Insights
biotech
From the real-world impact of AI and the rise of operator-investors, to the growing influence of women and underestimated founders in the funding landscape. Sarah breaks down what’s happening beyond Silicon Valley, explore how capital and media now move together, and spotlight the billion-dollar ideas driving the next wave of innovation.
- Billion Dollar Moves Episodes, Personal Growth, Startups, Venture Capital
From Lab to Table: The Startup Founder Revolutionizing the Seafood Industry | Sandhya Sriram, Shiok Meats
What does it take to sell and execute on what feels like an impossible vision?
This, is the task of a stem-cell scientist turned founder who is tapping into the multi-billion opportunity to create lab-grown crustacean meat.
Under Dr. Sandhya Sriram's leadership, Shiok Meats today is the world’s first cultivated shellfish meat company, and Southeast Asia’s first cultivated seafood and meat company. The startup’s mission is to bring delicious, sustainable, and healthy seafood to your table, using the cellular agriculture technology to grow meat from stem cells instead of slaughtering animals.Since its inception in 2018, they have grown from 2 to over 50 employees today, made a strategic acquisition themselves, raised over USD 30 Million dollars from big names from Y Combinator to Korean Conglomerate CJ’s Food Arm.
- Billion Dollar Moves Episodes, Startups
Executing On Your Purpose & Making Eggs Without Chickens
"If not now, then when? I had no job, nowhere to stay but I had to try. Even if I failed, I would have the peace of mind that at least I tried. I would have always wondered, what if?"
From the rise of Impossible Foods to McDonalds announcing their McPlant menu, plant-based food has undeniably taken the market by storm. Beyond the mainstreaming of veganism, fast-forward to 2021, a global crisis and global lockdowns drove consumers to reassess what they eat and their impact on the planet.
Riding this wave is Clara Foods (www.clarafoods.com), a Silicon Valley venture-backed company making animal protein without the animals. Led by Arturo Elizondo, Clara Foods is disrupting food technology, developing performance protein products and making the world's first animal free egg white protein. Using advanced fermentation to brew protein that is cleaner, greener and kinder to our environment today, this week, we take a personal deep dive with the man behind the vision of eggs without chickens.
- Billion Dollar Moves Episodes, Startups
Building Biotech with Brian Conn
The Bay Area landscape is still covered with large tech companies and countless tech startups, but the map is increasingly dotted with biotech startups. Apple is making constant strides in healthcare – so much so that Tim Cook RECENTLY said, “that there will be a day we look back and say Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind has been in healthcare.” And believe it or not, Google’s DeepMind is leading the field in protein engineering.
Today, human kind is experiencing a revolution, a revolution in science that will save and transform our lives. From microbiome manipulation, to genomic sequencing biotechnology promises an unprecedented future
But what does it really take to build a biotech company that will last?
In comes my next guest, Brian Conn, who has served as the CFO of numerous biotech companies over two decades where he has raised over $300M for his companies and completed 20 M&A deals.
He’s seen it all, in labs where stress levels are at an all-time high, where millions are burned before a product is seen in market. Currently, Brian is the CFO of a genomic sequencing startup Quantapore, is co-founder of a synthetic biology company Levadura, AND is an advisor for the VC firm General Inception.