💸 The Future of Food is Cell-Based

Host: Alex Shirazi
Guest: Lejjy Gafour | CEO | CULT Food Science
Category: 💸 Investing | Cell-Based Foods

Podcast’s Essential Bites:

[12:45] LG: "CULT Food Science is the first of its kind platform in North America being publicly traded, focused on basically cell-based foods. [...] We invest on a global scale. [...] We also are focused on developing our own IP and spinning up companies where we see whitespace as well. In our current portfolio where we have investments kind of across the chain of products, everything from bioreactors to consumer products, so that there can be mutual benefit between the companies' work as well to really help things kick off."

[18:12] LG: "If you want to invest in a startup, you generally have to be an accredited investor. [...] We're giving people the option and access to add cell-based foods to the portfolio early on, even though it is still risky, to be able to help support the change that they want to see in food systems in the future. [...] Everyday people think about this stuff and it's often inaccessible for them to support it. So that was another motivation for making CULT happen."

[22:47] LG: "When the industry initially first started, you had to be vertically integrated, so you had to do everything yourself, because there just literally wasn't anywhere to go to. [...] So the increase of B2B companies in the space is good, because [...] when there's more B2B firms, a new company can look at those firms, and actually actively make a choice to [...] depend on another company that specializes in [certain processes]. [...] And then it is an accelerant. [...] That proliferation of different ideas, different approaches, and accessibility globally for the technologies and approaches will create a steady climb towards that "scale" that we're all aiming for."

[26:52] LG: "Open Cell Ag is really motivation on the ecosystem side about being able to make as many materials, techniques, and information as available as possible to everyone in this space and beyond. [...] The goal really is to be able to provide information all the way from the most beginning things [...] to more complex initiatives, such as trying to build out a cell bank [...] to be able to provide those first starting materials for new companies in an affordable way, without predatory contracts, in an accessible way with strong backing information about those materials. And this really is about both accelerating the ecosystem as a whole on one hand, but then also attempting to make it more equitable across the board."