No matter your philosophy on diet, this is something new to consider: cruelty-free meat. It’s possible, and if Brian Spears has anything to do with it, it’s coming to a grocery store near you sooner than later.
The appetite to want slaughter free meat is huge. An Oklahoma State University – the heartland of meat country – study found that 90% people eat meat while 47% want to ban slaughter houses. This confirms that most people are not comfortable with the process by which meat is delivered to their plate. Spears’ company, New Age Meats is a pioneer in the next generation, clean meat industry. With a background in engineering, research, and industrial automation, Spears now has a lab in Berkeley that is working on bringing cell-cultured pork to market. In this Q&A, Spears opens eyes about the future of food and how important his advisor from Tech Futures Group has been in developing his strengths as a CEO.
There’s a buzz and a lot of money being invested into a new generation of meat alternatives. Why is this frontier exciting to people?
One of the biggest reasons is the growing understanding and acknowledgement that the way we get meat now is environmentally unsustainable. Take that with the heavy use of antibiotics and the pandemic reminding us of animal borne viruses and you’ve got people who are increasingly understanding the dangers of the meat industry as it currently stands.
On being a founder
“A founder’s challenge is being able to understand rapid organizational growth: what does the company look like today… in six months… in a year? ”
— Brian Spears, Founder of New Age Meats
How much capital have you raised?
We have raised over five million; mostly from venture capitalists. VCs expect a return – 20 to 50 times or more than the amount that they put in – with the understanding that you may fail. At first, the investor wants to understand the founder and why you are a good bet, and as the team grows, why the team is a good bet. You have to show them that you are solving real problems, that there’s a massive market on the other side, and that you are better than other companies who may be addressing the same market.
How is making meat a feat of tech?
The whole idea of what we are doing is trying to make meat outside of an animal. It’s deep tech. You take cells out of an organism and grow and multiply them so that they become the food you care about. This means we have to understand what the cells need to grow at a small scale in a lab, and then on a massive scale in a production environment. Getting the same behavior of the cells is non-trivial. It’s extremely multi-disciplinary – from biologists to bioengineers to food scientists and industrial engineers.
“You have to show [investors] that you are solving real problems, that there’s a massive market on the other side, and that you are better than other companies who may be addressing the same market. ”
How does a founder of a company need to think?
This is the second company I’ve started. The first was bootstrapped, which is quite different from a VC backed startup. A bootstrapped company typically grows more slowly — there’s less money to develop your product or service because you are much more beholden to what the customers will pay for right now. On the contrary, if you are VC backed, the end goal is your own vision which is a picture of what customers will pay for in the future. A good VC sees your vision and gives you the money to bring it to fruition. With the money, a founder’s challenge is being able to understand rapid organizational growth: what does the company look like today? In six months? In a year? My role changes as the company changes, so I need to decide when I take the time to learn skills and when I bring key team members to fill in what I don’t know.
Is Shelter in place having an effect on your company?
Yes. We are a physical sciences company and we have to work in a lab. The lockdown was very strict for a while. Now, I let the team define the safety practices that make them comfortable. We have to take more care, which takes more time, but I can’t move faster than safety dictates. The silver lining for us is that the pandemic highlights the brokenness of the current meat system. As a result, we have received more investment from investors that align with our vision of a safer, more sustainable meat production system.
How has SBDC’s Tech Futures Group assisted you on this unique journey?
How do you move to commercialization? How do you deal with investors? How do you grow rapidly? How do you keep making the structure work? How do you grow the team, manage the pipeline, build the culture? TFG has founders and CEOs who have done this, who understand how to assess a landscape and move new technology into the market. I was paired with and worked a lot on this with TFG Advisor, Louise Kirkbride at Tech Futures Group. She’s absolutely outstanding. She helps me think about the challenges ahead and know which ones to worry about first and which to deal with later. This helps me to tell the story better and bring investors and team members on board.
What do you see as the future of your company/industry?
We have had a definition of meat for several thousand years – the flesh of a slaughtered animal – but that definition is changing. The technology to create meat inside of an animal is old and there isn’t much innovation left there, but we remove the animal and work directly with the cells. We can mix in plants and fungi to make a better product. In the beginning we want to make the meat that people are comfortable with, but as we gain consumer trust we can show them that we can make something that is way better. The future of meat is safer, healthier, and incredibly more sustainable.
Explore the next generation of alternative proteins.
Visit the New Age Meats website, Twitter, and Instagram. As they prepare to get in front of the next round of investors including indie investors and the bioengineering and food industries, they are also interested in attracting brilliant people to their team.
Source: https://asksbdc.com/new-age-meats/