing that. So, yeah, I think that we want to get to that sort of outcome over the coming kind of decades. 


20:30
James
Do you kind of see the transition looking - maybe in the best case scenario, like the case kind of in a similar - such that the takeoff is fairly slow and it's a bit of a fringe weird thing for a while, and then maybe public investment booms and suddenly there's this thing people like to talk about? It's like social tipping points and suddenly people are kind of rushing over to this thing and it becomes the norm. Would you also expect alternative proteins to follow that same trajectory? 


20:55
Simon
So clearly that there's still a lot of work to be done in terms of the product itself and the technology. So regardless of anything around tipping points and so forth. And James, with your background, you know a lot about this sort of topic, so I'd love to hear your take on it. But certainly, the technology and the product, it's not going to get to big mass market until things improve on the taste and the cost and availability and all of those other attributes. But I think it's one of those incrementally kind of building things where the more that it gets cheaper, more attractive, better so called product performance, then the rate of increase of adoption, I think, increases a lot more. Like we're already in some markets at a certain point where now you have, for example, if you have a group of people going out, there's a chance that one of them may be flexitarian or whatever and that starts to influence. That's like the first tipping point of like: ‘Okay, we need to order one or two dishes in this kind of group which are like that’. Maybe in some more advanced countries it might be like you're starting to get households where you get a family member who might be plant-based or vegan or somewhere along that path. But really for the kind of wider, I do believe there is this kind of - it accelerates as you get more people, and then it kind of goes a lot faster once it becomes, like, weird to do that. But I think we've got ways to go to work towards that sort of goal. What's your take? Do you feel it will be sort of like, very slow kind of linear thing, or will it kind of accelerate as certain things happen? 


22:40
James
Yeah, I think I would expect most things, they kind of have this kind of like, this social tipping point phenomenon, and I think it's been slightly overhyped. There was one academic paper by Damien Sintola and also a book called ‘Change’, which is really interesting, and it makes you want to believe, because it's like you just reached a tipping point of about 25% of the population believe in this minority view, and then suddenly goes and becomes, like the majority view and becomes widespread. I actually think the academic paper is not very compelling. The way the academic study is framed is that the view is actually, whether you call this random face on a screen a name or another name, so it actually has no real world implication for you, doesn't cost more, doesn't taste different, there's no social pressure. So actually, it's in quite a hyper controlled academic setting that I think won't actually replicate in reality. So I'm a bit sceptical of numbers like 20-25%. But overall, I do expect something like that, but I just don't know exactly what that level is. And I think it's much higher than that percentage. 


23:38
Simon
Yeah, that sounds about right. Like, if you look at, for example, we just got a new place we're looking at. We're going to install solar panels and just turn off the gas and electrify it all. And solar panels is one of those classic ones where it's taken, like, decades. But incrementally, as all of the innovations and the prices come down and the performance per square metre has gone up, it's just kind of accelerated. And there wasn't like a huge kind of ‘bump, bump, bump’. It was more like just a gradual kind of acceleration, and then that obviously compounds and compounds, and now it's getting quite aggressive, like the curves. But I'd like to think it's something like that. But I think there's also cultural aspects that are maybe more challenging when it comes to this, because you've got food and how you are brought up and your childhood memories and family bonds, et cetera. And then you have other aspects of identity. And we have, unfortunately, this trend of certain positive things in terms of how we're developing as a society. But we also get some sort of other trends which are perhaps going in different directions, which is a risk factor when it comes to adopting some of these alternative proteins. 


24:57
Amy
I'm interested, so the majority of the podcast guests, in fact, I think all to date, have been working for nonprofits. So obviously this is a different realm for us. And I'm interested to know when deciding to invest in a company, how much you're thinking about the impact per animal. I know you were talking about shrimp paste, and potentially the number of lives affected is weighing into your decision making, but how much does that weigh into the decision versus making it just a maximally profitable investment? 


25:29
Simon
At the end of the day, it is a commercial model. So we are here to go and generate returns for our investors. And so we care about attributes, like: Will this be a successful company? Has it got good upside potential? So, in terms of how we look at impact: yes, we do. So we have a number of major categories and we have an internal scoring system and we have percentages and so forth. And one of those kind of major buckets, like we have four buckets. So it's like people: so team, product and technology, and then we have impact and opportunity, and then we have story potential. So impact and opportunity, which is kind of weighted as the highest level - within it we look at importance of the category in terms of climate impact, because that is kind of, one of our mandates - to work on things which are better for the climate. And also in terms of animal impact. So we kind of balance those out. So it is one of our kind of major attributes, but it's not the only one. But on the flip side, it is important. So, for example, if we look at a project which is potentially a really good kind of business opportunity, but a very marginal impact on both climate and animals, we won't go for those type of investments. So, for example, if you take maybe a type of sauce which is kind of like maybe nearly vegan anyway, naturally a category which is perhaps vegan, but there's a couple of tiny little ingredients that make it non vegan. If someone comes along with a totally 100%, no animal kind of version of that, it could be successful from a commercial point of view, but it's not going to have a big impact. It's not going to move the needle on climate change or on kind of number of animals suffering reduced. So we would stay away from those sort of things. And on the flip side, if there's something that would have tremendous positive impact on animals, it's still got to have a great return potential as well. So yeah, we're looking for things that kind of combine those together, which I think there's quite a lot. Like, if you think about it, Asia is so big and the amount of meat being consumed. So yeah, in most cases it 100% kind of lines up even. 


27:58
Amy
Just the fact you're working on companies that are set up in that region, I think we must put that ahead, like you say, those more sort of marginal changes where it's just like removing an egg powder or something from a product, the fact that you're investing in the first instance in Asia, particularly focusing on that region, I think the impact potential must be fairly large at this point. 


28:25
Simon
Yeah, absolutely, the potential is large, but we're starting from a relatively small base. So alternative proteins overall globally are still a very small fraction of total, for example, meat consumption, even in markets like the US where Beyond and Impossible have been there for several years now. So I'd say, yes, the potential is there, but we're at early days still, and so there's quite a lot to work on. 


28:52
James
So when you're thinking about impacts for animals, and I'm trying to think concretely, what is the number you kind of plug into your spreadsheet or your kind of rubric? Is it you're thinking, okay, this is a plant-based chicken product focused on Singapore. What are the number of chickens killed in Singapore? And this is kind of the rough number I use. Or is there another proxy you think that's better suited? 


29:11
Simon
It typically is kind of like a very, at a high level. It's kind of: ‘How much suffering is there in this sort of product?’ And that's kind of like a combination of how many animals are there, with some other kind of characteristics. And look, we're not reinventing the wheel. So we look at like, for example, Rethink Priorities, has some really good research into this and other folks have done a lot of work on this. So we're looking for kind of a broad thing of like, yes: ‘Is this a high impact?’ And it ends up being like: ‘Yes, this is a high impact or a medium impact, or relatively lower impact.’ That's kind of like the end result of that. And we would assign it a score for that particular attribute. But yes. So we're looking for impact both at climate as well as on the number of animals, the amount of animal suffering that we're alleviating; or animal lives that kind of are being reduced, taken out of the animal agriculture system if this is successful. And geographically, yes: so if a company is working on a particular species or a particular replacement product, we would look at how big is that product as a market and what markets are realistic for that company to reach into. Is it big enough? Is it justified? For example, we recently made an investment into a cultivated pet food company. So it's a startup out of Korea doing cultivated pet food in one of the handful of companies who are kind of pioneering this new space. Half of the people on the planet have a pet in their household. And of those pets, a lot of them are eating meat. And it may be like scraps and bits and pieces, but they're eating meat. And so it's a climate impact. Like if you just take pet food consumption, it ends up being a pretty high climate impact, as well as, of course, just adding more for the consumption pile in terms of number of animals. So we do try to do some sort of numbers analysis. I would say we can't go infinitely deep because we have to manage our time, but we definitely kind of do look at the big picture and kind of quantify things. 


31:25
James
Nice. And yeah, I think the pet food is an interesting example, because I think Professor Andrew Knight has some good research on this thing from the UK saying - I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's something like a fifth of all meat like: animal product consumption is raised to pet foods, particularly that now there's like a blossoming kind of premium pet food market where they're no longer eating these by-products or co-products, but actually animals are being killed explicitly for premium pet food, which just seems bonkers to me. But anyway…On the Rethink Priorities research as well, I'd be curious: is the stuff you use, is it their research on welfare ranges? So you're trying to look at the ability to experience pain and is that like an input into your thinking? 


32:05
Simon
Yeah. Correct. So we'd look at that. So we'd look number of animals, which is various sources, and it's fairly well understood. Like the FAO, like the Un FAO data would give us pretty good numbers by country, by market number of animals, or weight. And we can work backwards and reverse engineer the number of animals And then we would kind of multiply, if you like. Not as clean as that, but we would kind of weight it by how much suffering or welfare, capability or impact there would be. And it's not a precise kind of process because sometimes it's just not possible. There's so many unknowns there. But if you look, for example, at chicken, that's a no-brainer. The amount of chickens and how much weight they have and how much stress that puts on their joints and their bones and what is it, like: KFC - 10% of chickens in the UK don't make it. And then something like many tens of percents are kind of suffering from severe pain. So it's kind of like their whole lives is just intense agony, like all the time, literally. So that's a no brainer, right? The ‘number times the impact’ is kind of a no-brainer. So, yeah, we try to do that and look, it gets a bit more kind of - for example, like beef. Maybe the number of animals is less, maybe, depending on the farming condition. Its cut me relatively better than, for example, factory chicken farming or egg laying operation. But the climate impact is very high. So that also is within scope for us. So, yeah, we take both kind of factors in mind. 


33:52
Amy
Do you have another example of a company that you've invested in that you think is particularly interesting or innovative at the moment? 


34:00
Simon
Sure, yeah. So that's one of the good things about this job, is just getting to work with really cool founders who are working on really interesting kind of ideas. Nice just to pick maybe one example is we're working with a company called Fattastic out of Singapore and they have development in India and they are basically looking at engineering kind of better plant-based fats to perform better in cooking. So one of the challenges with the traditional approach of coconut oil is that (a) it's full of saturated fats, so there's an arguably kind of health issue there, and (b) the melting point isn't very high. So if you cook the product, then the fat melts out and that it doesn't kind of release over time and the flavour gets affected. Whereas if you have some sort of engineered fat that can kind of melt at a much higher temperature and also encapsulate flavours and potentially be fortified as well, so then you can get like a flavour release over time as it's cooked for longer, which kind of is closer mimicking animal products. So this is a small startup. And the founder, Satnam, has kind of a background in materials as well as alternative proteins and microfluidics as well, and has basically engineered a way to go and take other vegetable oil inputs and kind of structure them into things that can have different attributes. And so that's in the early prototype stage and they're kind of testing it, but the early results are pretty promising. So that could mean if it's successful, it could mean in like 2345 years time, we get products that just have a much better fat experience, sensory experience, and better performance, and potentially healthier as well. So yeah, that's an example of the kind of early stage innovation that's really exciting. And it makes us think that there's a long way to go in terms of improving these types of products. 


36:12
Amy
How long do you give them to have a product by itself or like a profitable product? What does the timeline look like? 


36:21
Simon
That's a great question. So we're typically investing at this early stage, like precede-stage or founding-stage, and then they have to kind of make enough progress and hit certain milestones to be able to get their follow-on funding round. Like typically these companies, they don't instantly turn a profit. They need several years of investment, and they basically need to get investment from external parties so they can go and innovate and make progress, and then ultimately, then they will become profitable companies in the longer term. So for them, they have to figure out their runway and what milestones do they need to hit to have a convincing kind of proposition to later stage investors. But to give a ballpark, typically the runway may be from one to two, sometimes two plus years. So they may get an investment from us and then it gives them like a year to go and really prove the prototypes, or to take it from prototype to kind of early pilot stage, or to get the first handful of customers on board for it, et cetera, and then be able to get later stage funding. So, yeah, that's kind of a ballpark. 


37:35
James
Actually sounds quite difficult, because in a way you have actually three kind of like bottom-lines of stakeholders. Not only do you have the profit, but you also have the animal impacts. And the climate impacts actually makes - maybe it's hard to maximise any one of those things, but trying to do really well in all three sounds particularly challenging. So I'm just noting that I guess having both investors, I assume from a climate angle as well as animal angle, makes things that additional bit more tricky. Is that right, do you think? 


38:02
Simon
I would say that, yeah. Pros and cons. So one, it means that we have to kind of look at different things, and we can't just pick things that we think are going to be commercially successful and don't care if they wreck the planet in the process or anything, to take an extreme. So yeah, we do that. But on the other hand, it also gives us a focus, like kind of a north star for us, as in: we're trying to go and transform the food system for all the reasons that we all think are important for climate and animal suffering, but also for human health. Because ultimately I feel like in the long term we can go and have healthier products, as well, that still taste great. So yes, we need to take into account these different attributes. But it also gives us focus. And sometimes as a startup - let's say we treat ourselves like a startup fund - a startup needs to be really focused on solving a problem and knowing what their purpose in life is. And the positive: it's kind of very clear what our role is. It's like to go and to invest profitably and generate great returns in moving us beyond animal agriculture and solving a bunch of important problems along the way. So yeah, we view it in a kind of a positive light. And also, frankly, the decision is more upfront, as in, is this the sort of company we think can have a good impact? And once it's past that stage, then it's kind of like the regular sort of things, like how's the company going? Is it executing well? How can we help the founders? It's like the impact thing. If they're successful, the impact thing will come along anyway just by the nature of what they're doing. So it's not something that we are thinking about day to day, whereas we may go and think about, okay: How can we help you to get introductions to the next investors at later stage? Or: ‘ow can we help you with some strategic decisions? But the impact thing is kind of already built into that company. So yeah, that's usually at the upfront. “Do we invest or not?” is where we really focus in on. 


40:06
James
That makes sense. What are your thoughts or kind of expectations on when alternative proteins will reach cost and taste parity with the cheapest animal products, such as chicken? I guess (a) do you think this will happen for sure? And (b) if yes, when do you think these kind of outcomes are likely? 


40:22
Simon
Well, I think that there's no fundamental limits, as in - just to first principles: like the inputs at scale eventually and the process and the outputs; there's no fundamental limit that says: ‘no, you will never be able to’ - I believe - ‘never be able to kind of get to that sort of leve’l. And actually, if you take chicken: plant-based chickens are starting to get cost competitive with premium and also kind of like mid level chicken products. Maybe not at the very cheapest yet, but we're already getting decently close. Now. products still need to get better and the texture and the taste profile, but on a cost basis, it's making progress. So I think I would hope and expect that within, let's say, 20 years - let's put a number on it - that you would be able to get to price parity across the different technologies. Ultimately, we want cultivated 0 that would be great, if we could get 100% chicken sales and that product is at price parity with the cheapest chicken. But in the meantime, things like hybrids and plant-based products, I think absolutely can get there, even for the cheapest ones. Because at the end of the day, the chickens can't really go any further. They're already so heavy, the lifespans are already kind of compressed as much as possible. I don't think they can go and have the same rate of improvement as what we can have in alternative proteins, just in kind of product development. So I think, like, big picture, although sometimes it's easy to get discouraged in the short term. If you kind of step out a bit and think about: ‘this is all happening in a blink of the eye’, in terms of we've been eating meat for literally many thousands of years, and now in one generation, we have a chance to transition that all over, or the vast majority over, then I think it kind of puts it in perspective. So, yeah, I think so. I think it's going to be possible starting with kind of plant-based and then hybrid products. And ultimately, we want full animal equivalent, kind of cultivated cells to be at that sort of, like, level. So a lot of work to do. But I think fundamentally, I feel positive that it's possible, if there is the investment, to keep the R&D going. 


42:51
James
Just to clarify: by hybrid, you mean often a mix of plant-based and actual animal protein or a mix of cultivated and animal protein, is that right? 


42:58
Simon
That's exactly right. So hybrid is a bit confusing. You get a couple of terms thrown around, and sometimes they mix messages or mixed meanings. So blended is typically referring to real animals or as in slaughter animal slaughter products blended with plant-based ingredients. So we see a couple of companies who are attempting that. The first attempts haven't been so successful with consumers, but I think arguably, there's still kind of a path for those types of companies. We don't invest in those companies as part of our fund mandate. But that's kind of blended hybrid. On the other hand, is like plant-based with cellular agriculture, which refers to fermentation or cultivated. So arguably, Impossible is the first example of a kind of a mass hybrid product because it uses precision fermentation to get its heme equivalent compounds which provides kind of various attributes that make it more meat-like. So, yeah, I think hybrid is going to be the way forward for the next several years. You get the benefit of the taste coming from a certain percentage of cells, animal cells, and then that's sufficient to really make plant-based a lot more compelling. And I think it's. It's early days, but there's some pretty interesting kind of internal as well as, I think a handful of - no, I think it's all internal kind of taste tests which show that, yeah, adding a small percentage of animal cells in different ways kind of does improve the consumer experience. 


44:38
Amy
I think that's always such an interesting balance because vegans would be against that blended model. But pragmatically, we're not the target, right? We are already convinced as such. So, yeah, I think it's always challenging and always comes with disagreement. But I think pragmatically speaking, that is the way forward if we're trying to encourage the rest of the population to transition and at least a part of their diet to be more plant-based or at least reducing their animal protein consumption. 


45:17
Simon
Yeah, I agree. And even cultivated, some vegans may not want it because it's like, it's really the animal products. And it originally came from a small biopsy. And it may not have been kind of a lethal biopsy. It's just a small sample, but they may feel like an ick factor of it. I personally, I wouldn't. Like, I would be right for it as soon as it's kind of known, I would enjoy those products. 


45:46
James
It'd be surprising if - given your investment role - that you'd actually not try cultivated meat when it was ready. So I think that makes total sense that you're pretty excited for it. 


45:53
Simon
Exactly. And I think my partner Mikail has tasted something like maybe eight different, eight or nine at this stage, different kind of cultivated meat products from different companies. But at the end of the day, we're the tiny percent of the market, the ethical vegans. It's like it's the 97% of people who are happily eating meat. To them, it's healthy, it's normal, and it's what everyone does. And they enjoy it.That's the folks that we want to get eating less and ultimately transition fully over into these things. 


46:32
Amy
What are some of the key challenges that are facing alternative proteins right now? We've talked about the availability, just general lack, I guess, of investment at this point, the products themselves. Is there something that stands out to you as kind of the key challenge of the moment? 


46:49
Simon
It's been said a lot of times, but I really think it's like the fundamentals. First you have to solve the fundamentals of price, nutrition and nutrition perception, and then taste and texture. And as you mentioned, availability. So if you have great products and they're not available where people buy, then, yeah, that's not great. So, yeah, price is. There's various different attributes to that, but it's like part of it is scale, part of it is innovation, and it's a bit different on the plant-based side versus the Cell Ag. side. So on plant-based, it's about scale-up and machinery and bigger production runs and more continuous production runs and optimising inputs and driving down the cost of ingredients, et cetera, logistics, those sort of things. 


47:43
Simon
On the Cell Ag. side, there's still a lot of kind of work to be done, because if you think about the background, this is all coming from essentially the pharma technology; so pharma industry. So pharmaceuticals are all about high value, low volume products, and now we're transitioning to food, which is the opposite. So there's kind of like a transition time where you do it at a very small scale to prove that it works. But then you figure out, okay, how do I make it grow faster? How do I make it - feed it with lower cost inputs, the feedstocks and the cell-based media, and what are the sources of the ingredients for those? And you kind of work on those. So there's a lot more work to be done. But fundamentally, everyone agrees that we need to get cost down. So that's kind of like a big one. 

Nutrition and health I think this is pretty obvious that, look; there's been a lot of research already showing on an equivalent basis, even like the existing plant-based alternatives to the conventional option, it's still healthier for you, even though it would have some sodium and some fat content. But fundamentally, plant-based products should be healthier. So now it's just people are experimenting with: do we make it healthier or do we have different things? For example, Impossible has a range of products which is kind of indulgent, as in it's less focused on kind of nutritional, and it's just all about the flavour and the taste. And then it has other kind of products which are kind of like trying to get a healthier profile. And then there's a perception which is like, not the reality, but there's work required to be done in terms of consumer perception and kind of countering some of the fud, the fear, uncertainty, doubt, which is kind of out there, which is driven sometimes by media, sometimes by influencers, sometimes obviously by the lobbyists and the kind of entrenched interests. 

And then fundamentally taste and texture. So making the products taste better, perform better. Like simple products, like mince products are pretty decent today. But if you get into whole cuts and like chunks of meat and strips and chunks and bigger pieces, there's still a long way, a lot of work to be done, but also some exciting innovation that's happening in that space. So I'd say, yeah, those are the kind of key challenges from a consumer side. 

And then there's other attributes from the investment and regulations and other things that I guess we can get into, but from a consumer side, I think those are the key ones. And I did mention before, like, cultural. So this is something that maybe is broader than just alt proteins, but there is that kind of cultural aspect. But we can work on the other stuff anyway and we will improve the situation. So it's not like we don't have to wait for cultural things to suddenly line up and be perfect. No, we can make progress by working on those other attributes. 


51:03
James
So it sounds like on the plant-based side, at least initially, it's a process of getting cost down, which is kind of more relying on kind of usage scale and kind of improving industrial processes, and slightly more on the engineering side, rather than the fundamental science. We're more for the cultivated. It's more like we just need kind of like the hard science, which I don't know anything about, like synthetic biology and stuff, is that kind of right? Is that the kind of distinction you might draw between at least those two areas of things? 


51:32
Simon
I think that's right. But that said, the plant-based products need to get better. So there is some fundamental innovation. And like we mentioned hybrids before, so it's basically borrowing from that. So I think there's innovation, but like, for example, even if they kept the formulations the same, there's still opportunities to improve how it's made. Like the same formulation could be made in more efficient ways. It's also a scale issue. Like if you get a larger scale, if you can get a larger facility which can process more, then you get your cost down, but you may not have enough demand initially to fill all that capacity. So are there smart ways to fill that capacity with other stuff so that you can get your product to come down in price? So for example, we have a portfolio company that's moved into a larger facility and they are kind of open to, for example, White Label. And White Label, for those who don't know, is like where you make a product but it's labelled by a different brand as their own. So for example, a supermarket brand, like a Waitrose or whatever, that could be their own branded product, but it's made by a supplier and it could be in the same facility where that supplier makes their own branded products. So I think there's some ways to scale up and therefore reduce the costs through that. And a couple of our portfolio are kind of at that stage of like they've got some great products and now it's like how do we scale this up and reduce costs? 


53:05
James
Yeah, and in terms of the innovation, you talk about as needed both maybe on the plant-based and the cultivated, I guess how much of that innovation will come through - do you think - investment from government? So public investment into this research and development or do you think it'll come from private companies? And I guess do you have a sense that the private sector has it covered or actually we do need large sums of government funds to actually do some of this fundamental research. 


53:30
Simon
We need more sources of funding, particularly like government, to get involved. If you look at tech and analogy to solar technology, there was a lot of government funding for that for literally years and even decades before the VC investment kind of really started. And even then it took a while. A VC investment started around kind of early 2000s, like 2002, 2003, it kind of started and it's increased and increased, and it's taken 20 years to kind of get to a really - now where it's in many cases cheaper than fossil fuels in many markets for the same kind of energy production. So I definitely think that government needs to play more of a role because certainly on the Cell Ag. side, there's a lot of kind of fundamental work and we don't want work to be siloed within companies. There should be some kind of shared academic work which is often government, university-government funded, that I think can kind of provide a foundation on top of which then the companies can innovate in their own particular areas. So for example, in the equivalent in biomedical side, there's a lot of fundamental research that's been done into, for example mouse models or whatever. And then companies are built on that. But they didn't have to reinvent the wheel. Every single company had to go and do their own work in this space. So I think, yeah, it's very important that we get more government and we're seeing some early signs of that. For example, in the Netherlands, we're seeing government starting to put in some real numbers, like millions of dollars of funding into research and applied research. We're starting to see the early stages of that. 


55:27
Amy
I guess that's helping on the public perception side as well, right, that we're seeing that the popularity is increasing just due to the government investment. It's therefore like a more sort of public investment. Obviously it's public spend. So do you think that will have, if that continues to increase, do you think that will have an important impact on public perception around the topic? 


55:50
Simon
I think so. I think that perhaps maybe not as much as some of the other factors, but yeah, I think there's sort of background level of, you know, this technology or this approach is legit and it's been backed by my government. For example, living in Melbourne in Australia, and our state government, Victorian State Government, recently just made a multi-million dollar investment. Their investment arm made an investment into a dairy precision fermentation company. So making dairy proteins from precision fermentation, so without any cows involved and so that sort of thing. And that got coverage that was covered on the national broadcaster, on ABC. My mum, who's not vegan, but she listens to ABC radio and she heard about the story and we chatted about it and so, yeah, it starts like, okay, the government is getting involved in this sector. So I'd say it's not the driving thing, it's not the thing that's going to get you to order the dish at the restaurant, but it is kind of like a background endorsement and comfort and acceptance factor, I think that builds up, which is important longer term. 


57:02
Amy
Yeah, definitely. How do you prioritise your investment portfolio between the different technologies? I'm assuming, as you were saying previously, that some are just significantly more expensive than others. Do you specifically prioritise one over another based on just how much money needs to be plugged into them in order for them to get to that sort of successful or profitable point? 


57:24
Simon
So stepping back globally, it's roughly about two thirds one third. So I think it's like two thirds of investment globally, like last year was into cultivated products, I think in one third. I have to check the timescale on that so I might check that. But the majority has been in the kind of Cell Ag. So not just cultivated, sorry, precision fermentation as well; molecular farming. For us, we take a balanced approach. So we don't want to invest just in cultivated or Cell Ag, we want to invest across. Partly it's because we believe in the future where there'll be hybrids, so there'll be like coming together of different types of technologies. 


58:10
Amy
Right. 


58:10
Simon
Partly, it's like an investment kind of portfolio management approach, where you're kind of balancing the different type of investments. So some are more speculative, longer term projects and some are kind of here and now execution or operational-type projects. So we are kind of balancing between those and look: different investors have different outlooks. Some will not invest in certain things, and they say we're only investing in this particular technology. But for us, I think they likely will have roles to play in the future system. If we fast forward like ten years, likely these technologies will be good at different things and work together in different ways. And so it makes sense for us. And also, frankly, it's like we're not quite sure. We don't know which ones. Maybe there's a fundamental breakthrough and it becomes very cheap to ferment proteins in new ways, and therefore it blows everything else out of the water. Cost-wise it's conceivable. So, yeah, we're taking a bit of a balanced approach, personally. 


59:19
Amy
Yeah, that seems logical. I think it's similar across the nonprofit space where trying to put funds across multiple different interventions towards the same goal and not just plugging everything into one thing that we know currently is working okay, perhaps that's going to be less effective in the future. So, yeah, trying to have a more broad and probabilistic approach to that end goal. 


59:42
Simon
Yeah, I think so. And it's also like we're not yet at maturity, as in, it's not like there is a dominant technology or company that's really at a huge mass market scale and needs that sort of large mass kind of funding. So the equivalent in a non-profit giving perspective might be like you have your malarial bed nets and they're proven and it's a very effective way to kind of save lives. And maybe the bulk of the funding is going to that sort of like mature, established approach, but then you're still making smaller bets in new ways or new things that are kind of tackling kind of problems in perhaps innovative, new ways. So I'm not sure if that's a great analogy because we don't have the equivalent yet of that in all protein. It's still too early, but I think the balanced approach of making multiple bets and supporting different approaches, I think for us seems to make sense. 


01:00:45
James
Yeah, because from the little I've read of alternative proteins - I get the vibe from what I've read, and I think we'll link it below, which is a techno economic analysis by someone called David Humbert and was commissioned by open philanthropy, and it has a fairly pessimistic view, and I'm sure I think it was a couple years ago now, and had a fairly pessimistic view on particularly cultivated products. And I think the claim was it's unlikely that they would ever reach cost parity with the cheapest animal products based on some limiting factors. And it's a hundred plus page report which I did not read fully myself, but there are some summaries which we'll link to by actually reading priorities and by some other people. But I guess David Humbert was saying that there are some kind of technological barriers, particularly around the cost of the inputs, like you were saying, and I think you mentioned cell cultured media and also amino acids, as well as you kind of saying we're difficulty moving to a high volume but lower value kind of product, which then requires difficulty of keeping. You can't use pharmaceutical grade bioreactors. Anyway, all this stuff I'll link below I don't know that much about. But anyway, I guess the question for you is, I guess, what are your thoughts on these kind of technological challenges proposed? And do you think that this is just like a much more speculative technology and has a low chance of working out? But like you said, the upside is so big it's worth investing in it regardless. Or is that kind of how you view cultivated, or is there something else that makes you more optimistic? 


01:02:10
Simon
Yeah, I mean, on an EV basis, expected value basis, then it certainly still makes sense to invest. But we also feel like it's still relatively early, and some of the assumptions, and certainly - I'm not a cell biologist or kind of a scientist in this particular area, so I'll defer to our advisors who are - so certainly there are kind of like key challenges. But I think some of the early assumptions may not be true in the future, as in cost of certain kind of inputs. Certain things have just never been a requirement to source them in alternative ways. And it could be that we hear of startups and talk with startups who are looking at this kind of supply chain for cultivated so they don't do the cultivated products, but they are working on specific proteins that are like an important and costly part of the mix, and they're coming at it with different approaches and different technologies. So it could be like at the moment, the way those input chains work, that it is challenging to kind of get to cost parity on current approaches. So I don't think there's any disagreement about that. But I think there are people working on alternative approaches. So I wonder if those kind of assumptions will be accurate in a few years time. For example, we are a small investor in VAL, which is one of the kind of cultivated meat companies actually out of Australia. And some of the assumptions in that report, they've already surpassed internally, like some of the costs that got down lower than some of what the reports are. But that's not to say that the other important engineering challenges aren't there. So I don't want to make it sound like they've magically kind of got to that stage. But it's early and making projections on kind of early numbers is always kind of like challenging. But no, we remain long-term optimistic, but we think it is a longer-term play for that. But don't forget, we have hybrids. So if it turns out that it's going to take more than ten years to get to cost parity for 100% sales, you can still put a lower percentage of sales and have a big impact on the product and the taste and the other attributes. So I think that hybrids are a way to kind of make progress even while you're working to bring the cost curves down. 


01:04:34
James
Maybe everyone's going to start investing in VAL, now that you said this but of course this is not financial advice. 


[group laughing]


And maybe you can talk to Simon if you are interested. Yeah, definitely. I think in terms of innovation, it is definitely hard to predict. And I always remember a famous graph I've seen of scientists predicting the floor price of solar energy and then what actually happens over time and just basically continuously kept plunging through the predicted floor price. Yeah, and it kind of shows that actually we're not always that great at predicting how innovation will change and how products and technologies will change. So I think that's at least one thing that is reasonable to be like: ‘yeah, humans are fallible, even though people who make these predictions are experts in the field.’ Science is just a bit of an unexpected world sometimes. So I think that definitely makes sense. 


01:05:26
Simon
Yeah, I think so. Look, I'm not dismissing and thinking it's going to be easy and there are key challenges and we know from our portfolio we've invested in ten plus kind of Cell Ag. companies. And we know that there are challenges that need to be overcome. But I would be worried if they weren't making progress. Like if they were like: ‘we're out of ideas.’ But it's not at that sort of stage. It's like: ‘no, we've got ideas, we just need to execute on them and we're making progress in different ways.’ I think I'm with long-term optimism. But still, we've got to look at every project and really ask the tough questions, like: why do we think that this team is the one who we think can make a breakthrough in this or make real progress in this? So we've still got a high bar, but we are long term optimistic on this. 


01:06:23
James
So in terms of other challenges, while we're on the topic of challenges for the old protein industry, there's been some new research recently by - also by Rethink Priorities, very popular name on this episode, and Jacob Peacock in particular, who looked at kind of what we've been talking about - but not explicitly - about this idea of price, taste and convenience being the most important factors in basically shaping how acceptance and uptake of alternative proteins will look like over time. And his research, which we'll link to below, basically finds that - he believes based on his research - it's kind of an oversimplified model, such that price rates and convenience alone don't dictate consumer behaviour. And there's other factors, whether that's social or cultural factors like we've spoken about. Also things like nutrition, which you kind of mentioned, but also even in scenarios or experiments where these things are kind of held constant due to experimental controls by academics, still there wasn't a huge uptake of these alternatives, particularly plant-based products, I guess, what are your thoughts on this kind of hypothesis? And I guess, is it something you believe in or do you think other factors are much more important than we've maybe been speaking about today? 


01:07:35
Simon
I think it is kind of like the most important question for plant-based. I would say that price, taste, convenience, accessibility - these are necessary, but not sufficient, I think. And so if we got price, taste, convenience overnight and suddenly the products were equivalent, we would still have work to do to go and get the majority of people to go and adopt these products. So there's a reason why certain consumers would like maybe products that are at a premium to their cheaper alternatives, but they still prefer them for other reasons. Like, why do you enjoy a kind of expensive latté at a Starbucks versus just getting a cheap one at a 711 or kind of a local service station. There's clearly other factors than just pricing. So taste is part of that. 

So I agree with that part of the conclusion. I think where I'm perhaps disagreeing - and look, there's a lot of really thoughtful responses from different folks to that analysis, including from GFI, so I'd encourage people to look at the forum post and have a look at Bruce Friedrich's kind of response and others. But I think the studies that this was based on were very small scale and pretty early. And I think they're really hard to extrapolate. So for example, certain university canteen environments where there's different halls and how people are going between the different halls and getting access to the different products. So I think it's hard to extrapolate from kind of early things. And also people's perceptions change over time. So if you go to another technology and you ask them about it really early, they'd say: ‘Oh, this is really dorky. I don't want to be involved in that.’ Let's say, for example, balancing like segway. Maybe people look at the early segway scooters and it's like: ‘Oh, that looks really dorky. I don't want to be involved in something like that where I'm kind of on this thing.’ And now look around - maybe it's not exactly segway, but it's like everyone's zooming around on their e-scooters and various other kind of variations on that. Maybe virtual reality, augmented reality is kind of on that similar curve where early on people were like: ‘this is awkward, someone's got a camera strapped to their eye.’ And now we've got really cool looking Ray-Bans with integrated cameras in there and I think in a few years Apple's coming out with their Vision Pro and that's going to change perceptions as well. 

So I think how people perceive things is not a static kind of condition. I think it evolves with how good the products are, but also with how things change on a kind of cultural side. So I think it's just really hard to extrapolate and also it depends on market. For example, we've seen - I think that post referenced Burger King and their Whopper, right? And if you look at the deployment in relative success in US versus Germany, for example, in Germany it's been a huge success versus the US and a similar product (maybe it is the same product, I'm not quite sure, but) it's performing very differently in different contexts. So that kind of goes to show that it depends on context and attitudes and other factors. So I'd say it's really hard to draw too many conclusions from an early stage thing when it's this early in the game. But I still think the fundamental point about it is, it's not just those price, taste, convenience, there's other things that have to change or be improved on or be worked on as well that are important. 


01:11:40
James
I think most people, like you said, would agree that, like you said, those three things are important; they're necessary, but not necessarily sufficient. So I think, yeah, and that's a really good point. And we'll definitely link that forum post because as you said, there's lots of good comments from both boost from GFI and other people, including I think actually some really insightful comments from Johannes Ackva talking. So he works and he's a climate funder and he kind of speaks about how things have changed in the climate tech world, particularly around solar and analogues. There's a useful thread I would also follow that we'll link to. 

Yeah, I think that moving on to maybe topics that are slightly closer to our name, you mentioned shrimp paste before, so we want to come back to shrimp paste because it would be remiss to do the whole podcast and not mention that.


[group laughing]


So, this is Carolina from Charity Entrepreneurship and she sent this question in, which I think is super important: ‘What are your thoughts on investing in shrimp paste?’ Like you said, lots of animals killed for this product? Have you thought about it? Are you making any steps? And yeah, what's happening in the alternative shrimp paste space? 


01:12:37
Simon
Well, we've invested in cultivated crustaceans and maybe this is a longer-term thing, but ultimately if that's successful, that can provide a real replacement for shrimp products. So I was a Personal Angel Investor in a company called Shiok Meats, which was kind of like the early mover, the first one in there. And then Better Bite as the fund has invested in Clever Meat, which is working on cultivated crustaceans specifically, or shrimp. 

So yes, we're invested into this. And I would say it's interesting because shrimp paste is prevalent in Asia. It's used in a lot of kind of cuisines. But there is actually a market already for vegetarian shrimp paste and the same for fish sauce and other kind of more on the sauce and condiment side of the house as part of the ingredients for cooking or just kind of as part of the meals. So there is kind of like a starting point for that but I think that if we're talking about a real one-for-one replacement, then that kind of goes towards more like cultivated or maybe it's a hybrid in the future. So yeah, from an impact perspective, clearly it makes a lot of sense and we just have to deliver on that. But on the positive, it's like an easier product, as in it's not a structured product. You don't actually have to have the full shrimp looking exactly the same and the bounciness of the flesh as you eat it's very different. So yeah, I think it might ultimately end up being kind of an easier product than a full shrimp experience. 


01:14:25
James
Out of interest, how come do you think it's not a good fit for plant-based? Because that seems like surely an easier way to get into that given you don't have some textural complexities like you mentioned. 


01:14:34
Simon
There already is - I believe, if I'm not wrong, I don't personally have too much like shrimp paste in my cooking, but I believe there are already vegetarian kind of like ones that have been around. Because don't forget, like a lot of these markets where this is popular, there is a buddhist community, and these sort of alternatives kind of do exist, maybe from traditional food makers, but certainly, for example, fish sauce, there's some pretty decent fish sauces now, and we use them kind of regularly in our family for cooking. So I believe there are those and there's an opportunity to kind of modernise them, make them better. But ultimately, if you want exactly like 100% kind of match of flavour profile, et cetera, then ultimately you'd want to have some cultivated either fully or partially as part of the product. 

So yeah, I think it's an important one. And this is probably one of those cases where super high impact by itself, but it's kind of like a bit of a niche thing. Like, okay, it's an element of your cooking, but it's not the only element. You don't have shrimp paste for a shrimp paste soup. You're not just spooning this up and eating it, but it does have a huge impact. So yeah, I agree with that. Kind of like the premise that we should try to have great alternatives for this from just a purely impact numbers point of view. 


01:16:02
Amy
So generally, I would encourage everyone to head to the Better Bite Ventures website. I think it was really interesting for me to read through all of the companies, founders, businesses that you have invested in so far. It's really interesting just to see that wide range of different products right across different animal replacement products. So yeah, I would head there for more information and some really great products that are being invested in right now. Simon, for you, is there a bit of news or something in the media, something that's come to light that's particularly excited you recently? 


01:16:41
Simon
Well, I think the big one is just in the US getting the regulatory approval and these products can now be served on plates in the US and albeit at small scales. So FDA and USDA kind of doing that and folks being able to actually try. Yes, like tiny scale, a lot of challenges to produce the volume required even at this kind of early stage. But it's letting people really go and try it and kind of capture their imagination and getting policymakers through to average consumers to actually try it. Just like in Singapore we've seen, I think it's fair to say that the overall Singapore population is much more receptive and positive about cultivated because they know it's like - okay, very small percentage have tried it - but they know it's real and they know that it's in a restaurant and it's moved out of Sci-Fi into ‘that's cool, I can go to that restaurant and people are eating it.’ And I know a guy who tried it. So I think that's kind of exciting from regulatory - it could have been years and years, right? From what I understand, it was a pleasant surprise for the industry, but I think that's a big one and it's the US, so it's huge market and it hopefully will set the tone for other countries as well to come. 


01:18:00
James
Nice. And what's a few pieces of media you'd recommend to listeners? And obviously this also includes your own podcast which you host. So yeah, feel free to plug any kind of books, articles or things you want to show people about your work or related work. 


01:18:14
Simon
I'd say like GFI is a great source, like lots of really good materials, podcasts, articles, reports, also community. So if you want to get involved in the various communities. A shout out to Animals Impact Slack and online communities. So some really thriving kind of conversations out there. And so really a big fan of that work. In terms of podcasts, I really like for example the Red to Green podcast, which is kind of a scientist explaining things for regular folks. So how does this fermentation thing work and what are some of the attributes? And just really interesting with a lot of historical backstory to it. So check that out. And also 80,000 hours has a wonderful recent interview with someone from GFI Europe with a real deep dive into what are the opportunities or the kind of the research bottlenecks and opportunities to progress this whole industry. So if you're from a scientific or even if you're not, if you just want to understand what's going on, it's a wonderful listen, like a real deep dive. Like 2-3 hours solid listen on that. So yeah, I think there's some really good resources out there. 


01:19:31
Amy
And is there any way that people can get more involved in your work? Obviously, those of us sitting at home with millions in the back pocket could consider becoming an investor. But also for us less wealthy folk, is there ways that we can support your work? 


01:19:49
Simon
So I would say that, well, we always want to kind of support just personally, apart from kind of investing, I like to kind of support and have calls with folks who are looking to kind of get into alt. protein or maybe asking for advice. And I've also, just outside of alt. protein helped to support some of the projects and the interesting ones that are going on the nonprofit side as well. So reach out to me on LinkedIn, that's probably the easiest. For Better Bite, we're always open to interns, volunteers and interns. So in, for example, analyst roles, so you don't have to be a scientist, but someone to help us to kind of compile research and kind of keep up to date of the various news and developments and so forth. We're looking also at community builders, so as in folks to help us build out some community initiatives around food and climate in Asia Pacific. 


01:20:52
Amy
Great. 


01:20:52
Simon
So I'd encourage folks, if they are interested in intern and volunteer roles, to reach out as well. And LinkedIn is the best way to connect with me. 


01:21:01
Amy
Okay, perfect. We'll link all of that in the show notes as well as always, everything else that we've discussed and any topics that have come up, they'll be there with links. 


01:21:10
Simon
Awesome. Yeah. 


01:21:11
James
Thanks so much for joining us, Simon. It's been such a great experience to chat with you and learn more, I think. Yeah, it's our first old protein episode. I think it's a bit overdue, so it's been nice to have you on and get a bit of deep dives. Yeah, I appreciate your time. 


01:21:21
Amy
Yeah, thanks so much. 


01:21:22
Simon
Yeah, likewise. Thanks for the fun discussion and also for all the work that both of you do. It's a really important topic, and I'm glad we're kind of having this opportunity to really go deep and with your other guests, as well. So I'm looking forward to lots of great episodes to come as well.