Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:21 All right. This is crazy. We just might call to meet you. I didn't believe what he told me that y'all were doing. So I want to prove. I'm like, I'll leave that for a second. What the heck are

0:34 y'all doing? Well, we're focused on industrial bio manufacturing and in that regard, which is one of the things I think is always interesting. Somebody passed along an article where some

0:45 microbiologists found a new ecosystem in the deep dark sea, essentially, that the

0:53 creatures are living off of gas coming out of the crevices and converting methane to food and things along line to that. So what we are doing is using biology to create chemicals, fuels, and things

1:08 along line to that to make people's lives better, more ecologically sound, and using the earth as opposed to as a as a recycling mechanism as opposed to petrochemicals. And so I don't wanna be a

1:21 crass, but in effect, is this microbe poop? I mean, is it the consumption of food, if you will, and the output that creates that process? Right, you may have a different opinion of it. So one

1:37 of the things that, one of the methods, and it's one of the methods you all use, it's fermentation, right? So if you've ever had beer, if you've ever had bread, if you've ever had wine, it's

1:48 using microbes, microorganisms, yeast to convert one thing into another and then using a downstream process to extract the chemical that you went out of it. So it's not, I wouldn't call it poop.

2:02 As you say it, I think it's just the conversion of, you know, when you talk about bread, it's converting sugar into another substance. So there's some of that in what we're doing as well, but

2:12 with all of the things from a scientific perspective, We're learning that we can modify. organisms, we can modify yeasts, we can modify these things to create something other than bread or wine or

2:25 beer as they go through that process and depending upon the raw material that you pump in and then the product that you introduce it to in the fermenter, you get a different solution coming out the

2:36 other end. Give me an example, a real world example of maybe what this is Yeah, well, the real world example that everyone knows, he mentioned is beer, you know. So fermentation, you probably

2:49 have been inside some breweries, got on a tour, right? So you have yeast, species, you eat them sugar, they produce alcohol. In Brazil, they use sugar to make bioethanol for fuel, right? So

3:02 that's in the whole industry that has to scale, right, and it's actually compete with fossil fuels. You could go to Brazil, most cars are hybrid, in gas station, they have bioethanol, and and

3:13 gas and resilience are used to doing the math really quickly and choose. Some days they choose by ethanol, some days they choose gas. So it's an example. In the US, they use corn instead, right?

3:25 Corn is a feed of stock to make by ethanol. What we're talking about here is the next frontier that is not limited to E. coli and yeast, this kind of a common microbes that we've known more about.

3:36 And why is this happening? It's because we've had a lot of advancements in genomics. DNA sequencing was not even around, like human genome project is not that old CRISPR is like 10 years old, you

3:48 know? So in some ways, humans were just at the beginning of understanding how we could build this partnership with microbes, the way we've built throughout history, you know, with farming and

3:59 with animals, agriculture, like all these things that really transformed human lives. We're now in the beginning of doing that through our relationship with microbes. If you look at pharma

4:11 industry, was the first one who just really leaned in from the days where, you know, workstracts. insulin from pancreas of pigs and dogs. And this is not too long ago, like 50 or so years ago.

4:23 And it would take like 10, 000 pounds of pancreas to get one pound of insulin. And that's animal insulin. To where they said, oh, well, if the insulin is there, it means there's a machinery

4:33 that's making it. And there's an enzyme that is expressing, the gene that is expressing that enzyme that produces that insulin So what if we take that gene and put it in a basic microbe like E.

4:47 coli and feed it sugar? Is there a chance that it's going to make the same thing? And it did. So that became the beginning of bi-manufacturing to fast-track to today. Former, they don't do many

5:01 chemical reactions. It's mostly biochemical reactions using this kind of E. coli, you know, dominantly in bioreactors to make these very specific molecules. But we know that with pharma, these

5:15 are things that are very - high value, very low volume, right? And what's happening now, the cost has come down such that companies like us and a lot of portfolio companies for them are exploring

5:27 what are the new frontier applications for this, where you could go into high volume, lower kind of a cost intermediate chemicals that could go into polymers and plastics and fuels. And so that's

5:39 the whole field of by manufacturing linked to by economy. And there's also aspect of it that is circular by economy, you know, which is closed loop, not just using sugar. So we could go into all

5:52 those details, but this is something that is very established already, but there's this new frontiers that we're exploring. Well, and you talk about AI a lot. It's part of AI is what's helping to

6:02 accelerate this, right? The one of our advisors, Doug Cameron, would tell you that there are billions of different microbes out there that can do different things and we're focusing on 12. So if

6:14 you start thinking about the universe of microbes and what they all might be able to do, and as we start to accelerate more and more into this area, the more and more opportunities they are. So

6:26 we've far surpassed Moore's law of doubling. It's the cost of all of this and the ability to do it has come down a million fold since this all started. Interesting. So I'm sitting here jumping to,

6:41 and I'm gonna make an assumption, which I get it makes an ass if you and me. But it's gonna go there. I mean, gotta be a lot better for the environment, right? I mean, is that big driver here?

6:54 I think it's multiple things, right? I do think it's a driver. Like Moji said, we've been doing this yet the scale that we're trying to get to for maybe 10, 15 years maybe. How long has the

7:08 petroleum industry been around? So we're at the beginning of. the petroleum industry, which was 125 years ago, and it does help the environment. We lean in a lot on national security. A lot of

7:21 the things that these chemicals are used for, tires, polymers, polyol, things along the lines that are made right now in other countries that maybe we're not as friendly with, maybe one of them

7:35 starts with an R, the other one starts with a C, and what would be the impact if we could bring that on shore? And then the supply chain, we also what the supply chain look like during COVID and

7:46 trying to create a more resilient supply chain. So there are a lot of different aspects of it, but yes, it's definitely, you know, one of our portfolio companies has a polymer that they use for

7:57 your phone case, use for insoles, use for the foam in these chairs, and you take it in your backyard and you bury it, and it's gone in six months. Oh, wow. Yeah, and their technology allows

8:09 them to dial in.

8:12 the degradability of it. So they can make it where it degrades in six months, nine months, three months, and they can just, they can dial it in. So, and this goes for coatings, all sorts of

8:14 stuff. So it's a, when I

8:22 talk, I always find myself saying, this is kind of utopian. There's all of these different opportunities, but there really is from the sense that we're early days on a lot of this. It's been

8:32 around, again, as long as we've made beer and bread, but the emoji's point where we're really starting to move into the chemical application of it That's a little bit newer, but it's exciting.

8:44 That is cool.

8:47 If, and I know you're gonna say it depends, you

8:54 know, which is a fair response, but, you know, immediately I kind of go, how do the economics of this work? Are you cost competitive with traditional manufacturing? I guess I would call it. Is

9:07 it better for the environment? So I'm going to be willing to pay more for it. And I know it's early days, but. Well, it doesn't depend. I'll just give you the, because we're actually doing this

9:18 and looking at those numbers. I would say we have a slightly, maybe a slightly different approach to this. Sustainability is not the initial focus for us. We said, okay, how could we make

9:31 initial biotech better and faster? And so part of that was like, well, what is it that is making it expensive today? And one of those things is the fact that if you want to use sugar, sugar is

9:42 expensive. It's not a waste, like there's use cases, and it's also compete with food, which is a whole other debate, food versus feeder stock. And we said, okay, but those microbes are limited

9:54 in that they need sugar to do what they need to do. But now we have all these tools. Can we use other microbes that don't need sugar and could use waste? A lot of the things that ends up in the

10:04 landfill, A lot of the things that today ends up. in an anaerobic digester to make RNG, okay? Can you feed those things to a different category of microbes that could produce, in our case, a

10:15 sustainable oil profile that also happens to be a lower CI, right? Which could be used to make things like sustainable aviation fuel. And the answer is yes. It turns out there is a lot of waste

10:26 that is today underutilized because, you

10:29 know, people have not looked at the microbes that could use them or other chemical processes that could do So why is that important? When you look at the tornado chart of the techno-economic

10:40 analysis for any kind of a bi-manufacturing process, feeder stock is the biggest driver, right? So if you could reduce your costs in feeder stock, it makes a huge difference. The other part of

10:50 this was, can you get paid to take garbage? Have we got - Yeah, actually - Is that on the table? Yes, absolutely. One of the feeder stocks is a effluent from dairy waste, right? And so we're

11:02 talking to a lot of those companies. One of them in the US said, We're spending every year, 3 million just in tracking cost for people who come in and take this. And then, and sometimes it's a

11:12 bit of a headache also in the landfill that processing to do. So, you know, they may even pay us a little bit to take this off the table. So imagine in your model, you have a negative cost or

11:25 okay, zero cost. So when people ask me, how low can this go? It's hard to answer because feeder stock is dictates pretty much, but outside of that, we looked at, and this is where it gets

11:37 interesting 'cause I'm in Houston, right? I'm a petroleum engineer by background. And so my training and the way of thinking about the world was through what oil and gas industry has done, which

11:48 is really good at bringing costs down, capital, project execution, all of that, right? And that is not how the traditional bi-manufacturing industry was thinking about it. They're thinking a

11:58 small scale, very expensive things, like lab coats, very kind of a hospital looking top environment. What, how could we mix these two universes? Like bring this idea of lowering the capics in

12:12 opics, but

12:14 leveraging these robust microbes and lower cost kind of a waste byproduct based feeder stock that could bring the cost down. And I think we have a line of side to it, to actually compete with

12:27 something like a palm or something like a soybean oil that is, you know, or a tallow or a use cooking oil that is used as kind of a feeder stock to make a lot of things But like you said, this is

12:37 just the beginning of it. Now, imagine after this becomes more efficient throughout time, but

12:43 none of this is about sustainability. It's just understanding what are the drivers of cost and in what ways can we bring those down? Well, and it's, so as another example of the feedstock world

12:54 and where it's going, I met two companies in DC earlier this year. One of them actually is in California and they collect crop waste. up and down the coast, the fertile part of California, and

13:06 then they separate it out and process it and then turn it into five different feedstocks for the bioindustries. So they go through that process. So it's more focused so that the producer doesn't

13:17 have to do anything process wise for the feedstock. And then they also had somebody who talked about their creating plants specifically for this industry that are much more highly intensive So you

13:30 use less acreage and produce more energy as an example like corn. I think they were talking about they get 100 more intensity on 100 less acreage than corn. So then all of a sudden you have a

13:46 feedstock that you could grow in an acre that otherwise would take you 100 acres of corn to do. And then it also, to your point, the other argument is should this be feedstock or should it be in

13:59 the food system? so that takes that answer off the table as well. Oh, wow, that's fascinating. So what does your company do?

14:07 So what we do is we use this different carbon by product waste streams, including CO2. We feed it into our bioreactors, which very much so could look like some of the ones you see in a brewery.

14:19 Okay, I was just about to ask that. Yeah, big silvers tanks. And what they do, these microbes that we have, they grow an oil inside their cell, inside the body. Naturally, they grow maybe up

14:31 to 20, but ours, we have optimized to where they grow up to 80 of the cell weight becomes oil. And it's kind of like humans, like you feed a lot of carbs and sugar, what happens, it's the only

14:43 fat. So it's almost to tell me that. By the way, audience, camera puts on 10 pounds, I'm much skinnier looking, that's right.

14:55 So it's a survival mechanism that we're kind of leaning into. And this is where we're saying, now we have this understanding of the metabolic and genetic pathways inside the microbes that we could

15:04 optimize, right? So then what we do, when you're making something like biothenol, the microbe has the machinery to excrete the product, like what you were saying earlier, like it's like a

15:16 pooping gap, right? In this case, because this was a survival kind of mechanism, we have to do a bit of a, like a, like a liposuction, right? We got to disrupt the cell and get the oil out.

15:28 And so we have different methods of doing that. You could use acids for lysis and then the solvents that are established, like this is how we get oil out of, like say soybean oil, for example,

15:37 right? So we use those methods to get the oil out. And then, so that's the first product from the process is that oil. The second product is the sale that is left once we get the oil out, right?

15:49 And that we've done testing on it and turns out it's an excellent bi-fertilizer, biostimulant for soil, health and kind of, especially for de-grated soil that needs to be kind of recovered and

16:05 regenerated. So it's the same process, produces two products, the oil and the bi-fertilizer. And that's what we're building. We're fixing actually to build our first commercial plan in Brazil to

16:17 showcase that and have other locations in mind from then on. When you say oil, what does that mean? Is that cooking oil, is it gasoline oil, what does. So the most comparable thing to it is like

16:32 palm oil or soybean oil. So you know, this carbon chains of oil, which say for crude is like very complex. So many mixes, but in the case of say palm oil is a lot of C-16, we go, soybean oil is

16:45 more like C-18. And depending on where you look in the chain, you have different properties.

16:53 go on something like if you're like more like C1214, that's more like biosefactant, you know? And so what we do, the natural pathway leads to this kind of a

17:03 C1618, which makes the oil a really good drop in for a process like HEFA to make sustainable aviation fuel. This is how we have the partnership with United and they invested in us and, you know,

17:13 it's the, in response to the demand for feeder stocks needed to make sustainable aviation fuel. But there's other use cases And what's crazy is that you could actually engineer the microbes to say,

17:26 I want more C14, less 18. And this is something you cannot go tell a palm tree, give me a different profile, right? So this is the beginning of us being able to kind of have this kind of a

17:38 relationship with nature in using the engine, but we have tools now to fine tune it into what is the best case. And this is where some of those cost savings come because sometimes they. The company,

17:51 the chemical company will have to do more processing to get the profile to exactly what they need. And that is not what nature gives them, you know? But in this case, you could bring that up a

18:02 stream and have the process specifically make the thing that is needed, you know, saving that cost for the refining processing. Well, and into your point, too, is going through your facilities.

18:13 There's no waste, right? You guys, whatever goes in comes out as something on the other end, whether it's the oil or it's the fertilizer. Right. Yeah. You know, one thing that's important also

18:24 to mention is this is not something that is like at odds with, say, even oil and gas. As a matter of fact, I think there is a lot of areas where oil and gas has benefited already from

18:36 understanding microbiology. I mean, you probably know a lot about the H2S problem in oil and gas. There's assets we're not even exploring because it's too sour, right? SRBs and

18:47 Bioside is a whole industry right to kill the microbes that could cause corrosion, could produce H2S, right? Yeah, I mean, every frack you run an antibiotic in a fast in it, so you're not

19:01 growing microbes in the hole. But so because of that, we know how powerful microbes could be, right? But that has been in a bad way. Turns out there's also good microbes in the subsurface that

19:13 you could utilize to make products, if it's like methane, the same way that you could use the anaerobic digester, you input all kind of waste and you mix CH4, right? You could do the same thing

19:26 in the subsurface with metangens. And this is actually how natural gas in some places is not biological, but in some places is biological. And these are microbes called metangens. This is how we

19:38 have natural gas. This is why it's called natural gas in the first place. And it's weird that as oil and gas companies, we don't know more about, these microbes, these engines that are making

19:49 this product, because now we have the tools to make them more efficient. Same way in an anaerobic digester, you could, they're still producing a lot of CO2 in the mix, right? Which is kind of

19:60 some of the companies, their approach is like, but we captured the CO2 and we injected the subsurface, like, yes, but we're still not solving the actual problem because every C that goes into CO2,

20:13 not CH4, is lost revenue at that point, right? So there is ways to optimize the market to make more CH4. And then for the subsurface itself, if you think of a reservoir as a bi-reactor, instead

20:25 of as a place where we're just gonna go extract what is already there. And this is how one of the companies that we started, but since then it's been spun out and is commercializing called Gold

20:36 Hydrogen, that's what they do. They introduce a package of nutrients that activate microbes that eat the undecovered oil from depleted reservoirs. And it could be 20, 30, 50 of the original oil

20:50 in place that we just can't get out, right? So that asset at that point is already a liability on a company's book, right? So actually you have to spend more money to plug an abandoned it. They

20:60 bring it back and they're turning it into a subsurface hydrogen production facility. So these are some of the other examples where this is not kind of a crazy idea this way out there. This is

21:10 happening right now in this enhanced understanding of biology and biotech could integrate with upstream, downstream operations in oil and gas as well. Well, and Doug Caram would say that he thinks

21:21 that the next frontier, which I think what you're alluding to is waste gas and how do you use the waste gas to do all of this? 'Cause I mean, the dirty little secret of the energy value chain is it

21:31 takes so much freaking energy to actually get a barrel of oil out and get it into a format that you can use a gasoline in the car. I mean, refineries use tons of energy, Transportation. Taking the

21:46 fuel here to there is huge. And so to the extent, you could at least even do partial of that in the ground before you yank it out. That's pretty - Like underground biorefinery that is integrated

21:60 and it's like, this is just the beginning. Imagine even like beginning of hydraulic fraction compared to today, how much more precise it's become in the way we design a particle size distribution

22:11 of the properties is this much and like this material. This is just the beginning So if we enhance this understanding, and I think generally this category of alternative uses of the subsurface,

22:21 it's just to not think of a reservoir as a place where how much all is in there, let's get it out. But think of it as there was some natural field stock there already, we got whatever we could out,

22:32 great. What about the rest of it? Because we've already spent all the capex to develop this pathway to the subsurface, right? And because we have explored it, we have all this knowledge, about

22:42 it, like what is the porosity, permeability, water chemistry, all these things. And right now, we're not using that. We just get up and go and look for the next one, right? But that's one of

22:52 those areas. And to your point of back cost, imagine not having to build massive bioreactors on surface because you're using one that is already built. When you talked about the use of energy,

23:04 right? The process that it goes through, the fermentation and the biological process is all self-contained So you're not putting, maybe warming it up a little bit here and there, but you're not

23:15 pumping a ton of energy into that process. It's pretty much doing it itself. So it's like, again, like making bread, right? You put the yeast and the flour together with a little bit of water

23:25 and it warms up, it does it itself. I don't add any added electricity to that process. Yeah, that'd be crazy. Well, you've got some people that are looking at co-locating, right? So then you

23:36 would co-locate these

23:38 plants so that you would take some of

23:41 the waste product out. and then run it right back through and then it'd become an input for the facility it's at. Wow, interesting. So now how are you playing this whole thing? So we're playing

23:51 on a couple of fronts. So we've got an accelerator called BioWell. So we, to your point, a lot of the companies that develop these solutions and so forth are PhDs and they're white jackets. They

24:05 think of it in small quantities. And as we all know, if we're really gonna go down the avenue of chemicals and so forth, those are not beaker size solutions. And that is a stepping point for them

24:19 that they need help with being able to commercialize and really grow and become an investable company. And then we're also, we have a venture firm called First Bite. So Veronica Breckenridge is the

24:30 founder of that firm. She had a, she has Fund One, which is kind of a proof of concept and she's deployed capital into seven different companies that do exactly what we're talking about. So we

24:41 help. companies develop. We help companies help to invest into companies and help them commercialize their solutions. That's wild. If I wanted to see one of these facilities, where would I go?

24:55 Well, welcome to ours. That would be easy in Houston. You've got one in Houston? Yeah. Just south of the energy stadium, like one minute from the energy stadium. Oh, wow. Yeah. And then

25:06 there are a few national locations like the Champaign Urbana, University of Illinois has a facility. Michigan State has one in Holland, as well as one in Lexington, and then our Lansing, excuse

25:19 me, and then there are a couple on the east and west coast. But that's one of the things that we're trying to do, too. We really think Houston and Texas in general should be kind of the epicenter

25:28 for this. So we're working to put together a facility that we could use to bring startups here and help them to do pilot runs, to start that commercialization route. But at the end of the day, the

25:40 ones that I have seen, except for the really, really large ones, or they look like a brewery. They're big stainless steel tanks with pumps and stuff like that, bringing in fluids in and out while

25:52 at Ferments and then bringing it out the other side. And ironically, in that whole process of a brewery, one of the companies that Veronica invested, she actually uses brewery waste. So the waste

26:02 that comes out of the brewery, she uses it to create retinol and other types of lubricants in this same process Is there, and I don't even know how to ask this, so feel free not to answer the

26:16 question. Maybe. But yeah, definitely maybe. No, is there a scope of the market today? Is there X million of sales of product? Just 'cause I have no concept of, are we talking10 a year? Are

26:34 we talking billions a year? Of companies that are producing it today.

26:44 And you can kind of make that number up 'cause I honestly have no idea how I'm gonna react whatever you say here, you know, 'cause I don't have a clue. The thing is, it's very specific to, okay,

26:52 what end markets, because this could, anything that we're making today could pretty much be by manufactured instead. There's companies that are making alternative letters to like a lot of the meats

27:05 and, you know, all the, like, impossible. And then you have the ones who are more focused on an industrial use cases, like, say, in the case of lipids, there is already a massive, like, 400

27:16 billion market for specialty lipids, oils, that go into all kinds of applications, like cosmetics, all the way to energy use cases. And so that's the kind of the playground. Yeah, and totally

27:29 see the size of the market and the future, you know. Huge, yeah. It's really brilliant, yeah. But it's very small, the role that this, my blame-of-action companies. in combination or doing

27:40 today is still very small. The one area that I would say is bigger is going to be biofuels and it's going to be because of Brazil and corn in the US.

27:54 just fermenting those to make. So this new generation of fermentation, precision fermentation, this is new. But their study is like from McKinsey and others from saying by

28:07 2035, a lot more of what we're used to is going to be manufactured and not because it's like more sustainable because we know and it's proven now. And I track this, people are not going to pay for

28:19 the more sustainable option. So if you could get to the same price, most likely they will pick the more sustainable option, but they're not gonna pay more because it's more sustainable. So SAF is

28:30 one of those examples. So by bringing the costs down because of the removing massive energy input that is needed for chemical reactions, for example, they will start to compete throughout time.

28:42 And it's just going to become more and more efficient because this is just the beginning of the productivity enhancements and like building the supply chain for bi-manufacturing. That doesn't exist

28:54 in a cohesive way today. Well, and it's the other side of it too, right? One of the things that we like to talk about is it's really hard to make someone change what they do If you say this is bad,

29:05 you can't use, you can't drink out of the plastic anymore, you can't drink out of the aluminum anymore, it's really hard to get a customer to change. What would the world look like if that was

29:15 biodegradable or the can that you've got is biodegradable? So then you didn't have to go through the process of separating your recycling. You didn't have to take it to the landfill and then they

29:23 separated and then they go through another process to make it usable again for the second go around. If it was just biodegradable, so no one really had to change what they do. because the product

29:35 that you're getting now is completely biodegradable, so you don't have to recycle anymore. And there's things that are coming down the road, like that, you get done with your tennis shoes, unless,

29:46 of course, they're Jordans, and you just take them out in the backyard and put them in your garden and bury them, and then they become fertilizer for your tomatoes. Yeah, that's crazy. And I

29:57 think you're absolutely right. There was a time where I think good for the environment was, in effect, marketing dollars. So companies would spend that. But

30:12 I always tell folks, follow me on this. Energy companies are really greedy, right? If they could charge more for gasoline by saying it's economically friendly, we'd have a pump at every station.

30:25 I mean, so they know nobody's gonna pay more for that. So, yeah. Yeah, that's great. I remember it the idea i think is it Sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, go. The other thing I wanted to

30:38 mention is, there's some adjustment happening in real time right now, that we're all seeing, with like approach to energy transition, like projects and all of that. I think one aspect of it that

30:49 is going to become more clear also is that there was so much, too much focus on only measuring CO2 emissions, which led to net zero goals and like, because it's measurable, right? So people say,

31:02 we're at this and we're gonna do this But if you really wanna care about nature, we have to think holistically was the impact on nature, right? And that includes water use, that includes land use.

31:14 So it may actually not be better to use soybean oil to make something, right? Maybe better off just to use fossil fuels, right? But that only is clear if you think about the holistic impact on

31:25 nature. And I think that is a lot of more companies and it's maybe more obvious in Europe at some point, this rebalance is going to happen to where we have more better models that could kind of give

31:39 us more of an apple to apple for solutions about the overall impact. Like in Samvida, we use planetary boundaries as our sustainability framework and how we measure the impact on nature instead of

31:51 just CI or the carbon intensity. And so that's another element that is important because if you think about all the gas company, if you drill a hole and you could have produced thousands of barrels

32:04 per day for the next 10, 15, 20 years, that's so impressive compared to the amount of time and energy and feeder stock that goes into re-creating that amount of energy and fuel. If you were to

32:17 build a facility on surface and feed it, what is the water use land use in totality, right? So that readjustment, I think, is also one of those things that is going to help with with some of the

32:29 bi-manufacturing initiatives. I mean, I'm an oil and gas home, or. and I know it's a product and all, but I've always said, you know, griping about CO2, it's plant food, we can argue how

32:42 truly, you know, what's the contributing factor there to climate change, 'cause climate's always changed, you know, across that, but getting rid of plastic, not a bad thing, and I could get

32:57 behind doing that, because at the end of the day, so I've spent a fair amount of time over in Europe, there's no plastic over there. I mean, we buy portable meals, and that plastic's getting

33:09 into our bodies, destroying our testosterone. I truly believe that, you know? Well, that's one of the things that, I guess a couple of things. I agree with you on the, you know, I think oil

33:20 and gas and energy's gonna be around for a long time. I think that you do have to, which is one of the things that we don't do a very good job of as humans period, is look at the whole picture, we

33:29 tend to just look at the silo that we tend to play in. I think oil and gas is going to be around for a long time as an energy feedstock to do whatever it's needed. And it's also a space for when you

33:39 think about chemicals and you think about plastics and stuff like that, there's only one feedstock. Wouldn't it be nice if there was multiple feed stocks if something did happen to the oil and gas

33:49 industry? And the other side, the Veronica talks about as well, and we've been preaching some of this too, it's not just the microplastic that everybody is talking about, right? A lot, you know,

33:60 the contacts that are probably in your eyes are chemical. The lipstick that our girlfriends or our wives put on is got chemicals that are petrochemicals. There are 80s or 80s pop bands.

34:13 So just think about how much oil and gas kiss wiped all over their face every night. And what did that do to their their body and their chemistry and and we wake up every what's what's in your

34:24 toothpaste. What's in you know the things that you wipe on your skin. There's all of these things that we don't know. fully what the impact is and wouldn't it be nice to be able to convert to

34:35 something that was biologic that would have less of an impact on you and your hormones, your body, and so forth. So my co-founder, who also happens to be my sister, Tara, her passion is

34:49 nature-inspired technology and she says

34:55 the ultimate sustainability is nature. So if we could eventually be in tune with nature and understand nature so well that we could create solutions that is leveraging what was already there and we

35:10 could kind of sit next to it because if you think about it in nature, you don't have waste. Isn't that weird? There's no waste. Like if there's something, it's a fetus like for something else,

35:21 you know, and we've kind of disrupted that flow but I think now we're finding in what ways can we rebalance that, you know. And it has to be kind of a conscious effort to identify those areas.

35:36 So this idea of nature inspired technology by manufacturing is one aspect of it. There's a lot of other ways of doing that. People talk about its oceans and everything else, but it's all connected.

35:47 It's all connected. And we are also part of nature. And we're also animal basically, like next to the other species. So, and I think we have a responsibility, even when we think about the

35:59 sustainability, like you said, plastics, right? But it's also, you know, people use the example, like for my kids, for my grandkids. But I would say, what about humans 100 years from now,

36:10 1000 years from now? You know, we're given what we're given because our ancestors had these ideas and didn't like fuck it up completely, right? So, what about us? Like, what are we gonna do?

36:22 And so, it kind of forces us to think a bit more long term And I think we do need to think a bit more long-term, you know? And so that's why this sustainability in some ways and economics, I think

36:35 that's why there's so much debate about it, right? Because you could have a completely logical argument about it, but if you're considering the short-term impact, that's one view, but you could

36:46 also have a long-term view and that's different. So I think humans in general, we need to kind of do a better job collaborating and having this like species level projects that we all could kind of

36:57 advance, you know? Well, that's one of the things of Veronica. The bleeds a lot off of Terra, and Veronica always says, just like the dinosaurs, right? The planet will be here after we're gone.

37:09 So wouldn't it be nice if we were around a little bit longer and didn't destroy the thing that's gonna list last forever, so.

37:17 I totally believe, and I don't know if you've heard Joe Rogan riff on this, but some advanced civilization lived here, you know, just given nature, climate. Yeah. I mean, think of it, like if

37:34 we got wiped out tomorrow, you know, thousands of years from now, there wouldn't be a lot of evidence of it. Whether just, I mean, go look at old buildings, you know, for instance, and I mean,

37:46 somebody built those pyramids. Yes. And we probably couldn't do that today if we wanted to. Yeah, agree. And so, yeah, no, it's okay So we're doing this podcast again in five years. Give me

38:00 something we talk about five years from now that maybe nobody's talking about today. That's kind

38:12 of your open-ended, wild-ass speculation question. Well, for me, I'll be talking about how the project is doing as a use case, because sometimes for us entrepreneurs, it's like you have a vision,

38:23 right? And you see it, but when you explain it, comes across fuzzy to some degree, right? But once you go and actually do it and build it, then you have the actual data, right, to point to.

38:36 And so how that's going and how it's scaling, that will be exciting and its impact. But I think the part that I will be even more excited to talk when we meet again in five years is going to be this

38:46 idea of subsurface by refineries and how that is transforming the oil and gas industry in terms of producing things that we want, whether it's hydrogen, whether it's methane in the subsurface

38:58 alternative uses of the subsurface and how that category is evolving. 'Cause by then gold hydrogen has had and trials multiple commercial deployment. And that one is a big one because think about

39:10 how many assets are just sitting there? Or we haven't even touched because there's a biological problem we just don't know how to solve, you know? And that would bring a lot of things in the

39:21 subsurface which by itself saves a lot of energy and money. but this understanding is gonna advance a lot in the next five years. So Subsurface By Refinery is in By Manufacturing, I think would be

39:35 definitely my favorite topic when I come back. Oh, that's cool. So my name is always, and I always like to throw this out. I think it's, the industry would develop so much so that it's

39:45 ubiquitous, everybody understands it. But

39:49 the thing that I think is interesting too, is we've been, we talk a lot about going to Mars, right? There's all this conversation about Mars What does that look like? Last time I looked, there's

39:58 probably not a lot of Amazon trucks up there, how do you get product there? And being able to use something like biology to create products on Mars so that it doesn't have to be shipped up there all

40:09 the time via rockets. And we've already, I've talked to a gentleman that's working with NASA now. So think about the fermenters, they use gravity, right? To keep the yeast and everything moving.

40:21 Once you get into space, Gravity doesn't work so well on a fermenter. So they're working on fermenters that work in space. So they're doing stuff like that. So they're already starting that

40:29 process. So wouldn't it be interesting to see what it would be like to do biology on Mars? And I think there's a place called NASA, not far from here. So it kind of ties into my Houston side of

40:41 the things. That's one of my

40:44 favorite memes. What if UFOs are just billionaires from other planets?

40:50 Yeah, the only thing that I

40:53 do think is interesting is it's become so bipartisan what we're talking about too. You've got the people that really like and are attached to the energy transition side, but then you've got all of

41:04 these people that are really focused on how do we deal with defense, how do we deal with supply chain, and it creates this bipartisan group of people that are coming together to really push it. So

41:13 you're seeing, a government leaning into it more and more. You're seeing states, frankly, starting to fight over the fact that they want these things in their state. So it's become a very

41:23 bipartisan issue that everybody can kind of agree on that we ought to do something. So that's pretty fascinating.

41:31 It makes sense. It's almost kind of like permitting for wires. It's like, hey, if you want renewables, guys, you got to run wires to get the electricity to where the people are You know, and

41:43 it's there. I think Joe Manchin almost had that done, the permitting reform. So fascinating. Yeah, this wouldn't seem to have a political bent to it. No, I don't think it at all. 'Cause you

41:56 talk the whole time, you never once were sitting there, oh, I'm gonna save the planet. You're like, I'm making coin,

42:03 you know? If you do that, it will save the planet as a consequence. I think the case point for what you said is like, if you look at critical minerals, like that has become so obvious that this

42:13 could be a big problem. if you can supply copper, lithium, other critical minerals. So there's been this massive push. There's nothing to do with sustainability. It's about national security.

42:24 And so one of our other spin-out companies called Endolith, that's what they do. And they've got a ton of momentum. Even though maybe they thought it will be more difficult with the administration

42:34 change, but this other movement came through and actually turned out there was a total net positive. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. All right, how do people get in touch with you? They can look at our

42:45 website, first byte, byte is B-I-G-H-T and not B-I-T-E, or they can go look at BioWell or they can just text me directly. My text is, or my email is, palmer9988gmailcom. Oh, how do

43:00 people run you down? If for the company, you could go to samvidacom, C-E-M-V-I-T-Acom. And then for me, probably the best way is LinkedIn. So, Goji, Academy, that'll be easy. LinkedIn is

43:11 good as well It's just Paul Palmer at LinkedIn. One LinkedIn. Well, you guys were cool to come on. Still, my mind's blown. We appreciate the time, this is fun. Yeah. I was like hanging out

43:21 and chatting it up with you and Moji. Okay, see you in five minutes. Maybe so. So you know it would be great.